After this the power of language failed him; but Angus M'Donald (who afterwards died from the effect of his own wound) related that he heard him praying fervently in Gaelic, and in whispers. He was sinking fast. As the cart passed near where his cousin Ross lay wounded, the latter sent his servant, Angus Sutherland, to inquire how he was; but Cameron's speech was gone—he could only shake his head mournfully, without replying; and just as the cart entered the village of Waterloo, he laid his head on the breast of the brave and good M'Millan, on whose arm he had reclined, and expired without a sigh.
His faithful follower conveyed the body in by the Namur gate, through which Cameron had that morning ridden forth at the head of his Highlanders, and took it straight to the billet they had occupied in Brussels. As he was obliged to rejoin the regiment without delay for the coming conflict at Waterloo, he made a rough deal coffin, and in this placed the body of his master, brother, and friend—for Cameron had been all these three to the poor Highland private; and thus he interred him, still in his full uniform, by the side of the King's Avenue, on the Ghent road, the Allée Verte. This was on the evening of Saturday, the 17th of June. The body was conveyed to its hastily-made tomb, in a common cart, for poor Ewen could afford nothing better; and the only persons who accompanied him were the landlord of the billet, an honest Belgian, and three wounded Highlanders, who, with their open scars, had tottered out of Brussels to pay the last tribute to him they loved so well, and had followed so long.
"Your lordships will see in the enclosed lists," says Wellington, in a dispatch to the Treasury, dated Orville, 25th June, "the names of some most valuable officers lost to His Majesty's service. Among them, I cannot avoid to mention Colonel Cameron, of the 92nd Regiment, and Colonel Sir H. Ellis of the 23rd, to whose conduct I have frequently called your lordships' attention, and who at last fell, distinguishing themselves at the head of the brave troops which they commanded. Notwithstanding the glory of the occasion, it is impossible not to lament such men, both on account of the public and as friends."
Such was the eulogium of Wellington!
When Cameron was lying dead in the hospital of Gemappe, there was found in the pocket of his Highland regimentals a touching memento, illustrative of his character, and more honourable even than the trophies of battle which he bore on his breast; viz., a pocket-book, containing the names of all the Highland soldiers who had come with him from his father's lands and from Lochaber; marking those whom he had promoted, and those who were dead; for he counted many of them as his clansmen and kindred, and had ever looked after the interests and welfare of them all as if they had been the children of his own hearth, and he had carried this list with him in all his battles, for it was dated at Alexandria, in Egypt, 24th September, 1801.
A captain of an English regiment was buried near him; and there in that lonely place the graves lay undisturbed until the month of April, 1816. In that year the colonel's brother, Captain Peter Cameron, of the Balcarris, came to Brussels, accompanied by Ewen M'Millan, who led him to the well-remembered place, where the graves lay, near three trees at a corner of the Allée Verte. The colonel's remains were exhumed, placed within another coffin, and brought to Leith; from whence a king's ship conveyed them to his native Lochaber, where a grand Highland funeral was prepared.
From Fassifern the remains of the colonel were borne for five miles, on the shoulders of his friends and clansmen, to the old kirkyard of Kilmalie, where, in presence of 3000 Highlanders, his aged father, then verging on his eightieth year, laid his head in the grave a second time, while the pipes played a lament; and now he sleeps in his native earth by the tomb of the MacLauchlans, the Leine Chrios of Locheil. Donald Cameron, his chief, was in attendance, with Barra, Barcaldine, and Glencoe, and seventy gentlemen of the clans dined in honour of the occasion, at the Inn of Maryburgh.
Old Highlanders yet tell how sadly and how solemnly on that day the march of Gille Chriosd rang in the great glen of Caledonia, and yet remember the dirge composed on that occasion by Ailean Dall, or "Blind Allan," the bard of the chieftain of Glengarry—perhaps the last of the family bards in the Scottish Highlands.
In consideration of his son's brilliant services, the venerable Ewen of Fassifern received a baronetcy, and in Kilmalie a monument has been raised above the grave of the hero of Arriverette. Its epitaph is from the pen of Sir Walter Scott, and is remarkable for the elegance of its expression:—