[491] Alexander Macdonald of Boisdale (Clanranald’s step-brother) was carried prisoner to London, and kept there until July 1747, when he was released.
[492] This was Boisdale’s third wife, Anne, daughter of Macneil of Barra.
[493] Captain Carolina Frederick Scott shares with Ferguson and Lockhart eternal infamy for his superlative cruelty to the hunted Jacobites of the Western Highlands. I found his name and that of Ferguson still perfectly remembered in the Outer Hebrides, and received with execrations. He was an officer of Guise’s regiment, the 6th (now the Royal Warwickshire). His satanic zeal, like Ferguson’s, was rewarded with promotion. In November 1746 he was appointed major in his regiment in the room of Major Wentworth, who was cashiered for surrendering Fort Augustus to the Jacobites (March 5th), when three companies of Guise’s regiment were made prisoners of war.
[494] Meaning Captain O’Neille.
[495] This is the Beinchillkoinnich of the Lyon (i. 329), the Beinn Ruigh Choinnich of the Ordnance Survey; a hill on the north side of Loch Boisdale, 900 feet high, from whence the low-lying country of South Uist can be viewed from sea to sea. On the northern spur there is a cave accessible only by a precipitous narrow ledge, where shelter from the weather could be had and an outlook to the Minch. Local tradition associates this cave with the Prince. He possibly took shelter there on this momentous day. South Uist, even in summer, is a very rainy island.
[496] Hugh Macdonald of Armadale, in Skye, was Flora Macdonald’s step-father. He was a grandson of Sir James ‘Mor’ Macdonald of Sleat, and was thus a first cousin of Sir Alexander’s father, and of Lady Clanranald’s father, as well as of Baleshare and Mrs. Campbell of Scalpa. He was a captain in one of Sir Alexander Macdonald’s independent companies out against Prince Charles. He had formerly been an officer in the French army. (Henderson’s Life of Cumberland, p. 299.)
[497] Daughter of Alexander (Montgomerie), 9th Earl of Eglinton. Married as his second wife to Sir Alexander Macdonald of Sleat; d. 1799.
[498] At Alisary, on the slopes of Sheaval, a hill to the south of Loch Eynort, and rising to the north-east from Flora’s old home of Milton (or Arrivoulin) on the low ground near the ocean. This was the hill pasture of her brother’s farm to which the cattle were driven in summer, while the owners occupied ‘shielings’ or temporary huts in the neighbourhood. It was an excellent place to meet. The western side of the island is a wide belt of dead level links formed by the sand thrown up by the swell of the Atlantic, and known as ‘the Machar.’ No wayfarer on the Machar could easily escape detection even if he were miles away, and it was the night of the full moon. Flora’s shieling was near the western end of the hill region of South Uist, and just about as far west as the Prince could have dared to go without losing the shelter of the hills.
[499] Benbecula, that part of the ‘Long Island’ lying between North and South Uist, and joined to these islands by sea-fords passable only at low tide and thus easily guarded.
[500] I found that the custom of nick-naming local notabilities after distinguished statesmen still exists. When I was visiting these islands fifteen years ago I met a crofter known as ‘Gladstone’ on account of his financial ability and his persuasive powers of (Gaelic) oratory, and there were others whose nick-names I have forgotten.