[501] I obtained a very interesting confirmation of this story from an aged cailliach when in the islands. She told me that a family of Campbells, who lived near Loch Eynort or Loch Skipport, had rowed the Prince and Neil MacEachain to Benbecula, and that the Prince was furiously angry with them; but her explanation of his anger was that the boatmen were Campbells, a name not beloved in the Outer Hebrides: no one had ever thought of the terrifying effect of a tidal island on a stranger. Cf. R. L. Stevenson’s Kidnapped, ch. xiv.
[502] A tenant who takes stock from the landlord and shares with him in the increase.
[503] Clanranald’s residence in Benbecula.
[504] A hill named Rueval, 400 feet above sea level, the only high ground on a very flat island. A projecting rock, on the south side of the hill, which gives considerable shelter and affords a wonderful view of the country, is probably the spot where the Prince lay waiting for Flora.
[505] John Campbell of Mamore; b. about 1693; d. 1770; suc. as Duke of Argyll on the death of his cousin, the 3rd duke, in 1761. He had command of the troops in the west of Scotland in 1745, with headquarters at Dumbarton. He pursued Prince Charles through the islands, hunting for him as far away as St. Kilda. He was on his way back from that island when he nearly captured the Prince at Benbecula. Many of the Jacobite prisoners passed through his hands, and, as a rule, he was kind to them, contrasting favourably with such men as Scott and Ferguson.
[506] Spelt Loch Uskavagh in the Ordnance Survey.
[507] i.e. Neil MacEachain.
[508] The home of Sir Alexander of Sleat at this time was Monkstat House (also spelt Mongstat, Mougstot and other variations), in the parish of Kilmuir, Trotternish. It was built on the site of an ancient monastic foundation near the shores of a lake named Columbkill, since then drained and parcelled into crofts. The ancient home of the family was Duntulm Castle, about five miles north of Monkstat, but during the troubles of the Revolution it is said to have been burnt by a party landed from a warship. Local legendary lore gives various other versions of the reason for abandoning Duntulm. By one account the family was driven from the castle by the ghost of Donald Gorm, a sixteenth-century ancestor. By another, it was owing to the death of a child of the family, who was killed by a fall from a window of the castle, which is built on the edge of a precipitous rock overhanging the sea. Monkstat was built in its stead.
[509] Alexander Macdonald of Kingsburgh, a senior cadet of the Sleat family, was the 6th in descent from James, a younger son of Donald Gruamach, 6th in descent from John, Lord of the Isles and the Princess Margaret. Kingsburgh was Sir Alexander’s factor in 1746. His house was on Loch Snizort, about eight miles south of Monkstat.
[510] The garrison belonged to the Macleod Militia, and the officer in command was Alexander, son of Donald Macleod of Balmeanach.