from which a
huge black banner was displayed, had made more than two thirds of its
voyage ere it was visible from the eminence on which Simon Glover stood
to overlook the ceremony. The instant the distant wail of the coronach
was heard proceeding from the attendants on the funeral barge, all the
subordinate sounds of lamentation were hushed at once, as the raven
ceases to croak and the hawk to whistle whenever the scream of the eagle
is heard. The boats, which had floated hither and thither upon the lake,
like a flock of waterfowl dispersing themselves on its surface, now drew
together with an appearance of order, that the funeral flotilla might
pass onward, and that they themselves might fall into their proper
places. In the mean while the piercing din of the war pipes became
louder and louder, and the cry from the numberless boats which followed
that from which the black banner of the chief was displayed rose in
wild unison up to the Tom an Lonach, from which the glover viewed the
spectacle. The galley which headed the procession bore on its poop a
species of scaffold, upon which, arrayed in white linen, and with the
face bare, was displayed the corpse of the deceased chieftain. His son
and the nearest relatives filled the vessel, while a great number of
boats, of every description that could be assembled, either on Loch
Tay itself or brought by land carriage from Loch Earn and otherwise,
followed in the rear, some of them of very frail materials. There were
even curraghs, composed of ox hides stretched over hoops of willow,
in the manner of the ancient British, and some committed themselves
to rafts formed for the occasion, from the readiest materials that
occurred, and united in such a precarious manner as to render it
probable that, before the accomplishment of the voyage, some of the
clansmen of the deceased might be sent to attend their chieftain in the
world of spirits.

When the principal flotilla came in sight of the smaller group of boats
collected towards the foot of the lake, and bearing off from the little
island, they hailed each other with a shout so loud and general, and
terminating in a cadence so wildly prolonged, that not only the deer
started from their glens for miles around, and sought the distant
recesses of the mountains, but even the domestic cattle, accustomed to
the voice of man, felt the full panic which the human shout strikes into
the wilder tribes, and like them fled from their pasture in