Highlanders" was
conferred upon it.

The regiment next fought at Martinique and Guadaloupe, returning to fight
again in Canada and take an important part in the battle which compelled
the surrender of Montreal. Altogether, it served seven years in the West
Indies and North America. It was only at this period that company
sergeants were given carbines instead of the Lochaber axes which they had
always carried.

In 1775 the regiment returned to Scotland, having been absent 32 years.

In April, 1776, the regiment embarked again for America, this time to
fight in the revolution of the American colonists. They were disembarked
on Staten Island, and, as I have said, they were engaged and suffered some
losses in the Battle of Brooklyn. They also suffered heavily in the Battle
of the Brandywine.

The Black Watch next fought against Hyder Ali, in India, in 1782.

In 1795 it took part in the defence of Nieuport, in Flanders, and suffered
much in the Gildersmalsen retreat, in that campaign.

Back again, the regiment went, after this, to the West Indies and in this
campaign the men were first given a uniform suitable to wear in the
tropics. Its principal features were white duck trousers and round hats.
The mutations of world warfare had had their effect. The Highlanders were
willing to put on pantaloons. There were but five companies of the
regiment on this expedition. The whole regiment was reassembled, however,
in the following year, at Gibraltar, and fought as a whole in the capture
of Minorca.

The year 1800 found the regiment, under Sir Ralph Abercromby, in Egypt.
During the fighting with Napoleon's armies, there, the regiment lost its
commander in action.

In 1808 the Black Watch was among the British forces in the Peninsula and
suffered extreme privation and heavy losses on the retreat from Corunna.

In the following year the regiment was on the ill-fated expedition to
Walcheren, returning with less than one-third of its original strength.
Three years later they were in Portugal again.

After the escape of Napoleon the regiment fought through to Waterloo,
though without playing an important part in that last great battle.

It then fought through the campaign of the Crimea as a part of Sir Colin
Campbell's Highland brigade.

Within a year it was in the lead of the force of six thousand men which
Sir Colin led against twenty-five thousand mutineers at Cawnpore.

Its next hard fighting was in the Ashanti campaig