founded on custom, and allowed by general consent
rather than established by laws,"[136] existed in their full vigour. The
military ranks of the clans was fixed and continual during the rare
intervals of local quiet, and every head of a family was captain of his
own tribe.[137] The spirit of rivalry between the clans kept up a taste
for hostility, and converted rapine into a service of honour. Revenge
was considered as a duty, and superstition aided the dictates of a
fiery and impetuous spirit. A people naturally humane, naturally
forbearing, had thus, by the habits of ages immemorial, become
remorseless plunderers and resolute avengers. When any affront was
offered to a chieftain, the clan was instantly summoned. They came from
their straths and their secluded valleys, wherein there was little
intercourse with society in general to tame their native pride, or to
weaken the predominant emotion of their hearts,--their pride in their
chieftain. They came fearlessly, trusting, not only in the barriers
which Nature had given them in their rocks and fastnesses, but in the
unanimity of their purpose. Each clan had its stated place of meeting,
and when it was summoned upon any emergency, the fiery cross, one end
burning, the other wrapt in a piece of linen stained with blood, was
sent among the aroused clansmen, traversing those wild moors, and
penetrating into the secluded glens of those sublime regions. It was
sent, by two messengers, throughout the country, and passed from hand to
hand, these messengers shouting, as they went, the war-cry of the clan,
which was echoed from rock to rock. And then arose the cry of the
coronach, that wail, appropriate to the dead, but uttered also by women,
as the fiery cross roused them from their peaceful occupations, and
hurried from them their sons and their husbands.

Never was the fiery cross borne throughout the beautiful country of
Invernessshire, never was the wail of the coronach heard on a more
ignoble occasion, than on the summons of the Master of Lovat, in the
September of the year 1698. After some fruitless negotiation, it is
true, with Lord Salton, and after availing himself of the power of his
father, as chieftain, to imprison Robert Fraser, and several other
disaffected clansmen whom that person had seduced from their allegiance,
the Master of Lovat prepared for action. The traitors to his cause had
escaped death by flight, but the clan were otherwise perfectly faithful
to th