s, nine hundred
kine, and two hundred of the small shaggy ponies of the Highlands.

It is said, and may but too easily be believed, that the sufferings of
the fugitives were terrible. How many old men, how many women with babes
in their arms, sank down and slept their last sleep in the snow; how
many, having crawled, spent with toil and hunger, into nooks among the
precipices, died in those dark holes, and were picked to the bone by the
mountain ravens, can never be known. But it is probable that those who
perished by cold, weariness and want were not less numerous than those
who were slain by the assassins. When the troops had retired, the
Macdonalds crept out of the caverns of Glencoe, ventured back to the
spot where the huts had formerly stood, collected the scorched
corpses from among the smoking ruins, and performed some rude rites of
sepulture. The tradition runs that the hereditary bard of the tribe took
his seat on a rock which overhung the place of slaughter, and poured
forth a long lament over his murdered brethren, and his desolate home.
Eighty years later that sad dirge was still repeated by the population
of the valley. [233]

The survivors might well apprehend that they had escaped the shot
and the sword only to perish by famine. The whole domain was a waste.
Houses, barns, furniture, implements of husbandry, herds, flocks,
horses, were gone. Many months must elapse before the clan would be
able to raise on its own ground the means of supporting even the most
miserable existence. [234]

It may be thought strange that these events should not have been
instantly followed by a burst of execration from every part of the
civilised world. The fact, however, is that years elapsed before the
public indignation was thoroughly awakened, and that months elapsed
before the blackest part of the story found credit even among the
enemies of the government. That the massacre should not have been
mentioned in the London Gazettes, in the Monthly Mercuries which were
scarcely less courtly than the Gazettes, or in pamphlets licensed by
official censors, is perfectly intelligible. But that no allusion to it
should be found in private journals and letters, written by persons free
from all restraint, may seem extraordinary. There is not a word on the
subject in Evelyn's Diary. In Narcissus Luttrell's Diary is a remarkable
entry made five weeks after the butchery. The letters from Scotland, he
says, described that kingdom as p