mainly abroad; but the
old friends of England, the winds, drove the battered fleet back into
harbor, and Charles in vain tried to persuade the Earl Marischal to
accompany him to Scotland in a small fishing vessel.

One result followed the reception of Charles by France, niggardly as
that reception was--war with England broke out, and the French army of
invasion was moved from Dunkirk to Flanders. The prince, not permitted
to serve in the French army, returned to Paris, where he had been
falsely assured by Semple and AEneas Macdonald that England was ready to
rise for him. Murray, who visited him in Paris, tried to dissuade him
from a wild venture; in Scotland he found the chiefs of his own opinion,
but the letter carrying the news never reached the prince. His Irish
friends urged him on; "the expedition was entirely an Irish project." He
borrowed money from his bankers, the Waters, he pawned his share of the
Sobieski jewels, and, with a privateer man-of-war and a brig, La
Doutelle, he left Belleisle on July 13, 1745. Neither the French court
nor his father knew that, attended only by seven men, "The Seven Men of
Moidart," he had set out to seek for a crown. The day before he embarked
he wrote to James; he said that no man would buy a horse, nor trust a
prince, that showed no spirit. "I never intend to come back," he added.
So, dressed as a student of the Scots College, he started. He lost his
convoy, the Elizabeth, on the way, after a drawn battle with the Lion
(Captain Brett). Resisting all advice to turn back, as AEneas Macdonald,
who accompanied him, narrates, he held on in La Doutelle, and reached
Erisca, an islet between Barra and South Uist, on August 2, 1745. An
eagle hovered over his ship, and Tullibardine hailed the royal bird as a
happy omen. But he found himself unwelcome. Boisdale bade him go home;
"I _am_ at home," said the prince. He steered for Moidart, the most
beautiful but the wildest shore of Scotland, a region of steep and
serrated mountains, of long salt-water straits, winding beneath the
bases of the hills, and of great fresh-water lochs. Loch Nahuagh was his
port; here he received Clan Ranald, whose desolate keep, Castle Tirrim,
stands yet in ruins, since "the Fifteen." Glenaladale (whose descendants
yet hold their barren acres), Dalilea, and Kinlochmoidart (now, like
Clan Ranald, landless men) met him with discouraging words. But, seeing
a flash in the eyes of a young Macdonald, of Kinlochmoidart