et daring of
the Highland chieftains who were engaged in it. It shows, also, the
state of the national feeling towards the English Government, at a time
when comparative quiet appeared to be established in the Highlands.

Attached to certain regiments which were then lying at Fort William,
there were a number of young volunteers, men of good family, who had a
soldier's pay, if they wished it, and were considered as pupils in the
art of war, "at liberty to retire if they chose, and eligible, being
often persons of family, to fill the vacancies which war or disease
occasioned among the subalterns."[252] This regiment was now about to
occupy the garrisons, and on their way to the Tyendrum or Black Mount,
the officers engaged in conversation, little dreading an assault in a
country inhabited only by a few herdsmen, and considered by them as
wholly subdued. But they were deceived in their sense of safety. Among
the heath and bushes in a narrow pass, circumscribed, on the one side,
by a steep mountain, and on the other by a small lake, which skirted the
path, for road there was not, lay in ambush two hundred well-armed and
light-footed Highlanders. The youths, or volunteers, were in the rear of
the regiment; as they marched fearlessly through the deep solitude of
this wild district, the Highlanders sprang forwards from their
ambuscade; and before the young soldiers could recover their surprise or
have recourse to their arms, eight or ten young men of family were
seized on and hurried away. With these were mingled others, among these
volunteers of less importance, who were carried away in the confusion by
mistake. A few shots were fired by the soldiery, but without any effect,
for the Highlanders had disappeared. This sudden attack excited the
utmost consternation among the officers of the regiment, nor could they
discover the object of this aggression; nor did they know either how to
pursue the assailants, or in what terms to report to Government so
ignominious a loss. They marched, therefore, silently to Dumbarton
without attempting to pursue an enemy whose aim it might be to lure
them into some fastness, there to encounter a foe too powerful, from the
nature of the country, to be resisted. On arriving at Dumbarton the
mystery was explained. There the commander of the corps found a letter,
stating that "certain chiefs of clans had no objection to King William's
ruling in England, considering that nation as at liberty to choos