Donald Cameron of Lochiel, had long exercised the authority of a
chieftain, before the Rebellion of 1745 entailed upon him a
participation in occupations still more arduous. He had, in short,
arrived at middle age when he was called upon to support the claims of
Charles Edward.

To the virtues and intentions of this chieftain, even his enemies have
borne tribute. He was accomplished, refined, and courteous; yet brave,
firm, and daring. The warlike tribes around him, unaccustomed to such a
combination of qualities, idolized the gallant and the good Lochiel. His
father, reposing on his honour and prudence, relied with security upon
his son's management of the family estates, and this confidence was
never disturbed by presumption on the one hand, nor by suspicion on the
other.

Donald Cameron had imbibed the principles of his father; and there is
little doubt but that, during the furtive visits of John Lochiel to
Scotland, a tacit understanding had been formed between them to support
the "good old cause," as they termed it, whenever circumstances should
permit. But Donald Cameron, although "he loved his King well, loved his
country better;" nor could he be persuaded to endanger the peace of that
country by a rash enterprise, which could never, as he justly thought,
prosper without foreign aid, and the hearty co-operation of the English
Jacobites. His own clansmen were, he well knew, prepared for the
contest, come when it might; for the conversation of the small gentry
and of the retainers consisted, to borrow a description from a
contemporary writer, entirely of disquisitions upon "martiall
atchievements, deer huntings, and even valuing themselves upon their
wicked expeditions and incursions upon their innocent low-country
neighbours. They have gott," adds the same author,[264] "a notion and
inviollable maxim handed down to them from their forefathers, that they,
being the only ancient Scotsmen, that whole nation belongs to them in
property, and look on all the low-country-men as a mixture of Danes,
Saxons, Normans, and English, who have by violence robbed them of the
best part of their country, while they themselves are penned up in the
most mountainous and barren parts thereof to starve; therefore think it
no injustice to commit dayly depredations upon them, making thereby
conscience to interrupt their illegal possession (as they call it) in
case it should prescribe into a right."[265]

It would not have been diffi