prepare for the undertaking. A deep sadness
pervaded his deportment when he began thus to fulfil his promise to the
Prince; but having once embarked in the enterprise, he exerted himself
with as much zeal and perseverance as if he had engaged in it with the
full approbation of his judgment. We cannot wonder at his dejection, for
his assent was the assent of all the clans. It was a point agreed among
the Highlanders, that had Lochiel not proceeded to take arms, the other
chiefs would not have joined the standard without him; and the "spark of
rebellion," thus writes Mr. Home, "must instantly have expired." "Upon
this," says an eye-witness of the Rebellion, "depended the whole
undertaking; for had Lochiel stood out, the Prince must either have
returned to France on board the same frigate that brought him to
Scotland, or remained privately in the Highlands, waiting for a landing
of foreign troops. The event has shown that he would have waited for a
long time."[275]

From henceforth the career of Lochiel was one of activity and of
exertions which it must have been almost melancholy to witness in one
whose heart was sorrowing and foreboding. He arranged his papers and
affairs as a man does before setting out on a journey from which he was
not to return,[276] and he summoned his followers to give aid to a cause
which as Mrs. Grant remarks, "a vain waste of blood adorned without
strengthening."[277] He sent messengers throughout Lochaber and the
adjacent countries in which the Camerons lived, requiring his chieftains
to prepare and to accompany their chief to Glenfinnin. Before, however,
the day appointed had arrived, a party of the Camerons and the
Macdonalds of Keppoch had begun the war by attacking Captain John Scott,
at High Bridge, eight miles from Fort William. The chief glory of this
short but important action is due to Macdonald of Keppoch; the affair
was over when Lochiel with a troop of Camerons arrived, took charge of
the prisoners, and carried them to his house at Achnacarry.

On the nineteenth of August (old style), Lochiel, followed by seven
hundred men, marched to Glenfinnin, where Charles was anxiously awaiting
his approach. When the Prince landed from one of the lakes in the glen,
Lochiel was not to be seen; and the adventurer, entering one of the
hovels, waited there two hours, until the sound of the bagpipes
announced the approach of the Camerons. These brave men who were thus
marching to their destiny adva