heralding his birth or of second-sighted seers predicting his future greatness. Born at Glentruim in Badenoch, in 1724, Captain Macpherson was the second son of Alexander Macpherson of the ancient house of Phoness, the oldest cadet of Sliochd Gilliosa, whose reputed chieftains were the Macphersons of Invereshie, now represented in the person of Sir George Macpherson-Grant. His mother was a daughter of the well-known house of Aberarder, representing the famous Sliochd Iain Duibh Macdonalds of Lochaber.

Sprung from these houses it may be said of him in Highland fashion, and with perfect truth, that the best blood of Badenoch and Lochaber ran in his veins. Both houses furnished the British Army with many distinguished officers, and, inheriting all their martial ardour, Iain dubh Mac Alastair, as he was then called, in course of time, though then well up in years, also obtained a commission. His military exploits have not come down to us, nor have we heard that he saw much service abroad, but be this as it may, certain it is that he attained to the rank of captain, and was employed for several years in his native district on recruiting service. This duty, oftentimes a disagreeable, always an unpopular one, Captain Macpherson discharged with so much judgment and success, that of the number of his recruits from the superabundant population, no less than seventy are said to have become commissioned officers. He had the less difficulty, no doubt, in the matter of selection, from the fact mentioned by a contemporary writer that "the genius of the people [i.e. of Badenoch] is more inclined to martial enterprise than to the assiduous industry and diligent labour requisite to carry on the arts of civil life." But fond mothers always will lament pet sons, albeit otherwise useless, who willingly or unwillingly don the "red coat," and the Othaichear Dubh, the first recruiting officer they had seen, other than the Chief; reaped more than the usual measure of opprobrium. He has been accused of atrocities in this business that are as incredible as they are unvouched, a good example of which is the anonymous clerical forced recruit, otherwise so microscropically described by the writer before quoted. Captain Macpherson, had he been able or inclined to set aside all laws divine and human, was still under the observation of, and amenable to,

the opinion of his fellow-countrymen, among whom there were then many gentlemen in the truest and best sense of the word the very souls of honour-who would not have brooked injustice to the meanest of their clansmen; but there is not a single instance known of his ever having forfeited the good opinion of any one of their number. On the contrary, as we shall presently show, many of them have, fortunately, left written testimonies of an entirely different character.

In 1777 Captain Macpherson married a lady of his own elan, belonging to one of the oldest and best families of the district, by whom he had a son (afterwards Colonel GilliosMacpherson) and two daughters, all of whom are still fondly remembered in Badenoch, and spoken of with the greatest admiration and respect. The amiable and accomplished Mrs. Grant of Laggan, in one of her letters incidentally mentioning one of those daughters, characterises her as "Elegance, vivacity, and truth personified," a graceful and truthful compliment equally applicable to the other daughter who died not very many years ago.

The following inscription on a tablet erected in the Parish Church of Kingussie in memory of Captain George Gordon M'Barnet, a son of one of these daughters, and a grandson of Captain Macpherson, speaks also for itself:

"Sacred to the memory of Captain George Gordon M'Barnet, 55th Regiment Bengal Native Infantry, who being attached to the 1st Bengal European Regiment 'Fusiliers,' fell at the assault. of Delhi on the 14th Septemher, 1857, aged 33 years. Few among the many heroes slain on the soil of Delhi will live longer in memory; young, gallant, and gifted with the noblest qualities—mental and personal-he fell when he could least be spared. Could soldier ask a more glorious death? In token of the love they bore their comrade this tablet is erected by his brother officers."

Eventually retiring from the army, Captain Macpherson betook himself to agricultural pursuits, and so successful were his improvements on the primitive modes of tillage then prevalent, that the more unsophisticated of the aborigines attributed the surprising results to nothing less than supernatural agency. Hence the foundation of the more modern story of the Contract. Spreading sand on an adhesive and unproductive

soil, and so reaping an abundant crop, was looked upon as a feat worthy of "Michael Scot" himself, so often in their mouths. More congenial, however, was the pursuit of the chase, a recreation in which the Captain frequently indulged through the liberality and courtesy of the princely Gordons and in which he had no rival, excepting, perhaps, his cousin, Iain Dubh of Aberarder, equally famous as a hunter of the deer. In his old age his passion for it cost him his life and this brings us down to 1800, the date of its occurrence-an epoch in Highland Chronology.

Undoubtedly Gaick, where the accident occurred, is a place calculated to impress the imaginative mind.

"O solemn hill-tops 'gainst a summer sky!"

-it is thus a recent visitor, the authoress of " Aldersyde," has expressed the thoughts which the scene awoke in her

"O purple glory of the heather bells!

O mystic gleams where light and shadows play
On verdant slope and on the yawning gorge,
Where in wild mood the mountain cataract
Hath leaped and eddied in its rocky bed!
O mountain loch! set like a lonely gem,
Thy breast a mirror of the majesty

Which hems thee in. How changeful is thy mood!
Now gleaming placid like a silver sea

Now fretting with thy waves the pebbly shore,
As some rude winds caress them! Ye give to me
A deep, strange, fearful joy. Ye make me raise
To Heaven a heart full fraught with silent praise."

The story of Call Ghabhaig or the "Gaick Catastrophe," has been often told, by divers persons of divers conditions, imbibing a particular hue or colour from each particular reciter. The version now submitted is that given by a contemporary, resident in the district at the time, well acquainted with the parties that perished, and who many times received from those by whom their bodies were found a relation of the circumstances, which he personally confirmed, by visiting, in the ensuing summer, the scene of the disaster.

"The glen which forms the principal feature of the range

of hills in the forest of Gaick lies about a dozen miles south of the Spey at Kingussie. Its hills are smooth, steep, and bare, and such sheer declivities that the glen in great snow-storms is subject to terrific avalanches by which the deer sometimes suffer, and upon one occasion a herd of ten stags and hinds were suddenly overwhelmed in sight of a celebrated deerhunter and gentleman of the Strath, who was stalking them at the moment when the rolling volume of snow descended the mountain and buried them in its bosom. Some years afterwards, by an awful catastrophe of the same kind, when on a hunting expedition in the same glen, he himself, the party by whom he was attended, several fine deer-hounds, and the house in which they lodged, were swept away on the night of a tremendous hurricane, in the first week of January, 1800." The persons who thus perished were, the leader Captain John Macpherson of Ballachroan, and four attendants, Donald Macgillivray, John Macpherson, Duncan Macfarlane, and another man named (James) Grant. Several other persons had been appointed by Ballachroan to accompany him, but they had been prevented by various causes; and upon the morning preceding the disaster, the rest had set out for the forest without them, and intending to remain for some days, had taken up their lodging in a stone-built hut used as a forest-lodge, and which stood immediately under one of the long bare slopes above described.

"The night upon which the event happened was terrifically stormy even beyond anything of the kind remembered in that high and mountainous district, yet as the forest hut was substantially built, and the party well supplied with provisions, their friends felt no anxiety for their safety until the third day after the tempest. When, however, they did not then return, alarm was excited in the Strath, and four or five of their friends set out in search of them. Upon reaching the glen they discovered that the house had disappeared, and upon approaching its site, a vast volume of snow at the foot sufficiently explained their fate. Early in the next day all the active men in the country assembled and proceeded to Gaick, and upon digging into the snow where the house had stood the dead bodies of four of the party were found in the following positions: Ballach roan lying in bed upon his face, Grant..

and John Macpherson also in bed, with their arms stretched out over each other, and Macgillivray in a sitting posture, with one of his hands at his foot, as if in the act of putting on or taking off his shoes. The body of Macfarlane was not found until after the disappearance of the snow, when he was discovered at a considerable distance from the house. This was accounted for by the supposition that he was standing when the avalanche came down, and thus presented to the rolling volume, had been carried away in the general wreck of the building, of which nothing was left above the foundationstones; while the beds of the rest having been only heath spread upon the floor, were protected from removal by the base line of the wall. With the lost body the course of the devastation was found strewed along the foot of the hill, the stones of the house were carried to the distance of three or four hundred yards, and a part of the roof and thatch for nearly a mile; the guns were bent, broken, and twisted in every possible shape, and by some their extraordinary contortions were attributed to electricity; but the cause was sufficiently explained by their having been mixed with the stones and timber of the house when in rapid motion, for the building was constructed in a substantial manner, the walls having been of stone, four feet high, and the area divided in the centre by a strong partition; such a weighty mass of materials rolled down with so much violence, and for such a distance, would satisfactorily account for the state of the guns intermingled amidst the ruins. The destruction of the forest hut was not the only catastrophe of that terrible night; part of an adjacent sheep-fank, and of a poind-fold at Loch-an-tSeilich, about two miles distant, were also swept away, and from the south side of Loch Ericht an immense body of earth and trees was carried across the ice to the north shore, where it is still to be seen, at least a quarter of a mile distant from the place from whence it was torn."

II.

'Oh, gladly in the times of old, I trod that glorious ground, And the white dawn melted in the sun, and red deer cried

around;