Page:Blackwood's Magazine volume 154.djvu/327

The following account of life in the Highlands of Scotland at the beginning of this century, and the notices of Colonel Ranaldson Macdonell, Chief of Glengarry and Clanronald, are based entirely upon the unpublished autobiography of Miss Macdonell of Glengarry, this chief's daughter, and upon material supplied by her:—

I was born at Glengarry, says Miss Macdonell, on Loch Oich, the highest point on the Caledonian Canal, in 1814. I was the fourth daughter of Colonel Ranaldson Macdonell of Glengarry and Clanronald. There were seven daughters of us and seven sons, of whom six boys died under three years of age, one boy and six girls grew to full age, and the youngest sister died at twelve years of age.

Garry Cottage, a charming villa near Perth, is the first place of which I recollect anything. There at three years of age I had the measles very severely, and my eye-sight was nearly lost. I next remember travelling from Glengarry to Inverie, one of my father's houses, where we generally spent a few weeks every summer. The journey in those days was a very curious one. We started from Glengarry in our own carriage; twenty-seven miles to Loch Hourn head—stopping half-way at Tomdown to feed the horses and get something for ourselves at the little inn, which consisted of three rooms, was built of turf, and was always brimful of peat-smoke: this hurt our eyes so much, that we children kept running out and in. I remember on one occasion our father telling us that we had better lie on our