the marks in the blade-bone of a sheep, held up to the light; and even so the Rev. Mr Robert Kirk assures us, that in his time, the end of the sixteenth century, "the seers prognosticate many future events (only for a month's space) from the shoulder-bone of a sheep on which a knife never came. By looking into the bone, they will tell if whoredom be committed in the owner's house; what money the master of the sheep had; if any will die out of that house for a month, and if any cattle there will take a trake (i. e. a disease), as if planetstruck.1

The Afghaun, who, in his weary travels, had seen no vale equal to his own native valley of Speiger, may find a parallel in many an exile from the braes of Lochaber; and whoever had remonstrated with an ancient Highland chief, on the superior advantages of a civilized life regulated by the authority of equal laws, would have received an answer something similar to the indignant reply of the old Afghaun; "We are content with discord, we are content with alarms, we are content with blood, but we will never be content with a master.”2 The Highland chiefs, otherwise very frequently men of sense and education, and only distinguished in Lowland society by an affectation of rank and stateliness, somewhat above their means, were, in their own country, from the abso

1

Essay on the Nature and Actions of the subterranean invisible people, going under the names of Elves, Fairies, and the liko. London, 1815.

2 Account of Caubul, p. 174, Note.

lute submission paid to them by their clans, and the want of frequent intercourse with persons of the same rank with themselves, nursed in a high and daring spirit of independent sovereignty which would not brook or receive protection or control from the public law or government; and disdained to owe their possessions and the preservation of their rights to any thing but their own broadswords.

Similar examples may be derived from the history of Persia by Sir John Malcolm. But our limits do not permit us further to pursue a parallel which serves strikingly to show how the same state of society and civilisation produces similar manners, laws, and customs, even at the most remote periods of time, and in the most distant quarters of the world. In two respects the manners of the Caubul tribes differ materially from those of the Highlanders; first, in the influence of their Jeergas, or patriarchal senates, which diminishes the power of their chiefs, and gives a democratic turn to each separate tribe. This appears to have been a perpetual and radical difference; for at no time do the Highland chiefs appear to have taken counsel with their elders, as an authorized and independent body, although, no doubt, they availed themselves of their advice and experience, upon the principle of a general who summons a council of war.1 The second point of distinction re

1 This is to be understood generally; for there were circumstances in which the subordinate chieftains of the clan took upon them to control the chief, as when the Mackenzies forcibly.com

spects the consolidation of those detached tribes under one head, or king, who, with a degree of authority greater or less according to his talents, popularity, and other circumstances, is the acknowledged head of the associated communities. In this point, however, the Highlanders anciently resembled the Afghauns, as will appear when we give a brief sketch of their general history. But this, to be intelligible, must be preceded by some account of their social system, of which the original and primitive basis differed very little from the first time that we hear of them in history until the destruction of clanship in 1748.

The Scottish Highlanders were, like the Welsh, the unmixed aboriginal natives of the island, speaking a dialect of the ancient Celtic, once the language of all Britain, and being the descendants of those tribes which had been driven by the successive invasions of nations more politic than themselves, and better skilled in the regular arts of war, into the extensive mountainous tract which, divided by an imaginary line, drawn from Dunbarton, includes both sides of Loch Lomond, and the higher and more mountainous parts of Stirling and Perthshires, Angus, Mearns, and Aberdeenshire. Beyond this line all the people speak Gaelic, and wear, or did wear, the Highland dress. The Western Islands are comprehended within this wild and extensive territory, which includes upwards of two

pelled the Earl of Seaforth to desist from his purpose of pulling down his family-seat of castle Brahan.

hundred parishes, and a population of about two hundred thousand souls.

The country, though in many places so wild and savage as to be almost uninhabitable, contains on the sea-coasts, on the sides of the lakes, in the vales of the small streams, and in the more extensive straths through which larger rivers discharge themselves, much arable ground; and the mountains which surround these favoured spots afford ample pasture walks, and great abundance of game. Natural forests of oak, fir, and birch, are found in most places of the country, and were anciently yet more extensive. These glens, or valleys, were each the domain of a separate tribe, who lived for each other, laboured in common, married usually within the clan, and, the passages from one vale to another being dangerous in most seasons, and toilsome in all, had very little communication with the world beyond their own range of mountains. This circumstance doubtless tended to prolong among these separate tribes a species of government, the first that is known in the infancy of society, and which, in most instances, is altered or modified during an early period of its progress. The chief himself had a separate appellative, formed on the same principle: thus the chief of the Campbells was called MacCallam-more (i. e. the son of the great Colin); Glengarry is called MacAllister-more, and so forth. Their language has no higher expression of rank; and when the family of Slate were ennobled, their clansmen could only distinguish Lord MacDonald as Mac

Dhonuil-more (i. e. the great MacDonald).

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this was often added some special epithet distinguishing the individual or reigning chief. Thus, John Duke of Argyle was called Jan Roy nan Cath, as the celebrated Viscount of Dundee was termed Jan Dhu nan Cath, namely, Red or Black John of the Battles. Such epithets distinguished one chief from another, but the patronymic of the dynasty was common to all.

The obedience of the Highlander was paid to the chief of his clan, as representing some remote ancestor from whom it was supposed the whole tribe was originally descended, and whose name, compounded into a patronymic, as we have already mentioned, was the distinguishing appellation of the sept. Each clan, acting upon this principle, bore to its chief all the zeal, all the affectionate deference, all the blind devotion, of children to a father. Their obedience was grounded on the same law of nature, and a breach of it was regarded as equally heinous. The clansman who scrupled to save his chief's life at the expense of his own, was regarded as a coward who fled from his father's side in the hour of peril. Upon this simple principle rests the whole doctrine of clanship; and although the authority of the chief sometimes assumed a more legal aspect, as the general law of the country then stood, by his being possessed of feudal influence, or territorial jurisdiction,-yet, with his clan, no feudal rights, or magisterial authority, could enhance or render more ample that power which he possessed, jure san