Cylchgronau Cymru

Chwiliwch trwy dros 450 o deitlau a 1.2 miliwn o dudalennau

his slaves, an affair described in detail in the documents that have survived. It was some time after this event that he settled permanently in Britain. I now turn to the gentleman whose silhouette I saw in the attic, Alan Cameron. Readers will recall how the chieftain, Lochiel, led his clansmen in the short and disastrous rising, 'the Forty-Five', and how the Camerons broke through Barrel's Regiment of Foot at Culloden. The second- in-command of the clan at that battle was Donald Cameron of Erracht. Donald's direct forebears had been long associated with war and violence, and few of them had died in their beds. His father had been killed at Sheriffmuir in 'The Fifteen', his grandfather had fought on the losing side at the Boyne in 1690, his great-grandfather had fallen during inter- clan strife in 1660, and his great-great-grandfather had been hanged for cattle-lifting in 1630. After Culloden, Donald Cameron took to the heather and the hills, and after several years of privation as a homeless wanderer accepted the government's terms, and returned to his ancestral hearth. Alan Cameron, was the son of this Donald, born in 1753 at Erracht in Inverness-shire. He is said to have been educated by private tutors before proceeding to St Andrews. A liberal education does not seem to have modified in any way the restless spirit bestowed on him by his ancestry. Hardly had he returned home than he quarrelled with a kinsman, Cameron of Morsheirlich, a Jacobite lately returned from wanderings on the Continent. As a result of the quarrel, Alan called him out. Morsheir- lich, a much older man and an expert swordsman, tried to persuade the challenger to abandon the challenge. However he insisted on the meeting, and the affair was settled with swords on the banks of the river Lochy on an early autumn morning. The challenger, who received some slight wounds, succeeded in fatally wounding Morsheirlich so that he died shortly afterwards. As a result Alan had to flee to escape the vengeance of the dead man's family, and for two years lived in Mull and Morven under the protection of his maternal kinsfolk, the Macleans. In 1773, he emigrated to America, and two years later obtained a commission in a provincial regiment, The Royal Highland Emigrant Corps, commanded by his kinsman, Colonel Alan Maclean of Torloisk, then engaged in operations against the American colonists. In course of the campaign he undertook a mission to raise and organize a force recruited from Red Indian tribes, but was captured and imprisoned in a vaulted cell in Philadelphia as an abettor of Indian atrocities, and was very badly treated. After two years he succeeded in escaping, but as he dropped from the prison wall he fractured both ankles. He was befriended by one Phineas Bond, who nursed him and afterwards assisted him to regain the British lines. He then returned to his native Erracht and was placed on half-pay.