eir mountains--if won, they returned there to secure their
booty. At other times they had their cattle to look after, and their
harvests to sow or reap, without which their families would have
perished for want. In either case, there was an end of their services
for the time; and though they were easily enough recalled by the
prospect of fresh adventures and more plunder, yet the opportunity
of success was, in the meantime, lost, and could not afterwards be
recovered. This circumstance serves to show, even if history had not
made us acquainted with the same fact, that the Highlanders had never
been accustomed to make war with the view of permanent conquest, but
only with the hope of deriving temporary advantage, or deciding some
immediate quarrel. It also explains the reason why Montrose, with all
his splendid successes, never obtained any secure or permanent footing
in the Lowlands, and why even those Lowland noblemen and gentlemen, who
were inclined to the royal cause, showed diffidence and reluctance to
join an army of a character so desultory and irregular, as might lead
them at all times to apprehend that the Highlanders securing themselves
by a retreat to their mountains, would leave whatever Lowlanders might
have joined them to the mercy of an offended and predominant enemy. The
same consideration will also serve to account for the sudden marches
which Montrose was obliged to undertake, in order to recruit his army in
the mountains, and for the rapid changes of fortune, by which we often
find him obliged to retreat from before those enemies over whom he had
recently been victorious. If there should be any who read these tales
for any further purpose than that of immediate amusement, they will find
these remarks not unworthy of their recollection.

It was owing to such causes, the slackness of the Lowland loyalists and
the temporary desertion of his Highland followers, that Montrose found
himself, even after the decisive victory of Tippermuir, in no condition
to face the second army with which Argyle advanced upon him from the
westward. In this emergency, supplying by velocity the want of strength,
he moved suddenly from Perth to Dundee, and being refused admission into
that town, fell northward upon Aberdeen, where he expected to be joined
by the Gordons and other loyalists. But the zeal of these gentlemen
was, for the time, effectually bridled by a large body of Covenanters,
commanded by the Lord Burleigh, and su