ook its name and badge from the wild cat of the forests, had a dispute
with the Macdonalds, which originated, if tradition may be believed, in
those dark times when the Danish pirates wasted the coasts of Scotland.
Inverness was a Saxon colony among the Celts, a hive of traders and
artisans in the midst of a population of loungers and plunderers, a
solitary outpost of civilisation in a region of barbarians. Though the
buildings covered but a small part of the space over which they now
extend; though the arrival of a brig in the port was a rare event;
though the Exchange was the middle of a miry street, in which stood a
market cross much resembling a broken milestone; though the sittings of
the municipal council were held in a filthy den with a roughcast wall;
though the best houses were such as would now be called hovels; though
the best roofs were of thatch; though the best ceilings were of bare
rafters; though the best windows were, in bad weather, closed with
shutters for want of glass; though the humbler dwellings were mere
heaps of turf, in which barrels with the bottoms knocked out served the
purpose of chimneys; yet to the mountaineer of the Grampians this city
was as Babylon or as Tyre. Nowhere else had he seen four or five hundred
houses, two churches, twelve maltkilns, crowded close together. Nowhere
else had he been dazzled by the splendour of rows of booths, where
knives, horn spoons, tin kettles, and gaudy ribands were exposed to
sale. Nowhere else had he been on board of one of those huge ships which
brought sugar and wine over the sea from countries far beyond the limits
of his geography, [331] It is not strange that the haughty and warlike
Macdonalds, despising peaceful industry, yet envying the fruits of that
industry, should have fastened a succession of quarrels on the people of
Inverness. In the reign of Charles the Second, it had been apprehended
that the town would be stormed and plundered by those rude neighbours.
The terms of peace which they offered showed how little they regarded
the authority of the prince and of the law. Their demand was that a
heavy tribute should be paid to them, that the municipal magistrates
should bind themselves by an oath to deliver tip to the vengeance of the
clan every burgher who should shed the blood of a Macdonald, and that
every burgher who should anywhere meet a person wearing the Macdonald
tartan should ground arms in token of submission. Never did Lewis the
Four