manner; when designed for ornament it is loose and
flowing, like the mantles our painters give their Heroes.

"Their thighs are bare, with brawny Muscles; a thin brogue on the foot,
a short buskin of various colours on the leg, tied above the calf with
a strip'd pair of garters. On each side of a large Shot-pouch hangs a
Pistol and a Dagger; a round Target on their backs, a blue Bonnet on
their heads, in one hand a broadsword, and a musquet in the other.
Perhaps no nation goes better arm'd, and I assure you they will handle
them with bravery and dexterity, especially the Sword and Target, as
our veteran Regiments found to their cost at Killie Crankie."

Although Sir William Sacheverall, he of the facile pen and the romantic
temper, brought no Spanish treasure to light, he helped us to see those
fighting MacLeans and MacDonalds as they were in their glory, and his
description was written almost two and a half centuries ago.

The "Spanish wrack" was handed down from one chief of the Campbell clan
to another, as part of the estate, until in 1740, John, the second Duke
of Argyll, decided to try his luck, and employed a diving bell, by
which means a magnificent bronze cannon was recovered. It has since
been kept at Inverary Castle, the seat of the Dukes of Argyll, as an
heirloom greatly esteemed. This elaborately wrought piece of ordnance,
almost eleven feet in length, bears the arms of Francis I of France
(for whom it was cast at Fontainebleau) and the fleur-de-lis. It was
probably captured from Francis at the battle of Pavia during his
invasion of Italy, and the Spanish records state that several of such
cannon were put on a vessel contributed to the Armada by the state of
Tuscany. At the same time a large number of gold and silver coins were
found by the divers, and the treasure seeking was thereby freshly
encouraged. Modern experts in wrecking and salvage have agreed that
the crude apparatus of those earlier centuries was inadequate to combat
the difficulties of exploring a wreck of the type of the _Florencia_
galleon, built as she was of great timbers of the iron-like African oak
which to-day is found to be staunch and unrotted after a submersion of
more than three hundred years.

The diving bells of those times were dangerous and clumsy, and easily
capsized. The men worked from inside them by thrusting out hooks and
tong-like appliances, and dared venture no deeper than eight fathoms,
or less than fifty feet.