Nothing in nature can surpass the wild grandeur and imposing sublimity of this mountain gorge, the frowning terrors of which, in after years, so impressed a brigade of Hessians in the last of our Scottish wars, that they refused to penetrate what appeared to them to be the end of the habitable world. Save the mountain torrent foaming down from the lofty hills, appearing one moment to hurl its spray against the shining rocks, and urge masses of earth and stones along with it, and disappearing the next, as it plunged into the bosky woodlands,--all was still as death in that Highland solitude, when, in steadiness and order, Dundee drew up his little host at its northern verge, admirably posted on well-chosen ground, two miles from the mouth of the pass; the only road to his position being the ancient pathway that wound along the face of the precipitous cliffs, where the least false step threatened instant destruction even to the most wary passenger.
Dundee's band--for it was indeed no more, though named an army--was only two thousand strong, and composed of various little parties, which were the nucleus of the corps he expected yet to form. On the right was the soi-disant regiment of Sir John Macdonald; a small body of the clans, under the illustrious chiefs of Locheil, Glengarry, and Clanronald, the Atholemen under Ballechin, Wallace's troop of horse, and a corps of three hundred half-clad and miserably accoutred Irishmen, composed the mainbody. Dundee's old troop, in which rode the Earl of Dunbarton, his officers, and several Highland gentlemen, formed the reserve of cavalry. The Highlanders, arrayed each in the picturesque tartan of their native tribes, were formed in close ranks, with their filleadhbegs belted about them; their brass-studded targets, long claymores, ponderous poleaxes, and long-barrelled Spanish rifles, shining in the rays of the meridian sun.
The brandishing of weapons and clan-standards, and the fierce notes of war and defiance, as the various pibrochs rang among the echoing hills, announced that the troops of Mackay were in sight. And now the brave and anxious Dundee, clad in his rich scarlet uniform, with the tall plumes waving on his polished headpiece, his fine features full of animation, and his black eyes alternately clouded by anxiety, or flashing with valour and energy,--galloped from clan to clan, inspiring them by every exertion of graceful gesture and military eloquence to add that day to the fame of their forefathers.