connivance, but without the knowledge, of the French Government. They were obtained through two English residents at Nantes. On August 2d the _Boutelle_ anchored off the Hebrides alone. The _Elizabeth_ had fallen in with an English vessel, the _Lion_, and had been so severely handled that she was obliged to return to Brest to refit, carrying with her all the arms and ammunition on which Prince Charles had relied for the furtherance of his expedition. So here was the claimant to the crown, friendless and alone, trying his best to derive encouragement from the augury which Tullibardine grandiloquently discerned in the flight of a royal eagle around the vessel. Eagle or no eagle, augury or no augury, the opening of the campaign was gloomy in the extreme. The first clansmen whose aid the prince solicited were indifferent, reluctant, and obstinate in their indifference and reluctance. Macdonald of Boisdale first, and Clanranald of that ilk afterwards, assured the prince, with little ceremony, that without aid, and substantial aid, from a foreign Power, in the shape of arms and fighting-men, no clansman would bare claymore in his behalf. But the eloquence and the determination of the young prince won over Clanranald and the Macdonalds of {205} Kinloch-Moidart; Charles disembarked and took up his headquarters at Borrodaile farm in Inverness-shire. A kind of legendary fame attaches to the little handful of men who formed his immediate following. [Sidenote: 1745--The Seven Men of Moidart] The Seven Men of Moidart are as familiar in Scottish Jacobite legend as the Seven Champions of Christendom are to childhood. Tullibardine; Sir Thomas Sheridan, the prince's tutor; Francis Strickland, an English gentleman; Sir John Macdonald, an officer in the service of Spain; Kelly, a non-juring clergyman; Buchanan, the messenger, and Aeneas Macdonald, the banker, made up the mystic tale. Among these Seven Men of Moidart, Aeneas Macdonald plays the traitor's part that Ganelon plays in the legends of Charlemagne. He seems to have been actuated, from the moment that the prince landed on the Scottish shore, by the one desire to bring his own head safely out of the scrape, and to attain that end he seems to have been ready to do pretty well anything. When he was finally taken prisoner he saved himself by the readiness and completeness with which he gave his evidence. No more of him. There were, happily for the honor of the adherents of the House of Stuart, few such followers in the Forty-five.