on his clan. There was a singular display of this feeling in one of the Crimean battles: a young Highland officer left his place in front of his company and began to retreat, when a sergeant seized him by the throat, and swore he would run him through the body if he did not turn. He chose rather to meet the fire of the Russians than the glare of the sergeant’s angry eye. This jealousy of their officers’ honour gave rise to an amusing incident during the attack on Fort Washington in 1777. The hill on which the fort stood was almost perpendicular, but the Highlanders rushed up the steep ascent like mountain cats. When half-way up the heights they heard a melancholy voice exclaim, “Oh, soldiers, will you leave me?” On looking down, they saw Major Murray, their commanding officer, at the foot of the precipice; his extreme obesity prevented him from following them. They were not deaf to this appeal: it would never do to leave their corpulent commander behind. A party leaped down at once, seized him in their arms, and bore him from ledge to ledge of the rock till they reached the summit, where they drove the enemy before them and made two hundred prisoners. Major Murray was not the only corpulent warrior among those Highland soldiers. Sir Robert Munroe of Fowlis, who commanded them at Fontenoy, was so fat that his own men had to haul him from the trenches by the legs and arms; he advised them to fall flat on the ground when the enemy fired, but remained erect himself, remarking that it was easy for a man of his weight to lie down, but not so easy to rise. Some of the men seem to have been as remarkable for height as their officers were for breadth. Thus we read of Samuel Macdonald, or “Big Sam,” of the Sutherland Fencibles, who was seven feet four inches in height, and stout in proportion. As the other men would have looked like pigmies beside such a giant, he stood on the right of the regiment when in line, and marched at its head when in column, followed by an immense mountain deer, between which and him there were certain physical, if not spiritual, affinities. He was an excellent drill, and, like most giants, extremely good-natured. Ordinary rations would not have sufficed to sustain such a corpus; he was therefore allowed half-a-crown a day of extra pay. Attracting the attention of the Prince of Wales, he made him one of the porters at Carlton House. But Macdonald soon tired of this inactive life, and longed to be with his old comrades of the 93rd. He rejoined the regiment, and died at Guernsey in 1802. Sam’s regiment seems to have been remarkable for the size and muscular strength of the men. It had no light company, and as more than 200 men were upwards of five feet eleven inches in height, they were formed into two grenadier companies, one on each flank of the battalion.