The history of the clans presents no more splendid illustration of that devotion which bound the clansman to his chief, and of the happy relationship implied therein, than is afforded in the circumstances attendant upon the origin of the Seventy-second Highlanders. The Earl of Seaforth, chief of the Mackenzie, had, as a leader in the rebellion of 1715, been banished from his country, his title attainted, and his estates forfeited, yet, withal, 400 of his late followers and tenants remitted to him in his exile a large portion of the rents they might have been liable for had he retained the estate. This most generous testimony of respect and practical expression of sympathy to the father was gratefully remembered by the son, and, notwithstanding the changes which, passing over the face of society, had swept away the old institution of clanship, induced the grandson, who, restored by purchase to the family property, and by his acknowledged loyalty, to the honours of the Earldom of Seaforth, in return for these favours, volunteered to raise a regiment for the Government. His appeal to his clansmen was amply successful. The Mackenzies and Macraes, rallying around him as their chief, gave thereby most hearty and flattering testimony to their own loyalty to the King, and unimpaired attachment to the family of Seaforth, which had so long and worthily presided over them. Accordingly, 1130 men were assembled and enrolled in the regiment—then known as the Seventy-eighth—at Elgin, in 1778. Marched to Edinburgh, it was thence removed to the Channel Islands, where its firm attitude, remarkable in such young soldiers, so won the confidence of the islanders, and encouraged the militia, as, together with our Highlanders, enabled them successfully to resist an attempted debarkation of French troops on the island of Jersey.