"These, my Lord, are my humble thoughts, but they are with submission to your Lordship's and the King's friends with you who are equally concerned with us, and I know equally zealous, and you all certainly know a great deal more than me here. "I beg your Lordship may make my compliments to our countrymen, with you, and to those noblemen and gentlemen of England who have so handsomely and generously joined you. I long impatiently to be with you, and with all the haste I can. "I send copies of this three different ways, that one or other of them may certainly come to your hands. "I also send by one of them, if not two, a power for your Lordship to raise money for the use of your armie, which my commission for the King fully empowers me to do and give. "I wish this may come to your hand, and I long to hear from your Lordship, which it being necessary I should soon, I am, with all respect, my Lord, your Lordship's most obedient humble servant, "MAR."[102] It was the intention of Lord Mar to remain at Perth until all the Jacobite clans should have joined his army; but having gained the intelligence that some arms for the use of the Earl of Sutherland were put on board a vessel at Leith, to be taken northwards, he determined to take possession of them. The master of the vessel had dropped anchor at Brunt Island, for the purpose of seeing his wife, who was there: Lord Mar sent a detachment to surprise the harbour, which succeeded in carrying off the spoil, back to Perth. A report was at the same time raised in Stirling: that the Earl was marching to Alloa, the Duke of Argyle forthwith ordered out the picquets of horse and foot, and, also, all the troops to be ready to march out to sustain them, if required. But the Jacobite army did not appear; and the report of their advance to Stirling was believed to be a false alarm, contrived by Mar in order to draw off the attention of the Duke of Argyle from the expedition to Brunt Island. The insurgents were now masters of the eastern coasts of Scotland from Brunt Island to the Murray Frith, an extent of above one hundred and sixty miles along the shore. On the western side, the Isle of Skye, Lewis, and all the Hebrides were their own, besides the estates of the Earl of Seaforth, Donald Mac Donald, and others of the clans. So that from the mouth of the river Lochie to Faro-Head, all the coast of Lochaber and Ross, even to the north-west point of Scotland, was theirs: theirs, in short, was all the kingdom of Scotland north of the Forth, except the remote counties of Caithness, Strathnaver and Sutherland beyond Inverness, and that part of Argyleshire which runs north-west into Lorn, and up to Lochaber, where Fort William continued in possession of the Government.