The time on which the incidents here recorded took place, was, I believe, in the autumn of the year 1685, the most dismal and troublous time that these districts of the south and west of Scotland ever saw, or have since seen. The persecution for religion then raged in its wildest and most unbridled fury: the Covenanters, or the whigs, as they were then called, were proscribed, imprisoned, and at last hunted down like wild beasts. Graham, Viscount of Dundee, better known by the detested name of Clavers, set loose his savage troopers upon those peaceful districts, with peremptory orders to plunder, waste, disperse, and destroy the conventiclers, wherever they might be found. All the outer parts of the lands of Chapelhope are broken into thousands of deep black ruts, called by the country people _moss haggs_. Each of the largest of these has a green stripe along its bottom; and in this place in particular they are so numerous, so intersected and complex in their lines, that, as a hiding–place, they are unequalled—men, foxes, and sheep, may all there find cover with equal safety from being discovered, and may hide for days and nights without being aware of one another. The neighbouring farms to the westward abound with inaccessible rocks, caverns, and ravines. To these mountains, therefore, the shattered remains of the fugitives from the field of Bothwell Bridge, as well as the broken and persecuted whigs from all the western and southern counties, fled as to their last refuge. Being unacquainted, however, with the inhabitants of the country in which they had taken shelter—with their religious principles, or the opinions which they held respecting the measures of government—they durst not trust them with the secret of their retreat. They had watches set, sounds for signals, and skulked away from one hiding–place to another at the approach of the armed troop, the careless fowler, or the solitary shepherd; yea, such precautions were they obliged to use, that they often fled from the face of one another.