As to the country itself, it was a mysterious, unknown land to all but the native. Ancient historians puzzled over its mystery, but could not fathom it. So they wrote under the shadow of the mysterious. Procopius, a Greek writer who flourished about A.D. 530, and wrote of the Roman Empire, speaking about the Highlands, says:— “In the west, beyond the wall (Antoninus’ Wall), the air is infectious and mortal, the ground is covered with serpents, and this dreary solitude is the region of departed spirits, who are translated from the opposite shores in substantial boats, and by living rowers. Some families of fishermen are excused from tribute in consideration of the mysterious office which is performed by these Charons of the ocean. Each in his turn is summoned at the hour of midnight to hear the voices and even the names of the ghosts, he is sensible of their weight, and feels impelled by an unknown but irresistible power.” Now we know how it was that the Romans could not conquer the Highlands. But we also know that the Highlanders were not, when the Romans came, the ignorant barbarians they are represented to have been, for Cæsar ascertained from them that the coast line of Britain was two thousand miles in length, an estimate not so very wide of the mark. We are told by one fourteenth century historian that “In Scotland ye shall find no man lightly of honour or gentleness, they be like wyld and savage people;” and by another that “as to their faith and promise, they hold it with great constancie,” statements which are not at all contradictory. The once prevalent idea that a Highland chief was an ignorant and unprincipled tyrant who rewarded the abject submission of his followers with relentless cruelty and oppression was entirely erroneous. He might be naturally ferocious or naturally weak, but in either case the tribal system curbed excess, for the chief men of the clan were his advisers, and without their approval he seldom decided on extreme measures. But though the sway of the chiefs was thus mild in practice, it was arbitrary, and they themselves were proud of their lot, their lands, and their dependents. It is related of the lairds of Barra, who belonged to one of the oldest and least-mixed septs in the Highlands, that as soon as the family had dined it was customary for a herald to sound a horn from the battlements on the castle tower, proclaiming aloud in Gaelic, “Hear, oh! ye people! and listen, oh! ye nations! The great Mac Neill of Barra having finished his meal, the princes of the earth may dine.”