of extreme penury, being indifferently accoutred, and
worse armed, half-naked, stinted in growth, and miserable in aspect. Each
important clan had some of those Helots attached to them; - thus, the Mac-Couls,
though tracing their descent from Comhal, the Father of Finn or Fingal, were a
sort of Gibeonites, or hereditary servants to the Stewarts of Appin; the
Macbeths, descended from the unhappy monarch of that name, were subjects to the
Morays, and clan Donnochy, or Robertsons of Athole; and many other examples
might be given, were it not for the risk of hurting any pride of clanship which
may yet be left, and thereby drawing a Highland tempest into the shop of my
publisher. Now these same Helots, though forced into the field by the arbitrary
authority of the chieftains under whom they hewed wood and drew water, were, in
general, very sparingly fed, ill dressed, and worse armed. The latter
circumstance was indeed owing chiefly to the general disarming act, which had
been carried into effect ostensibly through the whole Highlands, although most
of the chieftains contrived to elude its influence, by retaining the weapons of
their own immediate clansmen, and delivering up those of less value, which they
collected from these inferior satellites. It followed, as a matter of course,
that, as we have already hinted, many of these poor fellows were brought to the
field in a very wretched condition.
    From this it happened, that, in bodies, the van of which were admirably well
armed in their own fashion, the rear resembled actual banditti. Here was a
pole-axe, there a sword without a scabbard; here a gun without a lock, there a
scythe set straight upon a pole; and some had only their dirks, and bludgeons or
stakes pulled out of hedges. The grim, uncombed, and wild appearance of these
men, most of whom gazed with all the admiration of ignorance upon the most
ordinary production of domestic art, created surprise in the Lowlands, but it
also created terror. So little was the condition of the Highlands known at that
late period, that the character and appearance of their population, while thus
sallying forth as military adventurers, conveyed to the south-country Lowlanders
as much surprise as if an invasion of African Negroes or Esquimaux Indians had
issued forth from the northern mountains of their own native country. It cannot
therefore be wondered if Waverley, who had hitherto judged of the Highlanders
generally from the samples which the policy of Fergus had from time to time
exhibited, should have felt damped and astonished at the daring attempt