regiment too long under arms one day before inspection! and he sent Lieutenant Grant to the Brigadier's billet with a brief message, "that the regiment awaited him."

On another occasion, it chanced that by mistake he and a Spanish Colonel were billetted on the same mansion, and as it was thought too small to accomodate both, he resolved to turn out the Don who was already in possession of the premises. On Cameron arriving with the colours, which were borne by his cousin, Ewen Ross, and another ensign, and were escorted by four sergeants with their pikes, the Spanish colonel appeared in the doorway with his toledo drawn and pistols cocked. Fassifern drew his claymore. "Forward, gentlemen," said he; "at all risks I command you to lodge the colours!"

The sergeants charged with their pikes, and we know not how the affair might have ended, had not Villamur's corps of Spanish horse turned the corner of the street, which forced the rash chieftain to parley with the cavalier, and share his quarters in peace.

After the night of blood at Almarez, Cameron and his Highlanders, marched by Fuente del Maistre, Los Santos, the hill of Albuera, and many other places, bivouacking with their brigade wherever night found them, preparatory to the attack on the forts at Salamanca, and the battle there, which was fought, while Hill's division covered Lord Wellington's rere. After joining the grand army on these contested plains, the Highlanders were reviewed by their great general. Rations had been served out that morning; the sheep-heads had been assigned to the 92nd, and when they marched past by open column of companies, every sixth man carried a sheep's head in his left hand.

When Wellington entered Madrid, the Highlanders of Cameron for one night occupied the Escuriel, in the chapel of which the remains of a king and queen of Scotland (Malcolm III. and St. Margaret) are said to lie, having been conveyed to Spain in 1560. After Cameron marched to Aranjuez, his cousin, Ewen Ross, had a narrow escape from a terrible death. Having been ordered to the rere with sick from the brigade, and having no less than twelve wagons - full of officers, he reached Badajoz, after en

countering many difficulties, and there found that various outrages committed by the detachment of Lieutenant H—, of the 28th, were laid to the charge of his party, such as shooting and plundering the paisanos, robbing them of burros, wine, and provisions. Lack of Spanish prevented the gallant Highlander from explaining that he was not the guilty person; and the Marquis del Palacio, governor of Badajoz, illegally tried him by a Spanish court-martial, and unscrupulously sentenced him to death! Then fearing to carry this sentence into execution he sent him, under an escort of Portuguese horse, to Elvas, where an English officer saved him from a rabble who were bent on his destruction, and he was enabled to rejoin Cameron in safety. On this march he saved from starvation Mr. Irvine, the poor volunteer, whom he found in a sad state of destitution near Truxillo..

Cameron and his Highlanders endured great misery on the disastrous retreat from Burgos. Deprivation of food reduced the poor men almost to skeletons; their uniform was worn to rags; many were barefooted, and shirtless. Undeterred by the cruel exhibition of a soldier hung daily at the head of the column (for of twenty men under sentence of death for plundering, one was thus by Wellington's order sacrificed every day), the 92nd shot some wild pigs in a wood through which they passed. Big Dugald Campbell, one of their favourite officers, drove his long claymore through the body of a boar which he pursued through the thicket, and claimed from some cazadores. This prize he shared with Cameron and other officers, but the affair drew forth a most severe reprimand from head quarters, and this was at a time when a duro was given for a handful of oats or nuts, and when some of the officers had no food for six-and-thirty hours but a few mush

rooms or acorns.

Fassifern's regiment formed part of the small force which was left with General Howard to secure Wellington's retreat, by defending the old ruined town of Alba at the passage of the rapid Tormes. There the 50th, 71st, and 92nd, made a gallant stand on the 8th of November, 1812. After a long and fatiguing march, and just when about to receive a little ration of dry bread-the first food after three

days of starvation the appearance of the whole pursuing French army under Joseph Bonaparte, summoned the brigade to man the old and shattered walls of Alba. a relic of the Moorish wars-while the sappers undermined the bridge of the Tormes. Two green hills overlooked the town and river. Between these and the wall, within pistol-shot of the 92nd Highlanders, a French staff-officer, mounted on a white charger, had the temerity to ride leisurely reconnoitering, and followed by an orderly on foot. Twenty Highlanders levelled their muskets to shoot this daring fellow, but the chivalric Cameron cried aloud: "Recover your arms there! I will by no means permit an individual to be fired on !"

This officer who acted so boldly, and thus escaped so narrowly, proved to be no other than Marshal Soult, who, in ten minutes after, ordered eighteen pieces of cannon up to the heights, from whence they poured 1,300 rounds of shot and shell on the brave brigade of Howard. This they endured until the 13th, by which time Cameron lost forty-two men killed and wounded.

At day

break, on the morning of the 14th, a despatch arrived from Wellington, directing Howard to abandon Alba, as the French cavalry, 3,000 strong, had forded the river above the town and turned his flank. A Spanish garrison was left in the old castle of the Castigador de Flamencos the walls were abandoned, and the bridge blown

up.

Lieutenant John Grant of the 92nd was the last officer who quitted the town, being left to bring off the sentinels, just as the French entered, and he was struck by the stones as the bridge exploded, at the very heels of his party.

Wellington's admirable foresight saved Howard's brigade, which retired to winter quarters at Coria, in Leon, when, with many other officers and soldiers, Colonel Stewart of the 50th, as brave a Scot as ever drew a sword, expired of exhaustion and fatigue. A soldier of the 50th carved a rude stone, to mark where this old officer was laid. Refreshed by six months' rest in winter quarters at Banos, in a beautiful valley of Leon, overshadowed by high mountains, Cameron, after commanding the 1st brigade during General Foy's attack on Bejor, marched with his Highlanders, when the whole

army advanced to turn the famous positions of Jourdan on the Ebro and Douro, and to meet him on the green plains of Vittoria, where, on the 21st of June, 1813, he again commanded the 1st brigade of Hill's division, and carried the heights of La Puebla, when the gallant Cadogan fell amid heaps, yes, literally heaps, of his brave Highlanders.

Sir William Stewart having ordered Cameron to secure the heights, added, "yield them to none without a written order from Sir Rowland Hill or myself, and defend them while you have a man remaining." On this Fassifern ordered the pipers to strike up the " Camerons' Gathering," and the regiment advanced with great spirit and alacrity up the mountain side.

After this victory, the most decisive of the Spanish war, Cameron pushed on with his brigade towards the Pyrenees, beyond which the conqueror drove the French like a herd of sheep, and then garrisoned the heights by a chain of outposts previous to besieging San Sebastian, and blockading Pampeluna. On this occasion the care of the important pass of Maya was entirely assigned to Cameron, with the 1st brigade, after it had crossed the Bidassoa, and skirmished with the routed French until darkness set in, on the 7th July.

Cameron commanded this great outpost until the 25th of that month, when the French advanced to storm the heights under the Duke of Dalmatia, who had assumed the command of Jourdan's discomfited host, and was directed to retrieve all its disasters by driving the British beyond the Ebro. Full of confidence and of hope, at least to relieve the two beleagured fortresses, this brave marshal sent his legions against the various passes in the mountains which Wellington, who was then urging on the siege of San Sebastian in person, had occupied by battalions and brigades.

Cameron's force was encamped in the centre of a lonely gorge, and his outposts were far down the hillside in advance; and these, on Sunday the 25th, descried the division of General Drouet, 15,000 strong, advancing on the road that led from Urdax. Coming on with great spirit, they drove in the three light companies of the brigade, which Cameron had despatched as skirmishers in front, and gained the

high rock of Maya before the 2nd brigade of infantry could come to his support. His little band were thus left to defend that steep and narrow pass against five times their number. On this fatal morning the strength of the Gordon Highlanders was only 55 staff, and 762 rank and file.

To deceive the foe as to his real strength, Cameron skilfully divided his Highlanders into two wings, in open columns of companies, thus giving the slender battalion the aspect of two regiments; but this ruse was useless, as the traitor-muleteers, who, for the few weeks preceding, had been passing between the mountains and French outposts, had made Soult fully aware of the actual force left to defend the Pyrenees at every point. The moment the action commenced, Fassifern detached the 50th to the right, where, after a desperate conflict, it was driven back and forced to leave the ridge.

Under Major M'Pherson, Cameron then sent forward first the right wing, and then the left, of his brave Highlanders. Then ensued one of the most appalling scenes of carnage recorded in the annals of that protracted war. The Highlanders stood like a rampart, in which, however, frightful gaps were made by the bullets of the French, who came on, in one vast mob, shouting and brandishing their eagles. Separating the 1st and 2nd brigades, they descended upon the pass of Maya from one flank, while a fresh division poured upon its front from the Urdax road. Cameron, who had repeatedly ordered a charge, which was unheard amid the roar of the musketry, then made the whole fall back gradually upon the rock of Maya, a movement which was slowly and desperately covered by the left wings of the 71st Highland Light Infantry and Gordon Highlanders, which, by relieving each other, drenched in blood every inch of the ground, and there these gallant men defended the rock for ten consecutive hours, until-just when ammunition was falling short-the brigade of General Barnes arrived to their succour, and Lieutenant-General the Hon. Sir William Stewart, a fine old soldier whom all the troops loved well, ordered Cameron's brigade not to charge; but, exasperated by the slaughter they had endured, they rushed upon the French with the bayonet, and the Gordon Highlanders "for the first time disregarded orders,

and not only charged, but led the charge," and recovered every foot of ground as far as the pass from which they had been driven. In this headlong advance the pipers played the "Haughs of Cromdale," and the line was led by Captain Seton of Pitmedden, bonnet and claymore in hand. But the slaughter in their ranks was terrible, for 19 officers and 324 rank and file were killed, wounded, and missing. Among the wounded were-Cameron, who was shot through the thigh, and forced to leave the field; Major Mitchel who succeeded him; Captains Holmes, and Bevan, who died when his arm was taken out of the socket, and Ronald M'Donald of Coul; Lieutenants Winchester, who commanded the light company; Donald M'Donald, Chisholm, Durie, M'Pherson, and Fife, who, after having one ball turned by a button, and another by his watch, was struck down at last; Gordon, Kerr Ross, and John Grant, who was shot through the side. Among the ensigns were Thomas and George Mitchell, Ewen Kennedy (one of Cameron's Lochaber men) who bled to death on the field, and Alaster M'Donald of Dalchosnie, a youth of eighteen, who afterwards expired of a wound in the head, and was buried by four of the wounded officers in a hole just outside the town of Vittoria, where Holmes said a short prayer over his grave.

Sir William Napier, in his history, thus alludes to Fassifern and the two regiments of Highlanders :

"And that officer (Lieutenant-Colonel Cameron) still holding the pass of Maya with the left wings of the 71st and 92nd Regiments, brought their right wings and the Portugese guns into action, and thus maintained the fight; but so dreadful was the slaughter, that it is said the advancing enemy was actually stopped by the heapedup mass of dead and dying. The stern valour of the 92nd would have graced Thermopyla."

Strange to say, Lieutenant Gordon died at Edinburgh, sixteen years after, under the hands of a surgeon who was extracting the ball received at Maya, and he lies now in the Calton buryingground. Two balls grazed Cameron, but the third pierced the fleshy part of his right thigh. In great agony he called to M'Millan, who slung his musket, rushed to his side, and led his horse by the bridle out of the field.

"The gallant Cameron, who has so frequently bled for his country," says the Pilot of 12th October, 1813, "received three shots in his person, his horse received three, and three more were found in his cloak, which was strapped before his saddle in the usual manner." He lost so much blood, that, being unable to reach Vittoria, which was a hundred miles distant, and to which all the wounded were ordered to repair, he remained at an intermediate village until the scar healed, and he could rejoin the regiment at Roncesvalles, after it had been engaged between Lizasso and Eguaros, and on the heights of Donna Maria, having in both affairs 120 officers and men killed and wounded. Captain Seton brought the regiment out of the field: thus the speaker of the House of Commons, on the 24th of June, might well say that the Spaniards of future times would point, with pride, to the places "where a Stuart made his stand, and where the best blood of Scotland was shed in their defence." For his bravery at the Pyrenees his Majesty was pleased to permit Cameron to bear upon his shield the word Maya.

From this period he was incessantly engaged in all the operations along the French Pyrenees, in daily skirmishes, and the capture of entrenched camps. The country was now covered with snow, and the troops endured many privations, which Sir William Stuart (brother of Lord Galloway) did all in his power to alleviate, by issuing extra allowances of rum, which won him the cognomen of Auld Grog Willie, and his popularity was so great among all the troops, that his appearance was always hailed by a noisy cheer, and shouts of " God bless you, Sir William!" Lord Wellington disliked this, and compelled the general to refund to government all those extra allowances of rum served out to the poor soldiers amid the snows of that severe winter on the Pyrenees.

Cameron, who had long remarked that those officers of his 1st battalion who became, by promotion, members of the 2nd, and should consequently be at home, were always unfortunate if the corps were engaged, before the passage of the Nive ordered four of them to leave immediately for Britain, when the troops were just about to cross the river.

"God bless you, gentlemen," said

he, as they bade him adieu; "I am now tired of war, and may well wish I were going with you."

But, mounted on his charger, he was the first to cross the Nivelle, below Ainhoe, when his daring Highlanders were ordered to storm the strong redoubt in rere of the village, where they drove out the French and took possession of their huts. He led them through the Nive at Cambo; and in the attack upon those heavy columns which occupied the ground between the intrenched camp at Bayonne and the road to St. Jean Pied-de-Port, he fought valiantly at the battle of St. Pierre. There (Napier relates), at one period of the day, the overwhelming cannonade and musketry drove the 92nd in rere of the hamlet; however, on being succoured by their old comrades, the 50th, and Ashworth's Caçadores, they reformed behind St. Pierre, and "then their gallant colonel, Cameron, once more led them down the road, with colours flying and pipes playing, resolved to give the shock to whatever stood in their way. The 92nd was but a small clump compared to the heavy mass in front;" but Fassifern led them on as of old, and the heavy mass rolled before their bayonets like mist before the wind. Four times that day he led them to brilliant charges, and four times the foe was driven back. Cameron had 13 officers and 173 rank and file killed and wounded; but he obtained an honorary badge, inscribed with the word Nive.

After the attack on the enemy at Hellette, in the lower Pyrenees, where General Harispe was driven out, and forced to retire to Meharin; and after that gallant conflict on the heights of Garris, where he lost Seton of Pitmedden, and twelve other brave fellows, the scene of his next achievement was the pretty village of Arriverette, on the right bank of Gave de Mauleon, where the French endeavoured to destroy a wooden bridge, to prevent Wellington from following them; but a ford being discovered above it, Cameron boldly threw himselfinto the stream, at the head of his Highlanders-crossed under a fire of artillery, stormed the village, drove back the enemy, and, by securing the bridge, enabled the whole troops to pass. For this eminent service, his Majesty granted to him, as an additional crest of honourable augmenta

tion, a Highlander of the 92nd foot, "armed and accoutred, up to the middle in water, his dexter hand grasping a broadsword; in his sinister a banner, inscribed 92nd, within a wreath of laurel all proper, and on an escroll above the word Arriverette."* But Cameron had now a fresh cause of displeasure at his great leader; for, on applying to him, through LieutenantGeneral Lord Niddry, for leave to inscribe Arriverette upon the regimental colours, Wellington declined, without affording any satisfactory reason. He

acknowledged, in his reply, that "the 92nd forded the river, and attacked and took the village against a superior force of the enemy, in most gallant style;" but added that it was beneath their reputation to explain why they should not have Arriverette on their colours. This ambiguous reply Cameron considered another affront, and never forgot or forgave it.

He received an honorary badge for his conduct at the battle of Orthez; and on the 2nd March, 1814, distinguished himself at the capture of Aire so prominently, that George III. desired him to bear Embattled in Chief above the old cognizance of Lochiel (as the heraldic record above quoted has it)" a representation of the town of Aire, in allusion to his glorious services on the 2nd March last, when, after an arduous and sanguinary conflict, he succeeded in forcing a superior body of the enemy to abandon the said town, and subsequently had the honour to receive an address from the inhabitants, expressive of their grati tude for the maintenance of discipline, by which he had saved them from plunder and destruction." The address, which was so complimentary to his distinguished regiment, was signed by M. Codroy, the mayor, in the name of the people.

From thence he accompanied the troops in that hot and brilliant pursuit, which did not cease until the French evacuated Toulouse, and the white banner of Bourbon was displayed upon its walls. The seizure of Paris by the allies, the abdication of Bonaparte and proclamation of peace, the restoration of Louis XVIII., rapidly followed, and the peninsular army was ordered home.

In the last skirmish near Toulouse, Cameron had his favourite horse shot under him; and, though there was hot fire of musketry sweeping the place where it lay, M'Millan deliberately undid the girths of the saddle, and brought it away with the cloak and holsters, saying, that "though the French were welcome to the dead carcase, they should not get the good accoutrements."

When encamped at Blanchefort, two miles from Bordeaux, Cameron obtained his brevet colonelcy on the 4th June, 1814; and when cantoned at Pouillac, his Highlanders joyfully received the route for Scotland, and on the 17th July embarked on board H. M. S. Norge, which, however, by a change of destination, landed them at the Cove of Cork.

While his regiment, now reduced to one battalion, was in Ireland, Cameron returned, on leave, to his native glen at Fassifern.

Wellington had then won all the honours a subject could attain: patents of nobility, baronetcy, and knighthood were issued for generals of division and brigade; Orders of the Garter, the Bath, and the Crescent were unsparingly lavished among the heroes of the war; but the brave Cameron, notwithstanding all his services. though he had been almost riddled by musketshot, and had served in Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, and France, at home and abroad for twenty-one years-found that the Duke of Wellington had

omitted his name in the list of officers recommended for honorary distinctions. He visited London, and complained to the Duke of York, who offered to have him gazetted as an additional Cross of the Bath.

"I beg your highness will excuse me," said he, "for as my name has been omitted, I will not accept of it