Note 24 — Chapter IX

There were probably many descents and slaughters in these islands of which no historic record remains. It is known, however, that in 1585 a party of Macdonalds from Skye was forced by stress of weather to take refuge in the part of Jura belonging to Maclean of Dowart. Two gentlemen of the Macdonald clan, independently driven at the same time into a neighbouring inlet, remained concealed from their kinsmen and secretly carried off by night a number of Maclean’s cattle, which they took with them to sea, intending that the blame should fall on their chief. The Macleans, on discovering the robbery, attacked the Macdonalds who remained, and slew sixty of them, the chief escaping only because he had slept that night on board his galley.