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It was quite necessary to remove the Prince from Glencoridale, and the faithful Belshair was at once despatched by Lady Margaret to consult with Charles about his further movements. This Mr. Macdonald of Belshair arranged with Macdonald of Boisdale one of the shrewdest as well as kindest of the Prince's friends that they should meet at the Forest-house of Glencoridale.

Let the Prince appear with 5,000 French soldiers and French money and arms, and they would gather round him with alacrity, but they were prudent men and knew too well the strength of the existing Government to think that they could overturn it unaided. The first man to tell the Prince this unwelcome truth was Macdonald of Boisdale, to whom he sent a message as soon as he landed in Uist.

The importance attached by his supporters to these apparent tokens of identity sufficiently explains the Claimant's explicitness on these points. Melipilla is a long way off; and Boisdale is still further.

They found on inquiry that this cluster of islands belonged to Macdonald of Clanranald, a young chief who was known to be attached to the Jacobite cause. He was at present absent on the mainland, but his uncle and principal adviser, Macdonald of Boisdale, was in South Uist.

They received the prince with the greatest respect, but, like Macdonald of Boisdale, the two chiefs refused to take up arms in an enterprise which they believed to be absolutely hopeless. In vain Prince Charles argued and implored.

Besides these, the most remarkable points in his examination were his statements that, on the very next day after his arrival, he was engaged by a Mr. William Foster, of Boisdale, an extensive farmer in Gippsland, to look after cattle; and that he henceforward lived in obscurity in Australia under the name of Thomas Castro.

To Boisdale, in Australia, the Commission then repaired, and though this is many thousands of miles from South America, but here similar discoveries were made. Mr. William Foster, the extensive cattle farmer, was dead, but the widow still managed his large property.

Now, it being a fact as well known as any in his history, and, so far as I know, entirely undisputed, that the Prince's personal entreaties and urgency positively forced Boisdale and Lochiel into insurrection, when they were earnestly desirous that he would put off his attempt until he could obtain a sufficient force from France, it will be very difficult to reconcile his alleged reluctance to undertake the expedition with his desperately insisting upon carrying the rising into effect against the advice and entreaty of his most powerful and most sage partizans.

The pleasant life in the Forest-house had to be broken up, and for the next ten weary days the little party lived in their boat, eluding as well as they could their enemies by sea and by land. Their difficulties were much increased and their spirits sadly disturbed by the fact that their generous friend Boisdale had been taken prisoner.

This Boisdale was brother of the old Clanranald, chief of the loyal clan Macdonald of Clanranald. If these, his stoutest friends, hesitated to join his expedition Charles should have felt that his cause was desperate indeed. But his mind was made up with all the daring of his five-and-twenty years, and all the ill-fated obstinacy of his race.