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69 10 R Skye, Part II Boswell and Johnson departed Raasay in good spirits with the aim of traveling across Skye to the northwest coast and Dunvegan Castle, home of the MacLeods. They found no roads, no paths. “A guide,” wrote Boswell, “explored the way, much in the same manner as, I suppose, is pursued in the wilds of America, by observing certain marks known only to the inhabitants .” The weather was miserable; stretches were so boggy they had to dismount from their horses and walk. Part of their journey was taken by boat, or else they would have spent days winding through the island. On the way they stopped at a farmhouse in tiny Kingsburgh on Loch Snizort (Scotland’s funniest-named loch; say it out loud several times and you’ll hear why. It sounds like someone sneezed in German). Here they met the remarkable Flora Macdonald, whose history was so amazingly intertwined with Bonnie Prince Charlie, and, curiously, America. As a young woman she had taken the prince, fleeing for his life after the disaster at Culloden, from Lewis in the Outer Hebrides, disguised him as her maid, a certain “Betty Burk,” and escorted him away from pursuing soldiers across the treacherous waters of the Minch to Skye. Once back on land she saw him to safety and turned him over to other Jacobite sympathizers (Malcolm , Boswell’s companion, was foremost among them) who conveyed him across the island to Raasay in search of a safe haven. For her courageous actions she was seized by government troops and imprisoned in the Tower of London, eventually winning a pardon. On the way to the tower she left a vivid and amusing portrait of the prince donning his disguise: 70 Whisky, Kilts, and the Loch Ness Monster When the Prince put on women’s cloathes, he proposed carrying a pistol under one of his petticoats for making a small defence in case of attack. But [Miss Flora] declared against it, alleging that if any person should happen to search them, the pistol would only serve to make a discovery. To which the Prince merrily replied, “Indeed, Miss, if we shall happen to meet with any that will go so narrowly to work in searching as what you mean will certainly discover me at any rate.” But Miss would not hear of any arms at all, and therefore the Prince was obliged to content himself with only a short heavy cudgel, with which he design’d to do his best to knock down any single person that should attack him. Flora’s story hardly ended there, however. She returned to Skye in 1747, married Allan Macdonald, and remained there until 1774, a year after Boswell and Johnson visited her. She and her family then joined so many other Scots in the immigration to America and settled in North Carolina, where they became entangled in the revolution. Now supporters of the English crown she once disdained, they joined the loyalists, and her husband and son were captured and imprisoned. Flora returned to Skye by herself. Her son died in America, but she was later reunited with her husband, and she died on the island in 1790. An astonishing personal story, to be sure; she is unquestionably among Scotland’s most famous and bravest women. Many readers have wished that Boswell had provided a fuller description of her; even so, he devoted page after page to Flora (“A little woman . . . of mild and genteel appearance” is pretty much all we get), detailing the colorful stories of the prince on Skye. They are entertaining and show how absorbed he was with the prince (these pages are the longest devoted to any one person to be found in the entire Journal), but they are a bit out of place in this narrative. Suffice to say the Young Pretender made it off Skye on his retreat to France, barely keeping ahead of his would-be captors. When Boswell prepared to publish this section of his book he requested permission from King George III to use the name Prince Charles, fearing some hard feelings about the Jacobites might persist in the current English monarch. The king couldn’t seem to care less, but Boswell pestered him by mail and in person until he got approval. Neither Johnson nor Boswell was an overt Jacobite sympathizer; their feelings were much more complex. Johnson had a curiosity about the uprising , and Boswell—more of an admirer certainly—admitted...

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