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SKETCHES OF NORTH CAROLINA.

CHAPTER XII.
FLORA M'DONALD.

AMONG the emigrants to the Scotch settlements on the Cape Fear, was Flora McDonald, a name held in the highest reverence in the traditions of North Carolina and the Highlands of Scotland, though English history has given her neither a name nor a place in her pages, crowded with the events and personages of that day, that no human art can save from the oblivion they deserve. With or without history, the descendants of the Highlanders in North Carolina will love the name of Flora McDonald, while female excellence can be found among their sisters and daughters.

In those heart-stirring events that succeeded the rising in favor of the Pretender, and led to the emigration of the Scotch settlement on the Cape Fear river, Flora McDonald first makes her appearance, a young and blooming girl; in the troubles and distresses that affected the honest yet divided Scotch in Carolina, at the commencement of the American Revolution, she is the dignified matron; before the disasters and radical principles of the French Revolution troubled her country and employed her children {typo corrected}, she was carried to the cemetery of Kilmuir.

The most romantic escape of the Pretender, Prince Charles Edward, in his five months' wanderings in the Highlands of Scotland, hunted from mountain to dell, from crag to cavern, by day and by night, by the soldiers of the Duke of Cumberland, and a price set upon his head as a fugitive felon, was planned and executed by the McDonalds, the most powerful of whom had opposed the attempt to place the Prince upon the throne, as a hopeless rebellion, and many of whom were bearing arms for the house of Hanover; and some even then leading forces in search of the Royal fugitive, into the wilds and fastnesses of the Highlands and the Western Isles.

Roderick Mackenzie aided the flight of the Prince by his chivalrous death; Flora McDonald by her romantic spirit and womanly contrivance. "This young man," says one, "sought concealment in the mountains of Ross-shire after the battle of Culloden, and was surprised by a party of soldiers sent in pursuit of Charles Edward. His age, his figure, his air, deceiving the military