ABSTRACT
IT was formerly customary for the younger sons of gentlemen’s families, in Scotland, that did not go into the navy or army to become graziers. My father, who had no estate of his own, rented near a thousand acres of the Laird of Grant. He reared cattle, and drove them to the South of Scotland, and into England, where he sold them. He married, at the age of twenty, a daughter of some family of the name of Mackay; but I never knew anything of her family. My mother bore a daughter to him, and four sons; but he, being a rover in disposition and always hankering after the army, addicted himself to the use of the broadsword, in which he excelled; and, being very hot and quarrelsome, challenged and fought many gentlemen with the sword and target, which affronted many families in the neighbourhood, and broke my mother’s heart.
