FLORA MACDONALD ENCOURAGING THE SAILORS TO CONTINUE THE FIGHT.

FLORA MACDONALD IN NORTH CAROLINA.

BY BENSON J. LOSSING.

When the young Prince Charles Edward, grandson of James II., King of Great Britain, landed in Scotland in 1745, and claimed his right to the throne from which his grandfather had been driven, thousands of Scotchmen, regarding him as their lawful sovereign, joined him in fighting for the British crown. He fought, was defeated, and became a hiding fugitive on the island of Uist, one of the Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, and was assisted in making his escape to France by Flora Macdonald, a beautiful, patriotic, and romantic Scotch girl, just from school in Edinburgh, come to visit her kinsman, Laird Macdonald, the chief of Uist.

Laird and Lady Macdonald were friends of the Prince, and were trying to hide him from the searching eyes of British soldiers, who swarmed on the island in quest of him. They could not shield him much longer. Lady Macdonald conceived a plan for the Prince's escape, but found no man willing to undertake the perilous enterprise. Her young kinswoman Flora spoke scornfully of the timidity that held back her countrymen from such a patriotic and benevolent task.

"Will you undertake it, Flora?" asked Lady Macdonald, perceiving the young girl's zeal and patriotism.

"Indeed I will," quickly responded Flora.

Preparations were immediately made for the romantic enterprise. Neil Macdonald, a young kinsman of Flora, volunteered to accompany her. She obtained a passport to leave the island with Neil, and three others as a boat's crew, and Betsey Burke, a stout Irishwoman whom Flora pretended she had engaged as a seamstress for her mother in the isle of Skye.

Flora and her little party left Uist on a pleasant afternoon. Betsey Burke was the Prince in disguise. That night they weathered a terrific storm, and reached Skye in safety in the morning. At the intended landing-place they were confronted by soldiers, when, turning quickly eastward, they escaped a volley of bullets sent after them, and landed near the house of Sir Alexander Macdonald. Leaving the Prince concealed among the rocks, Flora told her secret in the willing ears of Lady Macdonald, who furnished an escort for the party, including stout Betsey Burke, to the Laird of Kingsburg (who was also a Macdonald). Flora had conducted the young Prince as an Irish seamstress through crowds of soldiers and people who were searching for him. The travellers tarried at the house of the Laird of Kingsburg that night, and the next morning Prince Charles Edward embarked for a successful voyage to France. As he was about to leave he kissed his fair deliverer, and said, "Gentle, faithful maiden, I entertain the hope that we shall yet meet in the royal palace."

The Prince and Flora never saw each other again. Her young kinsman, Neil Macdonald, accompanied Charles Edward to France, married there, and his son, born four years before Napoleon Bonaparte, became that great military leader's famous Marshal Macdonald, and Duke of Tarentum.

The part that Flora had taken in the escape of the Prince soon became known, and she, with the Laird of Kingsburg and other kindred, was confined in the Tower of London as a prisoner of state, charged with the crime of treason. Flora's romantic story, and her extreme youth and radiant beauty, created almost universal sympathy for her among every class of the English people. When George II. asked her, sternly, "How could you dare to succor the enemy of my crown and kingdom?" she replied, with sweet simplicity, "It was no more than I would have done for your Majesty had you been in his place."

It was so evident that Flora was not a political partisan of the "young Pretender," as he was called (she was not of his religious faith), and that she had acted from the generous and benevolent impulses of a woman's heart, that she and her kindred were pardoned and released. While she remained in London she attracted great attention. Crowds of the nobility and gentry of both sexes visited her, and bestowed upon her costly presents; and the government sent her home in a handsome chaise, accompanied by a fellow-prisoner, Malcolm McLeod, who afterward said, "I went to London to be hanged, and returned to Scotland in a chaise and four with Flora Macdonald."

Flora afterward married Allan, son of the Laird of Kingsburg,