specie. Notwithstanding this is a great loss to us, yet the
depopulation by these emigrations is a much greater.... Besides, the
continual emigrations from Ireland and Scotland, will soon render our
colonies independent on the mother-country." In August, 1773, three
gentlemen of the name of Macdonell, with their families and four
hundred Highlanders from Inverness-shire sailed for America to take
possession of a grant of land "in Albany." On the 22d of June
previously between seven and eight hundred people from the Lewis
sailed from Stornoway for the colonies. On the first of September,
1773, four hundred and twenty-five men, women and children from
Inverness-shire sailed for America. "They are the finest set of
fellows in the Highlands. It is allowed they carried at least 6000
pounds Sterling in ready cash with them." In 1774 farmers and heads of
families in Stirlingshire were forming societies to emigrate to the
colonies and the fever had also extended to Orkney and Shetland and
the north of England. In 1753 it was estimated that there were one
thousand Scots in the single county of Cumberland capable of bearing
arms, of whom the Macdonalds were the most numerous. Gabriel Johnston,
governor of the province of North Carolina from 1734 to 1752, appears
to have done more to encourage the settlement of Scots in the colony
than all its other colonial governors combined.

In 1735 a body of one hundred and thirty Highlanders with fifty women
and children sailed from Inverness and landed at Savannah in January
1736. They were under the leadership of Lieutenant Hugh Mackay. Some
Carolinians endeavoured to dissuade them from going to the South by
telling them that the Spaniards would attack them from their houses in
the fort near where they were to settle, to which they replied, "Why,
then, we will beat them out of their fort, and shall have houses ready
built to live in." "This valiant spirit," says Jones, "found