Many, like him, had been dispossessed crofters, but they knew him by his new name, and no one suspected that the mild-mannered Angus might have been the legendary figure that Hugh Breac Mackenzie had become. It was quite funny listening to people telling him how he had (a) jumped into the raging sea from the ship taking him to Botany Bay, and was living as a white Rajah in India (Hugh never learnt how to swim!), or (b) had organised a mutiny on the ship, taken it over, and was now leading a prosperous life on some South Sea Island or (c) had gone to France after a daring escape from a port where his ship had stopped, and was being trained to come back to England to organise a French style revolution which would put the masses in power, and tragically (d) had been tricked by the Duchess of Sutherland, lured to some dark corner by her hired assassins, and there garrotted, his body thrown in the sea.
Image credit: I believe this image is Public Domain, from “Working Men of Central Russia: “Antropological Study on Males of Vladimir, Yaroslavl and Kostroma Governorates” by Nikolay Y. Zograf, published 1892. This gentleman is apparently Petr Sobolev: “Blacksmith, age unknown, born in Romanov, Yaroslavl”. Various images from the book at imgur
Read about Hugh »
Book 1
Chapter 3: Year of the Sheep
(Scottish Highlands, 1792)
The granny-to-be was overjoyed at the news of the new addition, but in keeping with her no-nonsense nature, her first reaction was, 'What? Another mouth to f...
Chapter 7: Insurrection in the Highlands
(Scottish Highlands, 1792)
The seed for the insurrection had scarcely been put into the all too fertile soil of discontent, had not even been watered by illicit brew, than it had sprou...
Chapter 8: Pictou
(Canada, 1773)
Hughie dear boy, the letter began, I am writing to you from Pictou in Canada, where I have been these last few years. I am writing to tell you that I never m...
Chapter 11: Inverness and Cromarty
(Scottish Highlands, 1795)
‘We are at the dawn of a new age,’ he said with an almost religious fervour, ‘soon the country will be unrecognisable, it will be the age o...
Chapter 13: Strathnaver
(Scottish Highlands, 1800s)
One night Mam surprised everybody by telling the young pair that if they stopped fighting, she would tell them a story. Hugh did not remember her telling him...
Chapter 15: Dunrobin
(Dunrobin, Scotland, Early 1812)
On that cold spring afternoon, with scattered snow still covering the tops of ridges, Sir John Sinclair sat in his coach dressed in his finest, feeling that ...
Chapter 17: Clearance
(Highlands, 1800s)
What happened next was something nobody was prepared for. A few weeks later, Hugh had gone to Golspie and was drowning his sorrow in a tankard of ale at the ...
Book 2
Book 2 Chapter 9: Atlantic
(Crossing to Canada, 1800s)
They had all told her that for an unmarried mother, life in the Highlands was going to be unbearable, and urged her to go to Canada with John Robert.