Cannon to right of them. 
  Cannon to left of them,
  Cannon in front of them,
    Volley’d and thundered.

In our case, he said, we had guns at our back in addition.

We did not know at that time that the 42nd Highlanders were so famous, but a friend of ours, an officer in the army, has since handed us a description of that regiment, bringing its history down to a later period.

The 42nd Highlanders were originally formed from the independent companies raised in the year 1729 to keep the King’s peace among the Highland Hills; the Black Watch, so called from the dark hue of its tartan, was first paraded as a regiment of the British army in 1740.  They had distinguished themselves in all parts of the world:  America, India, Flanders, Egypt, Corunna, Waterloo, Sevastopol, Indian Mutiny, Ashantee, Egypt, Nile, and South Africa, and lost heavily at Ticonderago, Toulouse, Waterloo, and afterwards in the Boer War.  They were amongst our bravest soldiers, and were famous as being one of the four regiments named for distinction by Wellington at Waterloo; twice they had been specially called upon, once at the Battle of Alexandria, when the Commander-in-Chief, Sir Ralph Abercromby, called for a special effort at a critical period in the fight, saying, “My brave Highlanders!  Remember your forefathers!  Remember your country!” and victory immediately ensued; and again at the Battle of Corunna, when Sir John Moore in the thick of the fight, before being mortally wounded, exclaimed, “Highlanders!  Remember Egypt!” and the foe was scattered in all directions.  In Egypt, after storming Tel-el-Kebir and taking part in the battles that followed, such was the conduct of the Black Watch that Lord Wolseley sent the following telegram: 

   “Well done, old comrades of the Black Watch.”

Such we may venture to say were the men among whom we found ourselves on that occasion.  In after life we always took a deep interest in the doings of that famous regiment, and we noticed that when any hard fighting had to be done, the Black Watch nearly always assisted to do it—­so much so that sometimes we regretted that we had not had the honour of having been taken prisoner by them on that ever-memorable occasion!

The next village we came to was Tamerton Foliot, in a lovely situation, standing at the end of a creek which fills with the tide.  At that point the waters of the Tavy join those of the larger River Tamar, and eventually assist to form the Hamoaze.  Tamerton was a very old settlement, as Gilbert Foliot, who was Bishop of London from 1163 to 1188, and one of the most prominent opponents of Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was a native of that village.  There was a recumbent effigy in the church dating from the year 1346; but beyond that the great object of interest in the village was an old oak tree named the Coppleston Oak, because of a very sorrowful incident which occurred