1820, travelled 600 miles to be present at the Coronation of King George IV.  He was dressed on that magnificent and solemn occasion in the full costume of a Highland chief, including, as a matter of course, a brace of pistols.  A lady who was at the reception happened to see one of the pistols in his clothing, and, being greatly alarmed, set up a loud shriek, crying, “Oh Lord!  Oh Lord! there’s a man with a pistol,” and alarming the whole assembly.  As she insisted on Glengarry being arrested, he was immediately surrounded, and the Garter King of Arms came forward and begged him to give up the much-dreaded pistols; but he refused, as they were not loaded, and pleaded that they formed an essential part of his national garb.  At length, however, after much persuasion, he gave them up.

Glengarry wrote a letter to the editor of The Times, in which he said:  “I have worn my dress continually at Court, and was never so insulted before.  Pistols, sir, are as essential to the Highland courtier’s dress as a sword is to English, French, or German; and those used by me on such occasions as unstained with powder as any courtier’s sword, with blood.  It is only grossest ignorance of Highland character and costume which imagined that the assassin lurked under their bold and manly form.”

Glengarry, who, it was said, never properly recovered from the effects of this insult, died in 1828.

After about another mile we came to a monument near the side of the road, on the top of which were sculptured the figures of seven human heads held up by a hand clasping a dagger.  On each of the four sides of the base there was an inscription in one of four different languages—­English, French, Latin, and Gaelic—­as follows: 

As a memorial to the ample and summary vengeance which in the swift course of Feudal justice inflicted by the orders of the Lord MacDonnell and Aross overtook the perpetrators of the foul murder of the Keppoch family, a branch of the powerful and illustrious Clan of which his Lordship was the Chief, this Monument is erected by Colonel MacDonnell of Glengarry XVII Mac-Minc-Alaister his successor and Representative in the year of our Lord 1812.  The heads of the seven murderers were presented at the feet of the noble chief in Glengarry Castle after having been washed in this spring and ever since that event which took place early in the sixteenth century it has been known by the name “Tobar-nan-Ceann” or the Well of the Heads.

The monument was practically built over the well, an arched passage leading down to the water, where we found a drinking-utensil placed for any one who desired a drink.  We were glad to have one ourselves, but perhaps some visitors might be of such refined and delicate taste that they would not care to drink the water after reading the horrible history recorded above.

It appeared that Macdonald of Keppoch, the owner of the estate, had two sons whom he sent to France to be educated, and while they were there he died, leaving the management of his estate to seven kinsmen until the return of his sons from France; when they came back, they were murdered by the seven executors of their father’s will.  The Bard of Keppoch urged Glengarry to take vengeance on the murderers, and this monument was erected to commemorate the ample and summary vengeance inflicted about 1661.