Mac Ian dwelt in the mouth of a ravine situated not far from the southern shore of Lochleven, an arm of the sea which deeply indents the western coast of Scotland, and separates Argyleshire from Invernesshire.  Near his house were two or three small hamlets inhabited by his tribe.  The whole population which he governed was not supposed to exceed two hundred souls.  In the neighbourhood of the little cluster of villages was some copsewood and some pasture land; but a little further up the defile no sign of population or of fruitfulness was to be seen.  In the Gaelic tongue Glencoe signifies the Glen of Weeping; and in truth that pass is the most dreary and melancholy of all the Scottish passes, the very Valley of the Shadow of Death.  Mists and storms brood over it through the greater part of the finest summer; and even on those rare days when the sun is bright, and when there is no cloud in the sky, the impression made by the landscape is sad and awful.  The path lies along a stream which issues from the most sullen and gloomy of mountain pools.  Huge precipices of naked stone frown on both sides.  Even in July the streaks of snow may often be discerned in the rifts near the summits.  All down the sides of the crags heaps of ruin mark the headlong paths of the torrents.  Mile after mile the traveller looks in vain for the smoke of one hut, for one human form wrapped in plaid, and listens in vain for the bark of a shepherd’s dog or the bleat of a lamb.  Mile after mile the only sound that indicates life is the faint cry of a bird of prey from some stormbeaten pinnacle of rock.  The progress of civilisation, which has turned so many wastes into fields yellow with harvests or gay with apple blossoms, has only made Glencoe more desolate.  All the science and industry of a peaceful age can extract nothing valuable from that wilderness; but, in an age of violence and rapine, the wilderness itself was valued on account of the shelter which it afforded to the plunderer and his plunder.  Nothing could be more natural than that the clan to which this rugged desert belonged should have been noted for predatory habits.  For, among the Highlanders generally, to rob was thought at least as honourable an employment as to cultivate the soil; and, of all the Highlanders, The Macdonalds of Glencoe had the least productive soil, and the most convenient and secure den of robbers.  Successive governments had tried to punish this wild race; but no large force had ever been employed for that purpose; and a small force was easily resisted or eluded by men familiar with every recess and every outlet of the natural fortress in which they had been born and bred.  The people of Glencoe would probably have been less troublesome neighbours if they had lived among their own kindred.  But they were an outpost of the Clan Donald, separated from every other branch of their own family, and almost surrounded by the domains of the hostile race of Diarmid.211 They were impelled by hereditary enmity, as well as by want,