Page:Gallant exploits of Lord Dundee.pdf/21

Rh they could spread three folds of cloth below, and above them. The gutters of their stockings were under the knee, with a view to give more freedom to the limbs and they wore no breeches, that they might climb mountains with the greater case. Be covering of their head was a broad round wool-bonnet, but of the strongest milled texture, calculated equally to save from cold, from rains, on from the strokes of an enemy; the most simple of all ad-dresses: Yes, by turning up the front of the bonnet, which was the token of defiance, they gave a martial air; and, by adding a bunch of foliage of feathers, even a fine one. The lightness and looseness of their dress, the custom they had of going always on foot, never on horseback, their love of long journeys, but above all, that patience of hunger, and every kind of hardship, which carried their bodies forward even after their spirits were exhausted, made them exceed all other European nations in speed and perseverance of march. Montrose's marches were sometimes sixty miles in a day, without food or halting, over mountains, along rocks, through morasses. encampments, they were expert at forming beds a moment, by tying together bunches of heath, d fixing them upright in the ground: An art which, the be s were both soft and cry, preserved their health in the field, when other soldiers lost theirs.

The inclemency of their weather gave a rigidity their features, because it forced them to draw up the check for the protection of the eyes yet this conviction gave a fire to the eye. In work they were awkward; but in exercise they shewed all that variety of natural grace which continually attends the man form then not fashioned by art, and unconscious of observation.