| Details on the birth of Lady Janet Maitland Dundas copied from Waldie's Select Circulating Library, Part 1 -"Not far from Craigforth,
there resided an old companion in arms, Colonel Dundas, of Carron Hall. He had
been sent as a Commissioner by the Government to settle the limits of the
British frontier in America ; in this mission he was accompanied by Lady Eleanor
Dundas, and in the course of the long period which was occupied in discussing
the numerous questions which were agitated by the Commissioners on either side,
it was necessary that Colonel Dundas and his family should repeatedly change
their position from one point of the line to another.
After they had been some time in the Back Settlements of America, Lady
Eleanor gave birth to a daughter. Her Ladyship's health was far from being
robust, so that she was induced to employ a squaw of one of the aboriginal
tribes as the infant's nurse. The little stranger being much too young to
travel, was left with the squaw, under the charge of a favourite domestic, and
such was the attachment which the whole tribe had formed for their little
pale-faced guest, that it was not without the greatest difficulty they were
afterwards persuaded to part with her. At length, when the period arrived for
the return of the family to England, a serious application was made for the
restoration of the child ; but she was not given up until after a negotiation
had been entered into, with all the formalities required by the laws of the
tribe. Certain casks of brandy, which were employed to accelerate the negotiation, were found to have considerable weight with the Indian
plenipotentiaries ; and on the part of the tribe, the child was presented with a
quantity of furs so very valuable, that I have seen a muff, worn by Lady
Eleanor, and formed out of part of the present, which was said to be worth at
least a hundred guineas. Such was the warmth of the feelings manifested by these
untutored savages, that a considerable body of them, accompanied by the nurse,
insisted on carrying the child to the shores of the Atlantic, a distance of five
hundred miles, to the place where Colonel Dundas and his family were to embark
for England". |
