The summit of Ben Alder is 3758 feet above sea level. It rises 18 miles southwest of Cluny House and borders Loch Ericht to the south which itself lies at 2375 feet. The surrounding lands are still wild today, inaccessible and devoid of wintertowns and population. It was within this area that Cluny and the wounded Locheil quietly awaited news of the Prince throughout July and August. Their presence there was completely unknown to the squads of Lord Loudoun's militia who were stationed throughout Badenoch and actively searching for them everywhere but where they were.
Since mid-April Prince Charles had been seeking a passage back to France and his search for a ship had taken him to the Outer Hebrides and then 'over the sea' back to the Isle of Skye. His wanderings also took him to the Braes of Glenmoriston near Inverness and then to Ben Alder via Lochaber. He arrived there on 29th August and joined Locheil and Macpherson of Breakachie in a shieling. Cluny was away at the time but joined them on 1st September upon which they moved to another shieling even more remote. On the 4th or 5th they moved to a still more remote hideaway called the 'Cage'.
Those familiar with Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Kidnapped will recall the chapter titled 'Cluny's Cage' which tells how the story's two principal characters, David Balfour and Alan Breck Stewart, found refuge there after eluding pursuing 'red coats'. The location of the Cage is a much debated subject which has yet to be settled. Here is how Stevenson described it:--
"The trunks of several trees had been wattled across, the intervals strengthened with stakes, and the ground behind this barricade levelled up with earth to make the floor. A tree, which grew out from the hillside, was the living centre-beam of the roof. The walls were of wattle and covered with moss. The whole house had something of an egg-shape; and it half hung, half stood in that steep, hillside thicket, like a wasp's nest in a green hawthorn. Within, it was large enough to shelter five or six persons with some comfort. A projection of the cliff had been cunningly employed to be the fireplace; and the smoke rising against the face of the rock, and being not dissimilar in colour, readily escaped notice from below."
The novel's time frame is six years after the Prince and Locheil had sojourned in the Cage. Stevenson's description of the Cage is in agreement with contemporaneous reports but his treatment of Ewan Macpherson makes him out to be a wild uncouth Highlander fitting the Lowland prejudice of the late 19th century. Contemporary descriptions offer a much different view. One of these can be found in the discussion of the Kidnapped video at the right. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Cluny occupied the Cage after 13th September 1746 when word came that there were two French ships waiting for him at Loch nan Uamh. The record shows that the Prince and his party set off for there that night.
"We came at last to the foot of an exceeding steep wood, which scrambled up a craggy hillside, and was crowned by a naked precipice. . . . The trees clung upon the slope, like sailors on the shrouds of a ship; and their trunks were like the rounds of a ladder, by which we mounted. Quite at the top, and just before the rocky face of the cliff sprang above the foliage, we found that strange house which was known in the country as "Cluny's Cage."