!SOURCE: Rev. Thomas Whyte, AN HISTORICAL AND GENEALOGICAL
ACCOUNT OF THE BETHUNES OF THE ISLAND OF SKYE, Edinburgh, 1778,
reprinted London, 1893, by Alfred A. Bethune-Baker, reprinted by
ScotsPress, p. 9.
[Ferquhard junior] professed Medicine. He was of a frank and chearful
temper, and much loved and caressed by all, particularly his patients. He
died a young man unmarried, and the way and manner of his death was
this: He had been sent for by the Earl of Sutherland, to attend his
Countess in a dangerous illness. When he was returning hom in a ten
oared boat, after she recovered, it happened to land in an island, which
was not inhabited. Here the Doctor and his crew, proposed to stay a
little and refresh themselves; but alas! the boat being not well fastened
to the shore, went off with their provisions aboard, and twenty days
thereafter came into Dunrobin the Earl''s seat, whole and entire. The Earl
immediately sent out some able hands in quest of them; but before they
could possibly reach the island, all of them died for want of food; and
they found the Doctor lying on his breast within an old chapel, with a
book under his face, in which he had wrote an account of their dreadful
disaster [Manuscript History of the Bethunes of the Island of Sky.]