FORT

AUGUSTUS  , a village of Inverness-shire, Scotland . Pop . (tool) 706 . It is delightfully situated at the south-western extremity of Loch Ness, about 3o m . S.W. of Inverness, on the rivers Oich and Tarff and the Caledonian Canal . A branch line connects with Spear . Bridge on the West Highland railway via Invergarry . The fort, then called Kilchumin, was built in 1716 for the purpose of keeping the Highlanders in check, and was enlarged in 1730 by General Wade . It was captured by the Jacobites in 1745, but reoccupied after the battle of Culloden,when it received its present name in honour of William Augustus, duke of Cumberland, the victorious general . The fort was used as a sanatorium until x857, when it was bought by the 1 zth Lord Lovat, whose son presented it in '876 to the English order of Benedictines . Within four years there rose upon its site a pile of stately buildings under the title of St Benedict's Abbey and school, a monastic and collegiate institution intended for the higher education of the sons of the Roman Catholic nobility and gentry . The series of buildings consists of the college, monastery, hospice and scriptorium—the four forming a quadrangle connected by beautiful cloisters .

Amongst its benefactors were many Catholic Scots and English peers and gentlemen whose arms are emblazoned on the windows of the spacious

refectory hall . The summit of the college tower is uo ft. high .