manded until the end of the Peninsular war. At the Battle of Busaco on 27 Sept. 1810 he was particularly distinguished; the picked regiments of Reynier'e corps d'armee had driven in the right of the 3rd division, and established themselves in the be very heart of the British position. General Leith ordered up his 1st brigade to drive off the enemy, but the ground was too rugged for them to advance. "Meanwhile," to quote the words of Sir William Napier, "Colonel Cameron, informed by a staff officer of the critical state of affairs, formed the 9th regiment in line under a violent fire, and, without returning a single shot, ran in upon and drove the grenadiers from the rocks with irresistible bravery, plying them with a destructive musketry as long as they could be reached, and yet with excellent discipline refraining from pursuit, lest the crest of the position should be again lost, for the mountain was so rugged that it was impossible to judge clearly of the general state of the action" (Napier, Peninsular War, book xi. chap. 7). Cameron afterwards commanded his regiment at the battle of Fuentes de Onoro, the siege of Badajoz, the battle of Salamanca, the affair with the French rear guard at Osma on 18 June 1813, and the battle of Vittoria, on all of which occasions it formed a part of the 2nd brigade of the 5th division under General Leith. At the siege o San Sebastian the 9th carried the convent of San Bartholomé on 17 July 1813, when Cameron was wounded; it was engaged in the attempt of 25 July to storm San Sebastian, and in the successful assault of 31 Aug., when Cameron was again wounded, and during the siege operations his regiment lost two-thirds of its officers and three-fourths of its soldiers, In the invasion of France, as in the advance upon Vittoria, the 5th division formed the extreme left of the army; the 9th regiment led the division across the Bidassoa and in the attack on the French position, in the battle of the Nivelle, and in the fiercely contested battles of 9, 10, and 11 Dec. before Bayonne, which are known as the bottle of the Nive. In these three days the 9th regiment lost 300 men; on 10 Dec. it was completely surrounded, but charged back to the main army, and took 400 prisoners, and on 11 Dec. Cameron had his horse killed under him when reconnoitring the village of Anglet. The loss of the regiment in 1813 exceeded that of any other regiment in the Peninsula, amounting to 41 officers and 646 men killed and wounded. Cameron was not present at Orthes or Toulouse but was engaged until the end of the war in Sir John Hope's operations before Bayonne. On the conclusion of peace he received many rewards. On 4 June 1814 he was promoted colonel, and on the extension of the order of the Bath in January 1815 he was made one of the first K.C.B.'s; he was also made a knight of the Tower and Sword of Portugal, and received a gold cross with three clasps in commemoration of the six battles and one siege at which he had commanded his regiment. In 1814 he commanded his regiment in Canada, where he acted as brigadier-general and commandant of the garrison of Kingston until 1815, when he received the command of a brigade in the army of occupation in France. On 19 July 1821 Cameron was promoted major-general, and commanded the western district from 1823 to 1883, in which year he was appointed colonel of the 9th regiment, which be had so long commanded. On 10 Jan. 1837 he was promoted lieutenant-general; and on 23 Nov. 1844 died at Guernsey. He married a Miss Brock, niece of the first Lord de Saumarez, when stationed in Guernsey in 1803, by whom he had a son, Sir Duncan Cameron, G.C.B., who commanded the Black Watch at the battle of Balaclava, and afterwards the highland brigade in the Crimea.
[Royal Military Calendar; Regimental Record of the 9th Regiment; Wellington Despatches; Napier's Peninsular War; information contributed by General Sir Duncan Cameron, G. C. B.]
CAMERON, JOHN ALEXANDER (d. 1885), war correspondent, was descended from the Camerons of Kinlochiel, and was born at Inverness, where he was for some time a bank clerk. Subsequently he went out to India, and was connected with a mercantile house in Bombay. He began contributing to the Bombay Gazette, and waa for some time acting editor, when on the outbreak of the Afghan war in 1878 he was appointed special correspondent. When towards the close of the following year the war broke out afresh, he became correspondent of the London 'Standard.' Joining the column under General Phayrer sent to the relief of Candahar, he was the first to ride with the news of the victory of General Roberts to the nearest telegraph post, beating all other competitors by a day and a half. Then returning to Candahar he went out to the battlefield of Maiwand (July 1880), his description of which established his reputation as one of the most graphic of newspaper correspondents. On the outbreak of the Boer insurrection (December 1880) he crossed from Bombay to Natal, arriving there long before the correspondents from England. He was present (January 1881 ) at the battles of Loing's Nek and Ingogo, and, though taken prisoner at
