WHILE Alexander was overrunning the world by his arms,

and Greece was enlightening it with her arts, Scotland lay

hidden beneath the cloud of barbarism, and had neither

name nor place among the nations of the earth.1 Its

isolation, however, was not complete and absolute. Centuries

before the great Macedonian had commenced his

victorious career, the adventurous navigators of the Phoenician

seaboard had explored the darkness of the hyperborean

ocean. The first to steer by the pole-star, they boldly

adventured where less skilful mariners would have feared

to penetrate. Within the hazy confine of the North Sea

they descried an island, swathed in a mild if humid air, and

disclosing to the eye, behind its frontier screen of chalk

cliffs, the pleasing prospect of wooded hills, and far expanding

meadows, roamed over by numerous herds, and

dotted by the frequent wattle-built hamlets of its rude

inhabitants.