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.
