Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1822 edition. Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTION TO THE FIFTH EDITION. The author of the following letters (the genuineness of which has never been questioned in the country where the accuracy of his delineations may best be appreciated) is commonly understood to have been Captain Burt, an officer of engineers, who, about 1730, was sent into Scotland as a contractor, &c. The character of the work is long since decided by the general approbation of those who are most masters of the subject; and so large a body of collateral evidence respecting the then state of the Highlands has been brought forward in the Appendix and Notes, that it will be here only DEGREESnecessary to add such notices and remarks as may tend to illustrate the subject in general, as well as to prepare the reader for what is to follow. And first, it may be expected that somewhat should be said of the antiquity of the Highlanders, and the unmixed purity of their Celtic blood and language, of which they are more proud than of other more valuable distinctions to which they have a less questionable claim. Whence the first inhabitants of our moun* tains came, or who they were, it would now be idle to inquire. They have no written annals of their own; and the few scattered notices respecting them that remain, are to be gathered from strangers, who cannot be supposed to have had any accurate knowledge of their traditions concerning themselves. That a large portion of their population once was Celtic, cannot be doubted; but of this distinction, there seems to be less understood than the learned have commonly supposed. The traditions, superstitions, and earliest impressions of all the nations of the west, of whom, in a less cultivated state, we have any knowledge, seem to point to the east, "the great cradle of mankind, ..".
