Caledonian Sketches, OR A TOUR THROUGH SCOTLAND IN 1807. TO WHICH IS PREFIXED An Explanatory Address to the Public upon A RECENT TRIAL. BY SIR JOHN CARR, AUTHOR OF THE NORTHERN SUMMER, STRANGER IN FRANCE, &c. &c. With gold and gems if Chilian mountains glow, If bleak and barren Scotia's hills arife There plague and poifon, luft and rapine, grow; Here peaceful are the vales, and pure the skies, BUCHANAN. And freedom fires the foul, and fparkles in the eyes. BEATTIE. LONDON PRINTED. PHILADELPHIA REPRINTED BY JAMES HUMPHREYS, At his Book-store on Change-walk ; Sold also by W. Burditt, & Co. Boston. Inskeep and Bradford, New York. George Hill, 1809. VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE AFRICAN SOCIETY; VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE LITERARY FUND, &c. &c. &c. MY LORD, TO you, who have devoted so many years in the ardent and successful pursuit of knowledge in distant regions, the treasures of which you are about to pour into the lap of your country, I beg to have the honour of dedicating the following pages. Although, in extent and variety of research, as well as in the acquirements, toil, and enterprise necessary for its success, your Lordship has rarely been equalled, you have not resembled those travellers, who, to a perfect acquaintance with the laws, customs, and manners of other countries, unite an almost entire ignorance of their own. With the local, moral, and political character of the three divisions of the British empire, I know your Lordship is intimately conversant, and I hope that the representation which I have attempted of the natives and the scenery of the northern branch of it will meet with your approbation. EXPLANATORY ADDRESS ΤΟ THE PUBLIC. IN laying before the Public another literary production, I think it due, in point of propriety and respect, to advert to a circumstance which has lately brought my name before it, more especially as that circumstance is distantly connected with the present publication. I refer to an action which I brought against the publishers of a supposed libellous caricature print, and its explanation, of a personal and offensive nature, in consequence of which I have been charged by certain persons with having attempted a violence to the liberty of the press. Those whose hostility I have increased by that measure have distorted the ground of that action: perhaps no object ever was more grossly and actively misrepresented. From the dominion which my adversaries had and have over some of the public prints, they had considerable means of adding to the injustice which they had before attempted to exercise. If the matter merely related to myself, from my respect to the Public it should drop into oblivion; but |