But, when we examine his narrative, we find that he had never ventured beyond the extreme skirts of the Celtic region.

He tells us that even from the people who lived close to the passes he could learn little or nothing about the Gaelic population.

Few Englishmen, he says, had ever seen Inverary.

All beyond Inverary was chaos, [320] In the reign of George the First, a work was published which professed to give a most exact account of Scotland; and in this work, consisting of more than three hundred pages, two contemptuous paragraphs were thought sufficient for the Highlands and the Highlanders, [321] We may well doubt whether, in 1689, one in twenty of the well read gentlemen who assembled at Will's coffeehouse knew that, within the four seas, and at the distance of less than five hundred miles from London, were many miniature courts, in each of which a petty prince, attended by guards, by armour bearers, by musicians, by a hereditary orator, by a hereditary poet laureate, kept a rude state, dispensed a rude justice, waged wars, and concluded treaties.

While the old Gaelic institutions were in full vigour, no account of them was given by any observer, qualified to judge of them fairly.