32 MEMOIR OF 



along with his nephew, William Duncan, a lad of 

 sixteen years of age, he proceeded to Belfast, at 

 which sea-port town he had ascertained that a 

 vessel was about to sail on the 23d May, 1794; 

 and they arrived, after a passage of twenty-two 

 days, at Newcastle, in the state of Delaware. 



Mr. Ord, in his excellent Memoirs, remarks, that 

 Wilson, before leaving the scenes of his boyhood, 

 where every bold crag in the glens and mountains 

 which he used to traverse had its associations and 

 delights, frequently " cast a wistful look towards the 

 Western Hemisphere, where his warm fancy had 

 suggested the idea, that, among that people only, 

 who maintained the doctrine of an equality of rights, 

 could political justice be found." Upon landing, the 

 scantiness of his funds demanded his imnlediate exer- 

 tion in search of employment, which he found at 

 Philadelphia, after having travelled all that way on 

 foot, and from whence he first wrote to his father and 

 mother. Having been completely unsuccessful in 

 procuring employment in his own trade, he was 

 forced to accept of a job as a copperplate printer, 

 from Mr. John Aitken, a countryman of his own ; 

 but which not being of a permanent nature, obliged 

 him to set out again as a pedlar, during which ex- 

 pedition he also kept a Journal, in which is described 

 with considerable tact the manners of the people and 

 the habits of most of the quadrupeds and birds which 

 he met with. At this period of his history there is 

 a considerable blank, for we have little knowledge 

 of him from the time of his landing till about the 



