226 NIMROUS NORTHERN TOUR. 



quantity of native stock bought in for feeding ; and he works 

 twenty horses on his farm, having imported a capital Suffolk 

 Punch stallion for the improvement of the breed. At the meet- 

 ing of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, of the 

 year in which I was in the country, he was awarded several 

 premiums for superiority of stock. 



The Captain is equally highly bred as are his cattle in fact 

 he claims ancestral relationship to epic times, being clearly 

 descended from the noble race of Bruce, the hero of Scottish 

 history. He is likewise lineally descended from the celebrated 

 Robert Barclay, author of the " Apology for the Quakers," he, 

 the said Apologist, was the son of David Barclay of Ury, the son 

 of David Barclay of Mathers, the representative of an old Scots 

 family, of Norman origin, traceable, I believe, through fifteen 

 generations, to Theobald De Berkeley, who settled in Scotland 

 in the beginning of the twelfth century. The " Apology," an 

 elaborate work, I believe, written in Latin, and indicating no 

 small portion of both talent and learning, was dated thus : 

 " From Ury, the place of my pilgrimage, in my native country 

 of Scotland, 2$th of November, 1676." 



Thus I think I make it clear, that my friend the Captain is 

 quite thoroughbred, which to a great degree accounts for the 

 wonderful feats he has performed, certainly unequalled by any 

 one man in modern times at least. 



As a conversationist, he exemplifies Congreve's definition of 

 real native humour to a greater degree than almost any other 

 person I have hitherto met with in life, and the definition of the 

 dramatist, if my memory does not fail me, is this : " a singular, 

 unavoidable manner of doing or saying anything, peculiar and 

 natural to one man only, by which his speech and actions are 

 distinguishable from those of other men." Now I appeal to all 

 who know him, if such is not the Captain ; and whoever has 

 heard him as I have heard him, in a strain of colloquial 

 pleasantry, and observed the quiet, grave, but cheerful, though 

 guarded humour, that runs through his conversation ; the brevity 

 of some of his remarks, and the artless sincerity in which they 

 are uttered, together with his deep and manly voice very unlike 

 that of Velutti must, I think, be of a similar opinion with myself. 

 "What advantage he took of a good school education, and a 

 Cambridge matriculation, previously to his entering the army, I 

 am unable to say. He may, for aught I know to the contrary, 

 be no theoretical philosopher ; he may have given Homer and 

 mathematics to the winds, and have exchanged Herodotus 

 the Historian for Herodicus the Gymnast ; but in useful practical 

 knowledge, I would back him against most men \ and, were I in 



