124 NATURAL HISTORY. 



again on his wanderings. At the same time, he began 

 to write for the periodicals of the day, and made a suc- 

 cessful hit with his well-known ballad of ' Watty and 

 Meg ;' but his literary struggles at this period of his life do 

 not concern us here. The west of Scotland was at this 

 time in an extremely unsettled state, partly owing to 

 depression in trade, and partly to the general restlessness 

 produced in the working-classes of almost all countries by 

 the French Revolution. The operatives of the west 

 country, rightly or wrongly, believed themselves to be an 

 oppressed and ill-treated race, and their cause was warmly 

 espoused by Wilson, who wrote a number of poetical 

 squibs, attacking both men and measures. These, unfortu- 

 nately, brought him under the notice of the authorities, 

 with the result that a prosecution was instituted against 

 him, and he was condemned to imprisonment in Paisley 

 jail, and also to burn one of his obnoxious pieces with his 

 own hands, in public. 



On his liberation, Wilson determined to emigrate to 

 America, whither he set sail on the 23d of May 1794, 

 arriving in the state of Delaware some twenty-two days 

 after leaving Belfast. The first four years of Wilson's 

 life in America seem to have been passed in different 

 employments, but next to nothing is known of the details 

 of his life at this time. In 1800, we find him keeping 

 a school at Frankfort, Pennsylvania, and we have also 

 glimpses of him as a land-surveyor, and as a leader in a 

 local debating society. It is, however, clear that he had, 

 upon the whole, been an unsuccessful man, and that his 

 experiences in his new fatherland had not been agreeable ; 

 since he is found in 1801 writing to his friend Ord, urging 



