32 
MEMOIR OP 
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 immediate 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 sot 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 
