24 
ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY LIFE [ch. ii. 
He had thus taken very fairly “the measure of 
himself,” and was able not only to realise intel¬ 
ligently the extent and advantage of the acquire¬ 
ments of which he was then possessed, but also 
what further course he ought to follow for the 
attainment of those scientific purposes to which he 
had come to feel that his life ought in the main to 
be devoted. 
Although he felt, after a residence of many 
months in Harris, that the time had arrived for 
proceeding to carry out the remainder of his pro¬ 
jected tour, which was to include a visit to Skye 
and the northern counties of Scotland, yet we have 
no information as to how far he was able to carry 
out that plan. Its practicability, as appears from a 
passage in his journal just quoted, depended on 
certain arrangements with regard to his uncle’s 
affairs being completed; but we have no means of 
knowing where he actually went after leaving 
Harris, or whether indeed he did leave it at the 
beginning of May, as he had decided to do. The 
title prefixed to the journal—no doubt written after 
the tour had been completed—appears to imply that 
he had abandoned his plan, so far at least as regards 
the northern counties, as that title describes the 
completed tour from 3rd August 1817 to 13th 
August 1818 as “A Years Residence and Travels in 
the. Hebrides, vol. i.” 
I do not doubt that another volume giving an 
account of where and how he spent the three and a 
half months, from the beginning of May to 13th 
