Landscapes of Scotland [antikvár]

Scotland and England have been ruled by the same monarchy, and governed by the same parliament, for well over 250 years. The inhabitants of both countries speak the same language and use the same currency. They don't need passports or visas to move from one coimtry to the other and there are no customs posts on the border. Yet when most Englishmen cross the border into Scotland there is a very definite feeling of entering a foreign country. It is the "Scottishness" of Scotland that sets any first-time visitor back on his heels. "You see it in the architecture," says Michael PoweU in Alastaii Maclean's ScoOand (Deutsch 1972), "in the colossal granite walls of Aberdeen, in the majestic sweep Into the heart of Dundee of the road bridge over the Tay, in the fantasies of Scottish baronial, in the purity of the Brothers Adam. You hear it in the speech -direct, literate and colorful - whether broad Lowland or careful Highland. You enjoy it in the abundance of public golf courses; the stupendous high teas; the generous drams of whisky; the electric blankets on the clean beds; the unpretentious goodness of the small things in life." You see it, too, in the breathtaking sweep of a Highland glen, where the thin winding ribbon of gray road creeping almost apologetically through it seems a concession of nature to man's intrusion. The delicate hues of bracken and heather on either side of the road are broken by a mountain stream that was bubbling when Scotland had its own kings, and a Sassenach Englishman took his life in his hands if he crossed the border. It is the Scots themselves who have given their land this unique sense of identity - no mean achievement for a country of just over five mUllon people. It has been argued that the Scots have produced more eminent figures per capita than any other people. More than half the total number of American Presidents have Scottish ancestry and many British Prime Ministers have been Scots: MacmlUan, Douglas-Home, Gladstone, Ramsay MacDonald. Menzies of Australia and Fraser of New Zealand also had Scottish blood and John Paul Jones, founder of the U.S. Navy, was a Scot. And in many other fields, Scots are internationally acclaimed; Andrew Carnegie, Adam Smith, James Watt, Robert Bums and Sir Walter Scott, to name but a few. But the irony is that so many Scots achieved their success after leaving their homeland, making their mark on the world in foreign fields. Alastair MacLean, the best-selling novelist himself an expatriate, believes that his fellow countrymen are "bom adventurers Find a man herding sheep in the furthest reaches of Patagonia and the chances are that he is a Scot. I know of a village in the Italian Dolomites where the most cormnonly held sumames begin with 'Mac'____The Scots are to be found virtually everywhere." (Alastaii MacLean's Scotland). But where did the Scots come from originally? Most historians agree that the first man to stand upright on the mgged terrain of what is now Scotland did so perhaps as long ago as 6,000 BC. Bone and antler fishing spears and other mdimentary implements