[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR. "] SIR, — You have always shown
such just appreciation of Scotsmen and their character that it is surprising to read in the article on " The Secret of the Scot " that Scotsmen are not pioneers, and do not possess the sort of enterprise for the task. The phrase is evidently employed in a geographical sense, and hundreds of names might be advanced in disproof. But let me give only three. It was a Scot who made the first crossing of Canada—Alexander Mackenzie, 1793. Again, it was a Scot who in 1862 was the first to cross the continent of Australia from south to north—John McDougall Stuart. To mention as the third the great name of David Livingstone is surely unnecessary in this centenary year, and he is admitted as an exception by your contributor. These ventures at the time must have seemed madcap and profitless. Yet it was by the canny Scot that they were undertaken. It was the over- mastering impulse to seek "beyond the ranges " that sent him forward, and it is that national spirit which makes the Scotsman everywhere a pioneer.—I am, Sir, &c.,
[We did not mean to use " pioneer " in the sense of geo- graphical explorer, but in that of the men who first break ground in a new country.—En. Spectator.]
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