An English family, after being ruined in St Louis, and
reduced to their last hundred pounds, are persuaded by a Scottish
miner to accompany him across this desert to New Mexico. 'They are a
wonderful people,' says the story-teller, 'these same Scotch. They are
but a small nation, yet their influence is felt everywhere upon the
globe. Go where you will, you will find them in positions of trust and
importance--always prospering, yet, in the midst of prosperity, still
remembering, with strong feelings of attachment, the land of their
birth. They manage the marts of London, the commerce of India, the
fur-trade of America, and the mines of Mexico. Over all the American
wilderness you will meet them, side by side with the backwoods-pioneer
himself, and even pushing him from his own ground. From the Gulf of
Mexico to the Arctic Sea, they have impressed with their Gaelic names
rock, river, and mountain; and many an Indian tribe owns a Scotchman
for its chief.'
The adventurers join a caravan, which is attacked by Indians, and the
family of the destined Robinson find themselves alone in the
wilderness, 800 miles from the American frontier on the east, 1000
miles from any civilised settlement on either the north or south, and
200 miles from the farthest advanced lines of New Mexico in the
desert.
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