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Captain James Cook the great explorer would have been a great fan of Alexander Dalrymple because through his persistence that there existed a huge populous continent in the South Pacific, Cook was able to do plenty of exploring. Dalrymple himself introduced the name of this as yet unknown land as ‘ The Great South Land ' . Dalrymple hoped to find this place on an expedition due for the year 1769, but unfortunately for him the command was given to Cook.

This was an official government directive which came straight from the top of the house. It has been suggested that the scheme was doomed to failure from the very first idea and maybe that was actually why it had been put together. Perhaps it was a ploy to leave the Scottish gentry financially embarrassed and they would therefore be easier to persuade towards a union with England . Who knows?

The famous King Robert the Bruce had a daughter who married Walter FitzAlan, He was known as the steward of Scotland , which through time changed to Stuart. The couple were blessed with a son named David who was to be King. Young David Succeeded at the age of five, and Moray was made Regent to aid him in his Kingly tasks. At first, the reign of David II as King of Scotland seems to show us little more than long periods of costly wars against the hated English, but the consequent decline in the prestige of the Scottish monarchy and the increase in the power of the greedy Scottish barons had important repercussions.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is one of Scotland 's best known and loved writers. He is of course famous for his super sleuth ‘Sherlock Holmes', who with his equally well known side-kick Doctor Watson went through the literary world solving every case with their brilliant methods of deduction. His first published work was ‘ A Study in Scarlet' which became a best seller. Who could forget his arch enemy ‘Professor Moriarty', or the howling noise which you could almost imagine coming from the ‘Hounds of the Baskerville'? People still to this day flock to London every year to visit 221B Baker Street, to see where they believed the fictional character lived.

William Drummond hailed from Hawthornden, near the capitol city of Edinburgh , he was a renowned Scottish writer and it is to him the claim of being the first poet to write deliberately in the English language falls. He was a lover of the Renaissance love poetry and it is thought that he was heavily influenced by his passionate reading of the subject matter. Drummond had spent several years in France before settling at Hawthornden again in his twenties. Drummond was also first to use the Italian metrical form, the conzone in English. This unusual procedure brought Drummond to the attention of many of the poets and writers of that time.

Although not as well known in the world as Robert Burns, was to become, William Dunbar was a great Scottish poet. Burns work was definitely more humanitarian than Dunbar's , but it stands for itself with the sheer beauty of the words, the metrical variety, freshness and versatility in the phrasing. This was said to be the ‘Golden Age' of Scottish poetry, and the Scots were foremost when it came to vigorous poetry that would please their monarch Henry VII. One of Dunbar's most famous poems is named ‘The Golden Targe' it tells the story of a man who has fallen asleep on a beautiful May morning and is beginning to dream.

He is dreaming about the ‘Arrows of Love' which are being fired at him but being deflected by his Golden Targe.

Andrew Duncan was a great Doctor and Professor. He worked in Edinburgh and was the founder of what was to become “The Royal Public Dispensary” which was chartered in the year 1818, Duncan was a forward thinking man and as President of the Edinburgh College of Physicians, he proposed the city build and run the first public lunatic house. This project was completed in 1799. He was also the founder of the Caledonian Horticulture Society in the year 1799. Andrew Duncan had a son whom he named Andrew after himself. His son was a clever boy and soon showed signs that he too would follow in his fathers footsteps. Andrew the Younger was the first professor of medical jurisprudence anywhere in Britain at the University of Edinburgh in the year 1807.

John Graham was a great Scottish patriot who paid the ultimate price for his country. He was an icon of the Jacobite struggle for truth and died at the very moment of his personal glory after the battle of Killiecrankie in July 1689, with him died any real hope the Jacobite cause had at that time to defeat the forces of the Protestant King William III of Orange, who had usurped the crown along with his equally usurping wife Mary. John Graham was known as a fierce and courageous Scotsman who would do anything for his country, which he did. He was affectionately named “Bonnie Dundee” and had famous songs written about him.

Duns Scotus was a man who had great influence on the Catholic people of Scotland for many years. He was a Franciscan scholar, philosopher and theologian. He was originally from Duns in Berwickshire. It was him who wrote the classic defence in favour of the Virgin birth, as Immaculate Conception without sin, which is still so important to the Roman Catholic Church even today. Scotus was also one of the many who stood up for his religion when the French wanted to tax the Catholic church to pay for wars waged in the name of religion. Scotus was known to have a very fertile speculative mind and this can be seen by reading his great Theology work entitled ‘ Orinatio '. He was a great Scotsman who fought for what he believed in to help his church and his people.

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