Under existing circumstances it was but natural that the more enterprising, and especially that intelligent portion who had lost their heritable jurisdiction, should turn with longing eyes to another country. America offered the most inviting asylum. Although there was some emigration to America during the first half of the eighteenth century, yet it did not fairly set in until about 1760. Between the years 1763 and 1775 over twenty thousand Highlanders left their homes to seek a better retreat in the forests of America.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] "Description of the Western Islands," pp. 199, 200.
[2] "Letters from the North," Vol. II., p. 167.
[3] Lord Mahon's "History of England," Vol. III, pp. 308-311.
[4] Lecky's "History of England," Vol. II, p. 274.
CHAPTER II.
The Scotch-Irish in America.
The name Scotland was never applied to that country, now so designated, before the tenth century, but was called Alban, Albania, Albion. At an early period Ireland was called Scotia, which name was exclusively so applied before the tenth century. Scotia was then a territorial or geographical term, while Scotus was a race name or generic term, implying people as well as country. "The generic term of Scoti embraced the people of that race whether inhabiting Ireland or Britain. As this term of Scotia was a geographical term derived from the generic name of a people, it was to some extent a fluctuating name, and though applied at first to Ireland, which possessed the more distinctive name of Hibernia, as the principal seat of the race from whom the name was derived, it is obvious that, if the people from whom the name was taken inhabited other countries, the name itself would have a tendency to pass from the one to the other, according to the prominence which the different settlements of the race assumed in the history of the world; and as the race of the Scots in Britain became more extended, and their power more formidable, the territorial name would have a tendency to fix itself where the race had become most conspicuous.... The name in its Latin form of Scotia, was transferred from Ireland to Scotland in the reign of Malcolm the Second, who reigned from 1004 to 1034. The 'Pictish Chronicle,' compiled before 997, knows nothing of the name of Scotia as applied to North Britain; but Marianus Scotus, who lived from 1028 to 1081, calls Malcolm the Second 'rex Scotiae,' and Brian, king of Ireland, 'rex Hiberniae.' The author of the 'Life of St. Cadroe,' in the eleventh century, likewise applies the name of Scotia to North Britain."[5]