Topographical, statistical, and historical gazetteer of Scotland > Volume 1

ADVERTISEMENT.
these, the Compilers of this Gazetteer conceive themselves to have
enjoyed advantages above all their predecessors in the same department
of literature. The following Parliamentary papers have also afforded
much interesting and valuable matter, viz. :
I. The Reports of the Commissioners on Highland Roads and Bridges.
II. The Reports of the Commissioners under the Act for building additional Places
of Worship in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
III. The Reports of the Commissioners for making and maintaining the Caledonian
Canal.
IV. Reports of the Commissioners on the Herring Fishery.
V. Reports of the Commissioners on Northern Lights.
VI. Returns on the Small Debt Courts, Prisons, Burgh- Revenues, Electoral Inhabi-
tants, Teinds, Crown- Revenues, &c. of Scotland.
The Publishers feel themselves warranted in claiming for their volumes
a superiority over every other existing Gazetteer of Scotland, on the
single ground of its presenting a careful digest of these, and of the Old
as well as the New Statistical Account of Scotland, arranged in alpha-
betical order, and of easy consultation as a book of reference. But
while the compilers have directed their principal attention to the mate-
rials now enumerated, they have not confined themselves to these, nor to
what has hitherto been generally understood to be the strict limits of a
Gazetteer. In the Topographical, Statistical, and Historical
Gazetteer of Scotland — as indeed is implied in the name itself — they
have endeavoured to concentrate a variety of details which it has not
hitherto been customary to introduce into a mere Gazetteer ; nay, they
have not hesitated, wherever they thought such matter would be likely to
interest the general reader, to introduce Legendary, Poetical, Antiqua-
rian, and Artistical notices of different localities.
It has not entered into the plan of the present Work to notice every
hamlet and name that may have a place in the local history and topogra-
phy of Scotland ; but it is hoped that no name will be found to have been
omitted in the following pages which has acquired any importance or
celebrity in the annals of the country ; while a comparison of the number
of names introduced, with those of any other Gazetteer, will satisfy any
one that it has been drawn up on a more comprehensive plan than has
ever before been attempted. An Index has also been supplied to the names
of persons and places incidentally mentioned in the course of the Work.