Scotland

Scotland is a constituent country of the United Kingdom situated in the northern portion of the island of Great Britain having its capital at Edinburgh. It is separated from England by the Solway, Cheviots, and Tweed, and bounded in the north and west by the Atlantic and in the east by the German Ocean. English is its official language, but the Scottish form of the Gaelic is also spoken.

Inclusive of 788 islands, a large number of them are uninhabited, its area was originally divided into 33 counties. Its area is slightly more than one-half of England's, but has a coast-line longer by 700 miles. Greatest length from Dunnet Head, the most northerly point, to Mull of Galloway, the most southerly point is 288 miles, while the breadth varies from 32 to 175, Buchan Ness being the eastmost point and Ardnamurchan Point the westmost.

Originally the home of the Picts, and by them called Alban or Albyn, the country, already occupied as far as the Forth and Clyde by the Romans, was in the 5th century successfully invaded by the Scots, a Celtic tribe from Ireland. In 843 their king Kenneth was crowned king of Picts and Scots, and by the 10th century the country (known to the Romans as Caledonia) began to be called Scotia or Scotland. Government and power gradually centred in the richer lowlands, which, through contact with England, and from the number of English immigrants, became distinctively Anglo-Saxon. Since the Union with England the prosperity of Scotland has been of steady and rapid growth, manufactures, commerce, and literature (in all branches) having flourished wonderfully.

From rich pastoral uplands in the south — Cheviots, Moffat Hills, Lowthers, Moorfoots, and Lammermoors — the country slopes down to the wide, fertile lowland plain — growing fine crops of oats barley, wheat, &c. — which stretches, with a varying breadth of from 30 to 60 miles, up to the Grampians, the highest peak Ben Nevis, 4406 ft., whence the country sweeps northwards, a wild and beautiful tract of mountain, valley, and moorland, diversified by some of the finest loch and river scenery in the world. The east and west coasts present remarkable contrasts, the latter rugged, irregular, and often precipitous, penetrated by long sea-lochs and fringed with numerous islands, and mild and humid in climate, the former low and regular, with few islands or inlets, and cold, dry, and bracing.

Of rivers the Tweed, Forth, Tay, Dee, and Clyde are the principal. The Orkneys, Shetlands, and Hebrides are the chief island groups. Coal and iron abound in the lowlands, more especially in the plain of the Forth and Clyde, and granite in the Grampians. By the first decade of the 20th century staple industries were the manufacture of cottons, woollens, linen, jute, machinery, hardware, paper, and shipbuilding, of which Glasgow is the centre and commercial metropolis. Edinburgh, the capital city, is the chief seat of law, education, &c. Of cultivated land the percentage varied from 74.8 in Fife to 2.4 in Sutherland, and over all was only 24.2. Good roads, canals, extensive railway and communication systems knit all parts of the country together.

Presbyterianism is the established form of religion, and in 1872 the old parish schools were supplanted by a national system under school-boards similar to England. The lowlanders and highlanders still retain distinctive characteristics of their Teutonic and Celtic progenitors, the latter speaking in many parts of the Highlands their native Gaelic.