Our peasantry, settled around our own frontier, and around the shores of our lakes, have a notion that the Scotch Highlanders were, not long since, the same kind of wild, half-naked people compared with the true English, that the _Choctaws_, _Cherokees_, _Pottowatomies_ and _Kickapoo Indians_ are to the common inhabitants of these United States; and that less than an hundred years ago, these Scotchmen were in the habit of making the like scalping and tomahawking excursions upon the English farmer, that the North American savage makes upon the white people here. This is the general idea which our common people have of what Walter Scott calls "_the border wars_." Some of them will tell you that the Scotch go half naked in their own country--wear a blanket, and kill their enemies, with a knife, just like Indians. They say their features differ from the English as much as theirs do from the Indian. In a word, they suppose the Scotch Highlanders to be a race who have been conquered by the English, who have taught them the use of fire arms, and civilized them, in a degree, so as to form them into regiments of soldiers, and this imperfect idea of the half savage _Sawney_ will not soon be corrected; and we must say that the general conduct of this harsh and self-interested race towards our prisoners, will not expedite the period of correct ideas relative to the comparative condition of the Scotch and English. The Americans have imbibed no prejudice against the Irish, having found them a brave, generous, jovial set of fellows, full of fun, and full of good, kind feelings; the antipodes of Scotchmen, who, as it regards these qualities, are cold, rough and barren; like the land that gave them birth.