During a delightful sojourn which I shared with him in the Vale of Yarrow in 1880, a special object of pilgrimage was the ruined cottage in which the African traveller, Mungo Park, was born; and as he looked on it he recalled the picture, by Sir George Harvey, representing the fainting traveller in the African desert revived by the sight of a little flower that seemed to tell of the divine hand, and renewed his faith in the fatherhood of God. He followed up the subject, recovered an original sketch map executed by the traveller of his intended second route, of which he had a copy made; and among the letters preserved by him is one from Dr. Anderson of Selkirk, in which it is stated:--“Park served his apprenticeship for a surgeon with my grandfather in this house (Dove Cot) where I now live, and where my grandfather, my father, and myself have practised for more than a hundred years. My father served his apprenticeship with Park in Peebles, when he practised there before going off on his second journey. There stands a very handsome tree in front of my house, a horse-chestnut, which was planted by the traveller while courting his intended wife.” African travel had a peculiar fascination for William Nelson. The return of the venerable missionary, Dr. Robert Moffat, from his life-long labours among the Hottentots and Bechuanas, awakened in him the liveliest interest; and his son-in-law, Livingstone, was an object of special veneration. When the startling news of Stanley’s meeting with him at Ujiji was reported, it greatly excited and gratified him. And when Mr. Henry M. Stanley visited Edinburgh on his return from Africa, he received a hearty welcome at Salisbury Green. Keith Johnston, another of the explorers of the Dark Continent, who fell a victim to the deadly climate, was the son of an old friend. He watched with interest the news of his early efforts, and tenderly mourned his fate. The same summer in which the ruined cottage in the Vale of Yarrow was the object of William Nelson’s curious interest, he had as his guest at Salisbury Green Mr. Joseph Thomson, then recently returned from his exploratory wanderings in previously unvisited regions to the south of the Victoria Nyanza, and gratified his intelligent curiosity, plying him with questions about the strange land and its people.