undertakings. His journies to visit distant patients--his long and
solitary rides over "cold and lonely heaths" and "gloomy hills assailed
by the wintry tempest," seem to have produced in him feelings of disgust
and impatience, which he had perhaps rarely experienced in the deserts
of Africa. His strong sense of the irksomeness of this way of life broke
out from him upon many occasions; especially, when previously to his
undertaking his second African mission, one of his nearest relations
expostulated with him on the imprudence of again exposing himself to
dangers which he had so very narrowly escaped, and perhaps even to new
and still greater ones; he calmly replied, that a few inglorious winters
of country practice at Peebles was a risk as great, and would tend as
effectually to shorten life, as the journey which he was about to
undertake.

It might have been expected, that a person who had been so much
accustomed to literary and scientific society, and who had lately been
in some degree admitted into the fashionable circles of the metropolis,
in which he had become an object of much interest and attention, would
have felt great repugnance to the solitude and obscurity of a small
market town. But this does not appear to have been the case. General
society, for which indeed he was not particularly suited, was not much
to his taste; and during every period of his life, he always looked
forward to a state of complete retirement and seclusion in the country,
as the object and end of all his labours. He had great enjoyment however
in his own domestic circle, and in the society of select friends; and
his residence at Peebles was, in this respect, highly fortunate for him,
since it was the occasion of his becoming acquainted with two
distinguished residents in that neighbourhood; Colonel John Murray of
Kringaltie, a very respectable old officer, then retired from the
service, and Dr. Adam Ferguson; with both of whom he became intimate,