Excerpt from Tom Cringle's Log The few particulars which we know with regard to the Author of Tom Cringle's Log may be compressed almost into a sentence. The name of the writer of that series of papers (which first ap peared in Blackwood's Magazine) was Michael Scott. He was born in Glasgow, on the 30th October 1789, and attended the High School and University there. In October 1806 he sailed for J amaiea, where he remained in the management of various estates till 1810, when he joined a mercantile house in Kings ton, Jamaica. It was in the course of his employment in this establishment, and of the numerous Visits which he had occasion to pay to the neighbouring islands and to the Spanish Main, that he acquired that familiarity with the character of West Indian society, with the wild and adventurous nature of a nautical life, and with the scenes and aspects of a tropical climate, which afterwards imparted so much of truth and vivacity to his sketches. Arriving in this country in 1817, he married in 1818 3 but again returned to J amaica, and did not finally settle in Scotland till 1822. In 1829 he addressed to the late Mr Blackwood some fragments, under the pseudonym of Tom Ci'ingle, in which - brief and slenderly connected as they were - that publisher at once discerned the traces of ori ginal talent, and of great powers of description. He urged him to proceed, and to weave his materials into a connected form. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.