Scotland's Global Impact: How one small country changed the world
James Hunter's
 
Between October 22 and October 24 this year people from across the world will attend a conference in Inverness. One of the signature events of Scotland's Year of Homecoming, the conference, dealing principally with emigration and its consequences, is entitled Scotland's Global Impact: How one small country changed the world. Here one of the conference's organisers, James Hunter, reflects on the emigration experience and on Scotland's sometimes troubled relationships with its diaspora. 
 
Towards the close of what he described as 'a truly wonderful day' in the early part of 1918, an army chaplain aboard one of the Liverpool-bound troopships then carrying thousands of American soldiers to a war-torn Europe, scribbled a few lines to his wife back home in Texas. 'Quite early I was awake,' the chaplain wrote, 'and soon I heard a soldier's voice call out, "Come on boys, here's land."
 
  'And what was more, this first foreign land I ever laid eyes on was none other than Bonnie Scotland. I was almost overcome by my emotions and wondered long if it were not, after all, a dream. But there it was; great old hills ... planted here and there with farms. In fancy I saw, more than a century ago, the old sailboat with prow headed ... towards the west. And leaning far over the sides ... my own forefathers straining to see as long as they could a bit of their homeland.

  'After a century or more, a son of theirs greets these same old hills ... It was a sight I shall never forget, but shall retain the recollection of as a treasure above all price. I have seen Scotland!'

This American's name was William Angus McLeod. A year or so later, with peace now restored, McLeod travelled from London, where he was stationed, to Skye - which his emigrant great-grandfather had left in 1802. On the train from Inverness to Kyle of Lochalsh, and on the steamer from Kyle to Portree, the Texan met with 'a good many' other young men from several different countries who were, McLeod reported,