Joseph Banks (1743-1820)
The Journals of Joseph Banks’s Voyage up Great Britain’s West Coast to Iceland and to the Orkney Isles, July to October, 1772, ed. Roy A. Rauschenberg, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 117, 3 (Jun 15th, 1973), 186-226.
"Morven the land of heroes once the seat of the exploits of Fingal the mother of the romantick scenery of Ossion. I could not even sail past it without a touch of enthusiasm ... I lamented the busy bustle of the ship & had I dard to venture the censure of my companions would certainly have brought her to an anchor. To have read ten pages of Ossian under the shades of those woods would have ben luxury above the reach of kings."
Joseph BanksIn July 1772, fresh from a pioneering exploratory voyage of discovery to the Pacific with Captain Cook, the 29-year-old English naturalist, wealthy landowner and explorer Joseph Banks led the first British scientific expedition to Iceland by sea. Accompanying him on this expedition was fellow naturalist Daniel Solander, as well as an astronomer, translator, surveyors, servants and three artists: John Cleveley and the Miller brothers.
On the outward journey the travellers spent 17 days exploring the islands off the west coast of Scotland, from Jura to Oronsay, Staffa and Iona. Their return journey mid-October included a stop in the Orkney Islands. Together with Bank's journal, the Miller brothers and Cleveley’s drawings and watercolours act as invaluable sources of information on the Western Isles of Scotland in the 1770s. Although these all went unpublished in the main, Banks’ description of Staffa, illustrated with engravings after studies made on the spot, was published in Pennant's 1772 volume.