Section 3. Main ideas and supporting details.
1. We may note in passing that although Dr Johnson's friend and biographer Boswell was a Scotsman, Johnson despised, or pretended to despise, Scotsmen in general.
He once said that the best thing a Scotsman ever saw was the high road to England.
In his famous dictionary, Johnson defined oats as a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people.
He did not condemn all Scotsmen however.
Once he commented on a distinguished nobleman who had been born in Scotland but educated in England, saying that much could be made of a Scotsman, if he was caught young.
2. The first important point to note about the American Indians is that, in spite their name, they are in no way related to the peoples of India.
This confusion arose, as you probably know, because of a mistake on the part of Christopher Columbus.
When he landed in America, he thought that he had in fact discovered India.
This mistake has been perpetrated, that is kept alive, ever since by the name he gave them.
If they are related to any Asian group, it is to the Mongols of Northern Asia.
Many experts believe that the ancestors of the present American Indians emigrated from Northern Asia across the Bering Strait between 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.