IAN W Thomson (Letters, October 15) names Scots who made their mark abroad and it is a great pity that we are ignorant of the contribution our kith and kin have made to other countries.

A famous historian wrote: "A people who forget their history become a substitute people" and I feel this certainly applies to present-day Scots. I doubt if three people in the Isle of Lewis ever heard of these fellow islanders:

John Campbell, who taught the Chinese how to fish with steam trawlers; Robertson MacAulay, who founded the Sun Life Insurance Company of Canada; Robert Morrison MacIver, US sociologist, humanist and political scientist; and Commander Alexander MacKenzie, who wrote a navigation textbook for the US Navy;

Aeneas MacKenzie, Hollywood screenwriter, wrote many notable films including The Ten Commandments; Colin MacKenzie, Surveyor General of all India; and Admiral Thomas MacKenzie, Russian Navy, who founded the port of Sebastopol;

Donald R McLennan, who founded America's largest insurance broker, Marsh & McLennan; Donald MacLeod, chief engineer of Argentine Railways; Seaman Thomas MacLeod,who survived three Antarctic expeditions (1910, 1914 and 1920); Neil Morrison, believed to be the first white man to walk the length of the Amazon basin from the Pacific to the Atlantic; Alexander Nicholson, who built shipyards in China; Captain John Ryrie, who won the first ever China Tea Race in command of SS Cairngorm; John A Stewart, one of Abraham Lincoln's closest financial advisers during the American Civil War; Alexander Sutherland, the world's greatest elephant hunter; and Isabella Thomson, the first white woman to settle in Athabasca, Canada.

There are many other islanders I could name. Whatever their use to foreign countries, they have contributed nothing to the Isle of Lewis.

Donald J MacLeod,

49 Woodcroft Avenue,

Bridge of Don, Aberdeen.

IAN W Thomson (Letters, October 15) suggests that, if Eric Liddell had stayed in Scotland, "the Church of Scotland might have been invigorated by his presence". However, although Liddell (who was born in China) was associated with the Church of Scotland during his evangelical campaigns in Scotland, he was a Congregationalist (as was David Livingstone), not a Presbyterian.

Dr Alexander S Waugh,

1 Pantoch Gardens, Banchory.