John MacGregor was born in Gravesend, England in 1825 and became widely known as an adventure traveler and pioneer of the sport of canoeing, introducing the kayak into Europe following a visit to North America in 1858. He knew such diverse figures as Harriett Beecher Stowe, Henry Morton Stanley, and David Livingstone. His adventures took him from the summit of Mt. Blanc to the Canadian wilderness, to the Russian Far East, down the rivers of Norway and Sweden, to North Africa, and the Middle East. His popular descriptions of his adventures in his 'canoes, ' each named Rob Roy after the family's historic namesake, became immensely popular and the expedition from the Nile to the Jordan River and the Sea of Galilee described in The Rob Roy on the Jordan was his most successful work. This new edition contains an extensive biographical and historical introduction, updated annotations, as well as restorations of the 8 maps, 59 woodcuts and four plates from the 1869 first edition.