John MacGregor was born Jan 24, 1825, the son of General Sir Duncan MacGregor, K.C.B. His mother was the youngest daughter of Sir William Dick, baronet of Prestonfield. He graduated as 34th "wrangler" at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1847, received his M.A. in 1850, and was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1851.

Before he was called, however, MacGregor had already established a small reputation as a traveler. In 1849, he traveled overland across Europe to the Levant and on to Egypt, a nine-month tour which he wrote about in Three Days in the East (1850). By 1851 MacGregor had traveled to Russia, worked his way southward to Algeria and Tunis, and then by ship to Canada and the United States, an adventure which he later sketched in Our Brothers and Cousins, a Tour in Canada (1859).

Originally a patent lawyer, MacGregor generally ignored the practice after 1853 and devoted his life to travel and philanthropy. In addition to A Thousand Miles, he also wrote three other popular voyaging books: A Voyage alone in the Yawl Rob Roy (1867); The Rob Ray on the Baltic (1867); and The Rob Roy on the Jordan, Red Sea, and Gennesareth (1869). For each trip, MacGregor had a new decked canoe built which retained its predecessor's title.

A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe is generally considered to have been one of the most popular books of 1866--in modern parlance: the year's top nonfiction bestseller. The novelty of MacGregor's mode of travel in 1865 generated newspaper coverage not only across Europe but also as far away as the United States, Canada, and South America. In many ways, this trip was one of the first "media events" ever recorded across continents.

MacGregor is generally recognized as the prime inspiration for the growth of canoeing, canoe camping, and canoeing clubs in Europe and America (he was also the founder of the Royal Canoe Club which was "commodored" by the Prince of Wales), and by extension, the father of modern sea kayaking. In fact, the several versions of the Rob Roy were "decked" canoes, or in modern terms, a hard-shell sea kayak.

What hasn't been recognized about MacGregor, however, is that his books, written in the mid-Victorian period, foreshadow the shift in style toward terse, fast-paced prose without the embellishment often seen as a hallmark of Victorian style. In many ways, MacGregor's writing style is more modern and descriptive than such a writer as Robert Louis Stevenson whose account of a similar canoe voyage in the 1880s became his first book, An Inland Voyage.

MacGregor died on July 16, 1892, shortly after finishing the end notes found in this reprinted edition of A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe.