MEMOIR
OF
CAPTAIN HUGH CLAPPERTON,
THE
AFRICAN TRAVELLER.
MEMOIR
OF
CAPTAIN HUGH CLAPPERTON,
THE
AFRICAN TRAVELLER.
Section I.—INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
The life of Captain Hugh Clapperton, who died in his second attempt to explore the interior of Africa, was short, but very eventful. Not only did he possess a frame and constitution, both of body and mind, well fitted for a career of active exertion and romantic enterprise; but from the day of his birth to that of his death, it was his lot to endure, with almost no interruption, a painful succession of hardships and privations, or to be engaged in scenes and pursuits of a nature so perilous as to put existence itself in constant and imminent jeopardy. And had any record of these things been kept, either by himself or by any one else, who might chance to know even a tithe of the manifold dangers to which he was exposed, and the bold, and sometimes rash enterprises in which he was engaged, a narrative might thence have been composed, all true to the letter, and yet as full of wonderful and diversified incident, as well as of fearless and daring action, as ever flowed from the pen of the most creative genius in fictitious history—all modified by the child-like simplicity and generous nobleness of heart, combined with unbending integrity, unshrinking courage, and indomitable fortitude, in the character of him, whose fortunes in life they formed, and whose achievements in the discharge of duty they exhibited. But no such record was kept, except, while he lived, in our hero’s own retentive memory; and therefore, now that he is dead, some of the most marvellous passages of his life must remain in the deep oblivion in which they have been buried. We are assured by the friends with whom he lived in the closest intimacy, that when, like Othello, he was questioned respecting the story of his life from year to year; the battles, sieges, fortunes, that he had past; he would, with a fine flow of good humour, and an interesting detail of particulars, run it through even from his boyish days, down to the time when he was desired to tell it; and then, like the enamoured Moor, it was his hint to speak of most disastrous chances,
Of moving accidents by flood or field;
Of hair-breadth ’scapes in the imminent deadly breach;