But since that time, however, the reports of his death have been confirmed in a manner that leaves no doubt in the minds of his relatives of the melancholy fact, and these authenticated accounts record, that he fell by the hands of the barbarians, under the fiat of the king of the Foulahs, long the inveterate enemies of the Soolimas, by whom, the reader will recollect, Major Laing was so kindly received, and with whose king he contracted so interesting an acquaintance, or rather friendship, residing, it will be remembered, for three months in their capital of Falaba. The accounts of his death state, that it took place soon after the 21st of September 1826. We shall conclude this slight sketch of Major Laing, by extracting some remarks from an able article in the Quarterly Review, to which we have been indebted for some of our information regarding his last journey.
“We trust, (says the Reviewer) that there will be an end to the sacrifice of valuable lives, in prosecuting discoveries on this wretched continent, of which we know enough to be satisfied that it contains little at all worthy of being known; a continent that has been the grave of Europeans, the seat of slavery, and the theatre of such crimes and miseries as human nature shudders to think of; where eternal war rages among the numberless petty chiefs for no other motive than to seize the innocent families of the original natives, and sell them into perpetual slavery. The products for commercial purposes are few, and mostly confined to the sea-coasts; two-thirds of the interior being a naked and unhospitable desert, over which are scattered bands of ruthless robbers.”
FINIS.
FOOTNOTES:
[1]There is surely some error here.
[2]Narrative, &c. p. 225.
[3]He is said to have been especially negligent in collecting his fees.
[4]His stepmother had not as an excuse that she was burdened with the care of the children of the former marriage. Most of them were from home, and one of them gave up an annuity for her benefit, and this she and her family still enjoy.
[5]In a notice of Captain Clapperton’s life, published lately by John M‘Diarmid, Esq. Editor of the Dumfries Courier, it is stated, that while under the tuition of Mr. Downie, he catered successfully for newspapers, both for the benefit of his master and that of himself; and one gentleman he was in the habit of applying to, once said to him, though merely in joke, “What makes you come always to me; do you suppose you have a right to borrow all my papers?” At first the boy was rather abashed; but rallying in a moment, he presently replied, “I am sure I neither dirty nor keep them long, and your maids, I can tell you, hang all your washings to dry on Mr. Downie’s hedge.”—Sketches from Nature, p. 324.
[6]M‘Diarmid’s account of this matter is to the following effect, namely, that at the age of seventeen Clapperton became cabin-boy to Captain Smith of the Postlethwaite of Maryport having been recommended to him by the late Mr. Jonathan Nelson of Port Annan; that after he had made several voyages across the Atlantic in that ship, he was detected at Liverpool in the act of smuggling a few pounds of rock salt, to please the landlady of a house which he frequented; that after he had pled his ignorance of the revenue laws in mitigation of the terrors of trial and imprisonment with which he was threatened, he consented to go on board the Tender. Sketches from Nature, page 325. The whole of this account shows that the circumstances both of his entrance upon a sea-faring life, and into the royal navy, are now altogether unknown; or at least involved in great uncertainty.