[Footnote 1: There is surely some error here.]
[Footnote 2: Narrative, &c. p. 225.]
[Footnote 3: He is said to have been especially negligent in collecting
his fees.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 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.]
[Footnote 7: M‘Diarmid’s version of this important passage of
Clapperton’s life is, that after he had by compulsion become a sailor
on board a man-of-war, he wrote to Mr. Scott, banker in Annan,
describing his situation and soliciting his interest; that Mr. Scott
applied to General Dirom, and that the General applied to Sir Home
Popham, while his lady applied to her cousin Captain Briggs of the
Clorinde, and by the aid of these combined and powerful applications in
his behalf, Clapperton was raised to the rank of a midshipman. This is
the first time we ever heard that the youth was an object of interest
to so many honourable individuals; but when they claim the merit of
having been the means of promoting him to the rank of midshipman in the
navy, they claim more than their due; because it can be proved by the
date of documents still in the possession of a near relation of the
traveller, that he was a midshipman long before he was known to Captain
Briggs of the Clorinde.]
[Footnote 8: Since the above account of this transaction was printed,
we have been informed on unquestionable authority that Clapperton,
though without his own knowledge, was in reality indebted to his uncle
for the first step of his promotion in the navy. The matter had been
agreed upon between Colonel Clapperton and Sir Thomas Livingstone.
The situation in which he had discovered his nephew, not only in the
condition of a common sailor, but under the disguise of an assumed
name, was not fitted to lead to great familiarity between them when
they first met. But after the nephew had become a midshipman, and had
resumed his own name, the uncle took him to the shop of a Scotsman
in Gibraltar, and fitted him out with every thing requisite for his
new situation, and recommended him to the patronage of his friend Sir
Thomas Livingstone.]
[Footnote 9: To this the letters of his cousin, Mrs. General Dirom, in
Clapperton’s favour, might in some degree contribute.]
[Footnote 10: The following anecdote is transcribed from M‘Diarmid:—
“At this period, and before the Asia had weighed anchor, an incident
occurred which illustrates very strikingly his characteristic coolness
and intrepidity. One evening, the alarm was given that the ship was
on fire; the drums immediately beat to quarters, and the firemen were
piped away to the gun-room, where an immense quantity of luggage had
been temporarily deposited, and from whence were issuing huge and
increasing volumes of smoke. The after-magazine, containing some
hundred barrels of gun-powder, was immediately beneath, and the
appearance of the combustion had become so alarming, that every man
awaited his fate in silence, under an impression that the ship would
speedily be blown to atoms. At this awful moment, which will recal to
every mind Campbell’s striking description,
“As they drifted o’er their path,
There was silence deep as death;