It appears strange that a young man, quietly, and, at the same time, eagerly, pursuing the laborious profession of a schoolmaster, should have afterwards adopted another line of life forming a perfect contrast to that in which he had been previously employed. The change of his tastes is wholly to be attributed to his connexion with the volunteers. At a time when volunteering was very general, Alexander Laing entered one of the corps then forming; and in 1810 was made an ensign in the Prince of Wales’s Edinburgh Volunteers, then being in his seventeenth year. Captivated with the specimen he there had of a military life, he desired earnestly to be a soldier. He could no longer submit to the restraints and routine of school discipline; and at the end of the second year, he finally gave up the now to him irksome duties of teaching, to the disappointment of his parents and relatives, who were very desirous that he should not change his profession. Being, however, bent upon the military service, he, in the year 1811, went out to Barbadoes, where his maternal uncle, Colonel, afterwards General Gabriel Gordon, then was, with whom he remained a short time till he obtained an ensigncy in the York Light Infantry, which regiment he immediately joined at Antigua, and in two years thereafter he was promoted to a lieutenancy in the same corps—a situation which he held till the regiment was reduced, when he was then placed upon half pay. But anxious for occupation, he exchanged, as speedily as the affair could be negotiated, into the second West India regiment, which he joined at Jamaica. While there, he had to discharge the duties of deputy quartermaster-general, the exertions of which department brought on a liver complaint, for which his medical advisers recommended a sea voyage. He accordingly sailed to Honduras, by which his complaint was considerably relieved, and the governor, Colonel Arthur, finding him an active, useful, and intelligent officer, appointed him to the office of fort-major, and would not suffer him to return to Jamaica, but had him attached to another division of his regiment then in Honduras, where he remained till a return of his complaint forced him to come home, his frame being so much debilitated, that he was unable to walk, so that it became necessary to carry him on shipboard. His constitution was very seriously injured by this illness, and in consequence he remained nearly eighteen months with his friends in Scotland. During this time, however, that half of the second West India regiment to which he was attached was reduced, and he was again placed upon half-pay. In the autumn of 1819, he returned to London, and having been sent for by the late Sir Henry Torrens, then Colonel of his regiment, was familiarly complimented by him on his former services, immediately appointed lieutenant and adjutant, and proceeded to Sierra Leone.