On the fall of Sir Charles M‘Carthy, which took place early in 1824, Captain Sabine, who edits the Travels, and writes the preface from which we quote, says, “that Lieutenant-Colonel Chisholm, on whom the command of the Gold Coast devolved, deemed it expedient to send Captain Laing to England, for the purpose of acquainting government, more fully than could be done by despatch, with the existing circumstances of the command. Soon after his arrival in England, which took place in August, he obtained a short leave of absence to visit Scotland for the recovery of his health, which had been seriously affected by so many months of such constant and extreme exposure in Africa, as it is probable few constitutions would have supported.” He returned to London in October of the same year, where an opportunity now presented itself which he had long anxiously desired, of proceeding under the auspices of government, on an expedition to discover the course and termination of the Niger. He was now promoted to the rank of major, and departed from London on that enterprise early in February 1825, with the intention of leaving Tripoli, for Timbuctoo, in the course of the summer of that year. He touched at Malta on his way to Tripoli, where he was shown every attention by the late Marquis of Hastings, at whose table he repeatedly dined. While at Tripoli, he became acquainted with the British Consul, Mr. Warrington, his business with him producing an intimacy of the closest nature, which was farther cemented by Major Laing’s marrying his daughter, Emma Maria Warrington, an event which took place on the 14th of July 1825. But he had no time to spend in domestic life: two days after marriage he set out for those vallies of death where every preceding traveller had found a grave.