* * * * * Captain Hugh Clapperton was born in Annan, Dumfries-shire, in the year 1788. His grandfather, Robert Clapperton, M.D., was a man of considerable knowledge, as a classical scholar, and in his profession. He first studied at Edinburgh; but as, in those days, the continental colleges were considered superior in medicine and surgery, he went to Paris, and there studied for some time. On his return to his native country, he married Elizabeth Campbell, second cousin of Colonel Archibald Campbell of Glenlyon; and soon after settled in Dumfries-shire, at a place called Crowden Nows, where he remained until George Clapperton (the father of our traveller), and another son were born. He afterwards removed to Lochmaben, where he had an increase to his family of four sons and one daughter. All the sons became medical men, except the youngest and the only survivor, who entered his Majesty’s service, in the beginning of 1793, as a second lieutenant of marines. His eldest son, George Clapperton, married young to a daughter of John Johnstone, proprietor of the lands of Thorniwhate and Lochmaben Castle, and settled in Annan, where he was a considerable time the only medical man of repute in the place, and performed many operations and cures which spread his fame over the borders of England and Scotland. His father bestowed a good education upon him, which proved so useful a passport to public favour, that he might have made a fortune; but, unfortunately, he was, like his father, careless of money. He married a second wife, and was the father of no fewer than twenty-one children. Of the fruit of the first marriage, he had six sons and one daughter who grew to men and women’s estate. All the sons entered his Majesty’s service, the youngest of whom was Captain Clapperton, the African traveller, and the subject of this memoir. In his person he resembled his father greatly, but was not so tall by two inches, being five feet eleven inches; had great breadth of chest and expansion of shoulders, and otherwise proportionably strong; and was a handsome, athletic, powerful man. He received no classical education, and could do little more than read and write, when he was put under the tuition of Mr. Bryce Downie, a man of general knowledge, but chiefly celebrated for his mathematical abilities. He remained with Mr. Downie until he required a knowledge of practical mathematics, including navigation and trigonometry. He was found an apt scholar and an obliging boy by Mr. Downie, whose attention was never forgot by the traveller; as he expressed a great wish, when he arrived the first journey from Africa, that he could have had time to see his native country, and shake his old master once more by the hand. Captain Clapperton left Mr. Downie about the age of thirteen; when, by his own wish, he was bound an apprentice to the owner of a vessel of considerable burthen, trading between Liverpool and North America.