Note 8 — MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN HUGH CLAPPERTON, THE AFRICAN TRAVELLER.

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.