SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR’S LIFE.

Many allusions to my earlier history occurring in the following pages, it may not, perhaps, be deemed impertinent on my part, if I should attempt to give a short and hasty sketch of my life, devoted as it has been to perpetual wandering, and chequered by a thousand misfortunes.

My family is as ancient, I dare say, as that of any upon the face of the earth, although, notwithstanding the profoundest research, I have been unable to trace its descent, with genealogical accuracy and precision, to a more remote era than the period of my grandfather’s nonage; the history of all my ancestors previous to him, being either mixed with fable, or involved in doubt and uncertainty. If the ancient saying of the people of Cornwall, that,

“By Tre, Pol, Lan, and Pen,

You may know most Cornishmen,”

be entitled to credit, then undoubtedly my family is of pure Cornish extraction; and I would respectfully suggest that it has a double claim, in the present generation, to the enviable distinction of antiquity, my mother’s maiden name being Pen-rose, and my father’s name Lan-der. Thus much for my pedigree; and I have the solitary satisfaction of boasting of at least one celebrated character in its humble records, my grandfather, by my mother’s side, who was a noted wrestler in his day, and lived some fifty years since near the Land’s End.

I am the fourth of six children, and was born at Truro, in Cornwall, in 1804, on the very day on which Colonel Lemon was elected Member of Parliament for the Borough. Owing to this striking coincidence, singular as it may seem, my father, who was fond of sounding appellations, at the simple suggestion of the doctor who attended the family, added Lemon to my baptismal name of Richard: an example of the trivial means by which people are oftentimes accommodated with an extra name. As nothing remarkable occurred for the first five or six years after I came into the world, I shall pass them over in silence, simply observing, that when yet in infancy, whilst I was in the act of gazing one morning at something attached to the ceiling of my father’s stable, a piece of iron, having a sharpened edge, fell and entered my forehead; which accident was of so serious a nature that I was ill for several weeks, and narrowly escaped with life.

My rambling inclinations began to display themselves in early youth. I was never easy a great while together in one place, and used to be delighted to play truant and stroll from town to town, and from village to village, whenever I could steal an opportunity as well; as to mix in the society of boys possessing restless habits and inclinations similar to my own. I used also to listen with unmixed attention to old women’s tales about the manners and ceremonies of the natives of distant regions of the earth, and never felt greater pleasure than when, dangling me on their knees, or stroking down my face with their aged hands, they used to say, “you will be sure to see two kingdoms, Richard, for you have two crowns upon your head!” Their marvellous descriptions of monsters existing, they affirmed, in remote lands, likewise conspired to raise in me a longing to be a traveller; for the venerable matrons of my native county, moving in the humbler walks of life, like those of most other counties and nations, are fond of the wonderful, and endeavour to stamp a love of it in the tender mind of youth with all the solemnity and earnestness of age and belief. These tales, how incredible soever they might have been, made a deep and permanent impression on my thoughts; and though so very young, I formed a resolution, or rather felt a strong and violent inclination to become a wanderer, in order that the story of my adventures might one day rival in interest those to which I had listened with so devout an attention; perhaps also a childish feeling of pride entered my bosom as I used to say to myself: “And when I shall have returned from such and such a place, and seen all the strange sights in them, my former companions will look upon me with a mixture of wonder and admiration, and I shall excite the envy of the other boys.”

Thus the first period of my life flew swiftly away; and I was no more than nine years of age, as nearly as my memory, at this distance of time, will allow me to guess, when owing to a series of domestic misfortunes, which it would be a tedious and unpleasant task here to particularise, I left the paternal roof, and have ever since been almost a stranger in the place of my nativity.

The frequent observation of my lamented mother, “Remember, my poor child, the old proverb, ‘a rolling stone gathers no moss,’” has been entirely thrown away upon me, for between necessity and choice I have ever been in motion; and with respect to “moss,” taken in its figurative signification, I have certainly, in my own person, verified the truth of the homely adage above alluded to, scarcely ever having been able to retain a single handful in my grasp for any length of time together.

At the early age of eleven years I accompanied a mercantile gentleman to the West Indies, and whilst in St. Domingo was attacked with the fever of the country, suffering so severely under its influence that my life was despaired of; but, owing chiefly to the kindness and attention I experienced from some benevolent and sympathizing Negro females, joined to my youth and a naturally vigorous constitution, I recovered my wonted health, and after an absence of three years returned to my native country in 1818. From that period till the attainment of my 19th year, I lived in the service of various noblemen and gentlemen, one of whom I accompanied to France, and other countries on the Continent; when, hearing on my return to London, that Major Colebrook, one of His Majesty’s Commissioners of Inquiry into the State of the British Colonies, was in want of an individual to proceed with him in the capacity of servant, I quitted the office I then held, and procured the vacant situation with little difficulty. With this gentleman I embarked from Portsmouth on board the Lady Campbell, which weighed anchor on the thirteenth of February, 1823, and after a stormy and hazardous voyage of nearly five months, arrived in Simmons’s Bay, South Africa, on the 13th of July following. During the passage our unfortunate vessel, in which were upwards of forty ladies and gentlemen (passengers) with twenty servants, very nearly escaped destruction no less than three times. In the first instance, she encountered a heavy gale on the 8th of March, in which she lost her rudder, and leaked four feet of water in the hold. After being buffeted about by the wind and waves for four or five days, her distressed condition was observed by a small French brig belonging to L’Orient, which towed her into that port. There she was laid up for six weeks, in order that the serious damage she had sustained might be repaired; when, on the 1st of May, she again set sail. On the 10th of June following, a lady, passing near the gun-room, discovered it to be on fire, and immediately gave the alarm. After incredible exertions, and still greater noise, hurry, bustle, and confusion, the progress of the flames was arrested, and the fire finally extinguished, to the no small gratification of every one on board, who feared, and with justice, that from the proximity of the gun-room to the powder-magazine the most imminent danger was to be apprehended. This was not the last fright we experienced, for on the night of entering Simmons’s Bay the vessel unfortunately struck on a rock called by seamen “The Noah’s Ark,” but was happily lifted by the swell of the sea from her perilous situation, without being materially damaged by the shock; and nothing worthy of notice occurred till her arrival before Cape Town, Cape of Good Hope, as above mentioned.

After accompanying Major Colebrook in his journeyings from one extremity of that important colony to the other,—for a reason which it would be superfluous in this place to adduce, I left his service, and sailing from Cape Town, arrived in England in 1824. I had not been many weeks in the metropolis before I accepted of a situation in the establishment of a kinsman to the Duke of Northumberland, where my time passed away pleasantly and thoughtlessly enough; till the return of Captain Clapperton and Major Denham from the interior of Africa, in the following year, again aroused my rambling propensities, and I could not help reproaching myself for having remained so long a time in a state of comparative indolence. Determined from that hour to embrace the first favourable chance of once more quitting my native shores, to whichever part of the globe fate or fortune might destine me, I waited impatiently for something to take place in furtherance of the object I had most at heart; and an opportunity soon offered itself that promised to gratify my fondest and warmest inclinations, as well as amply to satisfy the inordinate desire I could not suppress of visiting foreign countries.

Having heard that it was the intention of the British Government to send out another expedition for the purpose of exploring the yet undiscovered parts of central Africa, and of endeavouring to ascertain the source, progress, and termination, of the mysterious Niger; and the attempt coinciding exactly with my long-cherished wishes, I instantly waited upon the late Captain Clapperton, who I was told was to be placed at its head, and expressed to that brave and spirited officer the great eagerness I felt to become a party, however humble, to the novel and hazardous undertaking into which he was about to enter. The Captain listened to me with attention, and after I had answered a few interrogations, willingly engaged me to be his confidential servant. In this interview the keen, penetrating eye of the African traveller, did not escape my observation; and by its fire, energy, and quickness, denoted, in my own opinion at least, the very soul of enterprize and adventure.

Having made the necessary arrangements, I entered with a light heart upon my new duties, and enjoyed the thoughts of following the bias of my own inclination with as great a zest as if the path of my future life had been strewed with flowers.

I had not, however, adopted this line of conduct without deep reflection on the difficulties that would, in all probability, accompany it. The destruction that had overwhelmed former travellers, engaged in the same pursuit, was by no means unfamiliar to me; and the melancholy story of Mungo Park and his companions in misfortune, in particular, had often crossed my thoughts. I felt a degree of shuddering sympathy for those enterprizing individuals, (heightened perhaps by the cloud of darkness in which their latter end was shrouded,) which no fictitious tale of woe had been ever able to excite in my bosom; yet even this failed in staggering my resolution, or overcoming my early and deeply-rooted prejudices.

There was a charm in the very sound of Africa, that always made my heart flutter on hearing it mentioned: whilst its boundless deserts of sand; the awful obscurity in which many of the interior regions were enveloped; the strange and wild aspect of countries that had never been trodden by the foot of a European, and even the very failure of all former undertakings to explore its hidden wonders, united to strengthen the determination I had come to, of embracing the earliest opportunity of penetrating into the interior of that immense Continent.

In vain my London acquaintances urged upon me the risk I should incur of finding a grave in Africa; and equally vain were the kind representations of a medical gentleman of the metropolis, who painted to me in lively colours the imminent danger to which my life would be exposed, by reason of my youth, inexperience, and habit of body. I disregarded all the counsel that the world could give me, and perhaps secretly depended on the strength of an unimpaired constitution to support me in sickness, and bring me out of every difficulty; so prone are we to indulge the belief that there is a something different, a latent excellence within us, which does not belong to the persons or characters of the rest of the world; and so just is the observation of the poet, that

“All men think all men mortal but themselves.”

As soon as my relatives in Cornwall were made acquainted with the step I was about to take, they expressed the deepest concern and sorrow, and sent me numbers of letters, couched in the simple and affectionate language of nature, expressive of their feelings, and endeavouring to dissuade me from proceeding to a region they all so greatly and justly dreaded. George Croker Fox, Esq. a highly respectable gentleman, residing at Grove Hill, near Falmouth, with the spirit of amiable benevolence by which he is so peculiarly distinguished, also exerted himself in the same object, promising that if my determination to leave England was fixed, rather than that I should expose myself to the dangers to be apprehended from African exploration, he would procure me a more lucrative situation in one of the South American republics. But no inducement under the sun could make me swerve, even in thought, from the line of duty I had laid down for myself; or cool the ardour that warned me to attempt, at least, the accomplishment of the great object towards which my earliest thoughts had been intently directed. Indeed, I had already gone too far to recede; and leaving the metropolis with Captain Clapperton, I arrived at Portsmouth, in order to embark in the Brazen sloop of war, Captain Willis, on the 24th of August, 1825, being then in the 21st year of my age.

WANDERINGS IN AFRICA.