Background
Alexander Gordon Laing was born at Edinburgh on December 27, 1793.
Alexander Gordon Laing was born at Edinburgh on December 27, 1793.
Alexander Gordon Laing was educated by his father, William Laing, a private teacher of classics, and at Edinburgh University.
Through General Sir George Beckwith, governor of Barbados, Alexander Gordon Laing obtained an ensigncy in the York Light Infantry.
He was employed in the West Indies, and in 1822 was promoted to a company in the Royal African Corps.
In that year, while with his regiment at Sierra Leone, he was sent by the governor, Sir Charles MacCarthy, to the Mandingo country, with the double object of opening up commerce and endeavouring to abolish the slave trade in that region.
He endeavoured to reach the source of the Niger, but was stopped by the natives.
He was, however, enabled to fix it with approximate accuracy.
He took an active part in the Ashanti War of 1823-24, and was sent home with the despatches containing the news of the death in action of Sir Charles MacCarthy.
Ghadames was reached, by an indirect route, in October 1825, and in December Laing was in the Tuat territory, where he was well received by the Tuareg.
On the 10th of January 1826 he left Tuat, and made for Timbuktu across the desert of Tanezroft.
Letters from him written in May and July following told of sufferings from fever and the plundering of his caravan by Tuareg, Laing being wounded in twenty-four places in the fighting.
He added that he intended leaving Timbuktu in three days' time.
His papers were never recovered, though it is believed that they were secretly brought to Tripoli in 1828.
Laing left England in February 1825, and at Tripoli on the 14th of July following he married Emma Warrington, daughter of the British consul.
