Alexander Gordon Laing

Explorer, born in Edinburgh, EC Scotland, UK. He served with the British army in the West Indies before becoming the first European to reach the ancient city of Timbuktu (1826), while searching for the source of the R Niger in W Africa. After leaving Timbuktu, he was murdered by local tribesmen.

Alexander Gordon Laing (December 27, 1793–September 26, 1826) was a Scottish explorer and the first European to reach Timbuktu.

Laing was born at Edinburgh. Later in the same year Laing visited Falaba, the capital of the Solimana country, and ascertained the source of the Rokell.

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. Henry, 3rd Earl Bathurst, then secretary for the colonies, instructed Captain Laing to undertake a journey, via Tripoli and Timbuktu, to further elucidate the hydrography of the Niger basin. Laing left England in February 1825, and at Tripoli on the 14th of July following he married Emma Warrington, daughter of the British consul. 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. From native information it was ascertained that he left Timbuktu on the day he had planned and was murdered on the night of the 26th of September 1826. In 1903 the French government placed a tablet bearing the name of the explorer and the date of his visit on the house occupied by him during his thirty-eight days stay in Timbuktu.

While in England in 1824 Laing prepared a narrative of his earlier journeys, which was published in 1825 and entitled Travels in the Timannee, Kooranko and Soolima Countries, in Western Africa.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.