Born an Irishman, the son of an Irishwoman; educated in Scotland, the country of my father, an ancient mariner, who, as master and supercargo, had sailed his own ship for many years in the Virginia trade; removed to England at the age of seventeen, in consequence of his death; I had, by the time I arrived at majority, passed four years of my mercantile apprenticeship in my paternal uncle's counting- house, an extensive merchant in that modern Tyre, the enterprising town of Liverpool; during which period, young as I was, I had already made four voyages in different vessels of his to foreign parts - to the West Indies, the Brazils, the Costa Firme, and the United States of America.