II
The forest kingdom of Abyssinia lies on a high and isolated plateau lifted above the tropical greenery of equatorial Africa; its slopes are steep, and its approaches mountainous and difficult. Once arrived on the heights, the traveller finds himself on a kind of land island with its own temperature, mountain-top climate, its own forest bred of the strange union of the fierce equatorial sun and the cool heights, and its own island people dwelling aloof in space and time. Though dark skinned, these folk are not negroes, but some Hamitic folk with a strong infusion of Jewish blood.
Their kingdom is one of the oldest in the world; their rulers claim descent from a son of Solomon and the queen of Sheba. Converted centuries ago from primitive Judaism to the Christianity of the African mind, this singular mingling of the testaments under the sun of Africa produced a kind of Jewish Christianity unique in the Christian world.
A forest land spread over mountains, a land thronged with black folk carrying burdens through mountain jungles, a land of lions roaring in the night, a land of spring rains and flooded water courses, a land of great feudal nobles clad in bright robes and riding with bare feet in the stirrup, a land of Biblical blood justice, Christian wonder-workings, wars and rumours of wars, a land whose sun beat through trees like a vast and terrible white sword, a land where almost the first thing seen by Bruce was the stuffed skin of a malefactor swinging from a tree.
The Laird of Kinnaird had arrived at the court of Saul, King of Israel. It was all there, the battles, the adventure, the death, the colour, and the cruelty. The head of the state was Ras Michael, governor of Tigre, the seventy-year-old soldier and intriguer who had assassinated one king, poisoned another and was now ruling in the name of a third. Like men coming one after the other to try a feat of strength, great feudal nobles and confederacies gathered together to thrust him from power; there were constant battles and new confederacies, and then the slinking hyenas carrying off human carrion in the night of forest shadows, brilliant stars and the odour of the battlefield. And in the morning priests, who wore the robes of the priests of Solomon, marching in company to sacrifice to the Sun.
The journey from the coast to Gondar, the capital of Abyssinia, took Bruce and his young Italian companion ninety-five days. Both made the journey wearing white Moorish robes.
Save for three Franciscan friars, of whose fate nothing is known, and of a certain French surgeon, no European had been seen in Abyssinia for close upon two hundred years. Bruce’s arrival had a decidedly dramatic quality. An epidemic of the smallpox had fallen upon the land; the nobles lay dying; the great houses trembled for their sons. Suddenly at the end of the caravan road had appeared the tall Laird of Kinnaird in his character of an observer and wandering physician.
A European and a wise man in their midst! It is the finger of Heaven! An attendant comes begging him to visit Ras Michael’s son, the young warrior Ayto Consu, who is dying of the plague.
Into the great dark den of the African palace walks the tall man who looked the Dey of Algiers squarely in the eye; he hears uneasy breathing in the half-darkness, and sees a magnificent youth tossing about on a bed of animal skins. A woman of extraordinary beauty and stateliness approaches; it is the Ozoro Esther, old Ras Michael’s young wife, and young mother of the warrior lad. This Biblical queen, this great lady of the ancient court of Israel, was to be Bruce’s unfailing friend and kind protectress.
Bruce opens the doors and windows, fumigates the rooms with incense and myrrh, and washes them with vinegar and warm water. The young prince passes the crisis of the plague, and lives.
The incident gives Bruce a name and a place. He is no longer the unknown European, but Yagoube, which is James,—Yagoube the physician, counsellor, and spring of secret wisdom. Slaves bring him new and clean clothes in the fashion of Gondar the capital. “My hair was cut round, curled and perfumed in the Amharic fashion, and I was thenceforward in all outward appearance a perfect Abyssinian.” From this day on, he will be a noble of the Abyssinians, he will ride with them, surprise them with his marksmanship, and follow them to battle with the wild, half-negro tribes.
He found the rôle of physician counsellor a congenial one, and carried it through with the best of humour. He thus described his visit to a young Abyssinian princess; the account and the humour of it are very characteristic of the man.
“The young patient being brought forward, soon after, one of the slaves, her attendant as in a play, pulled off the remaining part of the veil that covered her. I was astonished at the sight of so much beauty ... the rest of her dress was a blue shift which hung loosely about her and covered her down to her feet, though it was not very rigorously nor very closely disposed all below her neck. She was the tallest of the middle size, and not yet fifteen years of age, her whole features faultless.... Such was the beautiful Aiscach, daughter of the eldest of the ladies I was then attending.
“If Aiscach was ill,” said her mother, “you would take better care of her than of either of us.” “Pardon me,” said I, “Madam, if the beautiful Aiscach was ill, I feel I should myself be so much affected as not to be able to attend her at all!”
A scuffle with a kinsman of Ras Michael’s led to a feat which became the talk of Abyssinia.
In the king’s house, Bruce sat discussing the merits of gunnery with Guebra Mascal, a kinsman of the royal house. The Abyssinian, somewhat the worse for drink, took exception to something Bruce had said.
“He said I was a Frank and a liar,” Bruce recounted, “and on my immediately rising up, he gave me a kick with his foot. I was quite blind with passion, seized him by the throat, and threw him on the ground, stout as he was.” Guebra Mascal then wounded Yagoube slightly with his knife, but the giant Scot wrested the knife from his antagonist and beat him with the handle.
Any disorder in the king’s house being punishable by death, all present felt uneasy. Steps were taken to hush up the incident, but in some manner the story reached the ears of the king. The Abyssinian, as the aggressor, was summoned to the throne.
“What sort of behaviour is this my men have adopted with strangers?” cried the king. “And with my stranger, too, and in the king’s palace.... What! am I dead? or become incapable of governing longer?”
Matters seemed about to take an ill turn. At this Bruce became alarmed, for he was as generous spirited as he was courageous. Hastening to the palace, he pleaded with the offended king for the life of Guebra Mascal, and managed to save his life; yet the man long remained his bitter enemy.
The king, however, apparently continued to ponder on the affair, for presently he sent for the tall physician.
“Yagoube,” said the king, “did you soberly say to Guebra Mascal that an end of a tallow candle, in a gun in your hand, would do more execution than an iron bullet in his?”
Said Bruce—“Will piercing the table on which your dinner is served (it was of sycamore, about three-quarters of an inch thick) at the length of this room be deemed a sufficient proof of what I advanced?”
“Ah, Yagoube,” said the king, “take care what you say.”
Now follows an odd scene. Yagoube the stranger calls for a gun, and under the eagerly curious eye of the king and some attendants loads it with half of “a farthing candle.” Slaves then bring forth three stout battle shields of toughest and thickest bull hide, and set them one behind the other. One feels the incredulity, the sense of something miraculous about to happen, even the little touch of awe.
Now comes quiet, the aiming of the gun, a crash, and a palace room full of pungent powder smoke. Yagoube’s half of a farthing candle has pierced all three shields. Then comes the turning on its side of the royal table, and another roar; the candle has passed through the table top!
The principle involved is a simple matter of physics, but such learning of the devil had not yet arrived in Abyssinia. The prestige which Yagoube’s height, composed manner, and well-born air had already won for him was enormously increased. The old Ras presently heard of it, and begged the tall physician to repeat his miracle. “Magic!” said the Abyssinian priests, yet bore their guest no ill will; the exploit was visible proof of the world by which they lived.
Bruce now brought to light the mission which had really led him to Abyssinia. He was in search of the source of the Blue Nile, the true Nile of the ancients. The other half of the mystery, the source of the White Nile, the Nile of the inundations, apparently did not stir the eighteenth century mind, and it was not till 1856, when Burton and Speke arrived at the great Nyanza lakes, that the true source of the floods became known to modern Europeans. There is interesting evidence that the Romans possessed the secret, for Nero sent “two centurions” up the river, who returned with the report that it arose amid “great lakes.”
Yagoube’s notion of “going to see a river and a bog, no part of which he could take away” seemed incomprehensible to his hosts, and they were very loath to let him go into the wild, half-hostile hinterland. Coming to some realisation that his friend’s wish to reach the ancient river was the ambition of his life, the king solemnly invested Yagoube Bruce, the Laird of Kinnaird, with the feudal overlordship of the district of Geesh in which the springs of the Nile arose.
The road between the capital and his fief was a dangerous one, for it wound through the territories of a quasi-independent native prince named Fasil, and this prince was hostile to the then rulers of Abyssinia. Would not Yagoube, their friend, remain with them in the safety of the capital? Bruce, however, rose to the challenge to his courage and resolution.
Now comes an encounter with Fasil, and the refusal of the chieftain to let the laird pass. But Yagoube wins in the end, by captivating the savage with feats of gunnery and horsemanship. Presently Fasil, completely won, brings Bruce a present of a fine, loose, muslin garment fit for an African lord, and a handsome grey horse.
“Take this horse,” said the chieftain; “do not mount it, but drive it before you, saddled and bridled as it is.”
On into the forest goes the tall laird; the savages flee before the chief’s horse, and fall down before it. On the second of November, 1770, James Bruce arrives at the Blue Nile.
He stood on the brink of a steep hill, and saw the springs of the river below, and the river flowing away as a brook that had “scarcely water to turn a mill.” Hurrying pell-mell down the steep hillside, and falling twice as he ran, Bruce “the Abyssinian” reached the welling flood. In his hand he carried a large coconut shell which he had carried with him from Arabia, and this he filled with Nile water, and tossed off to the health of King George.
“I was arrived at the source of the Nile,” he wrote, “through numberless dangers and sufferings the least of which would have overwhelmed me but for the continual goodness and protection of Providence. I was, however, but then half through my journey, and all those dangers which I had already passed awaited me again on my return. I found a despondency gaining ground fast upon me, and blasting the crown of laurels I had too rashly woven for myself.”