The Lives of Celebrated Travellers, Vol. 2 (of 3)

by James Augustus St. John

JAMES BRUCE.

Born 1730.—Died 1794.

James Bruce, one of the most illustrious travellers whom any age or country has produced, was born on the 14th of December, 1730, at Kinnaird, in the county of Stirling, in Scotland. His mother, who died of consumption when he was only three years old, seemed to have bequeathed to him the same fatal disorder; for during childhood his health was bad, and his constitution, which afterward acquired an iron firmness, appeared to be particularly feeble. His father, who had married a second wife, by whom he had a large family, sent James at the age of eight years to London, where he remained under the care of his uncle, counsellor Hamilton, until 1742, when he was placed at Harrow school. Here he remained four years, during which he made considerable progress in his classical studies; and while he commanded the enthusiastic approbation of his teachers (one of whom observed, that for his years he had never seen his fellow), he laid the foundations of many valuable friendships which endured through life.

On leaving school at the early age of sixteen, Bruce, who at that time could of course understand nothing of his own character, imagined himself admirably adapted for the study of divinity and the tranquil life of a clergyman; but his inclination not receiving the approbation of his father, he necessarily abandoned it, and prepared, in obedience to paternal authority, to study for the Scottish bar. He returned to Scotland in 1747, and, having spent the autumn of that year in destroying wild fowl and other game, for which noble and rational species of recreation he always, we are told, retained a peculiar predilection, he resumed his studies, which, as they now led him through the dusty mazes of ancient and modern law, seem to have possessed much fewer charms for our future traveller than shooting grouse upon the mountains. Two years, however, were uselessly consumed in this study. At the termination of this period it was discovered that it was not as a lawyer that Bruce was destined to excel; and therefore, abandoning all thoughts of a career for which he had himself never entertained the least partiality, he returned in a considerably impaired state of health to his favourite field sports in Stirlingshire.

Here he lived about four years, undetermined what course of life he should pursue; but at length, having resolved to repair as a free trader to Hindostan, he proceeded to London in 1753 for the purpose of soliciting permission from the directors. An event now occurred, however, which promised to determine for ever the current of his hopes and pursuits. Conceiving an attachment for the daughter of an eminent wine-merchant, who, on dying, had bequeathed considerable wealth and a thriving business to his widow and child, Bruce relinquished his scheme of pushing his fortunes in the East, married, and became himself a wine-merchant. But Providence had otherwise disposed of his days. In a few months after his marriage, consumption, that genuine pestilence of our moist climates, deprived him of his amiable wife at Paris, whither he had proceeded on his way to the south of France. For some time after this event he continued in the wine trade, the interests of which requiring that he should visit Spain and Portugal, he applied himself during two years to the study of the languages of those countries, of which he is said to have possessed a very competent knowledge.

This preliminary step having been made, he may be said to have commenced his travels with a voyage to the Peninsula. Landing on the northern coast of Spain, he traversed Gallicia, spent four months in Portugal, and then, re-entering Spain, made the tour of a large portion of Andalusia and New Castile, and then proceeded to Madrid. His enthusiasm and romantic character, which had probably a new accession of ardour from the wild scenes still redolent of ancient chivalry which he had just visited, recommended him strongly to the Spanish minister, who used many arguments to induce him to enter the service of his Catholic majesty. This by no means, however, coincided with Bruce’s views. That restlessness which the man who has once conceived the idea of travelling ever after feels, unfitted him in reality for all quiet employment. He felt himself goaded on by the desire of fame; to be in motion seemed to be on the way to acquire it. He therefore proceeded across the Pyrenees into France, and thence, through Germany and Holland, to England, where he arrived in July, 1758.

He had learned at Rotterdam the death of his father, by which he succeeded to the family estate at Kinnaird. He likewise continued during another three years to derive profit from his business as a wine-merchant; but at the termination of that period the partnership was dissolved. All this while, however, his leisure had been devoted to the acquisition of the Arabic and other eastern languages, among the rest the Ethiopic, which probably first directed his attention to Abyssinia. In the mean while, an idea which he had conceived while at Ferrol in Gallicia was the means of bringing him into communication with the English ministry; this was, that in case of a rupture with Spain, Ferrol would be the most desirable point on the Spanish coast for a descent. Should the scheme be adopted, he was ready to volunteer his services in aiding in its execution. The plans appeared feasible to Lord Chatham, with whom Bruce had the honour of conversing on the subject. But this great man going out of office before any thing definitive had been concluded on, Bruce began to imagine that the plan had been abandoned; but was for some time longer amused with hopes by the ministers, until the affair was finally dropped at the earnest solicitation of the Portuguese ambassador.

He now retired in apparent disgust to his estate in Scotland; but shortly afterward, Lord Halifax, who seems to have penetrated into Bruce’s character, recalled him to London, and proposed to him, as an object of ambition, the examination of the architectural curiosities of Northern Africa, and the discovery of the sources of the Nile. This latter achievement, however, was spoken of in an equivocal manner, and as if, while he mentioned it, his lordship had entertained doubts of Bruce’s capacity for successfully conducting so difficult and dangerous an enterprise. Such a mode of proceeding was well calculated, and was probably meant, to pique the vanity of Bruce, and urge him, without seeming to do so, into the undertaking of what with great reason appeared to be an herculean labour. But whatever may have been Lord Halifax’s intentions, which is now a matter of no importance, the hint thus casually or designedly thrown out was not lost. Bruce’s imagination was at once kindled by the prospect of achieving what, as far as he then knew, no man had up to that moment been able to perform; and secretly conceiving that he had been marked out by Providence for the fulfilment of this design, he eagerly seized upon the idea, and treasured it in his heart.

Fortune, moreover, appeared favourable to his views. The consulship of Algiers, the possession of which would greatly facilitate his proceedings in the early part of the scheme proposed, becoming vacant at an opportune moment, he was induced to accept of it; and, having been appointed, he immediately furnished himself with astronomical instruments and all other necessaries, and set out through France and Italy for the point of destination.

During a short stay in Italy, spent in the assiduous study of antiquities, he engaged Luigi Balugani, a young Bolognese architect, to accompany him as an assistant on his travels; and, having received his final instructions from England, he embarked at Leghorn, and arrived at Algiers in the spring of 1763.

The leisure which Bruce now enjoyed, interrupted occasionally by business or altercations with the dey, was devoted to the earnest study of the Arabic, in which his progress was so rapid, that in the course of a year he considered himself fully competent to dispense with the aid of an interpreter. In the Ethiopic want of books alone prevented his making equal progress; for with him the acquiring of a language was a task of no great difficulty. He was now, having thus qualified himself for penetrating into the interior with advantage, peculiarly desirous of commencing his travels; for to continue longer at Algiers would, he rightly considered, be uselessly to sacrifice his time; and he repeatedly requested from Lord Halifax permission to resign his consulship. For a considerable time, however, his desires were not complied with. The critical position of the British in that regency required a firm, intelligent consul; and until a dispute which had just then arisen with the dey respecting passports should be settled, it was not judged expedient to recall Bruce, whose intrepidity, which was thus tacitly acknowledged, admirably adapted him to negotiate with barbarians. The dispute arose out of the following circumstances:—On the taking of Minorca by the French, a number of blank Mediterranean passports fell into their hands. These, in the hope of embroiling the English and Algiers, they filled up and sold to the Spaniards and other nations inimical to the Barbary powers. The effect desired was actually produced. Ships were taken bearing these forged passports; and although, upon examination, the fraud was immediately detected by the British consul, Bruce’s predecessor, it was not easy to calm the violent suspicions which had thus been excited in the mind of the dey, that the English were selling their protection to his enemies. In fact, the conduct of the governor of Mahon and Gibraltar, who, as a temporary expedient, granted what were termed passavants to ships entering the Mediterranean, strongly corroborated this suspicion; for these ill-contrived, irregular passports appeared to be purposely framed for embarrassing or deluding the pirates. Bruce endeavoured, with all imaginable firmness and coolness, to explain to the dey that the first inconvenience originated in accident, and that the second was merely a temporary expedient; but it is probable that had not the regular admiralty passports arrived at the critical moment, he might have lost his life in this ignoble quarrel.

This disagreeable affair being terminated, he with double earnestness renewed his preparations for departure. Aware that a knowledge of medicine and surgery, independently of all considerations of his own health, might be of incalculable advantage to him among the barbarous nations whose countries he designed to traverse, he had, during the whole of his residence at Algiers, devoted a portion of his time to the study of this science, under the direction of Mr. Ball, the consular surgeon; and this knowledge he afterward increased by the aid of Dr. Russel at Aleppo.

The chaplain of the factory being absent, to avoid the necessity of taking the duties of burying, marrying, and baptizing upon himself, he took into his house as his private chaplain an aged Greek priest, whose name was Father Christopher, who not only performed the necessary clerical duties, but likewise read Greek with our traveller, and enabled him, by constant practice, to converse in the modern idiom. The friendship of this man, which he acquired by kindness and affability, was afterward of the most essential service to him, and contributed more, perhaps, than any other circumstance to preserve his life and forward his views in Abyssinia.

At length, in the month of August, 1765, Bruce departed from Algiers, furnished by the dey with ample permission to visit every part of his own dominions, and recommendatory letters to the beys of Tunis and Tripoli. He first sailed to Port Mahon, and then, returning to the African shore, landed at Bona. He then coasted along close to the shore, passed the little island of Tabarca, famous for its coral fishery, and observed upon the mainland prodigious forests of beautiful oak. Biserta, Utica, Carthage were successively visited; and of the ruins of the last, he remarks, that a large portion are overflowed by the sea, which may account, in some measure, for the discrepancy between the ancient and modern accounts of the dimensions of the peninsula on which it stood.

At Tunis he delivered his letters, and obtained the bey’s permission to make whatever researches he pleased in any part of his territories. He accordingly proceeded with an escort into the interior, visited many of the ruins described or mentioned by Dr. Shaw, feasted upon lion’s flesh, which he found exceedingly tough and strongly scented with musk, among the Welled Sidi Booganim, and then entered the Algerine province of Kosantina. Here, he observes, he was greatly astonished to find among the mountains a tribe of Kabyles, with blue eyes, fair complexions, and red hair. But he ought not to have been astonished; for Dr. Shaw had met with and described the same people, and supposed, as Bruce does, that they were descendants of the Vandals who anciently possessed this part of Africa.

Having visited and made drawings of numerous ruins, the greater number of which had previously been described more or less accurately by Dr. Shaw, he returned to Tunis, and, after another short excursion in the same direction, proceeded eastward by Feriana, Gaffon, and the Lake of Marks, to the shores of the Lesser Syrtis. Here he passed over to the island of Gerba, the Lotophagitis Insula of the ancients, where, he observes, Dr. Shaw was mistaken or misinformed in imagining that its coasts abounded with the seedra, or lotus-tree. He must have spoken of the doctor’s account from memory; for it is of the coasts of the continent, not of the island, that Dr. Shaw speaks in the passage alluded to.

In travelling along the shore towards Tripoli Bruce overtook the Muggrabine caravan, which was proceeding from the shores of the Atlantic to Mecca,[^[8]] and his armed escort, though but fifteen in number, coming up with them in the gray of the morning, put the whole body, consisting of at least three thousand men, in great bodily terror, until the real character of the strangers was known. The English consul at Tripoli received and entertained our traveller with distinguished kindness and hospitality. From hence he despatched an English servant with his books, drawings, and supernumerary instruments to Smyrna, and then crossed the Gulf of Sidra, or Greater Syrtis, to Bengazi, the ancient Berenice.

[8]. Bruce says, “From the Western Ocean to the western banks of the Red Sea, in the kingdom of Sennaar.” His recent biographer omits the “kingdom of Sennaar,” but still places Mecca on the “western banks of the Red Sea.” For “western,” however, we must read “eastern” in both cases.

Here a tremendous famine, which had prevailed for upwards of a year, was rapidly cutting off the inhabitants, many of whom had, it was reported, endeavoured to sustain life by feeding upon the bodies of their departed neighbours, ten or twelve of whom were every night found dead in the streets. Horror-stricken at the bare idea of such “Thyestœan feasts,” he very quickly quitted the town, and proceeded to examine the ruins of the Pentapolis and the petrifactions of Rao Sam, concerning which so many extraordinary falsehoods had been propagated in Europe. From thence he returned to Dolmetta (Ptolemata), where he embarked in a small junk for the island of Lampedosa, near Crete. The vessel was crowded with people flying from the famine. They set sail in the beginning of September, with fine weather and a favourable wind; but a storm coming on, and it being discovered that there were not provisions for one day on board, Bruce hoped to persuade the captain, an ignorant landsman, to put into Bengazi, and would no doubt have succeeded; but as they were making for the cape which protects the entrance into that harbour, the vessel struck upon a sunken rock, upon which it seemed to be fixed. They were at no great distance from the shore, and as the wind had suddenly ceased, though the swell of the sea continued, Bruce, with a portion of his servants and a number of the passengers, lowered the largest boat, and, jumping into it, pushed off for the shore. “The rest, more wise,” he observes, “remained on board.”

They had not rowed twice the length of the boat from the vessel before a wave nearly filled the boat, at which its crew, conscious of their helplessness, uttered a howl of despair. “I saw,” says Bruce, “the fate of all was to be decided by the very next wave that was rolling in; and apprehensive that some woman, child, or helpless man would lay hold of me, and entangle my arms or legs, and weigh me down, I cried to my servants, both in Arabic and English, ‘We are all lost; if you can swim, follow me.’ I then let myself down in the face of the wave. Whether that or the next filled the boat I know not, as I went to leeward, to make my distance as great as possible. I was a good, strong, practised swimmer, in the flower of life, full of health, trained to exercise and fatigue of every kind. All this, however, which might have availed much in deep water, was not sufficient when I came to the surf. I received a violent blow upon my breast from the eddy wave and reflux, which seemed as given by a large branch of a tree, thick cord, or some elastic weapon. It threw me upon my back, made me swallow a considerable quantity of water, and had then almost suffocated me.

“I avoided the next wave, by dipping my head and letting it pass over; but found myself breathless, and exceedingly weary and exhausted. The land, however, was before me, and close at hand. A large wave floated me up. I had the prospect of escape still nearer, and endeavoured to prevent myself from going back into the surf. My heart was strong, but strength was apparently failing, by being involuntarily twisted about, and struck on the face and breast by the violence of the ebbing wave. It now seemed as if nothing remained but to give up the struggle and resign to my destiny. Before I did this I sunk to sound if I could touch the ground, and found that I reached the sand with my feet, though the water was still rather deeper than my mouth. The success of this experiment infused into me the strength of ten men, and I strove manfully, taking advantage of floating only with the influx of the wave, and preserving my strength for the struggle against the ebb, which, by sinking and touching the ground, I now made more easy. At last, finding my hands and knees upon the sands, I fixed my nails into it, and obstinately resisted being carried back at all, crawling a few feet when the sea had retired. I had perfectly lost my recollection and understanding, and, after creeping so far as to be out of the reach of the sea, I suppose I fainted, for from that time I was totally insensible of any thing that passed around me.”

In giving the history of this remarkable escape of Bruce, I have made use of his own words, as no others could bring the event so vividly before the mind of the reader. He seems, in fact, to rival in this passage the energetic simplicity and minute painting of Defoe. The Arabs of the neighbourhood, who, like the inhabitants of Cornwall, regard a shipwreck as a piece of extraordinary good fortune, soon came down to the shore in search of plunder; and observing Bruce lying upon the beach, supposed him to be drowned, and proceeded at once to strip his body. A blow accidentally given him on the back of the neck restored him to his senses; but the wreckers, who from his costume concluded him to be a Turk, nevertheless proceeded, with many blows, kicks, and curses, to rifle him of his few garments, for he had divested himself of all but a waistcoat, sash, and drawers in the ship, and then left him, to perform the same tender offices for others.

He now crawled away as well as his weakness would permit, and sat down, to conceal himself as much as possible among the white sandy hillocks which rose upon the coast. Fear of a severer chastisement prevented him from approaching the tents, for the women of the tribe were there, and he was entirely naked. The terror and confusion of the moment had caused him to forget that he could speak to them in their own language, which would certainly have saved him from being plundered. When he had remained some time among the hillocks several Arabs came up to him, whom he addressed with the salaam alaikum! or “Peace be with you!” which is a species of shibboleth in all Mohammedan countries. The question was now put to him whether he was not a Turk, and, if so, what he had to do there. He replied, in a low, despairing tone, that he was no Turk, but a poor Christian physician, a dervish, who went about the world seeking to do good for God’s sake, and was then flying from famine, and going to Greece to get bread. Other questions followed, and the Arabs being at length satisfied that he was not one of their mortal enemies, a ragged garment was thrown over him, and he was conducted to the sheikh’s tent. Here he was hospitably received, and, together with his servants, who had all escaped, entertained with a plentiful supper. Medical consultations then followed; and he remained with the sheikh two days, during which every exertion was made on the part of the Arabs to recover his astronomical instruments, but in vain. Every thing which had been taken from them was then restored, and they proceeded on camels furnished by the Arabs to Bengazi.

At this port he embarked on board of a small French sloop, the master of which had formerly received some small favours from Bruce at Algiers, which he now gratefully remembered, and sailed for Canea, in Crete; from whence he proceeded to Rhodes, where he found his books, to Casttrosso, on the coast of Caramania, and thence to Cyprus and Sidon. His excursions in Syria were numerous, and extended as far as Palmyra; but I omit to detail them, as of minor importance, and hasten to follow him into Egypt and Abyssinia.

On Saturday, the 15th of June, 1768, he set sail from Sidon, and touching by the way at Cyprus, his imagination, which was on fire with the ardour of enterprise, beheld on the high white clouds which floated northward above the opposite current of the Etesian winds messengers, as it were, from the mountains of Abyssinia, come to hail him to their summits. Early in the morning of the fifth day he had a distant prospect of Alexandria rising from the sea; and, upon landing, one of the first objects of his search was the tomb of Alexander, which Marmol pretended to have seen in 1546; but although his inquiries were numerous, they were perfectly fruitless.

From this city he proceeded by land to Rosetta, and thence up the Nile to Cairo. Here he was hospitably received by the house of Julian and Bertran, to whom he had been recommended; and he likewise received from the principal bey and his officers, men of infamous and odious characters, very extraordinary marks of consideration, his cases of instruments being allowed to pass unexamined and free of duty through the custom-house, while presents were given instead of being exacted from him by the bey. These polite attentions he owed to the opinion created by the sight of his astronomical apparatus that he was a great astrologer,—a character universally esteemed in the East, and held in peculiar reverence by the secretary of the bey then in office, from his having himself some pretensions to its honours.

This man, whose name was Risk, in whom credulity and wickedness kept an equal pace, desired to discover, through Bruce’s intimate knowledge of the language of the stars, the issue of the war then pending between the Ottoman empire and Russia, together with the general fortunes and ultimate destiny of the bey. Our traveller had no predilection for the art of fortune-telling, particularly among a people where the bastinado or impaling-stake might be the consequence of a mistaken prediction; but the eulogies which his kind host bestowed upon the laudable credulity of the people, and perhaps the vanity of pretending to superior science, overcame his reluctance, and he consented to reveal to the anxious inquirer the fate of empires. In the mean while he was directed to fix his residence at the convent of St. George, about three miles from Cairo. Here he was visited by his old friend Father Christopher, with whom he had studied modern Greek at Algiers, and who informed him that he was now established at Cairo, where he had risen to the second dignity in his church. Understanding Bruce’s intention of proceeding to Abyssinia, he observed that there were a great number of Greeks in that country, many of whom were high in office. To all of these he undertook to procure letters to be addressed by the patriarch, whose commands they regarded with no less veneration than holy writ, enjoining them as a penance, upon which a kind of jubilee was to follow, says Bruce, “that laying aside their pride and vanity, great sins with which he knew them much infected, and, instead of pretending to put themselves on a footing with me when I should arrive at the court of Abyssinia, they should concur heart and hand in serving me; and that before it could be supposed they had received instructions from me, they should make a declaration before the king that they were not in condition equal to me; that I was a free citizen of a powerful nation, and servant of a great king; that they were born slaves of the Turk, and at best ranked but as would my servants; and that, in fact, one of their countrymen was in that station then with me.”[^[9]]

[9]. In the biography of Bruce recently published there are a few mistakes in the account of this transaction, which, simple as it may appear, was precisely that upon which Bruce’s whole success in Abyssinia depended. Major Head says, that Father Christopher was the patriarch, that he accosted Bruce upon his arrival at the convent, and that it was he who addressed the letters to Abyssinia. Bruce, on the contrary, says that he was Archimandrites; and that it was “at his solicitation that Risk had desired the patriarch to furnish” him with an apartment in the convent of St. George. Nor was he at the convent to accost Bruce on his arrival. “The next day after my arrival,” says the traveller, “I was surprised by the visit of my old friend Father Christopher.” He goes on to say, that between them they digested the plan of the letters, and that Father Christopher undertook to manage the affair,—that is, to procure the patriarch to write and forward the letters.—Bruce’s Travels, vol. 1. p. 34, 35, 4to. Edin. 1790.

Our traveller was soon called upon to perform in the character of an astrologer. It was late in the evening when he one night received a summons to appear before the bey, whom he found to be a much younger man than he had expected. He was sitting upon a large sofa covered with crimson cloth of gold; his turban, his girdle, and the head of his dagger all thickly covered with fine brilliants; and there was one in his turban serving to support a sprig of diamonds, which was among the largest Bruce ever saw. Abruptly entering upon the object of their meeting, he demanded of the astrologer whether he had ever calculated the consequences of the war then raging between the Turks and Russians? “The Turks,” replied Bruce, “will be beaten by sea and land wherever they present themselves.” The bey continued, “And will Constantinople be burned or taken?”—“Neither,” said the traveller; “but peace will be made after much bloodshed, with little advantage to either party.” At hearing this the bey clapped his hands together, and, having sworn an oath in Turkish, turned to Risk, who stood before him, and said, “That will be sad indeed! but truth is truth, and God is merciful.”

This wonderful prophecy procured our traveller a promise of protection from the bey, to whom a few nights afterward he was again sent for near midnight. At the door he met the janizary aga, who, when on horseback, had absolute power of life and death, without appeal, all over Cairo; and, not knowing him, brushed by without ceremony. The aga, however, stopped him just at the threshold, and inquired of one of the bey’s people who he was. Upon their replying “It is the hakim Inglese” (English physician), he politely asked Bruce in Turkish “if he would go and see him, for he was not well;” to which the latter replied in Arabic, “that he would visit him whenever he pleased, but could not then stay, as he had just received a message that the bey was waiting.”—“No, no; go, for God’s sake go,” said the aga; “any time will do for me!”

Upon entering the bey’s apartment, he found him alone, sitting, leaning forward, with a wax taper in one hand, and in the other a small slip of paper, which he was reading, and held close to his eyes, as if the light were dim or his sight weak. He did not, or affected not, to observe Bruce until he was close to him, and started when he uttered the “salām.” He appeared at first to have forgotten why he had sent for the physician, but presently explained the nature of his indisposition; upon which, among other questions, Bruce inquired whether he had not been guilty of some excess before dinner. The bey now turned round to Risk, who had by this time entered, and exclaimed, “Afrite! Afrite!”—(He is a devil! he is a devil!) Bruce now prescribed warm water, or a weak infusion of green tea, as an emetic, and added, that having taken a little strong coffee, or a glass of spirits, he should go to bed. At this the bey exclaimed, “Spirits! do you know I am a Mussulman?”[^[10]]—“But I,” replied the traveller, “am none. I tell you what is good for your body, and have nothing to do with your religion or your soul.” The bey was amused at his bluntness, and said, “He speaks like a man!” The traveller then retired.

[10]. Major Head, in his account of this laughable consultation, by omitting all mention of the spirits, makes it appear that the bey meant to insinuate that vomiting, or drinking green tea, was contrary to the Mohammedan religion. But, although the Koran commands its followers to abstain from wine, under which denomination rigid Islamites include all kinds of spirits, it is by no means so unreasonable as to prohibit vomiting, or the drinking of warm water, or weak green tea.

Our traveller now prepared to depart; and having obtained the necessary letters and despatches both from the patriarch and the bey, commenced his movements with a visit to the Pyramids. He then embarked in a kanja, and proceeded up the river, having on the right-hand a fine view of the pyramids of Gizeh and Saccara, with a prodigious number of others built of white clay, which appeared to stretch away in an interminable line into the desert. On reaching Metraheny, which Dr. Pococke had fixed upon as the site of Memphis, Bruce discovered what he thought sufficient grounds for concurring in opinion with that traveller in opposition to Dr. Shaw, who contends in favour of the claims of Gizeh. The Serapium, the Temple of Vulcan, the Circus, and the Temple of Venus, the ruins of which should be found on the site of Memphis, are nowhere discoverable either at Metraheny or Gizeh, and are not improbably supposed by Bruce to be buried for ever beneath the loose sands of the desert. A man’s heart fails him, he says, in looking to the south and south-west of Metraheny. He is lost in the immense expanse of desert which he sees full of pyramids before him. Struck with terror from the unusual scene of vastness opened all at once upon leaving the palm-trees, he becomes dispirited from the effect of sultry climates, shrinks from attempting any discovery in the moving sands of the Saccara, and embraces in safety and in quiet the reports of others, who, he thinks, may have been more inquisitive and more adventurous than himself.

Continuing to stem the current of the Nile, admiring as they moved along the extraordinary scenery which its banks presented, they arrived at the village of Nizelet ul Arab, where the first plantations of sugar-cane which Bruce had met with in Egypt occurred. A narrow strip of green wheat bordered the stream during the greater part of its course, while immediately behind a range of white mountains appeared, square and flat like tables on the summit, and seeming rather to be laid upon the earth than to spring out of and form a part of it. The villages on the shore were poor, but intermingled with large verdant groves of palm-trees, contrasting singularly with the arid and barren aspect of the rocky ridges behind them; and presenting many features of novelty, they were not without their interest.

On arriving at Achmim he landed his quadrant and instruments for the purpose of observing an eclipse of the moon; but the heavens soon after her rising became so obscured by clouds and mist, that not a star of any size was to be seen. Malaria here produced extraordinary effects upon the inhabitants, or rather on the female portion of them; for while the men were vigorous and active, from their constant motion and change of air, the women, who remained more at home, were of a corpse-like colour, and looked more aged at sixteen than many Englishwomen at sixty. They were nubile, however, at ten years old; and Bruce saw several who had not yet attained the age of eleven who were about to become mothers.

In the afternoon of December 24th they arrived in the vicinity of Dendera, which they visited next morning, and found it in the midst of a thick grove of palm-trees. Having examined its gigantic temples, sculptures, and hieroglyphics, he returned to his station on the river. It was in this neighbourhood that he first saw the crocodiles. They were lying in hundreds, like large flocks of cattle, upon every island, yet inspired little or no terror in the inhabitants, who suffered their beasts of every kind to stand in the water for hours; while the women and girls who came to fetch water in jars waded up to their knees in the stream.

They arrived, January 7, 1769, at El Gourni, which in Bruce’s opinion formed a part of ancient Thebes. The stupendous character of the ruins, the temples, the palaces, the sepulchres, the sarcophagi, the antique paintings,—every thing appeared equally to deserve attention; but his time was short, and he employed it in copying a curious fresco executed in brilliant colours on the wall of a tomb. He would have remained longer, but his guides, pretending apprehension of danger from the robbers of the neighbouring mountain, refused to continue their aid, and, dashing their torches against the walls, retreated, leaving him and his people in the dark. He then visited Saxor and Karnac, where he observed two beautiful obelisks and two vast rows of mutilated sphinxes, which, with similar lines of dog-headed figures, probably formed the avenue of some magnificent structure.

From thence they proceeded to Sheikh Ammor, the encampment of the Ababdé Arabs. Bruce had met with Ibrahim, the sheikh’s son, at Furshoot; and now, upon his arrival, this young man came forth with twelve armed followers to meet him, and, conducting him into a tent, presented him to his father, Sheikh Nimmer, or the “Tiger Chief.” The old man was ill, and Bruce’s medical knowledge now enabled him, by allaying the sufferings of the sheikh, to acquire a powerful and a grateful friend. Observing the hospitable and friendly manner of Nimmer, our traveller said, “Now tell me, sheikh, and tell me truly upon the faith of an Arab,—would your people, if they met me in the desert, do me any wrong?”

The old man upon this rose from his carpet and sat upright, and a more ghastly and more horrid figure, says Bruce, I never saw. “No,” he replied; “cursed be those of my people or others that ever shall lift up their hands against you, either in the deserts or the tell (the uncultivated land). As long as you are in this country, or between this and Kosseir, my son shall serve you with heart and hand. One night of pain from which your medicines have relieved me would not be repaid were I to follow you on foot to Misr” (Cairo).

They then discussed together the means of facilitating Bruce’s entrance into Abyssinia, and, after much consideration, it was agreed that the most practicable route was by way of Kosseir and Jidda. The principal persons of the tribe then bound themselves by an oath not to molest or injure the traveller; but, on the contrary, in case he should ever require it, to protect him at the hazard of their lives. They would have extended their liberality still further, intending to present him with seven sheep, but these, as he was going among Turks who were obliged to maintain him, he requested they would keep for him until his return. They then parted.

At Assuan, which he next day reached, he was very politely entertained by the Turkish aga, who had received instructions from the bey to behave respectfully towards the stranger. From thence he proceeded, on beasts furnished by the aga, to the cataracts. On leaving the town they passed over a small sandy plain, where there were numerous tombs with Arabic inscriptions in the Kufic character; and after riding about five miles farther, arrived at the cataracts. The fall of the waters is here so inconsiderable that vessels are able to pass up and down; but the bed of the river, which may perhaps be about half a mile in breadth, is divided into numerous small channels by enormous blocks of granite, from thirty to forty feet in height. Against these the river, running over a sloping bottom, through a channel of insufficient breadth, dashes with extreme noise and violence, and is thrown back in foam and a thousand whirling eddies, which, eternally mingling with each other, produce a disturbed and chaotic appearance which fills the mind with confusion.

On the 26th of January, after much altercation with his host, he embarked in his kanja, and began to descend the river. Having reached Badjoura, he employed himself until the departure of the caravan, with which he was to cross the desert to Kosseir, in examining the observations he had made, and in preparing his journal for publication; in order that, should he perish, the labours he had already achieved might not be lost. This done, he forwarded them to his friends at Cairo till he should return, or news should arrive that he was otherwise disposed of.

On the 16th of February the caravan set out from Ghena (the Cæne Emporium of antiquity), and proceeded over plains of inconceivable sterility towards the Red Sea. “The sun,” says Bruce, “was burning hot, and, upon rubbing two sticks together, in half a minute they both took fire and flamed; a mark how near the country was reduced to a general conflagration!”

It was whispered about in the caravan that the Atouni Arabs were lying in wait for them somewhere on the road; and on their arrival at the wells of El Egheita, therefore, they halted to wait for the coming up of the caravans of Cus, Esneh, and Ebanout, in order to oppose as formidable a number as possible to the enemy. While they were at this place, Abd el Gin, or the “Slave of the Genii,” an Arab whom Bruce had received into his kanja on the Nile, and treated with much kindness, came up to him, and requested that he would take charge of his money, which amounted to nineteen sequins and a half. “What, Mohammed!” said Bruce, “are you never safe among your countrymen, neither by sea nor land?”—“Oh, no,” replied Mohammed; “the difference when we were on board the boat was, we had three thieves only; but when assembled here, we shall have above three thousand. But I have a piece of advice to give you.”—“And my ears, Mohammed,” said the traveller, “are always open to advice, especially in strange countries.”—“These people,” continued Mohammed, “are all afraid of the Atouni Arabs, and, when attacked, they will run away and leave you in the hands of these Atouni, who will carry off your baggage. Therefore, as you have nothing to do with their corn, do not kill any of the Atouni if they come, for that will be a bad affair, but go aside, and let me manage. I will answer with my life, that though all the caravan should be stripped stark naked, and you loaded with gold, not one article belonging to you shall be touched.” And upon putting numerous questions to the man, Bruce was so well satisfied with his replies that he determined to conform in every respect to his advice.

While the minds of all present were busied in calculating the extent of their dangers, and the probabilities of escape, twenty Turks from Caramania, mounted on camels, and well armed, arrived at the camp, and learning that the principal tent belonged to an Englishman, entered it without ceremony. They informed our traveller they were hajjis, going on pilgrimage to Mecca, and had been robbed upon the Nile by those swimming banditti, who, like the Decoits of the Ganges, are indescribably dexterous in entering vessels by night, and plundering in silence. By the people of the country they had, in fact, been ill-treated, they said, ever since their landing at Alexandria; but that having now found an Englishman, whom they regarded as their countryman, since the English, according to their historical hypothesis, came originally from Caz Dangli in Asia Minor, they hoped, by uniting themselves with him, to be able to protect themselves against their enemies. This preference was flattering, and “I cannot conceal,” says Bruce, “the secret pleasure I had in finding the character so firmly established among nations so distant, enemies to our religion, and strangers to our government. Turks from Mount Taurus, and Arabs from the desert of Libya, thought themselves unsafe among their own countrymen, but trusted their lives and their little fortunes implicitly to the direction and word of an Englishman whom they had never before seen!”

On the 19th they continued their journey over the desert between mountains of granite, porphyry, marble, and jasper, and pitched their tents at Mesag el Terfowy, in the neighbourhood of the Arab encampment. This, under most circumstances, is a position of considerable danger; for, as there are generally thieves in all caravans, as well as in all camps, marauders from one side or the other commonly endeavour to exercise their profession in the night, and embroil their companions. Such was the case on the present occasion. The thieves from the Arab camp crept unseen into Bruce’s tent, where they were detected, endeavouring to steal a portmanteau. One of them escaped; but the other, less nimble, or less fortunate, was taken, and beaten so severely, that he shortly afterward died. At this moment Bruce was absent; but on his return, a messenger from Sidi Hassan, chief of the caravan, summoned him to appear before him. It being late, our traveller refused. Other messengers followed—the camp was kept in unintermitted anxiety all night—and after much altercation and gasconading on both sides, fear of the Atouni Arabs at length induced them to calm their passions and consult their interest.

Proceeding in their course, however, without encountering an enemy of any kind, they arrived on the morning of the 21st in sight of the Red Sea, and in little more than an hour after entered Kosseir. Here he established himself in a house, and amused himself with observing the manners of the motley crowds assembled in the town. Next morning, being in a fishing-dress on the beach, seeking for shells, a servant came running in great haste to inform him that the Ababdé Arabs, to the number of four hundred, had arrived, and that having met with Mohammed Abd el Gin, whom they discovered to be an Atouni, had hurried him away with intent to cut his throat, there being blood between his tribe and theirs.

Together with this news the servant had brought a horse, and Bruce, without a moment’s reflection, sprang upon his back, and driving through the town in the direction which had been pointed out, quickly arrived at the Ababdé encampment. Upon his drawing near a number of them surrounded him on horseback, and began to speak together in their own language. The traveller now began to think he had advanced a step too far. They had lances in their hands, one thrust of which would have stretched him upon the earth; and by their looks he did not think they were greatly averse to using them. However, there was no retreating, so he inquired whether they were Ababdé, from Sheikh Ammor, and if so, how was the Nimmer, and where was Ibrahim. Upon their acknowledging that they were Ababdé, he gave them the salaam; but, without returning it, one of them demanded who he was. “Tell me first,” replied Bruce, “who is this you have before you?”—“He is an Arab, our enemy,” said they, “guilty of our blood.”—“He is my servant,” replied the traveller; “a Howadat, whose tribe lives in peace at the gates of Cairo!—but where is Ibrahim, your sheikh’s son?”—“Ibrahim is at our head, he commands us here; but who are you?”—“Come with me, and show me Ibrahim, and you shall see!” replied Bruce.

They had already thrown a rope about the neck of their prisoner, who, though nearly strangled, conjured Bruce not to leave him; but the latter, observing a spear thrust up through the cloth of one of the tents, the mark of sovereignty, hastened towards it, and saw Ibrahim and one of his brothers at the door. He had scarcely descended, and taken hold of the pillar of the tent, exclaiming Fiar duc, “I am under your protection,” when they both recognised him, and said, “What, are you Yagoube, our physician and friend?”—“Let me ask you,” replied Bruce, “if you are the Ababdé of Sheikh Ammor, who cursed yourselves and your children if ever you lifted a hand against me or mine, in the desert or in the ploughed field? If you have repented of that oath, or sworn falsely on purpose to deceive me, here I am come to you in the desert.”—“What is the matter?” said Ibrahim; “we are the Ababdé of Sheikh Ammor—there are no other—and we still say, ‘Cursed be he, whether our father or children, who lifts his hand against you, in the desert or in the ploughed field!’”—“Then,” replied Bruce, “you are all accursed, for a number of your people are going to murder my servant.”—“Whew,” said Ibrahim, with a kind of whistle, “that is downright nonsense. Who are those of my people who have authority to murder and take prisoners while I am here! Here, one of you, get upon Yagoube’s horse, and bring that man to me.” Then turning to Bruce, he desired him to go into the tent and sit down; “for God renounce me and mine,” said he, “if it is as you say, and one of them hath touched the hair of his head, if ever he drinks of the Nile again!”

Upon inquiry it was discovered that Sidi Hassan,[^[11]] the captain of the caravan, had been the cause of this attempt at murder; having, in revenge for Ab del Gin’s discovering the robber in Bruce’s tent, denounced him to the Ababdé as an Atouni spy.

[11]. Upon parting with Ibrahim, Bruce, enraged at the baseness and treachery of Sidi Hassan, entreated the young chief to revenge his wrongs upon this man, which was solemnly promised. Upon coolly considering the action, when he came to write his travels, he says, “I cannot help here accusing myself of what, doubtless, may be well reputed a very great sin.” Major Head, relating this transaction, quotes the following addition to the above sentence: “the more so, that I cannot say I have yet heartily repented of it.” This would have argued extreme cold-heartedness, to say the least of it; but the words are not found in the original quarto edition, whatever they may be in others of comparatively no authority.

While waiting for a ship bound for Tor, he undertook a short voyage to the Mountains of Emeralds, or Jibbel Zumrud, where he found the ancient pits, and many fragments of a green crystalline mineral substance, veiny, clouded, but not so hard as rock-crystal. This he supposed was the smaragdus of the Romans, and the siberget and bilur of the Ethiopians, but by no means identical with the genuine emerald, which is equal in hardness to the ruby. Returning to Kosseir, he forthwith commenced his survey of the Red Sea. Having visited the northern portion of the gulf, he arrived, almost overcome with fatigue, and suffering much from ague, at Jidda, where there were a great number of Englishmen, from whom he very naturally expected a hospitable reception.

It must be acknowledged, however, that on this occasion, as on many others, Bruce’s conduct bordered strongly upon the absurd. His dress and whole appearance were those of a common Turkish sailor, which as long as he remained on board might be very prudent; but when he came to present himself before his countrymen, from whom he expected the treatment due to a gentleman, it would have been decorous either to have improved his costume, or have given two or three words of explanation. He did neither, but desired the servant of the Emir el Bahr, or “harbour-master,” who had run over the names of all the English captains then in port, to conduct him to a relation of his own, who, when they arrived, was accidentally leaning over the rail of the staircase leading up to his own apartment. Bruce saluted him by his name, but without announcing his own; and the captain, no less hasty than himself, fell into a violent rage, called him “villain, thief, cheat,” and “renegado rascal,” declaring that if he attempted to proceed a step farther, he would throw him over the stairs. The traveller went away without reply, followed by the curses and abuse of his polite relative.

“Never fear,” said the servant, shrugging up his shoulders, “I will carry you to the best of them all.” He was now conducted to the apartment of Captain Thornhill, but having entered the room, “I was not,” says Bruce, “desirous of advancing much farther, for fear of the salutation of being thrown down stairs again. He looked very steadily, but not sternly, at me; and desired the servant to go away and shut the door. ‘Sir,’ says he, ‘are you an Englishman? You surely are sick, you should be in your bed: have you been long sick?’ I said, ‘Long, sir,’ and bowed. ‘Are you wanting a passage to India?’ I again bowed. ‘Well,’ says he, ‘you look to be a man in distress; if you have a secret I shall respect it till you please to tell it me, but if you want a passage to India, apply to no one but Thornhill of the Bengal Merchant. Perhaps you are afraid of somebody, if so, ask for Mr. Greig, my lieutenant, he will carry you on board my ship directly, where you will be safe.’ ‘Sir,’ said I, ‘I hope you will find me an honest man: I have no enemy that I know, either in Jidda or elsewhere, nor do I owe any man any thing.’ ‘I am sure,’ says he, ‘I am doing wrong in keeping a poor man standing who ought to be in his bed. Here! Philip, Philip!’ Philip appeared. ‘Boy,’ says he, in Portuguese, which, as I imagine, he supposed I did not understand, ‘here is a poor Englishman that should be either in his bed or his grave; carry him to the cook, tell him to give him as much broth and mutton as he can eat. The fellow seems to have been starved—but I would rather have the feeding of ten to India, than the burying of one at Jidda.’”

Bruce kept up the farce some time longer; despatched the mutton and the broth; and then threw himself at full length upon the mat in the courtyard, and fell asleep. The arrival of the Vizier of Jidda, who, in the traveller’s absence, had opened his trunks, and been terrified at the sight of the grand seignior’s firman, now disclosed Bruce’s rank and consequence to the English factory, and his acting the poor man was laughed at and excused.

His countrymen, when his objects and purposes were explained, did whatever was in their power for the furtherance of his views. Letters to the governor of Masuah, the King of Abyssinia, Ras Michael, and the King of Sennaar, were procured from Metical Aga and other influential persons, and a person who required a few weeks to prepare for the journey was appointed to accompany him. The time which must elapse before this man could be ready, Bruce employed in completing his survey of the Red Sea.

Having been joined at Loheia by Mohammed Gibberti, the person commissioned by the authorities of Jidda to accompany him to Masuah, he sailed from that part of Yemen on the 3d of September, 1769, and on the 19th cast anchor in the harbour of Masuah. This is a small island, lying directly opposite the town of Arkeeko, on the Abyssinian shore; and at the time of Bruce’s visit was under the authority of a governor holding his title by firman from the Ottoman Porte, under condition of paying an annual tribute. The Turkish power having greatly decayed in the Red Sea, this governor, or naybe, had gradually assumed the independent authority of a sovereign; though, in order to command a sufficient supply of provisions from Abyssinia, he had agreed to share with the sovereign of that country the customs of the port. Observing, however, the disorderly state of the government, he had lately withheld from the Abyssinian monarch his portion of the revenue, which had so far irritated Ras Michael, then at the head of the government, that he had caused it to be signified to the naybe “that, in the next campaign, he would lay waste Arkeeko and Masuah, until they should be as desert as the wilds of Samhar!”

While affairs were in this position, the naybe received intelligence that an English prince was about to arrive at Masuah on his way to Abyssinia; and it was forthwith debated by him and his counsellors in full divan, whether he should be hospitably received or murdered immediately upon his arrival. Through the influence of Achmet, the nephew and heir-apparent of the governor, pacific measures were resolved upon.

Being desirous of enjoying one night’s repose to prepare him for the toilsome contentions which he foresaw would arise, Bruce did not land until the next day; but Mohammed Gibberti went immediately on shore, and contrived to despatch letters to the court of Abyssinia, announcing Bruce’s arrival, and requesting that some one might be sent to protect him from the well-known rapacity and cruelty of the governor. He then waited upon this petty despot and his nephew, and artfully endeavoured to inspire them with very exalted notions of our traveller’s rank and consequence. The way being thus skilfully paved, Bruce himself landed next morning. He was received in a friendly manner by Achmet, who, when they had seated themselves, after the usual salutation, commanded coffee to be brought in, as a sign to the traveller that his life was not in danger. He then observed, with a somewhat serious air, “We have expected you here some time, but thought you had changed your mind, and were gone to India.”—“Since sailing from Jidda,” replied Bruce, “I have been in Arabia Felix, the Gulf of Mokha, and crossed last from Loheia.”—“Are you not afraid,” said he, “so thinly attended, to venture upon these long and dangerous voyages?”—“The countries where I have been,” Bruce replied, “are either subject to the Emperor of Constantinople, whose firman I have now the honour to present you, or to the Regency of Cairo, and Port of Janizaries—here are their letters—or to the Sheriff of Mecca. To you, sir, I present the sheriff’s letters; and, besides these, one from Metical Aga, your friend, who depending on your character, assured me this alone would be sufficient to preserve me from ill-usage, so long as I did no wrong. As for the danger of the road from banditti and lawless persons, my servants are indeed few, but they are veteran soldiers, tried and exercised from their infancy in arms, and I value not the superior numbers of cowardly and disorderly persons.”

To this Achmet made no reply, but returning him the letters, said, “You will give these to the naybe to-morrow. I will keep Metical’s letter, as it is to me, and will read it at home.” He put it accordingly in his bosom; and on Bruce’s rising to take his leave, he was wet to the skin by a deluge of orange-flower water, poured upon him from silver bottles by his attendants. He was now conducted to a very decent house, which had been assigned him, whither his baggage was all sent unopened.

Late in the evening he was surprised by a visit from Achmet, who came alone, unarmed, and half-naked. Bruce expressed his acknowledgments for the civility which had been shown him in sending his baggage unopened; but Achmet, more solicitous to do good than listen to compliments, at once turned the discourse into another channel; and, after several questions respecting his rank and motives for travelling, advised him by no means to enter Abyssinia, and let fall some few hints respecting the character of the people of Masuah. To express his gratitude, and secure a continuance of his good offices, Bruce begged his acceptance of a pair of pistols.

“Let the pistols remain with you,” says Achmet, “till I send you a man to whom you may say any thing; and he shall go between you and me, for there is in this place a number of devils, not men. But, Ullah kerim! (God is merciful.) The person that brings you dry dates in an Indian handkerchief, and an earthen bottle to drink your water out of, give him the pistols. You may send by him to me any thing you choose. In the mean time sleep sound, and fear no evil; but never be persuaded to trust yourself to the Kafro of Habesh at Masuah.”

Next morning the governor returned from Arkeeko, attended by three or four servants miserably mounted, and about forty naked savages on foot, armed with short lances and crooked knives. Before him was beaten a drum, formed of an earthen jar, such as they send butter in to Arabia, covered over at the mouth with a skin, like a jar of pickles. Bruce’s reception by this ferocious despot was inauspicious. On his presenting to him the firman of the grand seignior, upon seeing which the greatest pacha in the Turkish empire would have risen, kissed it, and lifted it to his forehead; he pushed it back contemptuously, and said, “Do you read it all to me, word for word.” Bruce replied that it was written in the Turkish language, of which he comprehended not a word. “Nor I neither,” said the naybe, “and I believe I never shall.”

The traveller then gave him his letters of recommendation, which he laid down unopened beside him, and said, “You should have brought a moollah along with you. Do you think I shall read all these letters? Why, it would take me a month!” And while he spoke he glared upon his guest with his mouth open, so extremely like an idiot, that it was with the utmost difficulty Bruce kept his gravity. However, he replied, “Just as you please—you know best.”

After a short conversation in Arabic, which the naybe at first affected not to understand, our traveller brought forward his present, which the naybe understood without the assistance of a moollah, and shortly afterward took his leave.

The inhabitants of Masuah were at this time dying so rapidly of the small-pox, that there was some reason to fear the living would not suffice to bury the dead. The whole island was filled with shrieks and lamentations both day and night; and they at last began to throw the bodies into the sea, which deprived Bruce and his servants of the support they had derived from fish, of which some of the species caught there were excellent.

On the 15th of October, the naybe, having despatched the vessel in which Bruce had arrived, began to put out his true colours, and, under various pretences, demanded an enormous present. Bruce, of course, refused compliance. He then sent for him to his house, and after venting his fury in a storm of abuse, concluded by saying, in a peremptory tone, that unless our traveller were ready in a few days to pay him three ounces of gold, he would confine him in a dungeon, without light, air, or food, until his bones should come through his skin for want. To aggravate the affair, an uncle of his, then present, added, that whatever the naybe might determine respecting his own demands, he could in nowise abate a jot from those of the janizaries; which, however, in consideration of the letter he had brought from the port of the janizaries at Cairo, were moderate—only forty ounces of gold.

To all this Bruce replied firmly, “Since you have broken your faith with the grand seignior, the government of Cairo, the pasha at Jidda, and Metical Aga, you will no doubt do as you please with me; but you may expect to see the English man-of-war the Lion before Arkeeko some morning by daybreak.”

“I should be glad,” said the naybe, “to see that man at Arkeeko or Masuah who would carry as much writing from you to Jidda as would lie upon my thumb-nail. I would strip his shirt off first, and then his skin, and hang him up before your door to teach you more wisdom.”

“But my wisdom,” replied Bruce, “has taught me to prevent all this. My letter has already gone to Jidda; and if in twenty days from this another letter from me does not follow it, you will see what will arrive. In the mean time, I here announce to you that I have letters from Metical Aga and the Sheriff of Mecca, to Michael Suhul, governor of Tigrè, and the King of Abyssinia. I therefore would wish that you would leave off these unmanly altercations, which serve no sort of purpose, and let me continue my journey.”

The naybe now muttered in a low voice to himself, “What, Michael too! then go your journey, and think of the ill that’s before you!” Upon which the traveller left him.

Other altercations, still more violent, ensued, and attempts were made by the creatures of the naybe to break into his house and murder him in the night; but these were constantly defeated by the courage and fidelity of his servants. Achmet, too, the nephew of the naybe, exerted whatever influence he possessed in behalf of the traveller; who, in return, was, under Providence, the means of preserving his life; for Achmet at this time falling ill of an intermittent fever, Bruce assiduously attended and prescribed for him, and in the course of a few days had the satisfaction of pronouncing him out of danger.

On the morning of the 6th of November, while at breakfast, Bruce received the agreeable intelligence that three servants had arrived from Tigrè; one from Jamai, the Greek, the other two from Ras Michael, both wearing the royal livery. Ras Michael’s letters to the naybe were short. He said the king’s health was bad, and that he wondered the physician sent to him by Metical Aga from Arabia had not been instantly forwarded to him at Gondar, as he had heard of his having been some time at Masuah. He therefore commanded the naybe to despatch the physician without loss of time, and to furnish him with all necessaries.

To these peremptory orders the naybe felt himself compelled to yield obedience; and accordingly Bruce was at length suffered to depart. In order, however, to make one attempt more at murdering the stranger, for which the old man appeared to have acquired a kind of passion, he furnished him with a guide and several attendants, who, it was suspected by the nephew, had received secret orders to cut him off upon the road. To counteract the designs of this worthy old relative, Achmet removed these attendants, and replaced them by servants of his own; and prevailing upon Bruce to proceed by a different route from that recommended by the naybe, for which purpose he supplied him with another guide, he took his leave, saying, “He that is your enemy is mine. You shall hear from me by Mohammed Gibberti.”

Bruce now proceeded over a plain partly covered with groves of acacia-trees, in full flower, towards the mountains, upon the ascent to which he met with considerable numbers of the wild mountain shepherds, descending with their families and flocks to the seashore, drawn thither by the fresh grass which springs up in October and November all along the coast. Their path, from the time they had reached the acclivity, lay over a broken, stony road, along the bed of a mountain torrent; but having reached a small green hill at some distance from the stream, they pitched their tent; and, it being near evening, prepared to pass the night there. The weather, which had hitherto been fine, now seemed to threaten rain. The loftier mountains, and a great portion of the lower ones, were quite hidden by thick clouds; the lightning was very frequent, broad, and deeply tinged with blue; and long peals of thunder were heard at a distance. “The river,” says Bruce, “scarcely ran at our passing it. All on a sudden, however, we heard a noise on the mountains above, louder than the loudest thunder. Our guides upon this flew to the baggage, and removed it to the top of the green hill; which was no sooner done than we saw the river coming down in a stream about the height of a man, and breadth of the whole bed it used to occupy. The water was thickly tinged with red earth, and ran in the form of a deep river, and swelled a little above its banks, but did not reach our station on the hill.”

During this day’s march he first saw the dung of elephants, full of thick pieces of undigested branches; and observed in the tracks through which they had passed several trees thrown down or broken in the middle, while the ground was strewed with half-eaten branches. The wild tribes who inhabited these mountains were a small, active, copper-coloured race, who lived in caves, or cages covered with an ox’s hide, and large enough to hold two persons. Though possessed of numerous herds of cattle, they abstained, like the Brahmins, from animal food, and subsisted entirely upon milk.

For some time after leaving this station their road lay through groves of acacia-trees, the prickly branches of which striking against their faces and hands quickly covered them with blood. They then proceeded through grassy valleys, and over mountains, bleak, bare, and desolate, until they arrived at a place called Tubbo, a picturesque and agreeable station, where they pitched their tent, and remained several hours. The mountains were here very steep, and broken abruptly into cliffs and precipices. The trees were thick, in full leaf, and planted so closely together that they seemed to have been intended for arbours, and afforded abundance of dark cool shade. Their boughs were filled with immense numbers of birds, variegated with an infinity of colours, but destitute of song; others, of a more homely and more European appearance, diverted the travellers with a variety of wild notes, in a style of music still distinct and peculiar to Africa; as different, says Bruce, in the composition from that of our linnet and goldfinch as our English language is from that of Abyssinia. Yet, from frequent and attentive observation, he found that the skylark at Masuah sang the same notes as in England.

The whole country between this and Mount Taranta abounded in game, and more particularly in partridges and antelopes, the latter of which, without exhibiting any signs of fear, moved out of the way to let them pass; or stood still and gazed at them. When they arrived at the foot of the mountain, the difficulties which presented themselves were appalling. The road, if it deserved the name, was of incredible steepness, and intersected almost at every step by large hollows and gullies formed by the torrents, and by vast fragments of rock, which, loosened from the cliffs above by the rains, had rolled down into the chasm through which their path lay. To carry Bruce’s telescopes, timekeeper, and quadrant through such a path as this was by the majority of the party declared to be impossible; and the bearers of the quadrant now proposed to drag it along in a way which would have quickly shattered it to pieces. To prevent so undesirable a catastrophe Bruce himself, assisted by a Moor named Yasine, who, being on his way to Abyssinia, had attached himself to our traveller’s party, undertook the task, and after extraordinary exertions, during which their clothes were torn to pieces, and their hands and knees cut in a shocking manner, they succeeded in placing the instrument in safety, far above the stony parts of the mountain. By this means their companions were shamed into exertion, and every one now striving to surpass the rest, all the instruments and other baggage were quickly got up the steep.

Having accomplished their laborious task, they found themselves too much fatigued to attempt the pitching of their tents; though, had it been otherwise, the scantiness of the soil, which was too shallow to hold a tent-pin, would have prevented them; they therefore betook themselves to the caves which they discovered in the rocks, and there passed the night. Next morning they proceeded to encounter the remaining half of the mountain, which, though steeper, was upon the whole less difficult than the part they had already passed; and in two days came in sight of Dixan, a city built on the summit of a hill, perfectly in the form of a sugar-loaf, surrounded on all sides by a deep valley like a trench, and approached by a road which winds spirally up the hill till it ends among the houses.

The inhabitants of this place enjoyed throughout the country the reputation of superior wickedness, and appeared fully to deserve it; for, whether Christians or Moors, the only traffic in which they were engaged was in children. These were stolen in Abyssinia, frequently by the priests; and being brought to Dixan, were there delivered over to the Moors, who conveyed them to Masuah, from whence they were transported to Arabia or India. Bernier found this trade in active operation in his time; and it has probably subsisted from the earliest ages, since Abyssinian girls have always been in request among the Arabs, while the boys are more valued farther eastward, where they are generally converted into eunuchs.

From Dixan they set forward November 25, and encamped at night under a tree. They had now been joined by about twenty loaded asses and two loaded bulls driven by Moors, who, in consideration of the protection they expected from our traveller, bound themselves by an oath to obey him punctually during the journey, and in case of attack to stand by him to the last. Next morning they proceeded over a plain covered with wheat and Indian corn, and on looking back towards Taranta, beheld its summit capped with black clouds, which emitted vivid streams of lightning, and frequent peals of thunder. Towards noon they encamped at the foot of a mountain, on the top of which was a village, the residence of an Abyssinian nobleman, called the Baharnagash, who, with a very ragged retinue, visited Bruce in his tent. Among the horses of his attendants there was a black one which Bruce desired to possess. When the chief had returned to his village he therefore despatched two persons to him to commence negotiations. The bargain, however, was soon concluded, and the money, about 12l., paid in merchandise; but by the time he had reached the encampment, the black horse had been converted into a brown one, which, if he wanted an eye, had the recommendation of great age and experience. This ancient charger was returned, and, after considerable shuffling and equivocation, the genuine black horse, sixteen and a half-hands high, and of the Dongola breed, was obtained. The noble animal, which had been half-starved by the Baharnagash, was named Mirza, and intrusted to the care of an Arab from the neighbourhood of Medina, a man well versed in all equestrian affairs. “Indeed,” observes Bruce, “I might say I acquired that day a companion that contributed always to my pleasure, and more than once to my safety; and was no slender means of acquiring me the first attention of the king.”

Their road now lying through a country into which the Shangalla, whom Bruce terms the ancient Cushites, were in the habit of making incursions, the whole party carefully examined the state of their firearms, and cleaned and charged them anew. In this day’s journey they passed through a wood of acacia-trees in flower, with which was intermingled another species of tree with large white flowers, yielding a scent like that of the honeysuckle; and afterward another wood, so overgrown with wild oats that, like the jungle grass of Bengal, it covered the men and their horses. This plain was perhaps the most fertile in Abyssinia, but, owing to the inveterate feuds of the villages, had long been suffered to lie waste, or, if a small portion were cultivated, the labours of sowing-time and harvest were performed by the peasantry in arms, who rarely completed their task without bloodshed.

Having crossed this plain, they entered a close country covered with brushwood, wild oats, and high grass, rough with rocks, and traversed by narrow difficult passes. At one of these, called the pass of Kella, they were detained three days by the farmers of the customs, who demanded more than they thought proper to pay. During this delay a kind of fair or bazaar was opened in the caravan, to which hundreds of young women from the neighbouring villages repaired, to purchase beads and other articles of African finery; and so eager were they to get possession of these toys, that they could be restrained from stealing them only by being beaten unmercifully with whips and sticks. Of chastity these Abyssinian beauties had no conception, and abandoned themselves to the desires of strangers without so much as requiring a reward.

The next day, after leaving Kella, they discovered in the distance the mountains of Adowa, which in no respect resemble those of Europe, or of any other country. “Their sides were all perpendicular, high, like steeples or obelisks, and broken into a thousand different forms.” On the 6th of December they arrived at Adowa, having travelled for three hours over a very pleasant road, between hedgerows of jessamine, honeysuckle, and many other kinds of flowering shrubs. This town, which was made the capital of Tigrè by Ras Michael, consisted of about three hundred houses, but each house being surrounded by a fence or screen of trees and shrubs, like the small picturesque homesteads which skirt the Ghauts on the coast of Malabar, the extent of ground covered was very considerable, and from a distance the whole place had the appearance of a beautiful grove. Within, however, were crime and wretchedness. The palace of the governor, which was now occupied by his deputy, stood upon the top of the hill, and resembled a huge prison. Upwards of three hundred persons were there confined in irons, some of whom had been imprisoned more than twenty years, solely, in most instances, for the purpose of extorting money from them; but when they had complied with their captor’s demands, their deliverance by no means followed. Most of them were kept in cages like wild beasts, and treated with equal inhumanity.

Here he was received in the most hospitable manner by Janni, the Greek officer of the customs, to whom he had been recommended by the patriarch of Cairo. In this town there was a valuable manufacture of coarse cotton cloth, which circulated instead of silver money throughout Abyssinia. The houses were built with rough stone, cemented with mud instead of mortar—which was used only at Gondar,—and had high conical roofs, thatched with a reedy sort of grass, rather thicker than wheat straw.

From this place he proceeded on the 10th of January, 1770, to visit the ruins of the Jesuits’ convent at Fremona, two miles to the north-east of the town. It resembled a vast fortress, being at least a mile in circumference, and surrounded by a wall, the remains of which were twenty-five feet high, with towers in the flanks and angles, and pierced on all sides with holes for muskets.

Leaving Adowa on the 17th, they arrived next morning at the ruins of Axum, which, extensive as they were, consisted entirely of public buildings. Huge granite obelisks, rudely carved, strewed the ground, having been overthrown by earthquakes or by barbarians, one only remaining erect. Colossal statues of the latrator anubis, or dog-star, were discovered among the ruins, evidently of Egyptian workmanship; together with magnificent flights of granite steps, and numerous pedestals whereon the figures of sphinxes were formerly placed. Axum was watered by a small stream, which flowed all the year, and was received into a magnificent basin of one hundred and fifty feet square, whence it was artificially conveyed into the neighbouring gardens.

Continuing their journey through a beautiful country, diversified with hill and dale, and covered so thickly with flowering shrubs that the odours exhaling from their blossoms strongly perfumed the air, they overtook three men driving a cow, and Bruce had an opportunity of witnessing an operation which, on the publication of his travels, was almost universally treated as a fiction. On arriving on the banks of a river, where it was supposed they were to encamp, the three men, who from their lances and shields appeared to be soldiers, tripped up the cow; and as soon as she had fallen, one of them got across her neck, holding down her head by the horns, another twisted the halter about her fore-feet, while the third, who held a knife in his hand, instead of striking at the animal’s throat, to Bruce’s very great surprise got astride upon her belly, and gave her a very deep wound in the upper part of her buttock. He now of course expected that the cow was to be killed, but, upon inquiring whether they would sell a portion of her, was informed that the beast was not wholly theirs, and that therefore they could not sell her. “This,” says the traveller, “awakened my curiosity. I let my people go forward and staid myself, till I saw, with the utmost astonishment, two pieces, thicker and longer than our ordinary beefsteaks, cut out of the higher part of the buttock of the beast. How it was done I cannot positively say; because, judging the cow was to be killed from the moment I saw the knife drawn, I was not anxious to view that catastrophe, which was by no means an object of curiosity: whatever way it was done, it surely was adroitly, and the two pieces were spread on the outside of their shields.”

After this, the skin which covered the wounded part was drawn together, and fastened by small skewers or pins. A cataplasm of clay was then placed over all, and the poor beast, having been forced to rise, was driven on as before. This mode of cutting beefsteaks from a living animal is no doubt extraordinary, but I can see nothing in it that should render it incredible, particularly to persons who make no difficulty in believing that men eat each other, or fasten their own bodies on swings, by hooks driven into the muscles of their backs, and thus suspended, whirl round in indescribable agony for the amusement of the bystanders. Yet this is indubitably done every day in Hindostan. The scorn with which Bruce met the incredulity of his critics was natural and just. But the skepticism of the public has now ceased. In fact, to avow it would be to plead guilty of a degree of ignorance of which few persons in the present day would care to be suspected.

Proceeding on his journey, Bruce learned at Siré that Ras Michael had defeated the rebel Fasil, who had long made head against the royal troops, with the loss of ten thousand men; and this intelligence struck terror into the numerous disaffected persons who were found throughout the country.

On the 26th they crossed the Tacazzè, one of the pleasantest rivers in the world, shaded with fine lofty trees, its banks covered with bushes, inferior in fragrance to no garden in the universe; its waters limpid, excellent, and full of fish, while the coverts on its banks abound with game. It was about two hundred yards broad, and about three feet deep; and in the middle of the ford they met a deserter from Ras Michael’s army, with his firelock on his shoulder, driving before him two miserable girls about ten years old, stark naked, and almost famished to death, the part of the booty which had fallen to his share after the battle. From this wretch, however, they could gain no intelligence.

The country through which they now passed was covered with ruined villages, “the marks,” says Bruce, “of Michael’s cruelty or justice, for perhaps the inhabitants had deserved the chastisement they had met with.” The scenery on all sides was now highly picturesque and beautiful. At Addergey, where they encamped near the small river Mai-Lumi, or the “River of Limes,” in a small plain, they were surrounded by a thick wood in form of an amphitheatre, behind which arose a sweep of bare, rugged, and barren mountains. Midway in the cliff was a miserable village, which seemed rather to hang than to stand there, scarcely a yard of level ground being between it and the edge of the precipice. The wood was full of lemons and wild citrons, from which circumstance it derived its name. Before them, towards the west, the plain terminated in a tremendous precipice.

After a series of disputes with the chief of this village, a malignant, avaricious barbarian, who seems to have designed to cut them off, they proceeded towards Mount Lamalmon, one of the highest points of Abyssinia. On the way they discovered on their right the mountains of Waldubba, inhabited by monks and great men in disgrace. The monks are held in great veneration, being by many supposed to enjoy the gift of prophecy and the power of working miracles. To strengthen their virtue, and encourage them in their austere way of life, they are frequently visited by certain young women, who may be called nuns, and who live upon a very familiar footing with these prophets and workers of miracles. Nay, many of these, says Bruce, thinking that the living in community with this holy fraternity has not in it perfection enough to satisfy their devotion, retire, one of each sex, a hermit and a nun, sequestering themselves for months, to eat herbs together in private upon the top of the mountains.

On the 7th of February they began to ascend the mountains which skirt the base of Lamalmon; and on the next day commenced the climbing of that mountain itself. Their path was scarcely two feet wide in any part, and wound in a most tortuous direction up the mountain, perpetually on the brink of a precipice. Torrents of water, which in the rainy season roll huge stones and fragments of rock down the steep, had broken up the path in many places, and opened to the travellers a view of the tremendous abyss below, which few persons could look upon without giddiness. Here they were compelled to unload their baggage, and by slow degrees crawl up the hill, carrying it a little at a time on their shoulders round those chasms which intersected the road. The acclivity became steeper, the paths narrower, and the breaches more frequent as they ascended. Scarcely were their mules, though unloaded, able to scramble up, and fell perpetually. To enhance their difficulty and danger, large droves of cattle were descending, which, as they came crowding down the mountain, threatened to push their whole party into the gulf. However, after vast toil they at length succeeded in reaching the small plain near the summit, where both man and beast halted simultaneously, perfectly exhausted with fatigue.

The air on Lamalmon was pleasant and temperate, and their appetite, spirits, and cheerfulness, which the sultry poisonous atmosphere of the Red Sea coasts had put to flight, returned. Next morning they ascended the remainder of the mountain, which was less steep and difficult than the preceding portion, and found that the top, which seemed pointed from below, spread into a large plain, part in pasture, but more bearing grain. It is full of springs, and seems, says Bruce, “to be the great reservoir from whence arise most of the rivers that water this part of Abyssinia. A multitude of streams issue from the very summit in all directions; the springs boil out from the earth in large quantities, capable of turning a mill. They plough, sow, and reap here at all seasons; and the husbandman must blame his own indolence, and not the soil, if he has not three harvests. We saw in one place people busy cutting down wheat; immediately next to it others at the plough, and the adjoining field had green corn in the ear. A little farther it was not an inch above the ground.”

On the 15th of February he arrived at Gondar, when, to his extreme vexation, he found that not only the king and Ras Michael, but almost every other person for whom he had letters, was absent with the army. Petros, the brother of Janni, his Greek friend at Adowa, to whom he had been in an especial manner recommended, had at the news of his coming been terrified by the priests, and fled to Ras Michael for instructions. A friend, however, of one of the Moors, whom Janni had interested in his favour, received him kindly, and conducted him to a house in the Moorish town, where he might, he said, remain safe from the molestations of the priests, until he should receive the protection of the government.

Late in the evening while our traveller was sitting quietly in his apartment reading the book of the prophet Enoch, Ayto Aylo, the queen’s chamberlain, who probably had never before been in the Moorish town, came, accompanied by a number of armed attendants, to visit him. This man, a zealous protector of strangers, and who was desirous, as he said, to end his days in pious seclusion either at Jerusalem or Rome, after a long contest of civilities and a protracted conversation, informed Bruce that the queen-mother, who had heard of his abilities as a physician, was desirous he should undertake the treatment of a young prince then lying ill of the small-pox at the palace of Koscam. On proceeding thither next morning, however, he learned that the patient had been placed under the care of a saint from Waldubba, who had undertaken to cure him by writing certain mystical characters upon a tin-plate with common ink, and then, having washed them off with a medicinal preparation, giving them to the sick man to drink. Upon Bruce’s second visit to the palace he was presented to the queen-mother, who, after some rambling conversation respecting Jerusalem, the Holy Sepulchre, Mount Calvary, &c., demanded of him bluntly whether he were not a Frank, by which they mean a Catholic. The traveller, in reply, swore to her by all the truths in the Bible, which she had then on a table before her, that his religion was more different from that of the Roman Catholics than her own. The old lady appeared to be convinced by his asseverations, and he shortly afterward took his leave. That same evening the prince, as well as his daughter, who had likewise been seized by the contagion, died of the small-pox in spite of the saints of Waldubba; and Bruce had to congratulate himself that these honest jugglers had taken the weight of the odium from his shoulders upon their own, for the patients would very probably have died whether they had been under the care of the monks or of the physician.

However, this natural event was the death-blow to the reputation of the saints. Bruce was required to repair immediately to the palace, and the various members of the royal family, as well as of the family of the Ras, who now fell sick, were placed with unbounded confidence under his care. Policy, as well as humanity, rendered his attentions to his numerous patients incessant; and very fortunately for him only one out of the whole number died. Ozoro Esther, the young and beautiful wife of Ras Michael, both of whose children, the one by a former and the other by her present husband, survived, was unbounded in her gratitude to the man whom she regarded as their preserver; and her friendship, which never knew diminution, may be regarded as one of the most valuable acquisitions our traveller ever made in Abyssinia. As a reward for his services he received a neat and convenient house in the immediate vicinity of the palace.

On the 8th or 9th of March Bruce met Ras Michael at Azazo. The old man was dressed in a coarse dirty cloth, wrapped about him like a blanket, while another like a tablecloth was folded about his head. He was lean, old, and apparently much fatigued. When he had alighted from the mule on which he had been riding, a Greek priest went forward and announced Bruce, who then came up and kissed his hand. “How do you do?” said the Ras; “I hope you are well.” He then pointed to a place where the traveller was to sit down, while a thousand complaints, a thousand orders, came before him from a thousand mouths. The king now passed, and shortly after the traveller and his companions returned to Koscam, very little pleased with the reception they had met with.

Next day the army marched into the town in triumph, the Ras being at the head of the troops of Tigrè. He was bare-headed. Over his shoulder hung a cloak of black velvet ornamented with silver fringe. A boy with a silver wand about five feet and a half in length walked close to his stirrup on his right-hand; and behind him in a body marched all those soldiers who had slain and spoiled an enemy in battle, bearing upon their lances and firelocks small shreds of scarlet cloth, one for every enemy slain.

Behind these came the governors of Amhara and Begunder, wearing, as well as the other governors of provinces, one of the strangest headdresses in the world: a broad fillet bound upon the forehead and tied behind, in the middle of which was a horn, or conical piece of silver, about four inches long and richly gilt. Then followed the king, wearing upon his forehead a fillet of white muslin about four inches broad, which, like that of the provincial governors, was tied behind in a large double knot, and hung down about two feet over his back. Immediately around him were the great officers of state, with such of the young nobility as were without command. The household troops followed. And after these came the military executioners, with a man bearing upon a pole the stuffed skin of a man who had been flayed alive a short time before. This was suspended as a tasteful ornament upon a tree directly opposite the palace, for the solace and amusement of his majesty.

For some days after this triumphal entry, Bruce, though he daily visited his patients at the palace, was utterly neglected, not only by the Ras, but by Ozoro Esther herself, and every person in Gondar, except the Moors, who were never weary of expressing their gratitude for his successful attention to their children. On the 14th, however, he was once more brought into the presence of Ras Michael, at Koscam. Upon entering he saw the old man sitting upon a sofa, with his white hair dressed in many short curls. His face was lean, his eyes quick and vivid. Bruce thought he greatly resembled Buffon in face and person. His great capacity was clearly discernible in his countenance. Every look conveyed a sentiment, and he seemed to have no occasion for other language, and indeed spoke little. He shook the traveller by the hand, and, after a few moments’ pause, occasioned by the entrance of a messenger from the king, said, gravely, “Yagoube, I think that is your name, hear what I say to you, and mark what I recommend to you. You are a man, I am told, who make it your business to wander in the fields in search after trees and grass in solitary places, and to sit up all night alone looking at the stars of the heavens. Other countries are not like this, though this was never so bad as it is now. These wretches here are enemies to strangers. If they saw you alone in your own parlour, their first thought would be how to murder you; though they knew they were to get nothing by it, they would murder you for mere mischief. Therefore,” says the Ras, “after a long conversation with your friend Aylo, whose advice I hear you happily take, as indeed we all do, I have thought that situation best which leaves you at liberty to follow your own designs, at the same time that it puts your person in safety; that you will not be troubled with monks about their religious matters, or in danger from those rascals that might seek to murder you for money.”

He then informed him that the king had appointed him Baalomaal, and commander of the Korcob horse; and desired him to go and kiss the ground before him on his appointment. Bruce now expressed his acknowledgments, and brought forward his present, which the Ras scarcely looked at; but shortly after observing him standing alone, commanded the door to be shut, and then said to him, in a low voice, “Have you any thing private to say?”—“I see you are busy, sir,” said Bruce, “but I will speak to Ozoro Esther.” His anxious countenance brightened up in a moment. “That is true,” said he; “Yagoube, it will require a long day to settle that account with you. Will the boy live?”—“The life of man is in the hand of God,” replied Bruce; “but I should hope the worst is over.” Upon which he said to one of his servants, “Carry Yagoube to Ozoro Esther.”

After an interview with this lady, towards whom he conducted himself with a degree of familiarity which in any other country would have been fatal to him, he presented himself before the king, who, after various childish questions, and detaining him until a very late hour, dismissed him for the night. He then proceeded, with several other officers of the palace, to the house of a nobleman, where they had that evening been invited to supper. Here a quarrel took place between Bruce and a nephew of Ras Michael, originating in the gasconading character of both parties, the Abyssinian conducting himself like a vain barbarian, and Bruce like a man no less vain, but possessing the advantage of superior knowledge. The only person who appears to any advantage in this affair is Ras Michael, who, quelling his natural feelings, and magnanimously taking upon himself the protection of the weaker party, acted in a manner truly noble, and, whatever may have been his crimes, stood on this occasion superior to all around him.

This storm having blown over, Bruce assiduously attended to the duties of his office, and by the exercise of considerable prudence, raised himself gradually in the estimation of the court. He had boasted, in his quarrel with the Ras’s nephew, that through his superior skill in the use of firearms, he could do more execution with a candle’s end than his antagonist with an iron ball; and one day, long after that event, he was suddenly asked by the king whether he was not drunk when he made this gasconade. He replied that he was perfectly sober; and offered to perform the experiment at once in presence of the monarch. This, in fact, he did; and having shot through three shields and a sycamore table with a piece of candle, his reputation as a magician,—for, with the exception of the king and the Ras, they all seem to have accounted for the fact by supernatural reasons,—was more firmly established than ever.

About this time he lost his companion Balugani, who had been attacked in Arabia Felix by a dysentery, which put a period to his life at Gondar. Of this young man Bruce has said but little in his travels; but he regretted his death, which threw him for a time into a state of depression and despondency. From this, however, he was roused by the general festivity and rejoicing which took place in Gondar upon the marriage of Ozoro Esther’s sister with the governor of Bergunder. The traveller dined daily, by particular invitation, with the Ras. Feasting, in Abyssinia, includes the gratification of every sensual appetite. All ideas of decency are set aside; the ladies drink to excess; and the orgies which succeed surpass in wantonness and lack of shame whatever has been related of the cynics of antiquity.

Among the patients whom Bruce had attended on his first arrival at Gondar was Ayto Confu, the son of Ozoro Esther by a former husband. The gratitude of this young man for the kind attention of his physician, which had been manifested on numerous occasions, at length procured Bruce to be nominated governor of Ras el Feel, a small unwholesome district on the confines of Sennaar. To this government our traveller never designed to attend in person; but it enabled him to oblige his old friend Yasine, the Moor, whom he appointed to govern the district as his deputy.

Into the details of the civil dissensions which at this period convulsed this barbarous country it is altogether unnecessary to enter. Revolts, conspiracies, rebellions, succeeded each other in the natural course of things, and Bruce’s position compelled him to take a more or less active part in them all. In the spring of 1770, Fasil, the rival of Ras Michael, being once more in motion, the royal army left Gondar, to proceed in search of the rebels, and on entering the enemy’s territory exercised all kinds of barbarities and excesses.

From the king’s army he proceeded in May to visit the cataract of Alata on the Nile. The river, where he first came up with it, was found to run in a deep narrow channel, between two rocks, with great roaring and impetuous velocity. Its banks were shaded by beautiful trees and bushes; and there was no danger from crocodiles, as that animal does not ascend the stream so high. “The cataract itself,” says Bruce, “was the most magnificent sight that I ever beheld. The height has been rather exaggerated. The missionaries say the fall is about sixteen ells, or fifty feet. The measuring is, indeed, very difficult; but by the position of long sticks, and poles of different lengths, at different heights of the rocks, from the water’s edge, I may venture to say it is nearer forty feet than any other measure. The river had been considerably increased by rains, and fell in one sheet of water, without any interval, above half an English mile in breadth, with a force and noise that was truly terrible, and which stunned and made me for a time perfectly dizzy. A thick fume or haze covered the fall all round, and hung over the course of the stream both above and below, marking its track, though the water was not seen. The river, though swelled with rain, preserved its natural clearness, and fell, as far as I could discern, into a deep pool or basin in the solid rock, which was full, and in twenty different eddies to the very foot of the precipice, the stream, when it fell, seeming part of it to run back with great fury upon the rock, as well as forward in the line of its course, raising a wave, or violent ebullition, by chafing against each other.”

After contending that the assertion of Jerome Lobo, that he had sat under the curve made by the projectile force of the water rushing over the precipice, could not be true, he adds,—“It was a most magnificent sight, that ages, added to the greatest length of human life, would not efface or eradicate from my memory.” “It seemed to me as if one element had broke loose from, and become superior to, all laws of subordination; that the fountains of the great deep were extraordinarily opened, and the destruction of a world was again begun by the agency of water.”

His curiosity on this point having now been satisfied, he returned to the army, which shortly after, at Limjour, fought a desperate battle with the rebels, in which the latter were defeated. After this, Fasil, their commander, upon making his submission, was received into favour, and appointed governor of Damot and Maitsha. During these transactions, many of the servants of Fasil visited the royal camp, and Bruce, reflecting that the sources of the Nile lay in their master’s government, endeavoured to conciliate their good wishes by his attentions and presents. He likewise in their hearing spoke highly of Fasil, and on their departure gave them, not only a present for their master, but also for themselves. These men, moreover, requested him to prescribe something for a cancer on the lip, with which Welleta Yasous, Fasil’s principal general, was afflicted.

In return for this service, which they rated very high, saying in the presence of the king that Fasil would be more pleased with the cure of this man than with the magnificent appointments which the king’s goodness had bestowed upon him, Bruce only demanded that the village of Geesh, and the source of the Nile, should be given him; and that Fasil, as soon as it might be in his power, should be bound by the king to conduct him to the sources without fee or reward. This request was granted; and Fasil’s servants swore, in the name of their master, that the village and the fountains should belong to Yagoube and his posterity for ever.

On the 28th of October, 1770, Bruce and his party set out from Gondar to explore the sources of the Nile. Having passed by the lake of Tzana, he came up at Bamba with Fasil’s army, which was now once more in motion. Here he had an interview with this rebel chieftain, who was as insolent to strangers as he was undutiful to his sovereign. However, after much blustering and many exhibitions of vanity, in which Bruce, who was never at a loss on such occasions, was fully his equal, he seemed to relapse into what was probably his natural disposition, and promised to afford his guest the most ample protection. He then introduced him to seven chiefs of the Gallas, ferocious savages, who appeared in the eyes of Bruce to be so many thieves; and having informed him that he might pass in the utmost safety through their country, and that, in fact, he would very soon be related to them all, as it was their custom, when visited by any stranger of distinction, to give him the privilege of sleeping with their sisters and daughters. Upon this he put a question to the savages in the Galla language, probably asking them whether it were not so; and they all answered, says Bruce, by the wildest howl I ever heard, and struck themselves upon the breast, apparently assenting.

Fasil, who was fond of hearing the sound of his own voice, now made another long speech, and then turned to the Galla, who now got upon their feet; and the whole party standing round in a circle, and raising the palms of their hands, Fasil and the seven chiefs repeated a prayer about a minute long, the latter apparently with great devotion. “Now,” says Fasil, “go in peace; you are a Galla. This is a curse upon them and their children, their corn, grass, and cattle, if ever they lift their hands against you or yours, or do not defend you to the utmost, if attacked by others, or endeavour to defeat any design they may hear is intended against you.” He then took the traveller to the door of the tent, where there stood a handsome gray horse bridled and saddled, and said, “Take this horse; but do not mount it yourself. Drive it before you, saddled and bridled as it is; no man of Maitsha will touch you when he sees that horse.”

A guide was now given him by Fasil, and he took his leave. The horse was driven before him, and he proceeded towards the mysterious fountains of the Nile, surrounded on all sides by a people ignorant, brutal, and treacherous, and bearing a stronger resemblance in character than any other race of men to the profligate Mingrelians described by Chardin.

On the 3d of November he came in sight of a triple ridge of mountains, disposed one range behind another, nearly in form of three concentric circles, which he supposed to be the Mountains of the Moon, the “Montes Lunæ” of the ancients, near which the Nile was said to rise; and on the 4th, about three quarters after one o’clock, “we arrived,” says Bruce, “on the top of a mountain, whence we had a distinct view of all the remaining territory of Saccala, the mountain Geesh, and church of St. Michael Geesh, about a mile and a half distant from St. Michael Saccala, where we then were. We saw immediately below us the Nile itself strangely diminished in size, and now only a brook that had scarce water enough to turn a mill. I could not satiate myself with the sight, revolving in my mind all those classical prophecies that had given the Nile up to perpetual obscurity and concealment. The lines of the poet came immediately into my mind, and I enjoyed here, for the first time, the triumph which already, by the protection of Providence and my own intrepidity, I had gained over all that were powerful and all that were learned since the remotest antiquity.

Arcanum natura caput non prodidit ulli,

Nec licuit populis parvum te, Nile, videre;

Amovitque sinus, et gentes maluit ortus

Mirari, quam nôsse tuos.’”[^[12]]

[12]. Lucan, Phars. x. 295.

His guide, who, having formerly committed a murder in the village of Geesh, was afraid to enter it, made a number of lame excuses for not accompanying him to the fountains, and at length confessed the truth. His apprehensions, however, were not proof against his vanity and avarice. He had long been desirous of possessing a rich sash which Bruce wore about his waist, and was bribed by this article of finery to approach somewhat nearer to the scene of his past villany. After leading the traveller round to the south of the church, beyond the grove of trees which surrounded it, “This,” says he, “is the hill which, when you were on the other side of it, was between you and the fountains of the Nile. There is no other. Look at that hillock of green sod in the middle of that watery spot; it is in that the two fountains of the Nile are to be found. Geesh is on the face of the rock where yon green trees are. If you go the length of the fountain, pull off your shoes as you did the other day; for these people are pagans, and believe in nothing that you believe, but only in this river, to which they pray every day, as if it were God; but this, perhaps, you may do likewise.”

“Half-undressed as I was,” says Bruce, “by the loss of my sash, and throwing off my shoes, I ran down the hill towards the little island of green sods, which was about two hundred yards distant. The whole side of the hill was thick grown over with flowers, the large bulbous roots of which appearing above the surface of the ground, and their skins coming off on treading upon them, occasioned two very severe falls before I reached the brink of the marsh. I after this came to the island of green turf, which was in form of an altar, apparently the work of art, and I stood in rapture over the principal fountain which rises in the middle of it.

“It is easier to guess than to describe the situation of my mind at that moment, standing in that spot which had baffled the genius, industry, and inquiry of both ancients and moderns for the course of near three thousand years. Kings had attempted this discovery at the head of armies, and each expedition was distinguished from the last only by the difference of the numbers which had perished, and agreed alone in the disappointment which had uniformly and without exception followed them all.... Though a mere private Briton, I triumphed here in my own mind over kings and their armies; and every comparison was leading nearer and nearer to presumption, when the place itself where I stood, the object of my vainglory, suggested what depressed my short-lived triumph. I was but a few minutes arrived at the sources of the Nile, 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.”

This was extremely natural. He had proposed to himself an object in itself rather curious than useful, and in all probability had in his imagination invested these fountains themselves with a magnificent or mysterious character which the realities were found not to possess, and that depression of spirit which is occasioned by disappointment ensued. Besides, he could scarcely seriously disbelieve the fact that Paez had visited the spot before him; and, therefore, that however great his pleasure might be, as “a private Briton,” triumphing in his own mind over kings and their armies, he was not really the first European who had approached these fountains; that is, was not the discoverer of them. The talking of kings at the head of armies having made the discovery of the sources of the Nile their object, and failed, is a mere rhetorical figure of speech. When Ptolemy Euergetes was at Auxum, what was there to hinder his proceeding to Geesh? Bruce’s mode of describing his own achievements is pompous and vain; but he had purchased the right to be a little vain at so dear a rate that we readily forgive him.

Having by numerous observations discovered that the fountains of the Nile are situated in latitude 10° 59´ 25´´ N., and in longitude 36° 55´ 30´´ E., Bruce, after a stay of six days, prepared to return to Gondar. While he remained at Geesh, he contrived with his usual address to acquire the confidence of the inhabitants, with whom he lived in great familiarity and harmony. These people, as his guide had informed him, really worship the Nile. Annually, on the first appearance of the dog-star, or eleven days afterward according to others, the servant, or priest, of the river assembles the heads of the clans around the principal fountain and altar. Having sacrificed a black heifer which has never borne a calf, they plunge the head of the beast into the fountain, and then draw it out, and wrap it up in the hide, previously sprinkled on both sides with the water of the river, so as that it may never more be seen by mortal. The body of the heifer is then divided into two parts, carefully cleansed, and placed upon the hillock, where it is washed with water brought in the hollow of the hand, for no dish must be used by the elders or principal persons of the tribes. The flesh is then cut into pieces, one for each clan, and eaten raw. They then quench their thirst with the sacred waters of the Nile, and burn the bones to ashes on the spot where they have been sitting. When this part of the ceremony is over, the head is carried into a cavern, which, they assert, extends under the fountains, and there certain mysterious rites, the nature of which has never been revealed, are performed. What becomes of the head is unknown. The Abyssinians, in hatred of their pagan subjects, assert that the powers of hell unite with the river worshippers in devouring it; but, however they may dispose of it, they certainly pray to the spirit residing in the river, whom they address as the Everlasting God, Light of the World, Eye of the World, God of Peace, the Saviour, and Father of the Universe.

Relics of serpent-worship, which has in all ages extensively prevailed in the East, were likewise observed among the Agows, who use them, as the Romans did their sacred chickens, for purposes of divination.

On the 10th of November Bruce took his leave of the fountains of the Nile, and returned to Gondar. Here, as the civil war still raged with unexampled fury, he was during a whole year witness of all those atrocities which ferocious barbarians exercise towards each other when excited by ambition or revenge. At the termination of this period, however, notwithstanding that old law of Abyssinia forbidding strangers to quit the country, which had a thousand times been broken, he obtained the king’s permission to depart, though not before he had taken a solemn oath, which he never intended to fulfil, that, after having visited his home and friends, he would return.

Leaving Gondar on the 26th of December, 1771, with a numerous suite of attendants, he proceeded through the northern provinces of Abyssinia, the country of the Shangalla, and crossing the rivers Rabad, Dender, and Nile, arrived on the 29th of April, 1772, at Sennaar, the capital of Nubia. The next morning after his arrival he was summoned into the presence of the king, whom he found in a small apartment in his vast clay-built palace, dressed very meanly, and reposing on a mattress covered with a Persian carpet. He was a “fellow of no mark or likelihood,” with a “very plebeian countenance;” but he received the stranger civilly, asked him numerous questions, and furnished him with a very comfortable dinner of camel’s flesh. The crowds in the streets, however, were exceedingly insolent; and while they affronted and hooted at him as he passed, he called to mind with horror that, but a few years before, this same mob had murdered a French ambassador with all his attendants.

At this city he was detained by various circumstances until the 8th of September, and during this period was enabled to make numerous inquiries into the history of the country, civil and natural, together with the manners, customs, religions, and character of its inhabitants. But when the day of departure arrived, he proceeded with indescribable pleasure on his journey, having the Nile on his right-hand, and the Bahr-el-Abiad, or White River, which he never approached, on the left. On the 21st he again crossed the Nile, and after travelling along its banks for several days, took a long leave of its stream, and plunged into the vast desert of Nubia. The soil here consisted of fixed gravel, of a very disagreeable whitish colour, mixed with small pieces of white marble and pebbles like alabaster, and wholly bare of trees. As they proceeded, indeed, a few patches of coarse grass, with small groves of acacia, met and refreshed the eye. On the 14th of November they halted in a small hollow, called Waadi-el-Halboub, and “were here at once surprised and terrified,” says Bruce, “by a sight surely one of the most magnificent in the world. In that vast expanse of desert, from west and to north-west of us we saw a number of prodigious pillars of sand, at different distances, at times moving with great celerity, at others stalking on with a majestic slowness. At intervals we thought they were coming in a very few minutes to overwhelm us, and small quantities of sand did actually more than once reach us. Again they would retreat, so as to be almost out of sight, their tops reaching to the very clouds. There the tops often separated from the bodies; and these, once disjoined, dispersed in the air, and did not appear more. Sometimes they were broken near the middle, as if struck with a large cannon-shot. About noon they began to advance with considerable swiftness upon us, the wind being very strong at north. Eleven of them ranged alongside of us about the distance of three miles. The greatest diameter of the largest appeared to me at that distance as if it would measure ten feet. They retired from us with a wind at S.E., leaving an impression upon my mind to which I can give no name, though surely one ingredient in it was fear, with a considerable deal of wonder and astonishment. It was in vain to think of flying: the swiftest horse or fastest sailing ship could be of no use to carry us out of this danger, and the full persuasion of this riveted me as if to the spot where I stood.”

The appearance of these phantoms of the plain, as Bruce terms them, sent their guide to his prayers, and together with the danger which they were now in of perishing of thirst, produced in the whole party nothing but murmuring, discontent, and insubordination. Next day the moving sand-pillars again appeared. The sublimity of the scene,—a boundless desert, level as the sea, condemned to eternal desolation, without sounds or signs of life, animal or vegetable; the arid soil, drained of every particle of moisture, reduced by perpetual attrition to almost impalpable atoms, and raised aloft by whirlwinds into prodigious columns, which, as if instinct with life, glided along with preternatural rapidity,—all this, I say, no language, however magnificent, or exalted by metaphor and poetical fervour, could ever present in its proper terrors to the mind. These pillars on their second appearance were more numerous, but of inferior dimensions to those seen at Waadi Halboub. They had probably been careering over the waste in the darkness and silence of night; as, immediately after sunrise, they were observed, like a thick wood, reaching to the clouds, and almost darkening the sun, whose slanting rays, shining through them as they moved along, like enormous shadows, before the wind, gave them the appearance of pillars of fire. Our traveller’s attendants now became desperate: the Greeks shrieked out that the day of judgment was come; Ismael, a Turk, said it was hell; and the Africans exclaimed that the world was on fire. Bruce now demanded of their guide whether he had ever before witnessed such a sight. “Frequently,” replied the man, “but I have never seen a worse.” He added, however, that from the redness of the air, he dreaded the approach of something much more terrible than these fiery columns,—the simoom, which almost invariably ensued upon such a disposition of the atmosphere. This information greatly increased the apprehensions of the traveller; but he entreated the man to conceal his suspicions from their companions.

In the forenoon of the next day, being in sight of the rock of Chiggre, where they expected to refresh themselves with plenty of excellent water, and were therefore in high spirits, the guide cried out with a loud voice, “Fall upon your faces, for here is the simoom!” Bruce looked, he says, towards the south-east, and saw “a haze come in colour like the purple part of the rainbow, but not so compressed or thick. It did not occupy twenty yards in breadth, and was about twelve feet high from the ground. It was a kind of blush upon the air, and it moved very rapidly; for I scarce could turn to fall upon the ground with my head to the northward, when I felt the heat of its current plainly upon my face. We all lay flat on the ground, as if dead, till Idris (the guide) told us it was blown over. The meteor, or purple haze, which I saw, was indeed passed, but the light air that still blew, was of a heat to threaten suffocation. For my part, I found distinctly in my breast that I had imbibed a part of it; nor was I free of an asthmatic sensation till I had been some months in Italy, at the baths of Poretta, near two years afterward.”

The effect of this state of the atmosphere upon his companions was sudden and extraordinary. They were all seized with an unusual despondency, ceased to speak to each other, or if they spoke it was in whispers; from which Bruce conjectured, perhaps without reason, that some plot was forming against him. He therefore called them together, reprimanded them for their fears, exhorted them to take courage, reminded them, that whatever might be their sufferings, his own were not less than theirs; desired them to look at his swollen face, his neck blistered by the sun, his feet torn and bleeding, and to observe his voice nearly lost by the simoom. With respect to the scantiness of water, of which they had complained, he was so well persuaded that they had nothing to apprehend on this score, that he would allow each man an additional gourd-full from their present stock. In fact, if they lifted up their eyes, they would perceive in the distance, the bare, black, and sharp point of the rock Chiggre, where there was an abundance of water. The only point, therefore, was to hasten on in good spirits to this spot, where all their fears of perishing from thirst in the desert would immediately vanish. This speech restored the courage of the whole party, and they continued their march with something like energy. That same evening they reached Chiggre.

On the 17th of November they left the wells, and resumed their march through the desert. Having journeyed on during the greater part of the day, amused rather than terrified by the moving sand-columns, with which they were now become familiar, they halted late in the afternoon in a vast plain, “bounded on all sides by low sandy hills, which seemed to have been transported thither lately. These hillocks were from seven to thirteen feet high, drawn into perfect cones, with very sharp points, and well-proportioned bases. The sand was of an inconceivable fineness, having been the sport of hot winds for thousands of years.” These cones, in fact, were nothing more or less than the relics of a group of sandy pillars, which had been perhaps on the previous day in motion; and had they then advanced so far, might have overwhelmed them in their fall. Marks of the whirling motion of the pillars were distinctly seen in every heap.

In the course of the next day they passed by the spot where, but a few years before, one of the largest caravans that ever came out of Egypt, amounting to some thousands of camels, and conducted by the Ababdé and Bishareen Arabs, had been overwhelmed by a sand-storm; and the heaps which probably had collected over their bodies had somewhat raised the level of the desert in that place. Here numbers of gray granite rocks were scattered over the plain. A little beyond this they came to a wood of dwarf acacia-trees, which furnished a little browsing to their camels.

In the night of the 19th, while they were encamped at a well, an attempt was made by a single robber to steal one of their camels. From this circumstance, which informed them they were come into the neighbourhood of man, they began to fear that they had approached the camp of some of those wandering Arabs who extract a scanty subsistence out of these torrid plains, and dwell all their lives amid simooms and pillars of moving sand, which form the terror of all other men. In the morning, however, no Arabs appeared; all was still; but, in diligently scrutinizing the appearance of the sand, they discovered the track of a man, by following which they soon came in sight of two ragged, old, dirty tents, pitched with grass cords. Two of Bruce’s attendants found, on entering the smaller tent, a naked woman; and our traveller himself, and Ismael the Turk, saw, on entering the larger one, “a man and a woman, both perfectly naked; frightful emaciated figures, not like the inhabitants of this world. The man was partly sitting on his hams; a child, seeming of the age to suck, was on a rag at the corner, and the woman looked as if she wished to hide herself.” Upon these miserable wretches they all immediately rushed like wild beasts, threatening to murder them; and, in fact, brought them all bound to their encampment, with the intention, at least on the part of all but Bruce, to put them to death. However, after terrifying them greatly, and learning from them some particulars respecting the movements of the tribe to which they belonged, it was resolved that the man should accompany them in chains, as a guide; and the women, after their camels had been lamed, left where they were until the return of their husband. If the man led them into danger he was to be put to death without mercy; if he served them faithfully Bruce engaged to clothe both him and his women, to present him with a camel, and a load of dora for them all.

On the 22d one of the African attendants was seized with a kind of phrensy, and, their anxiety for their own preservation having extinguished their humanity, was left to perish among the burning sands. Their camels were now dropping off one by one; their bread grew scanty; and the water they found in the wells was so brackish that it scarcely served to quench their thirst. Languor and inactivity seized upon them all; all the weighty baggage and curiosities, such as shells, fossils, minerals, the counter-canes of the quadrant, telescopes, &c., were abandoned, and inevitable death appeared to stare them in the face.

Their Bishareen prisoner, however, seemed not to be affected in the least, either by fatigue or the hot winds, and by his ingenuity in contriving a bandage for Bruce’s feet probably saved the traveller’s life. Here and there upon the sands, the bodies of men who had been murdered, and of camels which had perished for want, met their eyes; and suggested the thought that their own carcasses might shortly increase the number. Two of their camels, which kneeled down and refused to rise, they killed, preserving their flesh for food, and taking the water out of their stomachs, as a precious addition to their stock. One of the party had lost an eye, and others, more fortunate, perhaps, dropped down dead by the brink of the well where they had been quenching their thirst. Still they pushed forward, and at length Bruce announced to his followers that they were approaching Assuan. “A cry of joy,” says he, “followed this annunciation. Christians, Moors, and Turks, all burst into floods of tears, kissing and embracing one another, and thanking God for his mercy in this deliverance; and unanimously, in token of their gratitude and acknowledgments of my constant attention to them in the whole of this long journey, saluting me with the name of Abou Ferege (Father Foresight), the only reward it was in their power to give.”

About nine o’clock next morning they beheld the palm-trees of Assuan, and shortly afterward arrived in a small grove in the environs of the city. The waters of the Nile being now before them, no consideration of prudence, no fears of the consequences which might possibly ensue, could check Bruce’s companions from running at once to the stream to drink. The traveller himself sat down among the trees, and fell asleep, overcome by heat and fatigue. However, when his arrival was made known to the Aga of Assuan, he was received and entertained with distinguished hospitality, and furnished with dromedaries to go in search of the baggage which he had been compelled to abandon in the desert. He then paid and discharged his guide; and to the Bishareen, who had faithfully served him from the day in which he took him prisoner, and was now become particularly attached to his person, he gave the privilege of choosing the best of his camels; and having, as he had promised, clothed him completely, and presented him with dresses for his wives, and a camel-load of dora, dismissed him. The Arab, whom almost unexampled misery had reduced to a robber, was so far overcome by his generous treatment, that he expressed his desires, with tears in his eyes, to enter Bruce’s service, and follow him over the world, having first returned into the desert, and provided for the subsistence of his family. This, however, could not be, and they parted, the Arab to his desert, and Bruce to his home.

From Syene, or Assuan, Bruce descended the Nile to Cairo, whence, after a short stay, he proceeded to Alexandria, and took ship for Marseilles. He remained some time on the Continent, where he was universally received in the most flattering manner, before he returned to his native land, which he did not reach until the middle of the summer of 1774, after an absence of twelve years. In 1776 he married a second time: by this wife he had two children, a son and a daughter; but he was not fortunate in his marriages, for in 1785 he again became a widower.

Various causes, among which the principal one appears to have been disgust at observing that his statements were in many instances thought unworthy of belief, retarded the composition and publication of his travels. At length, however, in 1790, seventeen years after his return to Europe, the result of his labours and adventures was laid before the world, and prejudice and ignorance united their efforts to diminish, at least, if they could not destroy, his chance of fame, the only reward which he coveted for all the hardships and dangers which he had encountered.

On the 27th of April, 1794, as he was conducting an aged lady from his drawing-room to her carriage, down the great staircase of his house at Kinnaird, his foot slipped, and falling with great force down several of the steps, he pitched upon his head, and was killed. He was buried in the churchyard of Larbert, in a tomb which he had erected for his wife.

I have carefully avoided interrupting the course of the narrative by entering into any discussions respecting those points on which Bruce’s veracity has been called in question. His detractors, without any exception of which I am aware, consist of men whose authority, in matters of this nature is no longer respected, or who never, except from their numbers, possessed any. No man of competent understanding and knowledge of mankind can read Bruce’s Travels without a thorough conviction that the writer was a person of the strictest honour and veracity, who, though as in the case of Paez, he might be hurried by wounded pride and indignation into the commission of injustice, was wholly incapable of deliberate falsehood. That the name of Dr. Johnson is found among those of Bruce’s enemies, is to be regretted on Dr. Johnson’s own account. But the circumstance can excite no surprise in any one who recollects that the doctor likewise distinguished himself among the calumniators of Milton—a name which has long since ranked among the first which history records, and is the representative, as it were, of every thing that is most sacred in genius, and most unsullied in virtue. The other cavillers at Bruce demand no ceremony. Their absurd rancour has been stimulated by a secret conviction of their own inferiority in talent and enterprise; and, despairing of raising themselves to his level, they have endeavoured to bring him down to their own. Swift explains in two lines the whole philosophy of this proceeding:—

I have no title to aspire:

Yet, if you sink, I seem the higher!

It will be remembered that Marco Polo met with very nearly the same fate with Bruce, being not only disbelieved during his lifetime, but having to endure, even on his death-bed, the monstrous incredulity of his nearest relations, who, pressing around him, conjured him for the love of Christ, and the salvation of his soul, to retract the fictions which they imagined he had advanced in his writings. With the noble intrepidity which Bruce, I doubt not, would have shown under similar circumstances, he refused to abate a jot of his assertions, which, he solemnly averred, fell far short of the truth. The persecution of Marco Polo, however, arose wholly from the ignorance of his contemporaries; but Bruce had a foible, abundantly visible in his writings, from which the great Italian traveller was altogether exempt—I mean an arrogant and intolerable vanity. Even the most charitable of readers must frequently, in perusing Bruce’s writings, be angered, if not disgusted, at its perpetual recurrence in the coarsest and most undisguised forms; but when we reflect, that notwithstanding this foible, or partly, perhaps, in consequence of it, he was one of the most enterprising, adventurous, and indefatigable of travellers, we readily consent to overlook this defect in consideration of the many excellences which accompany it. As a writer he is slovenly and immethodical, and destitute to a remarkable degree of the graces of style; but, on the other hand, he is always so much in earnest, and so natural, in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, that it would argue nothing short of actual stupidity to doubt of the truth of what he relates.

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