Now comes an encounter with Fasil, and the refusal of the chieftain to let the laird pass. But Yagoube wins in the end, by captivating the savage with feats of gunnery and horsemanship. Presently Fasil, completely won, brings Bruce a present of a fine, loose, muslin garment fit for an African lord, and a handsome grey horse.
“Take this horse,” said the chieftain; “do not mount it, but drive it before you, saddled and bridled as it is.”
On into the forest goes the tall laird; the savages flee before the chief’s horse, and fall down before it. On the second of November, 1770, James Bruce arrives at the Blue Nile.
He stood on the brink of a steep hill, and saw the springs of the river below, and the river flowing away as a brook that had “scarcely water to turn a mill.” Hurrying pell-mell down the steep hillside, and falling twice as he ran, Bruce “the Abyssinian” reached the welling flood. In his hand he carried a large coconut shell which he had carried with him from Arabia, and this he filled with Nile water, and tossed off to the health of King George.
“I was arrived at the source of the Nile,” he wrote, “through numberless dangers and sufferings the least of which would have overwhelmed me but for the continual goodness and protection of Providence. I was, however, but then half through my journey, and all those dangers which I had already passed awaited me again on my return. I found a despondency gaining ground fast upon me, and blasting the crown of laurels I had too rashly woven for myself.”
III
While in Abyssinia, Bruce observed a certain extraordinary custom. Had he forgotten to mention this custom in the volumes of travel he later published, he would have done well, for his description of the custom did more to brand him as a marvel monger than all the rest of the fantastic realities set down in his careful and accurate history of his Abyssinian years.
This custom was eating of raw flesh from the living animal.