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.