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:—