Chapter XI: Part 11

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]

Footnote 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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JONAS HANWAY.

Born 1712.—Died 1786.

JONAS HANWAY, equally celebrated as a traveller and a philanthropist, was born on the 12th of August, 1712, at Portsmouth, in Hampshire. His father dying while he was yet a child, he was removed with the other members of the family to London, where he received an education suited to the course of life he was intended to pursue, and at the age of seventeen was placed as an apprentice in a mercantile house at Lisbon. Here Hanway conceived a passion for a lady then renowned for her beauty and accomplishments; but being unsuccessful in his love, he for ever renounced all idea of marriage, though he continued to the latest hour of his life an ardent advocate and admirer of womankind. Shortly after the expiration of his apprenticeship he returned to London.

Nothing remarkable occurred in the life of Hanway until the year 1743, when he entered as a partner into the house of Mr. Dingley, a merchant at Petersburg, for which city he embarked in the month of June of the same year. His character for integrity and perseverance was soon established in Russia. In the September of 1743, a few months after his arrival, he was appointed agent of the Russia Company in Persia, and intrusted with the management of the whole Caspian trade. He very quickly set out on his mission. His suite consisted of an interpreter, a clerk, a Russian servant, a Tartar boy, and a guard; and he was intrusted with twenty carriage-loads of English cloth. With this train he proceeded through Moscow to the banks of the Volga, where he embarked in a vessel for Astrakhan, from whence, after a short stay, he sailed down to Yerkie. Here he procured a passage to Persia, and traversing the whole length of the Caspian from north to south, arrived on the 3d of December at Lanjaron, in Persia. Here he was well received by Mr. Elton, a captain in the service of Nadir Shah, and formerly agent of the Russia merchants. With this gentleman he remained seven days, and then continued his voyage. As they steered towards the east the sky grew brighter, and the air, which had hitherto been raw and cold, became gradually warmer. The lofty peak of Mount Demawund, thirty leagues inland, was visible during four days. They reached Astrabad on the 18th of December, and their vessel, which resembled those of the Russian pirates, who usually committed great depredations on that coast, caused so much terror in the inhabitants, that they for some time refused to hold any communication with them.