Part 135

On the 25th of January, 1809, he received his final instructions, and on the 2d of March, he embarked at Cowes, for Malta, where he appeared in an oriental costume, and, by his judicious conduct, contrived to conceal his real character from several Swiss officers, whom he had previously known. Being unable to procure a vessel bound for Cyprus, he embarked in one sailing to the coast of Caramania. ‘I introduced myself,’ he says, ‘to the passengers, who were Tripolines, as an Indian Mohammedan merchant, who had been, from early years, in England, and was now on his way home; and I had the good fortune to make my story credible. During the course of our voyage, numerous questions were put to me relative to India, which I answered as well as I could; and when I was asked for a specimen of the Hindoo language, I answered them in the worst dialect of the Swiss-German.’ Having landed at Satalia, he made an excursion to Tarsus, where, finding a vessel bound for the coast of Syria, he embarked for that country, and entered it at the point where the Aasi, the ancient Orontis, falls into the sea. Here he joined a caravan proceeding to Aleppo, in his way whither he was much annoyed by the companions of his journey insisting that he was a Frank; and at Antakia, one going so far as to pull him by the beard, he resented the affront by giving the offender a blow on the face. On his arrival at Aleppo, he assumed the name of Ibrahim, and applied himself with unceasing assiduity to the study of the Arabic language, into which he made an attempt to translate Robinson Crusoe. In July, 1810, he started, by way of Palmyra, for Damascus; and, in the course of his journey, was twice attacked by banditti, and robbed of his watch and compass. He quitted Damascus in September, but returned to that city, after having visited the ruins of Balbec, Libanus, and Mount Hermon. He subsequently made an excursion into the Hauràn, the patrimony of Abraham, and, on the 1st of January, 1811, again entered Aleppo. From hence he accompanied an Arab sheikh into the desert towards the Euphrates, but the protection of his guide being insufficient, he was robbed of all his clothes, and compelled to return, without having accomplished any of the objects of his journey. ‘It was in this excursion to the desert,’ says Mr. Barker, the British consul at Aleppo, ‘that Burckhardt had so hard a struggle with an Arab lady, who took a fancy to the only garment which the delicacy or compassion of the men had left him.’ On the 14th of February, he finally quitted Aleppo, and once more returning to Damascus, made another journey from thence into the Hauràn, in the course of which, he discovered the ruins of a city unvisited by any other European, which he conjectured to be those of Petra, the capital of Arabia Petræa. The ruins are situate in the valley of Ghor, or Araba, the existence of which, he says, ‘appears to have been unknown to ancient as well as modern geographers.’ Speaking of Balka, he observes, ‘many ruined places and mountains in that district preserve the names of the Old Testament; and elucidate the topography of the province that fell to the share of the tribes of Gad and Reuben.’

After many hardships and dangers, our traveler reached Cairo, in Egypt, with the intention of joining a caravan, and traveling to Fezzan, in the north of Africa,――the grand object of his mission. Whilst, however, the caravan was preparing, he undertook an expedition to Nubia, on which he set out, accompanied by a guide, on the 14th of February, 1813. They were mounted on dromedaries, and Burckhardt’s only incumbrances were a gun, a sabre, a pistol, and a woollen mantle, which served by day for a carpet, and for a covering during the night. The country through which he passed was in a state of great distraction, but he proceeded in safety as far as the Mahass territory, on reaching which, ‘he found himself,’ says Mr. St. John, in his life of our traveler, ‘in the midst of the worst description of savages. The governor, a ferocious black, furiously intoxicated, and surrounded by numerous followers in the same condition, received him in a hut. In the midst of their drunken mirth, they called for muskets, and amused themselves with firing in the hut, and Burckhardt every moment expected that a random ball would put an end to his travels.’ Having proceeded up the Nile almost as far as Dongola, he turned towards the north, and at Kolbe swam across the river, ‘holding by his camel’s tail with one hand, and urging on the beast with the other.’ He then visited Ybsambul, Mosmos, Derr, and Assouan, where he remained till the 2d of March, 1814; his whole expenditure during the time of his stay, for himself, his servant, dromedary, and ass, not exceeding one shilling and sixpence per day.

Having assumed the character of a poor trader and a Turk of Syria, he on the day above-mentioned, set out with a caravan, through the deserts of Nubia, to Berbery and Shendy, as far as Suakim, on the Red sea, whence he performed his pilgrimage to Mecca by way of Jidda. During this journey, in the course of which he had an opportunity of confirming many of the statements of Bruce, he endured a series of hardships and sufferings scarcely inferior to those of Park in Africa. Whilst mad with thirst in the burning desert, he beheld the mocking mirage; and if he escaped burial beneath the overwhelming sand, lifted like a wave by the tempestuous blast, it was doubtful whether he had not yet a more dangerous foe to meet in the plundering Arab. At Damer, he cried beads for sale, to procure provisions for his ass; at Jidda, his finances were so low, that he was compelled to sell his slave, and he had already thoughts of resorting to manual labor, when he fortunately obtained three thousand piastres (about £100) by giving a bill upon Cairo. Crocodile’s flesh occasionally formed part of his food, and the dangers of the desert he found no greater than the inconveniences. Though almost worn out with fatigue, ‘I was obliged,’ he says, ‘every day, to fetch and cut wood, to light a fire, to cook, to feed the ass, and finally to make coffee; a cup of which, presented to my companions, was the only means I possessed of keeping them in a tolerable good humor.’ In his way through the Nubian desert, he relates a singular custom of the Arab guides, for the purpose of extorting small presents from travelers. ‘They alight,’ he says, ‘at certain spots, and beg a present; if it be refused, they collect a heap of sand, and mould it into the form of a diminutive tomb, and then placing a stone at each of the extremities, they apprise the traveler that his tomb is made; meaning, that henceforth there will be no security for him in this rocky wilderness.

Our traveler remained at Mecca from the 9th of September until the 15th of January, 1815, during which time he accurately noted the manners and customs of the holy city, without his real character being discovered, though it had been previously suspected by the pasha of Tayef, who jocosely observed, ‘It is not the beard alone which proves a man to be a true Moslem.’ On the 28th, Burckhardt reached Medina, which he quitted on the 21st of April, in a state of great mental depression, and still suffering from the recent attack of an intermittent fever. To add to his dejection, he found, on his arrival at Yambo, the plague in its most virulent shape: and being unable to procure a boat, he was obliged to remain a witness of its horrors for more than a fortnight, during which time, he says, ‘the air, night and day, was filled with the piercing cries of those who had been bereaved of the objects of their affection.’ At length, on the 24th of June, he reached Cairo, where, after having recruited his health, he employed himself in drawing up an account of his travels. In the spring of 1816, he visited Mount Sinai; and, having returned to Cairo, was making preparations to commence his long-delayed journey to Fezzan, to explore the source of the Niger, when he was attacked with dysentery on the 14th, and died on the 15th of October, 1817. ‘I have closed,’ says Mr. St. John, ‘the lives of few travelers with more regret.’ His obsequies were performed after the Mohammedan custom, according to his own request to Mr. Salt, to whom he observed, a few moments previously to his death, ‘that as he had lived as a Mussulman in the east, the Turks would claim his body; and perhaps,’ said he, ‘you had better let them.’

Thus fell another victim in the cause of geographical discovery, which, in Mr. Burckhardt, may be said to have lost one of its most able and enterprising devotees. Patient, courageous, cautious, and intelligent, no fatigues dispirited, no obstacle disconcerted, and no dangers dismayed him. He conformed himself to the manners of the various countries through which he passed with admirable tact; and, with an apparent carelessness of what was passing around him, suffered nothing worth observation to escape his attention.

JAMES BRUCE.

James Bruce was born at Kinnaird, near Falkirk, in Stirlingshire, on the 14th of December, 1730, and, in 1738, was placed under the care of his uncle, a barrister in London, who sent him, in January, 1742, to school, at Harrow. Here he so successfully prosecuted his studies, that Dr. Cox, the head-master, said of him, in a letter to a friend, ‘When you write to Mr. Bruce’s father about his son, you cannot say too much; for he is as promising a young man as ever I had under my care; and, for his years, I never saw his fellow.’ From Harrow, he went, for a few months, to a private academy, where he renewed his classical studies, and acquired a knowledge of French, drawing, arithmetic and geometry. In the November of 1747, he entered the University of Edinburgh, with the intention of studying the law; which, at his father’s desire, he had determined on adopting as his profession. Disinclination, however, and ill-health, induced him, in the spring of 1748, to relinquish for ever the sedentary labors of a law student; and being threatened with consumption, he retired to Scotland, where he remained till 1753. In the July of that year, he went to London, with the intention of embarking for the East Indies, where he purposed settling as a free trader, under the patronage of the Company, to whom he had already prepared a petition. An attachment, however, frustrated this design; and, in February, 1754, he married a Miss Allan, daughter of a deceased wine-merchant; and, for a short time, held a share in the business. This he relinquished on the death of his wife, which happened in Paris, eight months after her marriage; and such was the bigotry of the catholics towards protestants, that he was compelled to inter her at midnight, and to steal a grave in the burying ground assigned to the English embassy.

After this event, he again turned his attention to literature, and acquired a knowledge of the Spanish and Portuguese tongues, as well as the art of drawing; all of which studies he pursued with a view to their utility in the future travels that he secretly contemplated. At the commencement of the vintage season, in July, 1757, he embarked for the continent; and, after landing at Corunna, traversed Spain and Portugal, where he sojourned till the end of the year, devoting much attention to the social and political state of those countries. At the beginning of 1758, he passed over the Pyrenees to France; thence down the Rhine into Germany and the Netherlands, whence he was recalled to England, in July, by a letter announcing the death of his father. Whilst at Brussels, having taken the part of a young stranger, insulted in his presence, he was challenged to fight a duel, in which he severely wounded his antagonist, and was obliged to fly the city. The death of his father entitled him to an inheritance which afforded him ample means of efficiently and uninterruptedly pursuing the studies which were necessary to the success of his designs; and, by the year 1761, he had collected most of the Dutch and Italian books on the subject of oriental literature. He had also made great progress in the Arabic and Ethiopic languages, to the study of which was owing his determination to explore the sources of the Nile.

About this time, a rupture being anticipated between England and Spain, he visited Mr. Wood, the under-secretary of state, whom he requested to lay before the minister, Mr. Pitt, a plan he had concerted, when abroad, of an expedition against the latter country, by attacking Gallicia, in Ferrol. After much negotiation, his suggestion was adopted by the ministry, but it was subsequently abandoned, owing to the Portuguese ambassador having represented the great danger that would result to his country from such an expedition. Chagrined at the failure of his military project, he meditated returning to Scotland, where the recent discovery of some valuable mines on his estate would have enabled him to live with comfort and independence, when he received a message from Lord Halifax, requesting to see him before he left London. His lordship ridiculed the idea of Bruce’s retirement; and, after hinting to him the encouragement which the king would bestow on enterprise and discovery, suggested Africa to him, as a fit region for the exercise of both; and, as a further inducement to his visiting that country, offered him the situation of consul-general at Algiers, with leave to appoint a vice-consul in his absence. He promised him, in addition, the rewards stipulated in the affair of Ferrol, and advancement to a higher diplomatic station, if he made wide incursions into the former country.

He at length acceded to the proposal of Lord Halifax, and, in June, 1762, having previously been introduced to the king, set out for Africa. He reached that country on the 20th of March, 1763; when such was his knowledge of the Arabic, that he was able to fulfill his consular duties without the aid of an interpreter. On his way thither, he passed through the principal cities of Italy, where he made several sketches of its temples and ruins; and, it appears from his manuscripts, that he also intended writing a dissertation on the ancient and modern state of Rome. Shortly after his arrival at Algiers, a dispute occurred between him and the dey, concerning Mediterranean passes, for carrying which in a form differing from that originally prescribed, several British vessels were seized and destroyed; of which, having first remonstrated with the dey, he immediately wrote to inform government. The ministry, however, who had been secretly prejudiced against him, by a party hostile to him at Algiers, treated his communication very lightly; and, in May, 1765, being recalled to England, he was compelled, either to abandon the principal design of his residence in Barbary, or to make his intended excursions as a private individual. After some consideration, he adopted the latter alternative; and, on the 25th of August, sailed for Tunis, stopping, on his way thither, at Utica and Carthage, the ruins of which cities he stayed some time to examine, making drawings of the most important parts, in which he was assisted by a young Bolognese artist, whom he had brought with him from Italy. In one of his incursions into the interior of the country, he discovered Cirta, the capital of Syphax, whence he returned to Tunis, and started thence for Tripoli, by way of Gabs and Gerba. On entering the desert which borders the latter town, he was attacked by the Arabs, and compelled to return to Tunis, where he remained till August, 1766, when he crossed the desert in safety, and arrived at Tripoli. He next proceeded, across the Gulf of Sydra, to Bengazi and Ptolometa, and shortly afterwards, set sail for Crete, when a shipwreck drove him again upon the African shore, with the loss of every thing but his drawings and books, which he had fortunately despatched from Tripoli to Smyrna. From Begazi, the place of his shipwreck, and where he was cruelly treated, he escaped, by a French vessel, to Canea, where he was detained by an intermittent fever, till the end of April, 1767, when he proceeded, by way of Rhodes, to Sidon.

On the 16th of September he commenced his journey to Balbec, which he reached on the 19th of the same month; and, having returned to Tripoli, set out, in a few weeks, for Palmyra. After making several drawings, which, as well as those of Balbec, he afterwards presented to the king, he traveled along the coast to Latakia, Antioch, and Aleppo, where he was attacked by a fever, from which he with great difficulty recovered. About this time, meditating the discovery of the source of the Nile, he left Aleppo for Alexandria, where he arrived on the 20th of June, 1768. From hence he proceeded by land to Rosetta, where he embarked on the Nile for Cairo. After impressing the bey of the city with an idea of his skill in medicine and prophecy, he sailed to Syene, visiting, in his way thither, the ruins of Thebes; and, on the 19th of February, 1769, set out from Kenne, through the Thebaid desert, to Cosseir, on the Red Sea; and from thence proceeded to Tor and Jidda, where he landed on the 5th of May. After making several excursions in Arabia Felix, he quitted Loheia, on the 3d of September, for Masuah; where on his arrival, he was detained for some weeks, by the treachery and avarice of the governor of that place, who attempted to murder him, in consequence of his refusal to make him an enormous present. In February, 1770, he entered Gondar, the capital of Abyssinia, the ras of which city appointed him gentleman-usher of the king’s bed-chamber, commander of the household cavalry, and governor of a province.

On the 27th of October, after having taken an active part, in the councils of the sovereign, and effected several cures of persons about the court attacked with the small-pox, he left the capital, and set out in search of the source of the Nile, which he discovered at Saccala, on the 14th of the following November. The joy he felt on the occasion is thus described by himself: ‘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, history, and inquiry of both ancients and moderns, for the course of nearly 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. Fame, riches, and honor, had been held out, for a series of ages, to every individual of the myriads those princes commanded, without having produced one man capable of gratifying the curiosity of his sovereign, or wiping off the stain upon the enterprise and abilities of mankind, or adding this desideratum for the encouragement of geography. Though a mere private Briton, I triumphed here in my own mind over kings and their armies; and every comparison was leading the nearer to presumption, when the place itself where I stood, the object of my vain glory, suggested what depressed my short-lived triumphs. I was but a few minutes arrived at the source of the Nile, though numberless dangers and sufferings, the least of which would have overwhelmed me, but for the continual goodness and protection of Providence; I was, however, then but 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.’

After returning to Gondar, our traveler found much difficulty in obtaining permission to proceed on his way homewards; it being a rule with the inhabitants never to allow a stranger to quit Abyssinia. A civil war breaking out in the country about the period of his intended departure, he was compelled to remain in it till the December of the following year, and took part in one of their battles, in which his valiant conduct was such that the king presented him with a rich suit of apparel, and a gold chain of immense value. At length, at the end of 1771, he set out from Gondar, and in the February of the following year, arrived at Senaar, where he remained two months, suffering under the most inhospitable treatment, and deceived in his supplies of money which compelled him to sell the gold chain he had been presented with. He then proceeded by Chiendi, and Gooz, through the Nubian desert, and on the 29th of November, reached Assouan, on the Nile, after a most dreadful and dangerous journey, in the course of which he lost all his camels and baggage, and twice laid himself down in the expectation of death. Having procured, however, fresh camels, he returned to the desert and recovered most part of his baggage, with which, on the 10th of January, he arrived at Cairo: where, ingratiating himself with the bey, he obtained permission for English commanders to bring their vessels and merchandise to Suez, as well as to Jidda, an advantage no other European nation had before been able to acquire. In the beginning of March he arrived at Alexandria, whence he sailed to Marseilles; where he landed about the end of the month, suffering under great agony from a disease called the Guinea worm, which totally disabled him from walking, and had nearly proved fatal to him during his voyage. Notwithstanding, however, the perils he underwent, and the barbarities he witnessed in the course of his travels, and particularly at Abyssinia, yet even that country he left with some regret, and would often recall, with a feeling almost of tenderness, the kindnesses he had received there, especially from the ras’s wife, Ozoro Esther, between himself and whom a very affectionate intimacy had existed.

After residing a few weeks in the south of France, he set out for Paris, in company with Buffon, to whom he communicated much valuable information which that celebrated naturalist has acknowledged in his advertisement to the third volume of the History of Birds. His health being still unconfirmed, he left the French capital in July, and made a second tour into Italy where he resided till the spring of 1774, when he again returned to France, and thence proceeded to England, which he reached in June following, after an absence of twelve years. Previously to leaving Scotland, he had contracted an engagement with a lady, whom, during his travels, he never forgot; and he was so incensed, on his arrival at Rome, on hearing that she had married an Italian marquess, that he insisted on fighting with her husband, who, however, declined the challenge. After remaining some months in London, he returned to his mansion at Kinnaird, to regulate his private affairs, which he found greatly disordered in consequence of his relations having supposed him dead, and taken possession of great part of his effects; to prevent a recurrence of which, he married the daughter of Thomas Dundas, Esq., of Fingask, who, after bearing him three children, died in the spring of 1785.