Part 24

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.