The Pale Abyssinian: The Life of James Bruce, African Explorer and Adventurer

The voyage up the Nile was by necessity a leisurely one. Abou Cuffi, though skilled, was often drunk and the wind was, at that season, ill-suited to their journey. Many mornings they had to employ people to tow them against the current. Bruce was enjoying himself, however. He made friends with the Sheikh of the Howadat, a local tribe, and on the first two days went off on archaeological excursions, returning to the boat at night. This qualified him to do something he loved – argue about the findings of his predecessors: ‘Mr Niebuhr, the Danish traveller, agrees with Dr Pococke [about the location of Memphis]. I believe neither Shaw nor Niebuhr were ever at Metrahenny’.

Bruce was not a man to worry about libel or speaking ill of the dead so he carried on for another twenty pages. It is the one point in the Travels when he realizes he might be over egging the pudding: ‘Our wind was fair and fresh, rather a little on our beam; when, in great spirits, we hoisted our main and fore-sails, leaving the point of Metrahenny, where our reader may think we have too long detained him’.

The journey had started in earnest. From Cairo onwards, every night Balugani would calculate the temperature and Bruce would take the longitude and latitude. They would record detailed notes of everything they did, things they saw and customs they observed. Until now they had been on an extremely well-organized painting tour but from the moment they left Cairo they were on a scientific expedition, measuring, weighing and recording everything they came across. The tables on which they measured the weather and distances they travelled are amazing documents in themselves, not merely for the information they contain. Even when they were sick from tiredness or seriously ill, Bruce would take the readings and Balugani would enter them. Bruce even charted every twist and turn of the Nile, inserting the names of the villages along the way, marking accurate longitude and latitude measurements that had never before been available. He was determined that his journey should not merely be a jaunt. This was not a sponsored expedition, but neither was it that of a rich young man going off to find himself: Bruce wanted it to be useful. It was to be a well-documented voyage of discovery, of value to people who followed in his footsteps. For he was quite sure of one thing: follow they would.

Every night they had to post guards, for the villages they passed through were teeming with robbers, notorious for swimming out to anchored boats and stealing anything they could lay their hands on. They encountered trouble only when Bruce broke his own rules and tried to visit some ruins in a place where he had no introduction to the locals.

Abou Cuffi’s son Mahomet went on shore, under pretence of buying some provision, and to see how the land lay, but after the character we had of the inhabitants, all our fire-arms were brought to the door of the cabin. In the meantime, partly with my naked eye and partly with my glass, I observed the ruins so attentively as to be perfectly in love with them.

Bruce was destined to venture no closer. Mahomet came racing back to the boat – his turban stolen – with the entire village chasing after him. A few shots were fired at the boat and they cast off hurriedly whilst Bruce ranted at the villagers.

I cried out in Arabic, ‘Infidels, thieves, and robbers! come on, or we shall presently attack you:’ upon which I immediately fired a ship blunderbuss with pistol small bullets, but with little elevation, among the bushes, so as not to touch them. The three or four men that were nearest fell flat upon their faces, and slid away among the bushes on their bellies, like eels, and we saw no more of them.

Their progress was unhurried but they were covering a lot of ground and learning a great deal: ‘I was then beginning my apprenticeship, which I fully completed,’ remarked the explorer. One minute he would be drawing pictures of irrigation methods in his commonplace book and measuring the height of the wheat growing in the thin strip of land between the mountains that run parallel with the Nile, the next he would be exposing myths for future publication: ‘I was very pleased to see here, for the first time, two shepherd dogs lapping up the water from the stream, then lying down in it with great seeming leisure and satisfaction. It refuted the old fable, that the dogs living on the banks of the Nile run as they drink, for fear of the crocodile’. He never entirely cured himself of these bizarre asides which, though irksome to the scholar, are a delight to the general reader (for whom, in the end, he wrote). The running dogs of the Nile, now unheard of, were evidently well-known to eighteenth-century audiences.

Each day they would stop at whichever ruin happened to be next and from studying them Bruce came to many conclusions, some of which were correct, others less so. He guessed the location of Memphis correctly, but when he visited Cleopatra’s and Caesarian’s temple at Dendera, he decided that the ancient Egyptians must all have lived in caves because he could only find the remains of temples and graves. He also came to some rather startling conclusions about the Egyptian language which he drew from his study of the hieroglyphics: that it grew out of Ethiopic. All these, though, must be taken in context for his was a rapid progress of the Nile and he had no time to do any detailed research. He does not claim to be an oracle on these points.

At Thebes, however, Bruce made an important discovery; important not only because he was the first person to describe an intriguing facet of Egyptian life, but also because it led to his being disbelieved when he returned to London. In the tomb of Rameses III he discovered a painting of a ‘man playing upon a harp’ thus dating anew the origins of music. The occupant of the tomb was not known at the time. Until this was verified, it became known, after his death – through the respectable medium of Murray’s guide book of Egypt – as Bruce’s Tomb.

The whole principles on which this harp is constructed, are rational and ingenious, and the ornamented parts are executed in the very best manner.

The bottom and sides of the frame seem to be fineered, and inlaid, probably with ivory, tortoise-shell, and mother of pearl, the ordinary produce of the neighbouring seas and deserts. It would be even now impossible, either to construct or to finish a harp with more taste or elegance.

Everything which Bruce wrote and said about this harp and its player is true. The fresco is still there, complete with Bruce’s graffito upon it. It was, however, greeted with incredulity by many of his compatriots on his return to London. He described the harp to Doctor Burney, the musicologist, who then asked Bruce to write an article about it for his forthcoming History of Music. It was Bruce’s first published writing and the reaction to it gave Bruce a chastening introduction to public criticism. Fanny Burney, Dr Burney’s daughter, was quite wrong in her expectation of how Bruce’s letter and paintings would be received when published. She wrote in her diary:

Mr Bruce, that Great Lyon, has lately become very intimate with my father, and has favoured him with two delightful original drawings, done by himself, of instruments which he found at the Egyptian Thebes, in his long and difficult and enterprising travels, and also with a long letter concerning them, which is to be printed in the History. These will be great ornaments to the book; and I am happy to think that Mr Bruce, in having so highly obliged my father, will find by the estimation he is in as a writer, that his own name and assistance will not be disgraced, though it is the first time he has signed it for any publication, with which he has hitherto favoured the world.

Within days of the History’s publication, the cataloguer of the Theban lyre and the musical instruments of Ethiopia became known as the Theban liar. The ever acerbic Horace Walpole wrote to his friend, the Rev. William Mason,

It is unlucky that Mr Bruce does not posses [sic] another secret reckoned very useful to intrepid travellers, a good memory. Last spring he dined at Mr Crauford’s, George Selwyn was one of the company; after relating the story of the bramble [which we will hear later] and several other curious particulars, somebody asked Mr Bruce, if the Abyssinians had any musical instruments? ‘Musical instruments,’ said he, and paused – ‘Yes I think I remember one lyre’; George Selwyn whispered his neighbour, ‘I am sure there is one less since he came out of the country.’ There are now six instruments there.

It is extraordinary that when Bruce was being scrupulously truthful he was disbelieved, for when he is genuinely glamorizing his account or being economic with the truth, he invariably gets away with it. It must have made him wildly angry in the early years after his return and could well have allowed him to justify to himself his embellishments, on the basis that no one was going to believe him anyway. Walpole’s otherwise erroneous judgement on Bruce’s character was, however, correct in one respect: he was not a man to be trifled with. He added a proviso in his letter to Mason: ‘Remember this letter is for your own private eye, I do not desire to be engaged in a controversy or a duel.’

Bruce and Balugani had set up their easels to paint as many of the frescoes as they could but their guides were frightened of attack by the grave-robbers who lived in the surrounding hills and thus refused to stay. They extinguished all the torches and left Bruce and Balugani in the dark, forcing them to leave.

Very much vexed, I mounted my horse to return to the boat. The road lay through a very narrow valley, the sides of which were covered with bare loose stones. I had no sooner got down to the bottom, than I heard a great deal of loud speaking on both sides of the valley; and, in an instant, a number of large stones were rolled down upon me, which, though I heard in motion, I could not see, on account of the darkness; this increased my terror … I accordingly levelled my gun as near as possible, by the ear, and fired one barrel among them. A moment’s silence ensued, and then a loud howl, which seemed to have come from thirty or forty persons. I took my servant’s blunderbuss and discharged it where I heard the howl, and a violent confusion of tongues followed, but no stones.

Bruce was learning quickly about how to deal with dangers on the road. ‘When in doubt – shoot’, was his policy, though he was careful about whom he shot at. When it seemed impolitic to harm an adversary he merely terrified them with bloodcurdling exhibitions of firepower. On this occasion Bruce and Balugani made it back to the boat with no casualties and believing ‘it would be our fault if they found us in the morning’, cast off and floated down to Luxor ‘where there was a governor for whom I had letters’. He was impressed by the ‘magnificent scenes of ruins’ at Luxor and nearby Karnak although he did not purchase anything. Already, it seems, rapacious Westerners were buying up the best bits of ancient Egypt and taking them home. A row of sphinxes ‘had been covered with earth till very recently, a Venetian physician and antiquary bought one of them at a very considerable price, as he said, for the king of Sardinia. This has accused several others to be uncovered, though no purchaser hath yet offered.’

The day before they arrived in Aswan, Bruce went to see the chief of a tribe of desert Arabs, Sheikh Nimmer. Bruce and the sheikh’s son had met in Cairo where Bruce had dispensed some medicine for the old man. He had promised at the time that he would come and check on his patient later which, with an eye on the main chance, he was now doing. By prescribing some more drugs and teaching the servants how to make a special type of lime juice for the old sheikh, Bruce managed to extract a sincere oath of loyalty.

The great people among them came, of about two minutes long, by which they declared themselves, and their children, accursed, if ever they lifted their hands against me in the Tell [the cultivated part of Egypt], or field, in the desert, or on the river; or in case that I or mine, should fly to them for refuge, if they did not protect us at the risque of their lives, their families, and their fortunes, or, as they emphatically expressed it, to the death of the last male child among them.

Bruce could not know how useful this would prove in the future. He sailed on down to Aswan with not a worry in his head. He had a letter of credit on a trader there and one of introduction to the head of the garrison and the ruler of the town He was sure of a good reception and a comfortable night’s rest. Both of these he received before going to visit the first cataract, just above the town (no longer there due to the construction of the dam). After five days they began their return up the Nile towards Cus where they would strike out across the desert for the Red Sea and Abyssinia. It would be more than three years before Bruce saw Aswan again and it would be in markedly different circumstances. At Cus, he made his final preparations.

As I was now about to enter on that part of my expedition, in which I was to have no further intercourse with Europe I set myself to work to examine all my observations, and put my journal in such forwardness by explanations, where needful, that the labours and pains I had hitherto been at, might not be totally lost to the public, if I should perish in the journey I had undertaken, which, from all information I could procure, every day appeared to be more and more desperate. [This journal no longer exists. The Yale Center for British Art owns Bruce’s letters, diaries and notebooks and a book which purports to be the journal of his travels. It is, however, transparently something which he transcribed on his return, for the writing is too uniform and it is in far too well-preserved a state to have been the journal that accompanied him on his travels.] Having finished these, at least so far as to make them intelligible to others, I conveyed them to my friends Messrs Julian and Rosa, at Cairo, to remain in their custody till I should return, or news come that I was otherwise disposed of.

On 16 February 1769, well aware of the dangers ahead, Bruce consigned himself to the desert. He had made friends with a group of Turkish pilgrims from Anatolia and an Arab to whom he had given transport up the Nile. The Turks had an odd claim on Bruce for they came from ‘a district which they call Caz Dagli, corruptly Caz Dangli, and this the Turks believe was the country from which the English first drew their origin; and, on this account they never fail to claim kindred with the English wherever they meet, especially if they stand in need of their assistance’.

They were all part of a larger caravan but they distrusted their travelling companions, so they made plans with Bruce and his group to protect each other and fight as one if threatened by others in their caravan or by the local Atouni tribe. The Atounis made it their business to set upon and plunder such caravans as theirs. Bruce was to be in charge and all the valuables were put in his immediate baggage:

I cannot conceal the secret pleasure I had in finding the character of my country so firmly established among nations so distant, enemies to our religion, and strangers to our government. Turks from Mount Taurus, and Arabs from the desert of Libya, thought themselves unsafe among their own countrymen, but trusted their lives to and their little fortunes implicitly to the direction and word of an Englishman, whom they had never before seen.

Anticipating that he would see no more of his countrymen for some time, Bruce was suffering an attack of the kind of patriotism usually only inspired by the sight of a British consul from behind the bars of a foreign jail. The allies arranged passwords for use during the night, and set off into the desert ‘full of terror about the Atouni’.

It was on this eight-day desert crossing that Bruce first succumbed to a temptation which his family would be unable to resist in generations to come: ‘On each side of the plain, we found different sorts of marble, twelve kinds of which, I selected and took with me’.

The selection and removal of marbles when in foreign parts was to become something of a tradition among Bruce’s descendants, reaching its apogee in his cousin twice removed, the 7th Earl of Elgin. His own interest in marble – though not on such an industrial scale: he only collected small stones – seems almost obsessive. The glowing mountains that punctuate the route to Cosseir are indeed impressive, eight miles of ‘dead green, supposed serpentine marble’ but Bruce describes them in intricate detail, even for him, from the verde antico – ‘by far the most beautiful kind I had ever seen’, to the ‘red marble, in prodigious abundance, but of no great beauty’. It is almost as though he planned to return and start a quarrying enterprise to complement his coal mines.

It was not long before their fears of banditry were realized. An Arab was apprehended trying to steal from Bruce’s tent and was beaten to death by his guards before the Scot could intervene. This was an unfortunate incident, the more so because the Arab worked for Sidi Hassan, the caravan leader. Relations only worsened from then on. After much negotiation, the two leaders had a cagey meeting in the desert at which their respective retinues squared off against each other but no blood was spilled: an uneasy truce was called. It was in this atmosphere that, after ten days, they arrived in Cosseir where Bruce wreaked his revenge. He reported Sidi Hassan to the Bey who promised to discipline him. ‘Now Shekh,’ said Bruce to the Bey, ‘I have done everything you have desired, without ever expecting fee, or reward; the only thing I now ask you, and it is probably the last, is, that you revenge me upon this Hassan.’

Before the Bey could take action, however, Hassan was set upon by the Turks who had allied with Bruce in the desert crossing:

The whole party drew their swords, and … they would have cut Sidi Hassan in pieces, but, fortunately for him, the Turks had great cloth trousers, like Dutchmen, and could not run, whilst he ran very nimbly in his. Several pistols, however, were fired, one of which shot him in the back part of the ear; on which he fled for refuge to the Bey and we never saw him again.

The fashionably hobbled Turks soon left on the boat that Bruce was to charter for his journey to Jiddah (Jeddah).

This was not the only drama that occurred in the ‘small mud-walled village’ that was their embarkation point on the Red Sea. Abd-el-gin, one of Bruce’s servants, was kidnapped and the explorer unwisely charged off alone into the desert to negotiate for his return. ‘I had not got above a mile into the sands, when I began to reflect on the folly of my undertaking. I was going into the desert among a band of savages, whose only trade was robbery and murder, where, in all probability, I should be as ill treated as the man I was attempting to save.’

In a stroke of luck that showed the benefit of his medical training, the kidnappers turned out to be kinsmen of Sheikh Nimmer. He was able to claim protection and rescue Abd-el-gin with the noose, as yet untightened, around his neck.

The Bey soon left Cosseir to continue his tour and Bruce, as the most important person remaining in the town, moved into the fort. While waiting for the boat which would take him to Jiddah, Bruce hired a smaller boat and sailed off to investigate the emerald mountains which, according to Pliny, were supposed to be in the vicinity. Unsurprisingly, they were not made of emeralds. It was another unnecessary brush with death. As he described it in his commonplace book: ‘Nothing but a belief of pre-destination should make a man embark in such vessels they are loaded till within ten inches of the water’s edge after which two planks are added to the waist of the vessel and over these mats are fixed tarred at the joinings and this is all we have to rely upon to keep out the waves.’

They were on their way back to Cosseir after a peaceful voyage during which they had eaten shellfish and made maps of the rocks along the shore, when a storm blew up. It was soon discovered that the sail was nailed to the mast thus making it impossible to take down. The boat started to heave and was in imminent danger of sinking when the captain gave up and consigned their fate to Allah. Incensed, Bruce raged in fury.

‘What I order you is, to keep steady at the helm,’ shouted Bruce over the roar of the wind:

mind the vane on the top of the mast, and steer straight before the wind, for I am resolved to cut that main-sail to pieces, and prevent the mast from going away, and your vessel from sinking to the bottom … D—n Sidi e Genowi, you beast, cannot you give me a rational answer? Stand to your helm, look at the vane; keep the vessel straight before the wind, or by the great G – d who sits in heaven … I will shoot you dead the first yaw the ship gives, or the first time that you leave the steerage.

With that, he lurched across the boat, having ripped off most of his clothes – in case it became necessary to swim – and tore the mainsail to pieces with a machete. When they eventually made it back to the tiny port at Cosseir, they discovered that three boats from that village alone had been lost that day.

On 5 April they were able to set sail for Jiddah in the boat which Bruce had previously chartered. This had canvas sails which could be furled and ‘though small – was tight and well-rigged’. The ship’s captain was experienced and trustworthy though he had an uncanny likeness to an ape, which Bruce found endlessly amusing. He was indeed known by everyone as Ali the Ape. Not one to go on a leisurely cruise when there was work to be done, Bruce decided that he must chart the Red Sea while he was there and hence spent much of his time taking measurements and hurling plummets over the side of the boat. Marine navigation was not something he had studied, yet his chart of the Red Sea was used and valued for many years afterwards. Owing to the plethora of treacherous reefs in the narrow sea, it had previously been impossible for larger boats to travel its entire length. Combined with a treaty with the Bey of Cairo which he managed to forge on his way home, Bruce’s soundings changed all that. He also made an exhaustive survey of where drinking water could be procured, where it was safe to land and which languages were spoken at which ports.

In his Original Portraits, first published forty years after Bruce’s death, John Kay gave an example of how thoroughly Bruce had done the job: ‘Sir David Baird,’ he reported, ‘while commanding the British troops in the Red Sea, publicly declared that the safety of the army was mainly owing to the striking accuracy of Mr Bruce’s chart.’

Baird was a great popular hero who had been captured by Tipoo Sahib in India in 1780 and held captive for four years when he was in his early twenties. In 1801, by then promoted to general and knighted, he led a relief force from the Indian army to help in the removal of Napoleon from Egypt. He sailed up the Red Sea, using Bruce’s chart, marched from Cosseir, using Bruce’s map, and then sailed down the Nile – arriving in Alexandria with plenty of time left to assist in its capture.

The Red Sea inspired Bruce in many way, yet though he succeeded in much that he set out to do there a few of his ambitions proved too challenging. He did chart the sea and open it up to British trade but failed in his desire to solve the riddles of the Bible and the classical writers. He had tracked down and rejected the emerald mountains; he now set himself the formidable task of discovering how Moses parted the sea when being pursued by the Egyptians: ‘If the Etesian wind, blowing from the north-west in summer, could heap up the sea as a wall, on the right, or to the south, of fifty feet high, still the difficulty would remain, of building the wall on the left hand, or the north. Besides, water standing in that position for a day, must have lost the nature of fluid.’

After much time spent in these bizarre musings he eventually came to a conclusion he deemed satisfactory:

This passage is told us, by scripture, to be a miraculous one; and, if so, we have nothing to do with natural causes. If we do not believe Moses, we need not believe the transaction at all, seeing that it is from his authority alone we derive it. If we believe in God that he made the sea, we must believe he could divide it when he sees proper reason, and of that he must be the only judge.

The captain of the ship had various cargoes which needed collecting and depositing around the Red Sea so Bruce received a guided tour on his way down to Jiddah. He stopped off in Yambo, where the inhabitants were engaged in civil war and where he watched a savage battle which halted only because of a lack of ammunition, and he stretched his legs on islands whose wildlife he decimated in order to vary the constant diet of fish. The voyage gave him time to prepare his mind for Abyssinia and to ponder which towns corresponded with the ones he had read about in the works of the geographers Herodotus and Cosmas Indicoplustes. It was 3 May before they ‘anchored in the port of Jidda, close up on the key, where the officers of the custom-house immediately took possession of our baggage’.

When Bruce had set off to Cosseir across the desert he had been excited by the fact that it was the last of civilization he would see for some time. He had forgotten about Jiddah where British ships from India came to trade with Arabia. They could go no further thanks to insufficient treaties and the treachery of the waters but they were firmly ensconced at the Red Sea port. There was a factory and a small community of British working for the East India Company who had to loiter there in between journeys, waiting for the monsoon trade winds to turn to their advantage. There were nine British merchantmen at anchor when Bruce arrived and paid negotiators were busy making deals in a manner which fascinated him:

They sit down on the carpet, and take an Indian shawl, which they carry on their shoulder, like a napkin, and spread it over their hands. They talk, in the meantime, indifferent conversation, of the arrival of ships from India, or the news of the day, as if they were employed in no serious business whatever. After about twenty minutes spent in handling each other’s fingers below the shawl, the bargain is concluded, say for nine ships, without one word ever having been spoken on the subject, or pen or ink used in any shape whatever. There never was one instance of a dispute happening in these sales.