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