Bruce Travels through the Kingdoms of Tunis and Tripoli--Is
Wrecked--Beaten by the Arabs--Sails to Crete, Rhodes, Asia Minor,
and Syria--Visits Palmyra and Baalbec--Is Detained at Cyprus--Sails
for Egypt.
The dey, secretly admiring the firmness and integrity of Bruce's
character, had furnished him with recommendatory letters to the beys of
Tunis and Tripoli--states independent of the Dey of Algiers, but over
which the circumstances of the times had given him considerable
influence. Sailing along the African coast, Bruce landed at Bona, the
ancient Aphrodisium, and, anchoring at Biserta, he paid a visit to
Utica, as he says, "out of respect to the memory of Cato." He then
landed at Tunis, and, delivering his letters to the bey, he obtained
permission to visit the country in whatever direction he pleased. From
the French and English consuls he received great attention and
assistance; and about the middle of September, while the weather was
still dreadfully hot, he set out for the interior of the kingdoms of
Algiers and Tunis, accompanied by his draughtsman Luigi Balugani, a
French renegado named Osman, and ten spahis or foot-soldiers, "who,"
says Bruce, "were well armed with firelocks and pistols, excellent
horsemen, and, as far as I could ever discern, as eminent for cowardice,
at least, as they were for horsemanship." On reaching Tucca, he found a
Corinthian pillar of Parian marble and the ruins of a temple, among
which he remained fifteen days, making various most valuable drawings,
which, we are sorry to say, still remain unpublished.
After visiting several other places, he came to Hydra, the Thunodrunum
of the ancients, on the frontier of the two kingdoms of Algiers and
Tunis, and inhabited by a tribe of Arabs called Welled Sidi Boogannim.
These Arabs were immensely rich, paying no tribute to Algiers or
Tunis--the pretence for this exemption being a very singular one. By the
institution of their founder, they are obliged to live upon lion's
flesh; and, in consequence of thus eating up the enemies of the state,
they are not taxed like the other Arabs. Seated among these wild people,
Bruce openly partook of their fare, and, having done so, he acknowledged
it in words which are highly characteristic of himself:
"Before Dr. Shaw's travels first acquired the celebrity they have
maintained ever since, there was a circumstance that very nearly ruined
their credit. He had ventured to say in conversation that these Welled
Sidi Boogannim were eaters of lions; and this was considered at Oxford,
the university where he had studied, as a traveller's license on the
part of the doctor. They thought it a subversion of the natural order of
things that a man should eat a lion, when it had long passed as almost
the peculiar province of the lion to eat man. The doctor flinched under
the sagacity and severity of this criticism: he could not deny that the
Welled Sidi Boogannim did eat lions, as he had repeatedly said; but he
had not yet published his travels, and therefore left it out of his
narrative, and only hinted at it in his appendix.
"With all submission to that learned university, I will not dispute the
lion's title to eating men; but since it is not founded upon patent, no
consideration will make me stifle the merit of the Welled Sidi
Boogannim, who have turned the chase upon the enemy. It is an historical
fact, and I will not suffer the public to be misled by a
misrepresentation of it: on the contrary, I do aver, in the face of
these fantastic prejudices, that I have eat the flesh of lions--that is,
part of three lions, in the tents of the Welled Sidi Boogannim." If the
spirit of these noble animals had entered Bruce's heart, as their flesh
did his stomach, he could not have expressed himself in bolder terms!
From Hydra he went to the ancient Tipasa, where he found a most
extensive scene of ruins; and then entering the eastern province of
Algiers, he reached Medrashem, a superb pile of architecture. Passing
Gibel Aurex and Cassareen, the ancient Colonia Scillitana, he at last
reached Spaitla, in the kingdom of Tunis. The Welled Omran, a lawless,
plundering tribe, disturbed Bruce very much during the eight days which
he occupied in minutely measuring and drawing the extensive and
magnificent ruins of Spaitla. "It was a fair match," he says, "between
coward and coward. With my company I was enclosed in a square, in which
the three temples stood, where there yet remained a precinct of high
walls. These plunderers would have come in to me, but were afraid of my
firearms; and I would have run away from them had I not been afraid of
meeting their horse in the plain. I was almost starved to death, when I
was relieved by the arrival of Welled Hassan and a friendly tribe of
Dreeda that came to my assistance, and brought me at once both safety
and provision."
From Spaitla he proceeded to Muchtar and Musti, and then returning to
Tugga, he went down the Bagrada to Tunis. From Tunis he again went to
Spaitla, where he remained five days more, correcting and revising the
drawings and memoranda which he had already made there. Passing Feriani,
he came to a large lake, the Palus Tritonidis, now called the Lake of
Marks, because there is in it a row of large trunks of palm-trees set up
to guide travellers across it. "This was," says Bruce, "the most barren
and unpleasant part of my journey in Africa: barren, not only from the
nature of the soil, but by its having no remains of antiquity in the
whole course of it." This desert scene was at last most agreeably and
suddenly changed by the small river Triton, the water of which caused
the adjacent country to be covered with all kinds of flowers and
verdure. Bruce had now reached the Lesser Syrtis. He here turned to
visit El Gemme, where there had been a large and perfect amphitheatre,
until Mohammed Bey blew up a part of it to prevent its being occupied as
a fortress by the Arabs. Continuing along the coast to Susa, Bruce once
more arrived at Tunis, possessing drawings of what he considered "to be
all the antiquities worth notice in the territories of Tunis and
Algiers."
Notwithstanding the great heat to which he had been subjected, his
health was good, and he had hitherto met with no accident whatever: but
he had now a very serious undertaking to perform, which was to cross the
desert to Tripoli; and the Bey of Tunis being at enmity with the Basha
of Tripoli, could give him no letters of introduction. He accordingly
took leave of the bey and proceeded to Gerba, the island of the
Lotophagi, where the Bey of Tunis, with his usual munificence, had
prepared for him a house, with every sort of refreshment.
On this coast there is no sort of fruit whatever: neither bush, nor
tree, nor verdure of any kind, excepting the short grass that separates
this country from the moving sands of the desert. About four days'
journey from Tripoli, Bruce met the Emir Hadji, conducting a caravan of
pilgrims from Fez in Morocco, across the whole of Africa, to Mecca--that
is, from the Atlantic Ocean to the western banks of the Red Sea. The
caravan consisted of about three thousand men, with an immense number of
camels laden with merchandise, water, flour, and food, for the hadjis or
pilgrims; and such a crowd of uncivilized beings, wildly traversing such
a vast inhospitable desert, yet urged forward and supported by a
principle of religion, formed a very extraordinary spectacle. They had
scarcely passed when Bruce and his little party were assailed by a
number of Arab horsemen, whom they repulsed with considerable
difficulty, and with a loss of four men.
On arriving at Tripoli, Bruce was received by his countryman, the
British consul (the Hon. Mr. Fraser of Lovat), with that kindness and
attention which he much needed after so rude a journey, made with such
diligence that two of his horses had died from fatigue; but as the basha
was unfortunately at variance with Mr. Fraser, Bruce was much
disappointed at learning that it would be absolutely necessary for him
to return by the coast of the Lesser Syrtis to Tunis, to reside there
until Mr. Harrison, who was appointed by government to settle the
differences with the Barbary States, should solicit permission for him
to travel through the dominions of Tripoli.
To Tunis, therefore, Bruce returned, and remained there till August,
1766, when this permission reaching him, he again crossed the desert, by
Sfax and Gerba, to Tripoli, where he was hospitably received by the
French, Venetian, and British consuls. From Tripoli he despatched an
English servant to Smyrna with his books, drawings, and supernumerary
instruments, having torn from his books those pages which he conceived
might be of service in the Pentapolis or other parts of the Cyrenaicum,
and by these precautions most fortunately saved the greater part of his
labours in Africa. He then crossed the Gulf of Sidra, formerly known by
the name of Syrtis Major, and arrived at Bengazi, the ancient Berenice,
built by Ptolemy Philadelphus.
The brother of the Bey of Tripoli commanded here, a young man, weak in
understanding and in health. For more than a year Bengazi had been
suffering from severe famine; many people died from starvation every
day, and some of the living were actually hovering round the corpses of
the dead for food which human nature shudders to think of. Bruce at once
fled from this dreadful scene. Travelling over a great part of the
Pentapolis, he visited the ruins of Arsinoe and Ras Sem, and then
approaching the seacoast, came to Ptolemeta, the ancient Ptolemais, the
walls and gates of which he found still entire.
Here he was informed that the Welled Ali-Arabs had plundered the Morocco
caravan, which he had met in the desert; that the pilgrims had been left
to perish for want of water; that there was a famine at Derna, the
neighbouring town to which he had intended to proceed; that the plague
had also appeared, and that the town was engaged in a civil war. This
torrent of bad news was irresistible; and Bruce at once resolved to fly
from this inhospitable coast, and save for the public that knowledge and
information which he had already so resolutely and painfully acquired.
Accordingly, with his little party, he embarked on board a small Greek
vessel bound for Lampedoza, but the destination of which the master had
agreed to change to Crete. The vessel was badly appointed; and, when it
was too late, Bruce found that, although she had plenty of sail, she
carried not an ounce of ballast. A number of half-famished men, women,
and children, anxious to fly from the dreadful fate which awaited them,
crowded on board; but the passage was short, the vessel light, and the
master, as Bruce supposed, well-accustomed to these seas. At daybreak
the next day they sailed; and it was then discovered that the captain
was entirely ignorant of his duty, and wholly unable to manage his
ship.[10] A violent storm overtook them, and the vessel, falling to
leeward, struck on a rock near the entrance of the harbour of Bengazi:
fortunately, however, the wind suddenly lulled, and Roger M'Cormack,
Bruce's Irish servant (who had been once a sailor in the British
service), lowered the largest boat, into which he, Bruce, and a
multitude of people instantly jumped. Fearing they would be swamped,
they pushed off from the ship, and with two oars endeavoured to row the
boat ashore. Bruce had thrown off all his clothes except a short
under-waistcoat and his linen drawers; a silk sash or girdle was wrapped
round him; a pencil, pocket-book, and watch were in the breast-pocket of
his waistcoat; two Moorish and two of his English servants accompanied
him; and the rest of his party remained on board. They had scarcely got
a boat's length from the ship, when a wave nearly swamped them, and a
shriek of despair announced their helpless situation. The next wave was
approaching evidently to overwhelm them; and Bruce, fearing that some
woman, child, or helpless man would cling hold upon him, entangle him,
and thus ignominiously drag him down, resolved at least to make an
effort to save himself, and, exclaiming to his servants, both in Arabic
and English, "We are lost! If you can swim, follow me!" he jumped
overboard.
In moments of real danger, there is nothing which more distinguishes a
man than the simple fact of doing _something_; for the general effect
of fear is to paralyze the mind as well as the body, and men under this
base feeling do _nothing_. Bruce at first allowed himself to go to
leeward, in order to get clear of the boat. A strong, practised swimmer,
in the vigour of life, full of health, and accustomed to exertion and
fatigue of every description, he got on very well as long as he was in
deep water; but, as soon as he came to the surf, he received a blow on
his breast from the eddy wave which threw him upon his back, made him
swallow a quantity of water, and nearly suffocated him. The next wave
left him almost breathless and exhausted. At last, finding his hands and
knees on the sand, he fixed his nails into it, and desperately
maintaining his hold until the sea for a moment retired, he managed to
crawl forward a few feet: perfectly exhausted, he then fainted away, and
remained for a considerable time insensible to the waves which, one
after another, were eagerly rolling towards the shore, as if greedy to
regain their prey.
At this critical moment, the Arabs, who were but two short miles from
the shore, came down in crowds to plunder the vessel, all the people
from which were now taken on shore, those only being lost who had
perished in the boat. Bruce was first awakened from his trance by a blow
with the butt end of a lance on the back of his neck; but it was merely
accident that it had not been the point, for his short waistcoat, which
had been purchased at Algiers, and his sash and drawers cut in the
Turkish fashion, made the Arabs believe he was a Turk; and, after many
hard blows, kicks, and curses, they stripped their defenceless and
exhausted victim, leaving him as naked as their barren shore. After
treating the rest of the passengers and crew in the same manner, they
sought to plunder the bodies of those who had been drowned. In the mean
while, Bruce walked, or rather crawled, to some white sandy hillocks,
where he sat down and concealed himself as well as he could, for he knew
that if he approached the tents where the women were while he was naked,
he would receive bastinadoes considerably heavier than the last.
Smarting from the discipline he had already undergone, it suddenly
occurred to him that, by the gibberish in imitation of Turkish which the
Arabs had uttered to him while they were beating and stripping him, they
had taken him for a Turk, and had treated him accordingly. At this
moment an old Arab, attended by several young men, came up to him. He
offered them the salute of "Salum Alicum," with which at first they were
offended, asking him what, as a Turk, he had to do there? Bruce very
readily replied that he was no Turk, but a poor Christian physician, a
dervish, that went about the world seeking to do good for God's sake;
that when he was wrecked he was flying from famine, and was going to
Greece to get bread. A ragged, dirty baracan was immediately thrown over
him, and he was conducted to a tent, through the end of which appeared a
long spear, which is the mark of sovereignty. The sheikh of the tribe
being at peace with the Bey of Bengazi, asked Bruce many questions, and
at last ordered him a plentiful supper, at which he had the happiness of
meeting his attendants. Camels were then brought, and the whole party
proceeded to Bengazi, from whence Bruce wrote to the sheikh, entreating
him to endeavour to fish up his cases, for which he offered a handsome
reward: this, however, was not effected, and he lost a sextant,
telescope, timepiece, a small camera obscura, some guns, pistols,
several drawings, and many of his notes and observations.
At Bengazi he fortunately met with a small French sloop, the master of
which so gratefully remembered that Bruce had rendered him a trifling
service at Algiers, that he generously offered even to lend him money.
After having been detained at Bengazi about two months, during which
time he and his party had little to subsist on but fish, which they
themselves caught, they sailed in the French sloop from the bay; and,
bidding farewell to the coast of Africa, they landed at Canea, a small
fortress at the west end of the island of Crete.
The beating which Bruce had received at Bengazi left marks, which,
after a considerable time, totally disappeared; but the relentless ague,
which, in consequence of his exertions in the Sea of Ptolemeta, fixed
itself on his constitution, persecuted him through all his travels,
suddenly appearing and oppressing him in moments of his severest
difficulties. He was first seized with this disorder at Crete, where he
remained for some days dangerously ill.
From Canea he sailed to Rhodes, where, with very great pleasure, he
found his books. He then proceeded to Castelrosso, on the coast of
Caramania, in Asia Minor, where he had been credibly informed there were
very magnificent ruins; but his fever increasing, he found it impossible
to prosecute this undertaking: he was therefore reluctantly obliged to
abandon it, and, proceeding again to sea, he landed on the continent of
Asia, at Beiroot, near Sidon, on the coast of Phoenicia, in June, 1767.
Bruce was now in a very weak state of health; he possessed drawings and
notes which would have offered to most men alluring and tranquil
occupation; he had undergone fatigues which faithfully and frankly
warned him to give rest to his constitution; a new quarter of the world
was now before him--new in its dangers, its history, and its
inhabitants; but the enterprising spirit of Bruce remained unaltered;
and, careless of his shattered frame, he now resolved that, previously
to entering on his daring attempt to reach the source of the Nile, he
would endeavour, as he said, "to add the ruins of Palmyra to those of
Africa!"
There are two tribes, almost equally powerful, who inhabit the deserts
around Palmyra: the one the Anneci, remarkable for the breed of their
horses; the other the Mowulli, who are excellent soldiers. These two
tribes were not actually at war, nor were they at peace; they were
merely upon what is termed ill terms with each other--a very dangerous
time for strangers to have any dealings with either. Bruce would have
gone at once from Sidon to Baalbec, but it was then besieged by the
Druses of Mount Libanus. He therefore went to Tripoli in Syria, and
from thence set out for Aleppo; but, suddenly sinking under his Bengazi
ague, he was just able to reach the house of M. Belville, a French
merchant, to whom he was addressed for credit; and Bruce always
declared, "that, had it not been for his friendly attention, and the
skill and anxiety of Dr. Russel, physician to the British factory, it is
probable his travels would have ended at Aleppo."
As soon as he was restored to health, his first object was his journey
to Palmyra. Stopping at two miserable huts inhabited by a base set
called Turcomans, he asked the master of one of them to show him a ford,
which the man, apparently very kindly, undertook to do, although the
river, the Orontes, was so violent that he felt more than once an
inclination to turn back. However, suspecting nothing, he proceeded
according to the directions of his guide, when, all of a sudden, he and
his horse fell into such deep water, that each swam separately ashore;
and when Bruce went to dry himself at a caphar or turnpike, the man who
was there told him that the place at which he had attempted to cross was
an old bridge, one arch of which had long ago been carried away; that he
had consequently fallen into the deepest part of the river; and that the
people who had misguided him were an infamous banditti. From Hassia
Bruce and his party went to Cariateen, where, to their great surprise,
they found about two thousand of the Anneci encamped: they were treated
with civility, and passed the desert between Cariateen and Palmyra in a
day and two nights, proceeding all the while without sleeping.
Weary and exhausted, they ascended a hill of white gritty stone, hemmed
in by a narrow winding road; but when they reached the summit, "there
opened before us," says Bruce, "the most astonishing, stupendous sight
that perhaps ever appeared to mortal eyes. The whole plain below, which
was very extensive, was covered so thick with magnificent buildings,
that one seemed to touch the other--all of fine proportions, all of
agreeable forms, all composed of white stones, which at that distance
appeared like marble. At the end of it stood the palace of the sun, a
building worthy to close so magnificent a scene."
Between the human mind and the body there is that sympathetic union,
that the one readily shares its prosperity with the other; and Bruce,
both enraptured and refreshed with the scene before him, only thought
how he could copy it to the greatest advantage. He therefore, assisted
by Balugani, divided Palmyra into six angular views, bringing into the
foreground of each some edifice or group of columns particularly worthy
of delineation. These views were drawn on very wide paper, and on so
large a scale, that the columns in some of them were a foot long, and
several of the figures in the foreground of the temple of the sun nearly
four inches in height. Having finished thirteen of these drawings, he
and his party quitted Palmyra, and travelled about one hundred and
thirty miles to Baalbec, the interior of the great temple of which
surpassed, in Bruce's opinion, anything he had seen even at Palmyra.
Having taken a number of views, he proceeded by Tyre; and, as he says,
"much fatigued, and satisfied beyond measure with what I had seen, I
arrived in perfect health, and in the gayest humour possible, at the
hospitable mansion of M. Clerambaut, at Sidon."
He there found letters from Europe in reply to those which he had
written, announcing the loss of his instruments at Bengazi. From his
friend Dr. Russel, at London, he learned that a reflecting telescope, as
also an achromatic one by Dollond, had been forwarded to him; from Paris
he received a timepiece and a stopwatch; and from Louis XV., who had
heard from the Count de Buffon of Bruce's misfortune at Bengazi, he had
the honour of receiving a quadrant which had belonged to the Military
Academy at Marseilles. Flattered at the support thus extended to him,
and delighted with the acquisition of these instruments, he resolved no
longer to delay his voyage to Egypt, particularly as three years had
already elapsed since he quitted Algiers: accordingly, on the 15th of
June, 1768, he sailed from Sidon for Alexandria. The vessel touched at
Cyprus; but, occupied with his great undertaking, Bruce naturally says
of this island, "I had no curiosity to see it. My mind was intent upon
more uncommon, more distant, and more painful voyages. But the master of
the vessel had business of his own which led him thither: with this I
the more readily complied, as we had not yet got certain advice that the
plague had ceased in Egypt; and it still wanted some days to the
festival of St. John, which is supposed to put an end to that cruel
distemper."[11]
While thus detained at Cyprus, Bruce's thoughts and dreams were
enthusiastically filled with the distant object of his ambition; and, as
Mohammed is said to have once walked to the mountain because it declined
to visit him, so did Bruce indulge himself with the opposite idea, that
he saw the waters of the Nile flying towards him in the heavens of
Cyprus. "We observed," says he, "a number of thin, white clouds moving
with great rapidity from south to north, in direct opposition to the
course of the Etesian winds; these were immensely high. It was evident
they came from the mountains of Abyssinia, where, having discharged
their weight of rain, and being pressed by the lower current of heavier
air from the northward, they had mounted to possess the vacuum, and
returned to restore the equilibrium to the northward, whence they were
to come back, loaded with vapour from Mount Taurus, to occasion the
overflowing of the Nile, by breaking against the high and rugged
mountains of the south. Nothing could be more agreeable to me than that
sight, and the reasoning upon it. I already, with pleasure, anticipated
the time in which I should be a spectator first, afterward an historian
of this phenomenon, hitherto a mystery through all ages: I exulted in
the measures I had taken!"
But Bruce has already sailed from Cyprus; and, previous to his first
introduction to the waters of the Nile, it may not be improper for one
moment calmly and dispassionately to consider how far he was qualified
for the attempt which he was about to undertake. Being thirty-eight
years of age, he was at that period of life in which both the mind and
body of man are capable of their utmost possible exertions. During his
travels and residence in Europe, Africa, and Asia, he had become
practically acquainted with the religion, manners, and prejudices of
many countries differing from his own; and he had learned to speak the
French, Italian, Spanish, modern Greek, Moorish, and Arabic languages.
Full of enterprise, enthusiastically devoted to the object he had in
view, accustomed to hardship, inured to climate as well as to fatigue,
he was a man of undoubted courage. In stature he was six feet four
inches, and with this imposing appearance possessed great personal
strength; and, lastly, in every proper sense of the word, he was a
gentleman; and no man about to travel can give to his country a better
pledge for veracity than when, like Bruce, his mind is ever
retrospectively viewing the noble conduct of his ancestors; thus showing
that he considers he has a stake in society which, by the meanness of
falsehood or exaggeration, he would be unable to transmit unsullied to
his posterity.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] Some years ago, the writer of this volume, having been sent to make
a trigonometrical survey of the uninhabited island of Lampedoza,
embarked for Tripoli on board a small Greek vessel exactly similar to
the one described by Bruce. The master, as is usual in the
Mediterranean, had no instrument for determining his situation but a
board, a piece of string, and three small pins, which were to be placed
in particular situations, that no one on board understood but himself;
however, his hand and head shook so violently from the effects of
liquor, that for more than a day the vessel was beating about completely
lost. In the middle of the second night, a horse, which was standing on
deck, smelling the island of Malta, began to neigh most violently; and
accordingly, the land, thus announced by this animal to his
fellow-passengers, appeared in sight at daybreak.
[11] During the plague at Malta, the writer of this volume often heard
the Maltese predict, many months before the festival of St. John, that
the disorder would cease by that day, and so, in fact, it did. The
Maltese priests, of course, declared that St. John had killed it: but
the English doctors, with greater reason, attributed its departure to
excessive heat, which, no less than excess of cold, has been observed
generally to arrest the contagion.