appeared that this volume contains very little novelty, either as to fact, character, or description. Nor can we say that it is particularly well written; there is little elegance in the style, and no great choice of words or turns of expression. There is, however, nothing affected or tawdry, and Mr. Salt's readers will never feel their confidence in his veracity give way, by any suspicion that he allows the creations of fancy to interfere with the memoranda of his journal, or the love of fame, to violate the sanctity of historical truth. This observation reminds us of the second part of our undertaking, namely, to bring under the view of our readers the matters at issue between him and Mr. Bruce.

It is well known that the celebrated and intrepid character whom we have just named, was of a haughty and overbearing disposition, impatient of interrogation, and too proud to remove even the reasonable doubts of the most candid and intelligent. It is equally well known that, upon his return to Europe, he was beset with sceptics on all hands, who seemed unwilling to believe his statements, or to give credit to his testimony, and that he, scorning alike to explain or dispute, persisted in telling what he saw, and in despising their strictures. Hence, as inight have been expected, the number of unbelievers rapidly increased, who avenging themselves for his obstinacy and contempt, spared no pains to convince the public that Bruce was an impostor, and his book a romance. The researches of more impartial times, however, and the reports of every subsequent traveller, have fully confirmed the least credible parts of his narrative; and with the exception of two or three subordinate points, no man who has read the works of Browne, Clarke, and Salt, will have any difficulty in assenting to the faithfulness and accuracy of Bruce's representations.

The author now before us presents unquestionably the best authority hitherto in possession of the public, by which we can ascertain the veracity of Bruce; and as his book was drawn up from materials of the most authentic description, exposed to no inaccuracy from length of time, the blunders of an assistant, or the corrections of an editor, we would certainly, in relation to matters of which both profess to have been eye witnesses, give the preference to Mr. Salt. It is not, however, with regard to such things that the latter endeavours to invalidate the statements of his predecessor. On the contrary, he hunts after inaccuracies, the detection of which must have been made in his study rather than amid the wilds of Tigré, with his pen in his hand, and not his staff. From a comparison of dates, for example, he has found out, with Dr. Murray's aid, that Bruce could not have performed the voyage from Loheia, in the Red

Sea,

Sea, to Bamelmandel; and by calculating the monsoons, he labours to contradict the laboured inference of the same traveller that the fleets of Solomon were three years absent from Elath in going to and coming from Ophir, that is, the modern Sofala. As to the first, there is no doubt a degree of confusion introduced into the several dates, which has not been satisfactorily explained, but we cannot from that circumstance alone yield to the conclusion, that Bruce never was at Babelmandel; and with respect to the specie-ships, whenever Mr. Salt shall succeed in substituting a better hypothesis than that which he has attempted to explode, we will less reluctantly applaud his zeal in thus endeavouring to stop the progress of error.

One of the principal inaccuracies, or studied falsehoods, which the industry of criticism has brought to light in the works of Bruce, is the gross anachronism into which he suffered himself to be betrayed, in stating the death of Luigi Bulugani, his draughtsman, secretary, and fellow-traveller. In the fourth volume of his book he records the decease of this young man as having taken place at Gondar, in March, 1770, and adds that "a considerable disturbance was apprehended upon burying him in a church-yard. Abba Saluma used his utmost endeavours to raise the populace, and take him out of his grave; but some exertions of the Ras quieted both Abba Saluma and the tumults." It appears, however, from the journal kept by Bulugani, to which Dr. Murray, the editor of Bruce's Travels had access, and from which he has published pretty copious extracts, that he was alive in February, 1771. In fact, the journal in his hand-writing reaches down to that date, and it is chiefly from the circumstance that it proceeds no farther, that Dr. Murray concludes be must have died in March, 1771. But if he did not die until March, 1771, Abba Saluma could not have raised any disturbance about his burial, for the said Abba Saluma was executed for high-treason, on the 24th December, 1770; that is three months before Bulugani's death. There is, therefore, in this statement, a manifest and irreconcileable inconsistency; and as Bruce finally left Gondar on the 26th of December, 1771, the difficulty cannot be removed by the supposition that the Abba's death had been antidated a twelvemonth by mistake, for upon this view of the case, he must have been executed just two days before the departure of the traveller on his return home. We have, in short, only a choice of difficulties; and were it possible to assign a motive sufficiently strong for an intentional misrepresentation of facts, we should in this instance, more readily than in any other, give way to the suspicion that truth had been sacrificed to vain-glory. But the only motive which has been alleged, in order to account for this mis-statement, namely, the ambition

ambition of being the only European who had reached the sources of the Nile, does not appear to us at all satisfactory, for as Bulugani did really die in Abyssinia, and could not therefore contradict any story which Bruce might have chosen to fabricate in England, we can see no reason for recording his death a whole year before it actually took place, and seven months before they left Gondar, to go in search of the celebrated fountains, whence that river is supposed to take its rise. It would have answered Bruce's purpose equally well to have dispatched Bulugani, any time before October, or even to have left him sick at any of the villages between Gondar and Geesch; we, therefore, beg leave to ask Mr. Salt and the Encyclopædists*, what conceivable reason can be assigned for his wishing to get rid of his draughtsman so soon, and moreover, as Bulugani did in all probability die at Gondar, in March, we would ask them whether it is not still within the bounds of candour to conclude that the whole inaccuracy arose from confusion of dates, and without any wish to mislead. We have, indeed, admitted that the matter, prima facie, looks ill, and, as we have no intention to set ourselves up as eulogists of Bruce, we leave the question to the ingenuity of those who delight in special pleading.

When speaking of the mountains of Tigré, Bruce employs language which, not being strictly adapted to precise and literal description, has been made the ground of another impeachment upon his veracity.

"The province of Tigré," says he, "is all mountainous; and it has been said, without any foundation in truth, that the Pyrenees, Alps, and Appenines, are but mole-hills compared to them. I believe, however, that one of the Pyrenees, above St. John Pied de Port, is much higher than Lamalmon; and that the mountains of St. Bernard, one of the Alps, is full as high as Taranta, or rather higher. It is not the extreme height of the mountains in Abyssinia that occasions surprise, but the number of them, and the extraordinary forms they present to the eye. Some of them are flat, thin, and square, in shape of a hearth-stone, or slab, that scarce would seem to have been sufficient to resist the winds. Some are like pyramids, others like obelisks or prisms, and some, the most extraordinary of all the rest, pyramids pitched upon their points, with their base uppermost, which if it was possible, as it was not, they could have been so formed in the beginning, would be strong objections to our received ideas of gravity."

See the Article Abyssinia, in the Supplem to the Ency. Brit. where this subject is discussed with ex-vnc weakness and inaccuracy.

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In reading this passage, every one makes the suitable allow ance for the imperfection of verbal signs, and for that play of imagination which is excited by phenomena so new and strange; on which account we were not prepared to expect the minute criticism into which Mr. Salt has thought it expedient to enter, relative to this graphical sketch of the Tigré mountains. "The reader," says he, with some solemnity, "will readily believe me when I state that I did not see a single one which answered to the latter part of this description." We do give him credit for this negation, as he seems on more occasions than the present, to like such a basis for his argument; but let us analyse one of his own bursts of enthusiasm, on the same subject, and we shall, perhaps, discover that in poetical licence, he falls little short of Bruce. Having ascended a mountain in the neighbourhood of Dixan, he gained a prospect, in which a "thousand different shaped bills were presented to the view, which bore the appearance of having been dropped on an irregular_plain.” Now, if among these "thousand hills of different shapes," which seemed to have been dropped from the clouds, on an irregular plain, Mr. Salt did not find one with its sides projecting over its base, which is all that Bruce could mean by his inverted pyra mid, it must be owing, we suspect, to the cursory manner in which he examined them.-We would not enter upon such trifles in reviewing a work so respectable as that now before us, did not the author seize with the utmost avidity, every occasion which presents itself of invalidating the authority of by far the most distinguished of his predecessors. We recollect at this moment, another striking example of the envious or paltry disposition to which we allude. In crossing Taranta, Bruce discovered some excavations in the mountain, which, he concluded, could be nothing else than the caves in which the Troglodytes of old used to take up their residence, and, as it was a matter of necessity, there not being earth enough to hold fast a tent-pin for their encampment, he describes himself as passing a night in one of them; which, he adds, we found a quiet and not inconvenient place of repose. Mr. Salt, however, not having seen any of these excavations, ventures to give it as his opinion, that

"They never existed but in the imagination of the author, for it does not appear to me," says he, " any argument in favour of the existence of caves on one side of the mountain, that the houses at Dixan and Kalai, on the other side, are formed in a manner somewhat to resemble caves; but situation and distance seldom stand in the way of these minor candidates for public fame."

Minor candidates! So Bruce in Mr. Salt's eyes, is a mere dwarf! Well, henceforth, let it be an adage, that every man is the best judge of his merits and exploits.

Our

Our author should have been aware that the mere circumstance of his not seeing a thing, is not conclusive evidence that the thing was not to be seen, or that it never existed. His own experience should have taught him this maxim of judging and rule of candour; for, it is well-known, that, upon his return to England, after his first trip into Abyssinia, he not only called in question the Live-feast of the people of that country, as described by Bruce, but even the practice of eating raw flesh, on any occasion whatsoever. In his second journey, however, it was proved to him, on the indubitable testimony of Mr. Pearce, who had at that time been several years in Abyssinia, that liveflesh is actually made use of, and that the animal out of which it is cut, is sometimes drove a considerable distance after the incision is made. When Mr. Pearce was in company with some Lasta soldiers, two of them who had fasted long, made preparations for cutting out the Shulada, the name they gave to the pieces of flesh, weighing about a pound, which they sliced out of the buttock of an nufortunate cow, that had fallen into their hands. After the operation was performed, the skin was laid over the wound, and the whole plastered up with cowdung; nor was the animal finally put to death till the end of the journey. It is deserving of notice, too, that whenever Mr. Salt, on his second visit, mentioned the term, Shulada, he was im mediately understood; and yet he is said to have made during his former tour, particular enquiries respecting this practice, the result of which enquiries, was, that "he doubted the fact altogether." So much for hasty inference and cursory investigation.

As it was on this subject, that objections to Bruce's veracity were first started in England and France, we shall bring forward two authorities which, in our opinion, go a great way to confirm his statements in their fullest extent. When Dr. Clarke was at Cairo, he met an Abyssinian Dean, with whom he entered into conversation about Bruce's Travels, and to whom he put some questions relative to the eating of raw flesh. The Dean not only admitted

"That the soldiers on marauding excursions, sometimes maim cows, taking slices from their bodies, as a favourite article of food, without putting them to death at the time; but, also, that, during the banquets of the Abyssinians, raw meat, esteemed delicious throughout the country, is frequently taken from an oxor a cow, in such a state, that the fibres are still in motion; and the attendants continue to cut slices until the animal dies." Clarke's Travels, Vol. iii.

The next authority is Mr. Salt himself; whose description of a Brind Feast, we transcribe from the Article on Abyssinia already alluded to.

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