"When first," says Bruce, "I mentioned this in England as one of the singularities which prevailed in this barbarous country, I was told by my friends it was not believed. I asked the reason of this disbelief, and was answered that people who had never been out of their own country, and others well acquainted with the manners of the world (for they had travelled as far as France), had agreed the thing was impossible, and therefore it was so. My friends counselled me farther, that, as these men were infallible, and had each the leading of a circle, I should by all means obliterate this from my journal, and not attempt to inculcate in the minds of my readers the belief of a thing that men who had travelled pronounced to be impossible. They suggested to me, in the most friendly manner, how rudely a very learned and worthy traveller had been treated for daring to maintain that he had ate part of a lion, a story I have already taken notice of in my introduction. They said that, being convinced by these connoisseurs that his having ate part of a lion was impossible, he had abandoned this assertion altogether, and afterward only mentioned it in an appendix; and this was the farthest I could possibly venture. Far from being a convert to such prudential reasons, I must for ever profess openly that I think them unworthy of me. To represent as truth a thing I know to be a falsehood, and not to avow a truth I ought to declare--the one is fraud, the other cowardice: I hope I am equally distant from them both; and I pledge myself never to retract the fact here advanced, that the Abyssinians do feed in common upon live flesh, and that I myself have, for several years, been partaker of that disagreeable and beastly diet. On the contrary, I have no doubt, when time shall be given to read this history to an end, there will be very few, if they have candour enough to own it, that will not be ashamed of ever having doubted." Bruce, trusting to the justness of this appeal, gave more credit to his readers than they deserved, for they all broke down under the weight of this unusual fact; and all ranks of people, from Dr. Johnson the moralist down to Peter Pindar and the author of Baron Munchausen, disbelieved and ridiculed Bruce's statement, which, indeed, generally speaking, is not credited even at the present day. That to eat raw beef, cut out of a living cow, is not an English custom, is most true; but it is equally true that there is nothing in this statement which an acquaintance with human nature, as developed in various well-known parts of the world, does not strongly and fully corroborate. Its improbability can only be maintained by two arguments; first, the nauseousness of the food; and, secondly, the cruelty of the means of obtaining it.