Conscious of his own integrity, and not suspecting that, in a civilized country, the statements of a man of honour would be disbelieved, he did not think it necessary gradually and cautiously to prepare his hearers for a climate and scenery altogether different from their own, but he at once landed them in Abyssinia, and suddenly showed them a vivid picture to which he himself had been long accustomed. They had asked for novelty, and, in complying with their request, he gave them good measure, and told them of people who wore rings in their lips instead of their ears; who anointed themselves, not with bear's grease or pomatum, but with the blood of cows; who, instead of playing tunes upon them, wore the entrails of animals as ornaments; and who, instead of eating hot, putrid meat, licked their lips over bleeding, living flesh. He described debauchery dreadfully disgusting, because it was so different from their own. He told them of men who hunted each other; of mothers who had not seen ten winters; and he described crowds of human beings and huge animals retreating in terror before an army of little flies! In short, he told them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. At that time (to say nothing about the present day) the English public indolently allowed itself, with regard to particular regions of the earth, to be led and misled by a party of individuals, who dogmatically dictated what idle theory was to be believed, and what solid information was to be rejected. These brazen images Bruce refused to worship. In their presence he maintained his statements, and they frowned upon him with pompous incredulity. With just indignation, he sneered at their impertinence and folly; but they knew their power, and they deliberately banded together to run him down. "There has not," says Dr. Clarke (who travelled in three quarters of the globe, and who at Cairo had an opportunity of corroborating Bruce's statements), "there has not been an example in the annals of literature of more unfair and disgraceful hostility than that which an intolerant and invidious party too successfully levelled during a considerable time against the writings of Bruce." "I will venture to assert," says Belzoni, "that the only reason why such doubts could have been started respecting his (Bruce's) work, was the spirit of contradiction excited by the illiberality of travellers, and those who were no travellers: the former, because they had not power to resist jealousy, which, in spite of all their efforts to conceal it, shows itself through the veil of their pretended liberality and impartiality; and the latter, because they are unable to control their bad propensity to dispute and condemn everything they have no knowledge of."[39]