He landed but at a few places, for the Abyssinian shore was quite desert, and the Arabian side extremely dangerous, being inhabited by a most barbarous people. On the one shore he could get nothing, while on the other he knew that he would be robbed of what little he had. His observations were therefore mostly nautical; and if his description of the charts and pilots he met with be correct, his labours were at least well intended. The pilots of the Red Sea, he says, "are creatures without any sort of science, who decide upon a manoeuvre in a moment;" and of the charts he thus speaks: "God forgive those who have taken upon them very lately to ingraft a number of new soundings upon that miserable bundle of errors, that chart of the upper part of the gulf from Jidda to Mocha, which has been tossed about the Red Sea these twenty years and upward! I would beg leave to be understood, that there is not in the world a man more averse than I am to give offence, even to a child. It is not in the spirit of criticism I speak this; but where the lives and properties of so many men are at stake yearly, it is a species of treason to conceal one's sentiments, if the publishing them can any way contribute to safety, whatever offence it may give to unreasonable individuals." Lord Valentia has thought proper to declare that Bruce "never was below Loheia;" "that his voyage from Loheia to Babelmandel is evidently a fiction;" "that his book partakes more of romance than reality;" "that he has so mixed truth with _falsehood_," &c., &.c, &c. In a polite and civilized country, this style of language (most particularly from one fellow-traveller to another) deserves no reply; it is a poison which must carry with it its own antidote. Lord Valentia himself admits that several of Bruce's latitudes and longitudes are correct; but he also asserts that others are incorrect, and that some are even copied from Niebuhr. All men are prone to error; and it may or may not be true that Bruce sometimes, without acknowledgment, availed himself of the experience of those who had preceded him; nevertheless, the observations which Lord Valentia has thought it proper to make upon our traveller are certainly not supported by the following extract from the journal even of his lordship's own secretary, Mr. Salt. "During Captain Court's absence, I endeavoured to get as much information as possible concerning the place; and for this purpose, one of the elder inhabitants, who had spent his life in piloting vessels to and fro, was brought to me by the nayib's man. He confirmed to me the names of all the islands we had seen in the morning, which agreed most perfectly with what Bruce has called them. He recognised every island, excepting two, mentioned by Bruce, as I named them from the book." It is likewise due to Bruce to repeat here the remark of Captain Keys of the royal navy, in whose vessel Lord Valentia and Mr. Salt first visited the Red Sea. "Mr. Bruce," says