Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 2 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773Bruce, James
History
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 2 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773
Bruce, James
Egypt -- Description and travel; Ethiopia -- Description and travel; Ethiopia -- History; Natural history -- Ethiopia; Nile River
Seven or eight days are a space of time just enough for the passing
through Woggora, where he justly remarks the heats are not so excessive
as in the places he came from. He takes no notice of the passage of
Lamalmon, which ought to have been very sensible to a man in a decayed
state of health, the less so as he was only descending it. Every thing
which relates to the passage of the Tacazzé is just and proper, only
he calls the river itself the Tekesel, instead of the true name, the
_Tacazzé_. It was the Siris of the ancients; and it is doing justice
to both countries, when he compares the province of Siré with the most
delicious parts of his own country of France. This province is that
also where he might very probably receive the young elephant, which he
says awaited him there as a present to the king of France, and which
died a few days after.
He passed afterwards to Adowa. It is the capital of Tigré, is still the
seat of its governor, and was that of Ras Michael in my time. All that
he says of the intermediate country and its productions, shew plainly
that his work is genuine, and his remarks to be those of an eye-witness.
From this province of Tigré he enters the country of the Baharnagash,
and arrives at Dobarwa, which he erroneously calls Duvarna, and
says it is the capital of the province of Tigré, whereas it is that
of the Baharnagash. Isaac Baharnagash, when in rebellion against his
sovereign, surrendered this town to the Turks in the year 1558, as may
be seen at large in my history of the transactions of those times.
As the authenticity of this journey, and the reality of Poncet’s
having been in Abyssinia, has been questioned by a set of vain,
ignorant, fanatic people, and that from malice only, not from spirit
of investigation, of which they were incapable, I have examined every
part of it, and compared it with what I myself saw, and shall now give
one other instance to prove it genuine, from an observation Poncet has
made, and which has escaped all the missionaries, though it was entire
and visible in my time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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