Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 4 (of 5): In the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773Bruce, James
History
Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, Volume 4 (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
We found Beyla to be in lat. 13° 42´ 4´´; that is, about eleven miles
west of Teawa, and thirty-one and a half miles due south. We were met
by Mahomet, the Shekh, at the very entrance of the town. He said, he
looked upon us as risen from the dead; that we must be good people,
and particularly under the care of Providence, to have escaped the
many snares the Shekh of Atbara had laid for us. Mahomet, the Shekh,
had provided every sort of refreshment possible for us; and, thinking
we could not live without it, he had ordered sugar for us from
Sennaar. Honey for the most part hitherto had been its substitute. We
had a good comfortable supper; as fine wheat-bread as ever I ate in my
life, brought from Sennaar, as also rice; in a word, everything that
our kind landlord could contribute to our plentiful and hospitable
entertainment.
Our whole company was full of joy, to which the Shekh greatly
encouraged them; and if there was an alloy to the happiness, it
was the seeing that I did not partake of it. Symptoms of an aguish
disorder had been hanging about me for several days, ever since the
diarrhœa had left me. I found the greatest repugnance, or nausea,
at the smell of warm meat; and, having a violent headach, I insisted
upon going to bed supperless, after having drank a quantity of warm
water by way of emetic. Being exceedingly tired, I soon fell sound
asleep, having first taken some drops of a strong spirituous tincture
of the bark which I had prepared at Gondar, resolving, if I found any
remission, as I then did, to take several good dozes of the bark in
powder on the morrow, beginning at day-break, which I accordingly did
with its usual success.
On the 20th of April, a little after the dawn of day, the Shekh, in
great anxiety, came to the place where I was lying, upon a tanned
buffaloe's hide, on the ground. His sorrow was soon turned into joy
when he found me quite recovered from my illness. I had taken the
bark, and expressed a desire of eating a hearty breakfast of rice,
which was immediately prepared for me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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