The Pale Abyssinian: The Life of James Bruce

An interesting book on the 18th century British traveller James Bruce, who spent many years in Africa. He wasn't the first European to visit the source of the Blue Nile (that honour apparently belongs to Portuguese Jesuits) but was certainly the first to do so in a systematic and scientific manner. His mapping of the source was subsequently found to be only 20 minutes out (p266). He was interested in everything - languages, birds, plants, medicine, astronomy, war and, less prudish than later Victorian travellers, the local women.

The author tries, in passing, to develop a theory that the true purpose of Bruce's journey was to find the Ark of the Covenant, reputed to be in Ethiopia. He bases this on Bruce's membership of the Freemasons, show more and on omissions and errors in Bruce's otherwise meticulous accounts. The evidence is not very compelling, but it's always interesting to speculate.

Bruce remains relatively unknown. I had never heard of him before. His manner did not endear himself to the establishment at the time (at least in Britain - he seems to have been more popular in mainland Europe), his experiences seemed rather too fantastic, and there were rivalries amongst different travellers and writers.

But he was an extremely important fore-runner of later explorers, indeed "the father of nineteenth century exploration and one with the purest motives", according to the author (p267). Another quoted opinion (p266) calls him "the first great scientific explorer of Africa, the first to go out there neither for trade, nor for war, nor to hoist a flag, nor for the Glory of God, but from curiosity". The last word is given to no less an authority than David Livingstone who, in 1868, described Bruce as "a greater traveller than any of us" (p268). show less

I could go on and on. Made me wish I'd been born a gentleman of means in the 18th century. The archetypal adventurer - you couldn't make it up.