76 MEMOIR OF BRUCE. 



turn yellow and rot, the lakes to putrify and swarm 

 with vermin, all this beauty suddenly disappears. 

 Bare, scorched Nubia returns with its poisonous 

 winds and moving sands, glowing and ventilated 

 with sultry blasts, which are followed by a troop of 

 terrible attendants epilepsies, apoplexies, fevers, 

 agues, and dysenteries of the most obstinate and 

 fatal character." 



The city itself, which covers a prodigious space 

 of ground, was built of clay houses one story high, 

 and the floors of earth. Bruce having a present to 

 deliver from the sovereign of Abyssinia, had an 

 interview with the king ; he found his Nubian 

 majesty at his toilette, which was performed by a 

 slave rubbing him all over with a rancid compound 

 of grease and butter, with which his head was 

 dripping as if it had been plunged in water. 



His fame as a physician introduced him to the 

 royal haram, in which were about fifty sable queens, 

 whose only covering was a narrow piece of cotton 

 rag round their middle. The favourite beauty was 

 a sturdy dame about six feet high, and corpulent 

 beyond all proportion. Next to the elephant and 

 the rhinoceros, she appeared to Bruce one of the 

 largest living creatures he had ever met with. Her 

 features were of the true negro character. A ring of 

 gold passed through her under lip, and weighed it 

 down till it covered her chin like a flap, and left her 

 teeth bare. The inside of her mouth was stained 

 black with antimony. Her ears, to which heavy gold 

 rings were appended, reached down to her shoulders, 



