328 
MACOWAR. 
perfectly true, and that Mr. Bruce's adventures at, and near it, were 
complete romances. I confess that I always had some doubts in my 
mind respecting this voyage from Cosseir, from the absurdity of the 
account he gives of his taking a prodigious mat sail, distended by 
the wind, then blowing a gale, in his arms, and yet having one 
hand at liberty to cut it in pieces with a knife. Nor could I more 
easily credit his finding at Jibbel Zumrud or Sibergeit, the pits 
still remaining, " five in number,none of them four feet in diameter, 
from which the ancients were said to have drawn the emeralds." 
That five wells should now exist, which have not been worked since 
the days of the Romans' holding Egypt, a period of thirteen cen- 
turies, in a country where the sand is driven about by incessant 
gales; that he should find a man who had twice before visited 
these unworked mines situated in a desert country; and, above all, 
that he should there have found, " nozzles, and some fragments of 
lamps," still lying on the ►brink of these wells, which would have 
been covered with sand by one single Shamaul, or north wester, are 
circumstances of such extreme improbability, that nothing but the 
highest character for veracity could induce me to believe the person 
who narrated them. 
Had these been all the objections, Mr. Bruce's friends might have 
pleaded that there was no positive proof against him. He has how- 
ever convicted himself, by pretending to give us latitudes. He 
declares that, by his own observations, Jibbel Zumrud is in lat. 25° 
S' N. when, in fact, it is a place as well known as any part of the 
Red Sea, and is in 2,3° 48'. It might be supposed that this is an 
error of the press, were it not that he has placed the island in the 
same latitude in his extraordinary chart, of which I shall have to 
