26 
MEMOIR OP BRUCE. 
scripts deposited in the monastery of St. Laurence 
and the famous library of the Escurial at Madrid. 
Having a slight acquaintance rvith that tongue, he 
might perhaps have brought to light some of their 
hidden treasures ; although little could be expected 
from Bruce after the laborious researches of Michael 
Casiri, who was at that very time engaged in com- 
piling his celebrated work the Bibliotheca Arabico- 
Hispana Escurialemis , in which he has classed and 
given copious extracts from no fewer than one thou- 
sand eight hundred and fifty-one Arabic manuscripts. 
But the jealousy of the Spanish government pre- 
vented him from gaining admission into that vast 
sepulchre of oriental learning, except upon a condi- 
tion with which his unsettled imagination could not 
comply, that of attaching himself to the Spanish 
court. 
After sojourning there for a few months, he de- 
parted for Pampeluna, the capital of Navarre, where 
he arrived on Christmas day,. 1757> on his way to 
France. Crossing the Pyrenees, he reached Bour- 
deaux, where he tarried for some time, delighted 
with the cheerful vivacity of French society. From 
that city he traversed the country eastward to Stras- 
burg, and then following the course of the Rhine to 
its confluence with the Maine, he visited Frankfort. 
Returning northward, he passed through Cologne 
to Brussels, having a strong desire to visit the Aus- 
trian Netherlands. On the second day after his 
arrival he innocently inveigled himself in a duel 
with a stranger; and having w'ounded his antago- 
