1808.) 
therefore, to be less general even than 
formerly; and the practice of cutting it 
without caring whether the animal be 
alive or dead, may confirm a part of the 
first anecdote respecting the three sol- 
diers; but a custom by no means gene- 
ral, and a practice adopted from haste or 
indifference, rather than choice, can ne- 
yer Justify the description of an Abyssi- 
nian feast, On the contrary, the fact is 
directly contradicted by the Travels 
themselves, in which raw beef is re- 
peatedly introduced, and a cow is re-- 
peatedly slaughtered for the entertain-— 
ment; but no imstance 1s to be found in 
the Travels or in the journals, in the 
camp or in the city, among the Galla or 
the Agows, of a cow being brought to the 
door and devoured alive, mucli less of 
the promiscuous intercourse of the sexes 
at such entertainments, 
As the professed object of the travels 
was to discover the source of the Nile, 
the author exults throughout in the dis- 
tinguished glory of having been the first 
who explored those hidden fountains, for 
which the greatest conquerors of antiquity, 
Sesostris, Cambyses, Alexander and Cz- 
gar, had searched or enquired in vain, 
To this vain-glorious assertion two ob- 
jections were early made; that Mr. Bruce 
was neither the first, nor even the second 
European to whom those coy fountains 
were revealed, nor were these the real 
sources of the Nile. The source of the 
Abyssinian river was known to the Jesuits 
above a hundred and fifty years before it 
was traced by Bruce, who endeavours, 
in vain, to discredit the discoveries of 
Paez and Lobo. Its rise from two foun- 
tains in Sacala, near Gecsh, its supposed 
course through the lake of Dambea, the 
semicircular sweep which it makes round 
the provinces of Damot and Gojam, when 
it quits the lake, are accurately delineated 
in the maps not only of D’Anville, but of 
Telez, Ludolf, and Lobo, from which our 
author’s map has been partly constructed ; 
and the merit, whatever it nay be, of the 
first discovery is candidly conceded by 
the editor himself to Paez, to whose nar- 
rative, published by Kircher, the most ri- 
diculous objections kave veen made by 
Bruce. Peter Paez, a Portuguese jesuit, 
who resided long in the country, visited 
these fountains iu 1618; and his descrip- 
tion of the springs is minutely followed 
by Jerome Lobo, another jesuit, who saw 
them again in 1625. Lobo resided for 
some time in the province of Damot, 
near the source of the Nile, which he 
certainly had some curiosity to examine ; 
On the Credit due to Bruce’s Travels, 531 
and his exact coincidence with Paez, in 
the depths of the fountains, and their 
distance from each other, is no proof that 
he never visited the springs which he de- 
scribes. The manuscripts of Paez, whe 
died in 1623, must have been brought 
from Abyssinia by Lobo himself, and the 
precise measurements ascertained by the 
former would be adopted by the latter, 
just as one historian is transcribed by an- 
other. That they were inserted with 
other additions by Le Grand, the French 
translator, is evident to us, from another 
relation which Sir Robert Southwell ap- 
pears to have procured at Lisbon from 
Lobo himself, and which was translated 
and published by Sir Peter Wyche, at the 
request of the Royal Society, in 1668. 
It is entitled <* A short Relation of the 
River Nile, of its Source and Current, 
&c by an Eye-witness.” &c. and was re- 
published by Dr. Rotherham, in opposi- 
tion to Bruce’s Travels in 1791. The 
two springs are described, not according 
to Paez, as four palms each in diameter, 
and at a stone cast from one another, but 
as ‘ each about the bigness of a coach- 
wheel, distant twenty paces,” and the 
principal fountain is described as“ neara 
trench, entangled with shrubs, the bot- 
tom not to be reached with aline five and 
twenty palms, which, by the way, meets 
(as is guessed) with the roots of the neigh- 
bouring shrubs, which hindered farther 
passage; the other spring is to be fathom- 
ed at sixteen palms.” As a proof that 
Lobo the author wasan eye-witness, it is 
observable that the trench omitted by 
Paez, was perceived by Bruce, and the 
difliculty of sounding the larger fountain 
is attested by Balugani, his Italian assist- 
ant; viz. that it was full of rushes and 
could not be sounded when attempted on 
the 4th and on the 5th of November; 
though Bruce asserts that he then thrust 
his lance through the rushes with ease to 
the bottom at the depth of six feet nine 
inches, and again sounded it vith a pluin- 
met on the 9th. A third fountain has 
been produced in the interval between 
Lobo and Bruce; but there can be no 
doubt that the boasted discovery of the 
source of the Nile was anticipated by the 
Portuguese jesuits, to whom the empire 
of Abyssinia was familiarly known above 
two centuries before our author ap- 
peared. 
That Mr. Bruce however, though not 
entitled to the merit of the first discovery, 
visited in person the remote source of the: 
Abyssinian river can no longer be dis- 
pated. The journal of Luigi Balugani 
from 
