This serio-comical valedictory malediction, which Bruce bequeaths to "twenty greasy monks of Koscam," abruptly closes his history of Abyssinia, and upon the distant sources of the Nile the curtain now drops! More than half a century has elapsed, and no one has raised the veil which Bruce lifted up; no one has penetrated the mist through which he found his way, or encountered the dangers which he overcame.
Yet by far the most arduous and dangerous undertaking in the history of Bruce's life remains to be related; for, whatever may have been his difficulties in Abyssinia, however roughly he may have been treated there, he had warm and powerful friends, and was in a country professedly Christian; but his homeward journey is now to be undertaken, through the centre of some of the most savage, burning, steril regions in the world; and if the reader but reflects on the many distinguished individuals who, full of health and enthusiasm, have left Cairo to ascend the Nile, and have yet very early found it impossible to proceed, he will feel for poor Bruce, while with a broken and exhausted constitution he is about to enter on this painful and perilous journey.
When Mr. Salt visited Abyssinia, nearly forty years after Bruce had left it, he was informed that Ras Michael, who was even then talked of as "the old lion," died in 1780, in the eighty-eighth year of his age. The beautiful Ozoro Esther, too, was dead; and, indeed, nearly all Bruce's friends had gone to their long home.
"Yusuph," says Salt, "spoke of him (Bruce) with much regret. He, and every one with whom I have conversed, confirmed the character of Ras Michael as given by Bruce." "He left," said Dofter Esther, a learned Abyssinian, "a great name behind him."
[34] Some years ago, the Pasha of Tripolitza, in riding through the town, inquired who had thrown some rubbish into the street. A remarkably honest-looking man instantly popped his head out of his window to acknowledge that it was he. The pasha made a slight sign to the executioner who attended him, and the poor man's head never returned to his shop!
Hassen Pasha, well known to the English army in Egypt by the nickname of Djezzar, or the "The Butcher," was a man of a much more merciful disposition. One day he went to inspect a small redoubt which had been thrown up by his particular desire: a part of it rather displeased him; but, instead of barbarously sending for the _head_ of his commanding engineer, he desired the executioner merely to bring him one of his _ears_. Some of Djezzar's best officers had slit noses, which proved that he possessed, by comparison, a very humane, considerate, and reflecting mind; for, after all, a one-eared man may enjoy in this world many little pleasures; whereas, when once his head is off, there is an end of him.