Coffin, a very intelligent, pleasing, active lad, but of course illiterate, remained in Abyssinia until the year 1827, when he surprised his brother, who is now valet to Lord ----, and who had long supposed him to be dead, by suddenly calling upon him in London. From a conversation which we have just had with Coffin, we understand that he is about to return to Abyssinia; the present government having refused to give him anything for the king of that country beyond a trifling complimentary present.
As, excepting Lord Valentia, Salt, Pierce, and Coffin, no European travellers have visited Abyssinia since the days of Bruce, we have conceived it to be absolutely necessary, in order that the reader may be enabled to form a correct judgment, to explain the connexion which exists between Lord Valentia, his secretary, his valet, and Nathaniel Pierce the English sailor, who, after deserting from his majesty's brig the Antelope, was patronised by Lord Valentia: for, as the two former, men of education and distinction, have already most violently attacked Bruce, and as the two latter are, we believe, about to follow (naturally enough) the opinions of their masters (we even understand that Pierce's life has been actually prepared for publication by one or more of Mr. Salt's friends), we feel it to be a duty which we owe to science, to truth, and to Bruce's memory, to show that these four individuals, without any improper intention, support rather than corroborate each other; and, having made this explanation, we no less unwillingly proceed to notice a few of the observations which have been made against Bruce by Lord Valentia and Mr. Salt.
"On the 5th," says Lord Valentia, the commander-in-chief of Bruce's enemies, "I had a most severe attack of fever, which went off at night. I took James's powder, which I thought relieved it. On the 7th I was unwell in the morning, but the James's powder prevented a regular fit. I took _two grains_ of calomel night and morning, which gradually recovered me."--Vol. ii., p. 218. His lordship, alluding to Bruce, farther says: "When a person attempts to give geographical information to the public, it is necessary that his information should be accurate, and that he should not give as certain a single circumstance of which he has not positively informed himself." Yet Lord Valentia not only published "Travels to Abyssinia" (having only landed at Masuah, a harbour which did not at that time even belong to the King of Abyssinia), but also thus ventures, merely from hearsay, to contradict Bruce, who had been an eyewitness of facts which he related. "Although," says his lordship, "I was not so fortunate as to reach Macowar, yet I was sufficiently near it to convince myself that the _accounts I had received_ at Massowah and Suakim of its actual position were 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 Gibel 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," &c., &c.