TRAVELS OF JAMES BRUCE the Abyssinians can have, and that when they give a feast they kill an ox and immediately serve up a quarter of it on the table with much pepper and salt. The gall of the ox serves both for oil and vinegar ! Sir William Jones declared that the country people and soldiery made no scruple of drinking the blood and eating the raw flesh of an ox, which they cut without caring whether it was alive or dead. On February 15th Bruce reached Gondar and encamped by the Ankarab River. Here he stayed some time, and made many friends by his medical skill and knowledge. The excesses which he saw committed at the Abyssinian court troubled him greatly, and he was forced to be present at one marriage feast which lasted for some weeks. Cattle were distributed among the populace and the army, drink was given in proportion, and he considered the dissipation which followed both unimaginable and indescribable. The married women ate raw beef, drank spirits and a drink made of honey and water fermented, and smoked like men. After a time Bruce asked for and obtained permission to go and live in the village of Emfras, which is situated about twenty miles from Gondar on the eastern side of the Lake of Demba. About this time the king of Abyssinia made him a gentleman of his bedchamber, a commander of the household cavalry, and a governor of a province !

In return for the services which Bruce was able to render, the king gave him the village of Gish and the ground round about it, which contained the source of the river Abai, better known in Sudan territory as the " Blue Nile."

During the summer of that year (1770) Bruce never lost an opportunity of making his way towards the source of the Blue Nile, for he felt with the poet : " Sed cum tanta meo vivat sub pectore virtus, Tantus amor veri, nihil est quod noscere malim Quam fluvii causas per saecula tanta latentes Ignotumque caput : spes sit mihi certa videndi Niliacos fontes."

(Lucan x. 188 sqq.) He believed the Blue Nile to be the source of the whole Nile, for he attached little importance to the White Nile and never ' The king was Takla Hiymanot II. 'Admas Sagad II. ; he was deposed in April, 1777, and died in the following September.

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