a great number of Greeks in that country, many of whom were high in office. To all of these he undertook to procure letters to be addressed by the patriarch, whose commands they regarded with no less veneration than holy writ, enjoining them as a penance, upon which a kind of jubilee was to follow, says Bruce, "that laying aside their pride and vanity, great sins with which he knew them much infected, and, instead of pretending to put themselves on a footing with me when I should arrive at the court of Abyssinia, they should concur heart and hand in serving me; and that before it could be supposed they had received instructions from me, they should make a declaration before the king that they were not in condition equal to me; that I was a free citizen of a powerful nation, and servant of a great king; that they were born slaves of the Turk, and at best ranked but as would my servants; and that, in fact, one of their countrymen was in that station then with me."[1]
Our traveller was soon called upon to perform in the character of an astrologer. It was late in the evening when he one night received a summons to appear before the bey, whom he found to be a much younger man than he had expected. He was sitting upon a large sofa covered with crimson cloth of gold; his turban, his girdle, and the head of his dagger all
- ↑ In the biography of Bruce recently published there are a few mistakes in the account of this transaction, which, simple as it may appear, was precisely that upon which Bruce's whole success in Abyssinia depended. Major Head says, that Father Christopher was the patriarch, that he accosted Bruce upon his arrival at the convent, and that it was he who addressed the letters to Abyssinia. Bruce, on the contrary, says that he was Archimandrites; and that it was "at his solicitation that Risk had desired the patriarch to furnish" him with an apartment in the convent of St. George. Nor was he at the convent to accost Bruce on his arrival. "The next day after my arrival," says the traveller, "I was surprised by the visit of my old friend Father Christopher." He goes on to say, that between them they digested the plan of the letters, and that Father Christopher undertook to manage the affair,—that is, to procure the patriarch to write and forward the letters.—Bruce's Travels, vol. 1. p. 34, 35, 4to. Edin. 1790.
