over at the mouth with a skin, like a jar of pickles. Bruce's reception by this ferocious despot was inauspicious. On his presenting to him the firman of the grand seignior, upon seeing which the greatest pacha in the Turkish empire would have risen, kissed it, and lifted it to his forehead; he pushed it back contemptuously, and said, "Do you read it all to me, word for word." Bruce replied that it was written in the Turkish language, of which he comprehended not a word. "Nor I neither," said the naybe, "and I believe I never shall."
The traveller then gave him his letters of recommendation, which he laid down unopened beside him, and said, "You should have brought a moollah along with you. Do you think I shall read all these letters? Why, it would take me a month!" And while he spoke he glared upon his guest with his mouth open, so extremely like an idiot, that it was with the utmost difficulty Bruce kept his gravity. However, he replied, "Just as you please—you know best."
After a short conversation in Arabic, which the naybe at first affected not to understand, our traveller brought forward his present, which the naybe understood without the assistance of a moollah, and shortly afterward took his leave.
The inhabitants of Masuah were at this time dying so rapidly of the small-pox, that there was some reason to fear the living would not suffice to bury the dead. The whole island was filled with shrieks and lamentations both day and night; and they at last began to throw the bodies into the sea, which deprived Bruce and his servants of the support they had derived from fish, of which some of the species caught there were excellent.
On the 15th of October, the naybe, having despatched the vessel in which Bruce had arrived, began to put out his true colours, and, under various pretences, demanded an enormous present. Bruce,
