Gondar, but he was then very appropriately dressed, like those Galla (he remarked,) whom I had seen on a visit to Ras Welled Selassé. On my enquiring respecting the story of the Worari, he said he had heard of the practice, and believed it to be true; but with regard to the living feast described by Mr. Bruce, he declared that he had never witnessed any such cruel practice, and expressed great abhorrence at the thought. He admitted the licentiousness of the higher orders to be carried to much greater lengths in Amhara than in Tigré; but that the scene narrated by Mr. Bruce was certainly greatly exaggerated, a proof of which he drew from his mention "of the company drinking the health of the party," a custom absolutely unknown throughout Abyssinia; Kefla Yasous, he added, and many other persons of rank in the country, were greatly attached to Mr. Bruce; and when he quitted Abyssinia, Dofter Esther said, that he left behind him "a great name."
I subsequently received accounts from many different quarters, which all tended in the strongest manner to corroborate the statements of Dofter Esther: he may have been mistaken upon some few immaterial points of his narrative; but upon the whole I have reason to think it extremely, correct. In this account it is to be observed, that the most material points (besides those noticed in a former part of this work) which affect Mr. Bruce's veracity, are those, of his never having received any district or command; his not having been engaged in the battles of Serbraxos—the overthrow of his pretensions to an almost intuitive knowledge of the languages of the country—his mis-statements respecting Guanguol, Amha Yasous, and the living feast, and the unpardonable concealment of the fact, that Balugani attended him on his journey to the sources of the Nile. Many of these points, however inconsistent in themselves, or however strongly they may be contradicted by the evidence which I have collected, are of such a nature, that they do not admit of any positive proof by which they may be actually set aside; but the confutation of the latter circumstance, resting upon data accessible to every one in possession of Mr. Bruce's work, is more particularly worthy of notice, as it appears to me, that there was something of cru-
