own safety and escape. The advice is impracticable, nor would I take it were it not so. Your lordship may depend upon it, that till I have the king's orders, or find that I can be of no further service here, nothing will make me leave Algiers but force. One brother has already, this war, had the honour to lose his life in the service of his country. Two others, besides myself, are still in it, and if any accident should happen to me, as is most probable from these lawless butchers, all I beg of his Majesty is that he will graciously please to extend his favour to the survivors, if deserving, and that he will make this city an example to others, how they violate public faith and the law of nations." It is this constancy and firmness, in postponing the consideration of danger to the consideration of duty, which has mainly tended to exalt the British character above those of other nations. Bruce weathered every danger, till August 1765, when, being relieved by the arrival of another consul, he left this piratical stronghold, and began to prosecute his researches along the coast of Africa. Landing at Bona, he paid a visit to Utica, "out of respect to the memory of Cato," and then, with a proper retinue for his protection, penetrated into the interior of the kingdoms of Algiers and Tunis. On the borders of these states, he found a tribe named the Welled Sidi Boogannim, who are exempted from taxes on condition of their living exclusively upon lions; a means of keeping down those enemies of the public. Dr Shaw, the only British predecessor of Bruce in this line of research, had been much laughed at, and even openly scouted, for having hinted at the existence of such a custom. His friends at Oxford thought it a subversion of the established order of things, that a man should eat a lion, when it had long passed as almost the peculiar province of the lion to eat the man. Bruce was exactly the man to go the more boldly forward when such a lion was in the way.
He thus alludes, in his own travels, to the foolish scepticism with which Dr Shaw's statement had been received: "With all submission to the learned University, I will not dispute the lion's title to eating men; but since it is not founded upon patent, no consideration will make me stifle the merit of the Willid Sidi Boogannim, who have turned the chase upon the enemy. It is a historical fact, and I will not permit the public to be misled by a misrepresentation of it On the contrary, I do aver, in the face of these fantastic prejudices, that I have ate the flesh of lions, that is, part of three lions, in the tents of the Willid Sidi Boogannim." This is certainly a notable enough specimen of the contra audientior ito. After having traversed the whole of these states, and taken drawings of every antiquity which he esteemed worthy of notice, he moved further west to Tripoli, where he was received with great kindness by Mr Eraser of Lovat, British consul at that place. From Tripoli he dispatched the greater 'part of his drawings to Smyrna, by which precaution they were saved from the destruction which must have otherwise been their fate. Crossing the Gulf of Sidra, which makes a considerable sweep into the northern coast of Africa, Bruce now reached Bengazio, the ancient Berenice built by Ptolemy Philadelphus. From this place he travelled to Ptolemata, where, finding the plague raging, he was obliged to embark hastily in a Greek vessel which he hired to carry him to Crete. This was perhaps the most unlucky step he took during the whole of his career. The vessel was not properly provided with ballast; the sails defied the management of the ignorant man who professed to steer it; it had not therefore got far from shore when a storm drove it to leeward, and it struck upon a rock near the harbour of Bengazi. Bruce took to the boat, along with a great number of the other passengers; but finding that it could not survive, and fearing lest he should be overwhelmed by a multitude of drowning wretches, he saw it necessary to commit himself at once to the sea, and endeavour to swim ashore. In this attempt, after suffering much from the vio-
