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The man who claimed to discover the source of the Nile in 1770 was an unlikely candidate for a life of adventure. At school he was a sickly boy and, after briefly studying law at Edinburgh, he spent several years recovering his health at his family home, Kinnaird House, near Falkirk.
Here, the ailing youngster grew into a barrel-chested six-foot-four – a colossus for his time – and his stature inspired a sense of self-confidence that allowed for the expression of his more adventurous tendencies. After his father’s death he inherited the estate and with it coalmines to provide the financial backing to fulfil his travelling urge.
In the 1760s Bruce was variously an amateur espionage agent in Spain, a draughtsman of North African ruins, a student of medicine in Syria and British consul-general in Algiers. A shipwreck near Libya proved pivotal, for the scientific equipment Bruce lost in the Mediterranean was replaced by wealthy associates on the condition that he’d undertake a quest that had been puzzling geographers for at least 3000 years – to discover the source of the Nile.
Despite the apparent perils that accompanied any expedition into the interior of the Dark Continent, Bruce embarked with the same insouciance with which his contemporaries would have undertaken a Grand Tour. He was convinced that Abyssinia (now divided between Ethiopia and Eritrea) was the place to look, but merely to get there Bruce had to be both tenacious and ingenious – he travelled under various guises, including as a Syrian physician, an itinerant dervish and a wandering fakir.
Very few Europeans had visited Abyssinia and the scenes that greeted him in Gondar, its highland capital, were outlandish to say the least. The Abyssinian court was not one to be impressed by airs and graces – its rulers’ ideas of fun included having the corpses of their enemies stuffed and paraded through the capital – so Bruce had his work cut out to impress the local aristocracy.
However, his remarkable linguistic skills aided communication, and his medical training came in useful: Bruce cured several members of the royal family of smallpox, which helped to alleviate the Abyssinian’s initial suspicions. Respect for Bruce was compounded by his competence both on a horse and as a marksman, which allowed him to impress the irascible warrior-prince, Ras Michael, and the young monarch Tecla Haimanot. So much so, in fact, that he was soon given several Abyssinian
