Page 354 - Travels in Arabia (Vol 2)_Neat

xv.] COAST OF NUBIA. 331 m

several points are thus wholly incorrect, was
nearly two years in the Red Sea,—Bruce was
five months: the former was provided with
&
chronometers and other costly instruments,
t
and was accommodated in a vessel “ com­ m
pletely officered and equipped as a man-of-
war,”—“ and that everything might be com­
pleted to his comfort, the commander was
directed to keep a table for him at the ex­

pense of the East India Company.” Bruce
hires at his own cost a boat, the planks of
which are sewn together with cordage. In &
I
this crazy bark he traverses the whole length
of a sea (nearly one thousand two hundred 1
miles), the navigation of which has, from the
earliest to modern times, been considered
perilous, even to a proverb. Lord Valentia
sails under the auspices of the then Governor
General of India, the Marquis Hastings, and
under the powerful protection of the English
flag, which the late expedition to Egypt had

taught even barbarians to respect. Bruce
journeys as a private gentleman, with the sole
noble object of enlarging our stock of geo­
graphical knowledge. He had no govern­
ment to look to his comforts,—his resources
were all his own.