James Bruce Autograph Letter to an Unnamed Trusted Friend, from Cairo, 3 December 1768

Résumé du livre

Bruce recalls the King's recommendation to him "to make Excursions as far as I possibly could into the Continent of Africa & above all to endeavor to penetrate into Abyssinia as far as the Capital & the source of the Nile & to see what possibility or what profit would likely accrue from the cultivation of a commerce there"; he announces that he has executed the first article but had thought of abandoning the second when Mr. Montagu came to Egypt from England; however, now that Montagu has been expelled for misconduct Bruce finds himself "obliged either to undertake this last part or by abandoning it lose a great part of the merit of what I had already done"; he proceeds to explain in detail his mixed feelings about the dangers and merits of this task, offering an extraordinarily clear insight into his own motivation.