Account of the life and writings of James Bruce of Kinnaird. Author of Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, in the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773

Edinburgh : Archibald Constable, 1808. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. Bound in contemporary calf. Quarto, 29 cm. Rebacked, with modern spine. xiv, 504, 4 pages. 22 plates total: frontispiece portrait, 19 plates, 2 folding maps. Travels to discover the source of the Nile. Bruce attempted to find the source of the Blue Nile by traveling to Ethiopia, where the source was reputed to be located. He began his journey in Egypt in 1768, navigating the Red Sea to Jiddah, landing in Arabia and Massawa. His party set out from Gondar to the Ethiopian highlands, eventually reaching Lake Tara and Gish Abay, the source of the Blue Nile, in 1770. From Gondar, he began the arduous 1200 mile trek through the Sudanese desert back to Cairo. When he returned to Britain his incredible accounts were met "by scepticism concerning the truth of Bruce's claims" -DNB. In 1790 he published his 5 volume "Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile" to support his account of his travels. The book was an instant success, but doubts lingered and Bruce was for a time unfairly deemed a travel fraud. The 2nd and 3rd editions of Bruce's Travels were "edited by the oriental scholar Alexander Murray, whose painstaking examination of Bruce's papers established a more reliable text of his travels and whose biography of Bruce (1808) is an important contemporary source." - DNB.