Travels in the Footsteps of Bruce in Algeria and Tunis
9781465684493
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Many years of my life have been passed in and about the countries which he first opened out to geographical knowledge. When, therefore, I found myself at Algiers as Bruce’s successor in office, after the lapse of a century, my interest in him was redoubled. I read the unsatisfactory account of his Barbary explorations, prefixed to the first volume of his travels, with the greatest regret that it was not more detailed, and I resolved to ascertain whether some hitherto unpublished matter might not exist, tending to throw greater light on the subject. I searched the records of the Consulate in vain; not a document of his time remained; all had been destroyed by fire before the French conquest. At the Record Office in London a series of his reports exists, containing many interesting details of the State of Algiers. They are bound up with Arabic documents relative to treaties of great historical value; but, naturally enough, there is not a word regarding his explorations, which only commenced after he had resigned his public duties in August 1765. I then bethought me that Lady Thurlow, daughter of the late Lord Elgin, was great great granddaughter of the traveller, and heiress of Kinnaird. I applied to her, and was overjoyed to find that she possessed immense stores of his manuscripts, drawings, and collections. Lord Thurlow selected from amongst these everything relative to the first journey Bruce made in Africa before proceeding to Abyssinia, and these he most kindly placed at my disposal for publication, if I thought the subject sufficiently interesting. I went to Lord Thurlow’s, fully prepared to find much valuable matter, but I had no conception that a treasure of such magnitude and importance awaited me. I do not intend to allude to the great mass of drawings irrelevant to my present subject; what especially interested me was a collection of more than a hundred sheets, some having designs on both sides, completely illustrating all the principal subjects of archæological interest in North Africa from Algiers to the Pentapolis, and executed in a style which an architectural artist of the present day could hardly excel. Mr. Bruce frequently exhibited these drawings during his lifetime, and alluded to the desire he entertained of publishing a work on the antiquities of Africa. Ornamental title pages for the various parts of this work actually exist, but he appears never to have commenced the letterpress necessary to illustrate the drawings. It is possible that the manner in which his book of travels had been received induced him to abandon the subject in disgust, but it is more probable that the enormous expense of engraving the drawings, estimated at from 3,000l. to 5,000l., rendered the project too costly to be realised. After his death the increasing taste for the arts and the more general patronage of publications of that nature induced his son to think of making arrangements regarding such a work, but his designs were interrupted by his own death in 1810. Major Cumming Bruce more than once entered into negotiations with the trustees of the British Museum for the transfer of the whole collection to the nation, but no arrangement satisfactory to both parties could be arrived at, and for the past thirty years they have remained unseen by the present generation, and almost forgotten, in the possession of the Bruce family.
