The first part of a five-volume account of James Bruce of Kinnaird’s expedition to Ethiopia in search of the source of the Blue Nile. Bruce arrived in Egypt in 1768 and after receiving financial support from the Mamluk ruler Ali Bey, sailed down the Red Sea towards Ethiopia. In 1770, he reached the Ethiopian capital, Gondar, and had an audience with the emperor Tekle Haymanot II and his regent Mikael Sehul (who Bruce compared to his friend the Comte de Buffon). Bruce knew Ge’ez and was well received among the court and in wider Ethiopian society.

In October 1770, he set off in search of the source of the Blue Nile with a small party consisting of the Italian draughtsman Luigi Balugani and a Greek guide named Strates (who possibly already knew the location of the source). They reached Gish Abay in Amhara that November, where Bruce observed that the river there, also known as the Abay or Felege Ghion, was the source of the Blue Nile.

While recognising that the White Nile was the longer river, he believed that the Blue Nile was the ‘true’ Nile recognised by the ancients. As such, Bruce ascertained that he was the first European to find the source of the Nile. However, the source of the river had previously been visited by a Spanish missionary, Pedro Paez, in 1618. Although Paez had died before publishing his account, the site was known to the Portuguese missionary Jeronimo Lobo who also visited the source during his own travels to Ethiopia in the 1620s and published an account of the journey. Bruce sought to discredit these earlier explorers, accusing their accounts of having been fabricated, with passages about the river being added at a later date. These assertions have since been disproven, with Lobo’s description of the source being regarded as accurate. The source of the Blue Nile at Gish Abay has been known to the people of the region for centuries and is regarded as holy in the Ethiopian Church, its waters are believed to possess healing powers.