Below is the excerpt I used for the Sandford Alumni Book Club [this link is old, the current chapters are: James Bruce: A Scotsman at the Nile, and Richard Burton: The Forbidden City of Harrar] Zoom meeting, this past June 17.
I used an excerpt from page 529, from Volume One of Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773. This is a multi-volume account of the Scotsman James Bruce (1730–94) describing his travels through Egypt and Ethiopia.
I used this because it related to a previous Sandford Book Club zoom meeting, where I discussed this same Ethiopian King (Emperor) Lalibela, but in a different context.
The bolded sections are mine, for reminders during the meeting.
In the reign of Lalibala, near about the 1200, there was a great persecution in Egypt against the Christians, after the Saracen conquest, and especially against the masons, builders, and hewers of stone, who were looked upon by the Arabs as the greatest of abominations; this prince opened an asylum in his dominions to all fugitives of that kind, of whom he collected a prodigious number. Having before him as specimens the ancient works of the Troglodytes [according to ancient Greek sources - north African cave-dwelling hermits], he directed a number of churches to be hewn out of the solid rock in his native country of Lasta [where Lalibela is situated], where they remain untouched to this day, and where they will probably continue till the latest posterity.Large columns within are formed out of the solid rock, and every species of ornament preserved, that would have been executed in buildings of separate and detached stones, above ground. This prince undertook to realize the favourite pretensions of the Abyssinians, to the power of turning the Nile out of its course, so that it should no longer be the cause of the fertility of Egypt, now in possession of the enemies of his religion.We may imagine, if it was in the power of man to accomplish this undertaking, it could have fallen into no better hands than those to whom Lalibala gave the execution of it ; people driven from their native country by thofe Saracens who now were reaping the benefits of the river, in the places of those they had forced to seek habitations far from the benefit and pleafure afforded by its stream.This prince did not adopt the wild idea of turning the course of the Nile out of its present channel; upon the possibility or impossibility of which, the argument (so warmly and for so long agitated) always most improperly turns.His idea was to famish Egypt: and, as the fertility of that country depends not upon the ordinary stream, but the extraordinary increase of it by the tropical rains, he is laid to have found, by an exact survey and calculation, that there ran on the summit, or highest part of the country, several rivers which could be intercepted by [mines], and their stream directed into the low country southward, instead of joining the Nile, augmenting it and running northward. By this he found he should be able so to disappoint its increase, that it never would rise to a height proper to fit Egypt for cultivation.And thus far he was warranted in his ideas of succeeding (as I have been informed by the people of that country), that he did intersect and carry into the Indian Ocean, two very large rivers, which have ever since flowed that way, and he was carrying a level to the Lake Zaway, where many rivers empty themselves in the beginning of the rains, which would have effectually diverted the course of them all, and could not but in some degree diminish the current below.Death, the ordinary enemy of all these stupendous Herculean undertakings, interposed too here, and put a stop to this enterprize of Lalibala.But Amha Iayesus, prince of Shoa (in whose country part of these immense works were) a young man of great understanding, and with whom I lived several months in the most intimate friendship at Gondar, assured me that they were visible to this day; and that they were of a kind whose use could not be mistaken that he himfelf had often visited them, and was convinced the undertaking was very possible with such hands, and in the circumstances things then were.He told me likewise, that, in a written account which he had seen in Shoa, it was said that this prince was not interrupted by death in his undertaking, but persuaded by the monks, that if a greater quantity of water was let down into the dry kingdoms of Hadea, Mara, and Adel, increasing in population every day, and, even now, almost equal in power to Abyssinia itself, these barren kingdoms would become the garden of the world; and such a number of Saracens, dislodged from Egypt by the first appearance of the Nile's failing, would fly thither:...that they would not only withdraw those countries from their obedience, but be strong enough to over-run the whole kingdom of Abyssinia.Upon this, as Amha Eyesus informed me, Lalibala gave over his first scheme, which was the famishing of Egypt; and that his next was employing the men in subterraneous churches ; a useless expence, but more level to the understanding of common men than the former.Don Roderigo de Lima, ambassador from the king of Portugal, in 1522 saw the remains of these vast works, and travelled in them several days, as we learn from Alvarez, the chaplain and historian of that embassy*, which we shall take notice of in its proper place.