Nathaniel Pearce (1779–1820) was, according to J. J. Halls, who edited and published his autobiographical writings in two volumes in 1831, 'one of those remarkable and adventurous beings, whom Nature, in her sportive humour, seems to take delight in creating'. Having run away to sea twice, deserted from the navy, accidentally killed a man, and briefly converted to Islam, he came into his own as a reliable guide and factotum to British travellers in Egypt. He accompanied Henry Salt on his mission to Abyssinia in 1805 (Salt's own account is also reissued in this series), where he married a local girl and served the ruler of Tigré until the latter's death in 1816. Pearce's frank and humorous account of his life was written for Henry Salt, and it is particularly interesting in the details it gives of the land and people of Ethiopia, then little known by Europeans.