Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/488

 of the inhabitants, who, by different machines, raise water from the stream.

are not to attribute to Poncet, but to those who published, the story here put into father Brevedent's mouth about the fugitive Christians in Nubia, which fable gave rise to the first institution of the Ethiopic mission. "It drew tears, says he, from the eyes of father Brevedent, my dear companion, when he reflected that it was not long since this was a Christian country; and that it had not lost the faith but only for want of some person who had zeal enough to consecrate himself to the instruction of this abandoned nation." He adds, that upon their way they found a great number of hermitages and churches half ruined; a fiction derived from the same source.

was taken, and apostatized early, and the stones of hermitages and churches had long before this been carried off, and applied to the building of mosques. Father Brevedent, therefore, if he wept for any society of Christians at Dongola, must have wept for those that had perished there 500 years before.

was much caressed at Dongola for the cures he made there. The Mek, or king, of that city wished him. much to stay and fettle there; but desisted out of respect, when he heard he was going to the emperor of Ethiopia. Dongola, Poncet has placed rightly on the eastern bank of the Nile, about lat. 20° 22'.

caravan departed from Dongola on the 6th of January 1699; four days after which they entered into the kingdom