Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/496

 of his king, taken forcibly from the chancellor of the nation, and made a Mahometan before their eyes. Abyssinian embassy then demanded from France, and recommended to M. de Maillet, was a presumptuous, vain, impracticable chimera, which must have ended in disappointment, and which never could have closed more innocently than it did.

pass over all that happened during Poncet's stay at Gondar, as he did not understand the language, and must therefore have been very liable to mistake. But as for what he says of armies of 300,000 men; of the king's dress at his audience; of his mourning in purple; of the quantity of jewels he had, and wore; of his having but one wife; and of large stone-crosses being erected on the corners of the palace at Gondar; these, and several other things, seem to me to have been superadded afterwards. Nor do I think what is said of the churches and Christians remaining in the kingdom of Dongola, nor the monstrous lie about the golden rod suspended in the air in the convent of Bifan is at all the narrative of Poncet, but of some fanatic, lying friar, into whose possession Poncet's manuscript might have fallen. The journey itself, such as I have restored it, is certainly genuine; and, as I believe it describes the best and safest way into Abyssinia, I have rectified some of the few errors it had, and now recommend it to all future travellers, and to the public.