Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/508

 that language, not one book of which, at that day, they had ever seen.

these empty criticisms have been kept alive by the merit of the book, by this alone they have any further chance of reaching posterity; while, by all candid readers, this itinerary, short and incomplete as it is, will not fail to be received as a valuable acquisition to the geography of these unknown countries of which it treats.

it but a piece of duty to the memory of a fellow-traveller, to the lovers of truth and the public in general, to state the principal objections upon which this outcry against Poncet was raised; that, by the answers they admit of, the world may judge whether they are or are not founded in candour, and that before they are utterly swallowed up in oblivion.

first is, that of the learned Renaudot, who says he does not conceive how an Ethiopian could be called by the name of Murat. To this I answer, Poncet, de Maillet, and the Turkish Basha, say Murat was an Armenian, a hundred times over; but M. Renaudot, upon his own authority, makes him an Ethiopian, and then lays the blame upon others, who arc not so ignorant as himself.

Secondly, Poncet asserts Gondar was the capital of Ethiopia; whereas the Jesuits have made no mention of it, and this is supposed a strong proof of Poncet's forgery. I answer. The Jesuits were banished in the end of Socinios's reign, and the beginning of that of his son Facilidas, that is about the year 1632; they were finally extirpated in the end of this last prince's reign, that is before the year i665, by