484 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



in Abyffinia, and wonders how they fhould have reprefent* 

 ed a thing they had never feen, and, having done fo, re-« 

 mained Hill incapable to make or ufe it. Poncet was no 

 man of reading out of his own profcflion ; he nowhere 

 pretends it ; he recorded this fadt bec-aufe he faw it, as a 

 traveller fhould do, and left others to give the reafon 

 which he could not. Poncet calls this place Heleni, from 

 a fmall village of that name in the neighbourhood. Had he 

 been a fcholar he would have known that the ruins he wai 

 obferving were thofe of the city of Axum, the ancient mc-?- 

 tropolis of this part of Ethiopia.. 



Ptolemy Evergetes, the third Grecian king of Egypf} 

 conquered this city and the neighbouring kingdom ; reli- 

 ded fome time there ; and, being abfolutely ignorant of 

 hieroglyphics, tlien long difufed, he left the obelifk he had 

 ereded for afcertaining his latitudes ornamented with li- 

 gures of his own chooling, and the inventions of his fub- 

 jec^s the Egyptians, and particularly the door for a conve* 

 nience of private life, to be imitated by his new-acquired 

 fubjefls the Ethiopians, to whom it had hitherto been un-» 

 known. 



From Dobarwa he arrived at Arcouva, which, he fays^ 

 geographers mifcal Arequies. M. Poncet might have ipa- 

 red this criticifm upon geographers till he himfelf had been 

 better informed, for both are equally mifcalled, whether Ar- 

 cuviva or Arequies. The true and only name of: the place,- 

 knov/n cither to Mahometans or Chriltians, is Arkeeko, as 

 the ifland to which he paiTed, cro/ling an arm of the fea, is 

 called Mafuah, not Meflbua, as he everywhere fpells it. 



Erom 



