49^. TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



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

 ever feen. 



All thefe empty criticiims have been kept aUve by the 

 merit of the book, by this alone they have any further 

 chance of reaching pollerity ; while, by all candid readers, 

 this itinerary, fliort and incomplete as it is, will not fail to 

 be received as a valuable acquifition to the geography of 

 thefe unknown countries of which it treats. 



I THINK it but a piece of duty to the memory of a fellow- 

 traveller, to the lovers of truth and the public in general, to 

 ftate the principal objccT:ions upon which this outcry againft 

 Poncetwas raifed; that,bytheanfwers theyadmit of, the world 

 may judge whether they are or are not foimded in candour, 

 and that before they arc utterly fwallowed up in oblivion. 



The firft is, that of the learned Renaudot, who fays he 

 does not conceive how an Ethiopian could be called by the 

 name of Murat. To this I anfwer, Poncet, de IVIaillet, and 

 the Turkifli Baflia, fay 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 fo ignorant as himfelf. 



Secondly, Foncct alTerts Gondar was the capital of Ethi- 

 opia ; whereas the Jefuits have made no mention of it, and 

 this is fuppofed a llrong proof of Poncet's forgery. I an- 

 fwer. The Jefuits were banilhed in the end of Socinios's 

 reign, and the beginning of that of his fon Facilidas, that is 

 about the year 1632 ; they were finally extirpated in the end 

 of this lail prince's reign, that is before the year i665, by 



his 



