484 TRAVELS TO DISCOVER 



in Abyffinia, and wonders how they mould 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 profeffion ; he nowhere 

 pretends it ; he recorded this fact becaufe he faw it, as a 

 traveller mould 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 was 

 obferving were thofe of the city of Axum, the ancient me- 

 tropolis of this part of Ethiopia. 



Ptolemy Evergetes, the third Grecian king of Egypt, 

 conquered this city and the neighbouring kingdom ; refi- 

 ded fome time there ; and, being abfolutely ignorant of 

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

 erected for ascertaining his latitudes ornamented with fi- 

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

 jects the Egyptians, and particularly the door for a conve- 

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

 fubjects the Ethiopians, to whom it had hitherto been un- 

 known. 



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

 geographers mifcal Arcquies. M. Poncet might have fpa- 

 red this criticifm upon geographers till he himfelf had been 

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

 couva or Arequies. The true and only name of the place, 

 known either to Mahometans or Chriftians, is Arkeeko, as 

 the ifland to which he parted, crofling an arm of the fea, is 

 called Mafuah ? not Meiloua, as he everywhere fpells it. 



From 



