96 ttlAVELS IN ABYSSINIA, 
Wood, where he gives a general summary of his 
early travels. There are also astronomical obser- 
vations taken at Loheia, on a day when, accord- 
ing to the Travels, he ought to have been absent 
on the voyage to Babelmandel. The combination 
of all these circumstances certainly gives the affair 
a very unfavourable aspect. Yet I know not if 
it be so wholly impossible, as even his editor 
seems to conceive^ that he really performed these 
journeys. Should we suppose Balugani to have 
remained behind, and to have made the observa- 
tions, some of the difficulties would be solved. 
The circumstances which might induce us to 
grasp at any possibility, is the want of all con- 
ceivable motive for these gross and scandalous 
fictions. Had the feigned excursions been made 
into some yet unknown region in the heart of 
Africa, where no other traveller had penetrated, 
the case would have been very different. On the 
contrary, they were voyages made quite in the 
common and beaten track, in the performance of 
which there was neither glory nor difficulty. The 
one up the Nile, in particular, carries him over 
the very same ground which he afterwards really 
traversed in his return from Abyssinia ; so that 
it made no addition to the sphere of his tra- 
vels. These considerations cannot, indeed, weigh 
against positive proof ; but they make us require 
a higher degree of evidence, and more strictly 
