Then followed the journey of Jannequin de Rochefort and his companions in Senegal, and the still more important explorations of Brüe and Campagnon in the same region, journeys which have been referred to in Chapter IX. During the reign of king Charles II a Dutch or Anglicized Dutch merchant, named Vermuyden, asserted that he had ascended the Gambia and reached a country beyond, full of gold, but the truth of this story is open to considerable suspicion. In 1723 Captain Bartholomew Stibbs, and later still a man named Harrison, repeated Jobson’s explorations of the Gambia. In 1720-30 Dr Shaw, an Englishman, travelled in Egypt, Algeria[169] and Tunis, and gave the first fairly accurate account of the Barbary States which had been received since they became Muhammadanized. A little later (1737-40) an English clergyman, Doctor of Laws and Fellow of the Royal Society, Richard Pococke, travelled in Egypt and explored the Nile as far as the first cataract. In about 1780, Sonnini, an Italian, born in Alsace, explored Egypt, and gave a really circumstantial account of that country which did much to incite the French Revolutionary Government to invade it. In 1768-73 James Bruce, a Scotchman of good family, who had been educated at Harrow, and had spent two-and-a-half years as Consul at Algiers, travelled first in Tunis, Tripoli, and Syria. He then entered Egypt, and, becoming interested in the Nile question, he voyaged down the Red Sea to Masawa, and journeyed to Gondar, the capital of Abyssinia. Having some knowledge of medicine, he found favour with the authorities, and was given a command in the Abyssinian cavalry. After many disappointments, his ardent wish was granted; and he arrived at what he believed to be the sources of the Nile, but which really were the head-waters of the Blue Nile, to the south of Abyssinia. He journeyed back by way of Sennār and the Nubian Desert to Cairo. In 1793 William George Browne, a Londoner, and a member of Oriel College, Oxford, attracted by the accounts of Bruce’s travels, entered Egypt, and crossed the Libyan Desert from Asiut to Darfur in 1793. There he was treated extremely badly by the sultan of the country, and practically endured a captivity of three years before he succeeded in returning to Egypt.