CHAPTER II EARLY RECORDS Travellers’ Names inscribed on the Monuments — Poncet passes through Kharga _en route_ for Ethiopia — Browne — Cailliaud’s Extensive Researches — Drovetti — Sir Archibald Edmonstone, Bart., discovers Dakhla Oasis — Hoskins — Exaggerated Opinions of Ancients regarding the Oases — Names of Explorers on the Walls of Hibis — Rohlfs’ Expedition — Zittel’s Geological Work — The words ‘Oasis,’ ‘Wah,’ ‘Otu,’ and ‘Set-ament’ — A Theban Myth — Dr. Schweinfurth — Brugsch Bey — Captain H. G. Lyons — Government Survey of the Oases — Dr. John Ball. Inscribed on the walls of the ancient monuments in the oasis one frequently comes across the names of travellers who visited the same scenes fifty, a hundred, or even two hundred years ago. Many of these explorers wrote descriptions of their travels and experiences, and such early records are naturally of the greatest interest and importance; unfortunately they are now out of print and somewhat difficult to procure, so that I make no apology for briefly referring to those which I have been able to examine. Most of these early records are extremely quaint, and although they are chiefly descriptive of the personal experiences and impressions of the writers, in some cases numerous observations are recorded in a sufficiently exact manner to be of permanent scientific value. A French physician, Monsieur Poncet, who passed through Kharga in 1698, _en route_ for Abyssinia, appears to have been the only traveller who left any written records of the Great Oasis between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. A translation of the account of his travels was published in English in 1709 (‘A Voyage to Æthiopia’). Accompanied by one Hagi Ali, an officer of the Abyssinian Emperor, and by a Jesuit missionary, Father Charles Francis Xaverius de Brevedent, Poncet set out from the town of Manfalut in the Nile Valley, and travelled along the Derb el Arbaîn, the well-known caravan route to the south. His description of this portion of the journey is as follows: “We set forward on the 2d of October early in the Morning, and from that very Day we enter’d a frightful Desart. These Desarts are extremely dangerous, because the Sands being moving are rais’d by the least Wind which darken the Air, and falling afterwards in Clouds, Passingers are often buried in them, or at least lose the Route, which they ought to keep.”