Towards the close of the year 1796, I was told by the Coptic patriarch, that for the preceding nine years or more, no communication had taken place between Egypt and Abyssinia. Two men pretending to be priests of that country, came in 1793 to Kahira, but it was afterwards discovered that they were either not Abyssins, or fugitives, and without authority or commission. The interception of their intercourse by land might be caused by the unsettled state of _Sennaar_ and _Nubia_. Slaves from Abyssinia are usually brought by the Red Sea from _Mâsuah_ to Jidda, and many of them are sold in Mecca, though but few reach Kahira by way of Cossîr and Suez. Gold sometimes comes to market by the same route, and the Abyssins are thence supplied with such foreign commodities as they stand in need of. To the slaves of Habbesh no very marked preference is shewn in Egypt. They are more beautiful than those of Soudân; but the price of the two kinds, _cæteris paribus_, is nearly the same. A priest of the Propaganda, a native of Egypt, and consequently possessing every advantage of language and local knowlege, during my absence to the Southward, had endeavoured to penetrate into Abyssinia. Having reached Sennaar, he was dissuaded by the people of that city from attempting to proceed. Unmindful of their representations he prosecuted his journey, but was assassinated between _Sennaar_ and _Teawa_. The Propagandists had a single missionary, a native of _Habbesh_, at _Gondar_, and styled _Bishop of Adel_, but concealing himself under the exterior of a physician. In 1796, the order at Kahira told me that they had received no authentic intelligence concerning him during several years preceding. At Suez, March 1793, I met an Armenian merchant, who had formerly traded to Abyssinia, and seemed a man of intelligence. He told me that he was at Gondâr while Bruce was there, and that Yakûb was universally talked of with praise. This merchant narrated of his own accord the story of shooting a wax-candle through seven shields; but when I asked him if Bruce had been at the Abyssinian source of the Nile, he affirmed that he never was there. He observed that Bruce had been appointed governor of _Râs-el-Fîl_, a province in which Arabic is spoken. My informer added, that the Abyssins were a gross ignorant people, and often ate raw flesh. In Dar-Fûr a Bergoo merchant, named _Hadji Hamâd_, who had long resided in Sennaar, and was in Bruce’s party from Gondar to Sennaar, said that _Yakûb_ had been highly favoured in the Abyssinian court, and lived splendidly. He was often observing the stars, &c. Both my informers agreed that he had been governor of Râs-el-Fîl; and both, that he had never visited the Abyssinian source of the Nile, esteemed the real one in that ignorant country.