Some days after the caravan came to Gerri. Poncet says, the use of this station was to examine caravans coming from the northward, whether they had the small-pox or not. This usage is now discontinued by the decay of trade. It must always have served little purpose, as the infection oftener comes in merchandise than by passengers. At Gerri great respect was shewn to Poncet, as going to Ethiopia. I cannot conceive why Poncet says, that, to avoid the great windings of the Nile, he should have been obliged to travel to the north-east. This would have plainly carried him back to the desert of Bahiouda, and the Arabs: his course must have been S. W. to avoid the windings of the Nile, because he came to Herbagi, which he describes very properly as a delicious situation. The next day they came to Sennaar. The reader, I hope, will easily perceive that my intention is not to criticise Mr Poncet’s journey. That has been done already so illiberally and unjustly that it has nearly brought it into disrepute and oblivion. My intention is to illustrate it; to examine the facts, the places, and distances it contains; to correct the mistakes where it has any, and restore it to the place it ought to hold in geography and discovery. It was the first intelligible itinerary made through these deserts; and I conceive it will be long before we have another; at any rate, to restore and establish the old one will, in all sensible minds, be the next thing to having made a second experiment. He surely is in some degree of mistake about the situation of Sennaar when he says it is upon an eminence. It is on a plain close on the western banks of the Nile. A small error, too, has been made about its latitude. By an observation said to have been made by father Brevedent, the 21st of March 1699, he found the latitude of Sennaar to be 13° 4´ north. The French maps, the most correct we have in all that regards the east, place this capital of Nubia in lat. 15° and a few minutes. But the public may rest assured, that the correct latitude of Sennaar, by a mean of very small differences of near fifty observations, made with a three-feet brass quadrant, in the course of several months I staid in that town, is lat 13° 34´ 36´´ north. What I have to say further concerning Sennaar will come more naturally in my own travels; and I shall only so far consider the rest of Poncet’s route, as to explain and clear it from mistakes, Sennaar being the only point in which our two tracts unite.