I shall beg the reader to remark, that, from the time of Poncet’s setting out of Egypt till his arrival at Sennaar, so far was he from being ill-looked upon, or any bad construction being put upon his errand, that he was, on the contrary, respected everywhere, as going to the king of Abyssinia. It never was then imagined he was to dry up the Nile, nor that he was a conjurer to change its course, nor that he was to teach the Abyssinians to cast cannon and make war, nor that he was loaded with immense sums of money. These were all _piæ fraudes_, lies invented by the priests and friars to incite these ignorant barbarians to a crime which, though it passed unrevenged, will justly make these brethren in iniquity the detestation of men of every religion in all ages. Poncet left Sennaar the 12th of May 1699, and crossed the Nile at Basboch, about four miles above the town, where he stopped for three days. This he calls a fair village; but it is a very miserable one, consisting of scarce 100 huts, built of mud and reeds. He departed the 15th in the evening, and travelled all the night as far as Bacras, and arrived the day after at Abec; then at Baha, a long day’s journey of about ten hours. He is mistaken, however, when he says Baha is situated upon the banks of the Nile, for it is upon a small river that runs into it. But, at the season he passed it, most of those rivers were dried up. On the 19th he came to Dodar, a place as inconsiderable as Baha; then to Abra, a large village; then to Debarke and Enbulbul. On the 25th they came to Giesim. Giesim is a large village situated upon the banks of the Nile, in the middle of a forest of trees of a prodigious height and size, all of which are loaded with fruit or flowers, and crowded with paroquets, and variety of other birds, of a thousand different colours. They made a long stay at this place, not less than nineteen days. In this interval, father Brevedent is said to have made an observation of the latitude of the place, which, if admitted, would throw all the geography of this journey into confusion. Poncet says, that Giesim is half-way between Sennaar and the frontiers of Ethiopia, and that a small brook, a little beyond Serké, is the boundary between those states. Now, from Sennaar to Giesim are nine stages, and one of them we may call a double one, but between Giesim and Serkè, only four; Giesim then cannot be half way between Sennaar and Serkè.--Again, the latitude of Sennaar is 13° 4´ north, according to Brevedent, or rather 13° 34´. Now, if the latitude of Giesim be 10°, then the distance between Sennaar and it must be about 250 miles which they had travelled in eight days, or more than thirty miles a-day, which, in that country, is absolutely impossible.