And here I must set the critic right also, as to what he says of the produce of these parts. There is no grain called Dara, at least that I know of. If he meant millet, he should have called it Dora. It is not a mark of barrenness in the ground where this grows: part of the finest land in Egypt is sown with it. The banks of the Nile which produce Dora would also produce wheat; but the inhabitants of the desert like this better; it goes farther, and does not subject them to the violent labour of the plough, to which all inhabitants of extreme hot countries are averse. The same I say of what he remarks with regard to cotton. The finest valleys in Syria, watered by the cool refreshing springs that fall from Mount Libanus, are planted with this shrub; and, in the same grounds alternately, the tree which produces its sister in manufactures, silk, whose value is greatly inhanced by the addition. Cotton clothes all Ethiopia; cotton is the basis of its commerce with India, and of the commerce between England, France, and the Levant; and, were it not for some such ignorant, superficial reasoners as Abbé Renaudot, cotton, after wool, should be the favourite manufacture of Britain. It will in time take place of that ungrateful culture, flax; will employ more hands, and be a more ample field for distinguishing the ingenuity of our manufacturers. We see, then, how the least consideration possible destroys these ill-founded objections, upon which these very ignorant enemies of Poncet attempted to destroy his credit, and rob him of the merit of his journey. At last they ventured to throw off the mask entirely, by producing a letter supposed to be written from Nubia by an Italian friar, who asserts roundly, that he hears Poncet was never at the capital of Ethiopia, nor ever had audience of Yasous; but stole the clothes and money of father Brevedent, then married, and soon after forsook his wife and Ethiopia together. Maillet could have easily contradicted this, had he acted honestly; for Hagi Ali had brought him the king of Abyssinia’s letter, who thanked him for his having sent Poncet, and signified to him his recovery. But without appealing to M. Maillet upon the subject, I conceive nobody will doubt, that Hagi Ali had a commission to bring a physician from Cairo to cure his master, and that Poncet was proposed as that physician, with consent of the consul. Now, after having carried Poncet the length of Bartcho, where it is agreed he was when Brevedent died, (for he was supposed there to have robbed that father of his money) what could be Hagi Ali’s reason for not permitting him to proceed half a day’s journey farther to the capital, and presenting him to the king, who had been at the pains and expence of sending for him from Egypt? What excuse could Hagi Ali make for not producing him, when he must have delivered the consul’s letters, telling him that Poncet was come with the caravan for the purpose of curing him?