consul's letters, telling him that Poncet was come with the caravan for the purpose of curing him?
Besides this, M. de Maillet saw Hagi Ali afterwards at Cairo, where he reproached him with his cruel behaviour, both to Poncet and to friar Justin, another monk that had come along with him from Ethiopia. Maillet then must have been fully instructed of Poncet's whole life and conversation in Ethiopia, and needed not the Italian's supposed communication to know whether or not he had been in Ethiopia. Besides, Maillet makes use of him as the forerunner of the other embassy he was then preparing to Gondar, and to that fame king Yasous, which would have been a very strange step had he doubted of his having been there before.
Supposing all this not enough, still we know he returned by Jidda, and the consul corresponded with him there. Now, how did he get from Bartcho to the Red Sea without passing the capital, and without the king's orders or knowledge? Who franked him at those number of dangerous barriers at Woggora, Lamalmon, the Tacazzé, Kella, and Adowa, where, though I had the authority of the king, I could not sometimes pass without calling force to my assistance? Who freed him from the avarice of the Bahamagash, and the much more formidable rapacity of that murderer the Naybe, who, we have seen in the history of this reign, attempted to plunder the king's own factor Musa, though his mailer was within three days journey at the head of an army that in a few hours could have effaced every vestige of where Masuah had stood ? All this, then, is a ridiculous fabrication of lies; the work, as I have before
