1091

The Red Sea..

For a long time the water of the Mediterranean flowed out through the Red Sea, which is 100 miles wide and 1500 long, and full of reefs; and it has worn away the sides of Mount Sinai, a fact which testifies, not to an inundation from the Indian sea beating on these coasts, but to a deluge of water which carried with it all the rivers which abound round the Mediterranean, and besides this there is the reflux of the sea; and then, a cutting being made to the West 3000 miles away from this place, Gibraltar was separated from Ceuta, which had been joined to it. And this passage was cut very low down, in the plains between Gibraltar and the ocean at the foot of the mountain, in the low part, aided by the hollowing out of some valleys made by certain rivers, which might have flowed here. Hercules [Footnote 9: Leonardo seems here to mention Hercules half jestingly and only in order to suggest to the reader an allusion to the legend of the pillars of Hercules.] came to open the sea to the westward and then the sea waters began to pour into the Western Ocean; and in consequence of this great fall, the Red Sea remained the higher; whence the water, abandoning its course here, ever after poured away through the Straits of Spain.

Taken from The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci edited by Jean Paul Richter, 1880.

Notebooks of Leonoardo da Vinci
XVII: Topographical Notes.
. . .
1071,
1072,
1073,
1074,
1075,
1076,
1077,
1078,
1079,
1080,
1081,
1082
The straits of Gibraltar.
1083,
1084,
1085
Tunis.
1086
Libya.
1087
Majorca.
1088
The Tyrrhene Sea.
1089
The Levantine Sea.
1090
The Red Sea..
1091,
1092
The Nile.
1093,
1094,
1095,
1096,
1097,
1098
Customs of Asiatic Nations.
1099,
1100
Rhodes.
1101,
1102
Cyprus.
1103
The Caspian Sea.
1104,
1105,
1106
The sea of Azov.
1107
The Dardanelles.
1108
Constantinople.
1109
The Euphrates.
1110
Centrae Asia.
1111
. . .