"Quanto alle notizie sul monte Tauro, sull’Armenia e sull’ Asia minore che si contengono negli altri frammenti, esse vennero prese da qualche geografro o viaggiatore contemporaneo.  Dall’indice imperfetto che accompagna quei frammenti, si potrebbe dedurre che Leonardo volesse farne un libro, che poi non venne compiuto.  A ogni modo, non e possibile di trovare in questi brani nessun indizio di un viaggio di Leonardo in oriente, ne della sua conversione alla religione di Maometto, come qualcuno pretenderebbe.  Leonardo amava con passione gli studi geografici, e nel suoi scritti s’incontran spesso itinerart, indicazioni, o descrizioni di luoghi, schizzi di carte e abbozzi topografici di varie regioni, non e quindi strano che egli, abile narratore com’era, si fosse proposto di scrivere una specie di Romanzo in forma epistolare svolgendone Pintreccio nell’Asia Minore, intorno alla quale i libri d’allora, e forse qualche viaggiatore amico suo, gli avevano somministrato alcuni elementi piu o meno fantastici. (See Transunti della Reale Accademia dei Lincei Voi.  V Ser. 3).

It is hardly necessary to point out that Prof.  Govi omits to name the sources from which Leonardo could be supposed to have drawn his information, and I may leave it to the reader to pronounce judgment on the anomaly which is involved in the hypothesis that we have here a fragment of a Romance, cast in the form of a correspondence.  At the same time, I cannot but admit that the solution of the difficulties proposed by Prof.  Govi is, under the circumstances, certainly the easiest way of dealing with the question.  But we should then be equally justified in supposing some more of Leonardo’s letters to be fragments of such romances; particularly those of which the addresses can no longer be named.  Still, as regards these drafts of letters to the Diodario, if we accept the Romance theory, as pro- posed by Prof.  Govi, we are also compelled to assume that Leonardo purposed from the first to illustrate his tale; for it needs only a glance at the sketches on PI.  CXVI to CXIX to perceive that they are connected with the texts; and of course the rest of Leonardo’s numerous notes on matters pertaining to the East, the greater part of which are here published for the first time, may also be somehow connected with this strange romance.

7. Citta de Calindra (Chalindra).  The position of this city is so exactly determined, between the valley of the Euphrates and the Taurus range that it ought to be possible to identify it.  But it can hardly be the same as the sea port of Cilicia with a somewhat similar name Celenderis, Kelandria, Celendria, Kilindria, now the Turkish Gulnar.  In two Catalonian Portulans in the Bibliotheque Natio- nale in Paris-one dating from the XV’h century, by Wilhelm von Soler, the other by Olivez de Majorca, in l584-I find this place called Calandra.  But Leonardo’s Calindra must certainly have lain more to the North West, probably somewhere in Kurdistan.  The fact that the geographical position is so care- fully determined by Leonardo seems to prove that it was a place of no great importance and little known.  It is singular that the words first written in 1. 8 were divisa dal lago (Lake Van?), altered afterwards to dall’Eitfrates.