to carry into effect with due love and care the task for which you sent me [Footnote:  ][6]; and to make a beginning in a place which seemed to me to be most to our purpose, I entered into the city of Calindrafy[7], near to our frontiers.  This city is situated at the base of that part of the Taurus mountains which is divided from the Euphrates and looks towards the peaks of the great Mount Taurus [8] to the West [9].  These peaks are of such a height that they seem to touch the sky, and in all the world there is no part of the earth, higher than its summit[10], and the rays of the sun always fall upon it on its East side, four hours before day-time, and being of the whitest stone [Footnote 11:_Pietra bianchissima_.  The Taurus Mountains consist in great part of limestone.] it shines resplendently and fulfils the function to these Armenians which a bright moon-light would in the midst of the darkness; and by its great height it outreaches the utmost level of the clouds by a space of four miles in a straight line.  This peak is seen in many places towards the West, illuminated by the sun after its setting the third part of the night.  This it is, which with you [Footnote 14:  Appresso di voi.  Leonardo had at first written noi as though his meaning had,been:  This peak appeared to us to be a comet when you and I observed it in North Syria (at Aleppo? at Aintas?).  The description of the curious reflection in the evening, resembling the “Alpine-glow” is certainly not an invented fiction, for in the next lines an explanation of the phenomenon is offered, or at least attempted.] we formerly in calm weather had supposed to be a comet, and appears to us in the darkness of night, to change its form, being sometimes divided in two or three parts, and sometimes long and sometimes short.  And this is caused by the clouds on the horizon of the sky which interpose between part of this mountain and the sun, and by cutting off some of the solar rays the light on the mountain is intercepted by various intervals of clouds, and therefore varies in the form of its brightness.

THE DIVISIONS OF THE BOOK [Footnote 19:  The next 33 lines are evidently the contents of a connected Report or Book, but not of one which he had at hand; more probably, indeed, of one he purposed writing.].

The praise and confession of the faith [Footnote 20:  Persuasione di fede, of the Christian or the Mohammedan faith?  We must suppose the latter, at the beginning of a document addressed to so high a Mohammedan official. Predica probably stands as an abbreviation for predicazione (lat. praedicatio) in the sense of praise or glorification; very probably it may mean some such initial doxology as we find in Mohammedan works. (Comp. 1. 40.)].

The sudden inundation, to its end.

[23] The destruction of the city.

[24]The death of the people and their despair.

The preacher’s search, his release and benevolence [Footnote 28:  The phraseology of this is too general for any conjecture as to its meaning to be worth hazarding.]