_ 63 _ Turcomen. He is the lord of all Syria and carries on a long war with the Grand Turk, and has now ordered all his fortresses on land to be destroyed, to continue fighting. These are great philosophers in Ormuz, and doctors. Manna can be bought here, which is a kind of dew which falls in a certain place in Persia and looks like comfits; it does not conform to what is described in the Scriptures. The rivers Euphrates and Phison flow into this strait in which we are. The Nile flows through Egypt and rises in the land of Prester John. It overflows in Egypt, and is well known for its crocodiles; in the summer in Egypt, it becomes very dirty because then it is winter at the Cape of Good Hope, where it rises, in the land of the Prester, and in the winter in Egypt it comes very clear because then it is summer in the Cape. The Ganges flows in Bengal in India as far as the place they say Alexander the Great reached and then turned back because the people resisted too strongly. The temples of Elefante and Kanari appear to be Roman work. Father Belchior Gonçalvez will give more information about this because he is in that country. Here we are also near the Red Sea and St Catherine’s Mount of Sinai, which lies on the Strait of Mecca, near Arabia Deserta.
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