This Is The Place, If The Report Of The Inhabitants
Deserves Any Credit, Where The Israelites Miraculously Passed
Through The Red Sea On Dry Land; And There Is Some Reason For
Imagining The Tradition Not Ill Grounded, For The Sea Is Here Only
Three Leagues In Breadth.
All the ground about Toro is barren for
want of water, which is only to be found at a considerable distance,
in one fountain, which flows out of the neighbouring mountains, at
the foot of which there are still twelve palm-trees.
Near Toro are
several wells, which, as the Arabs tell us, were dug by the order of
Moses to quiet the clamours of the thirsty Israelites. Suez lies in
the bottom of the Gulf, three leagues from Toro, once a place of
note, now reduced, under the Turks, to an inconsiderable village,
where the miserable inhabitants are forced to fetch water at three
leagues' distance. The ancient Kings of Egypt conveyed the waters
of the Nile to this place by an artificial canal, now so choked with
sand, that there are scarce any marks remaining of so noble and
beneficial a work.
The first place to be met with in travelling along the coast of
Africa is Rondelo, situate over against Toro, and celebrated for the
same miraculous passage. Forty-five leagues from thence is Cocir.
Here ends that long chain of mountains that reaches from this place
even to the entrance of the Red Sea. In this prodigious ridge,
which extends three hundred leagues, sometimes approaching near the
sea, and sometimes running far up into the land, there is only one
opening, through which all that merchandise is conveyed, which is
embarked at Rifa, and from thence distributed through all the east.
These mountains, as they are uncultivated, are in some parts shaded
with large forests, and in others dry and bare.
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