e mercy and buried him.
He seemed to have been some time dead, yet the body had no ill smell.
These winds are most destructive in Arabia the Desert.

CHAPTER IV

The author's conjecture on the name of the Red Sea. An account of the
cocoa-tree. He lands at Baylur.

To return to the description of the coast: sixty leagues from Suaquem is
an island called Mazna, only considerable for its ports, which make the
Turks reside upon it, though they are forced to keep three barks
continually employed in fetching water, which is not to be found nearer
than at a distance of twelve miles. Forty leagues from hence is Dalacha,
an island where many pearls are found, but of small value. The next
place is Baylur, forty leagues from Dalacha, and twelve from Babelmandel.

There are few things upon which a greater variety of conjectures has been
offered than upon the reasons that induced the ancients to distinguish
this gulf, which separates Asia from Africa, by the name of the Red Sea,
an appellation that has almost universally obtained in all languages.
Some affirm that the torrents, which fall after great rains from the
mountains, wash down such a quantity of red sand as gives a tincture to
the water: others tell us that the sunbeams being reverberated from the
red rocks, give the sea on which they strike the appearance of that
colour. Neither of these accounts are satisfactory; the coasts are so
scorched by the heat that they are rather black than red; nor is the
colour of this sea much altered by the winds or rains. The notion
generally received is, that the coral found in such quantities at the
bottom of the sea might communicate this colour to the water: an account
merely chimerical. Coral is not to be found in all parts of this gulf,
and red coral in very few. Nor does this water in fact differ from that
of other seas. The patriarch and I have frequently amused ourselves with
making observations, and could never discover any redness, but in the
shallows, where a kind of weed grew which they call gouesmon, which
redness disappeared as soon as we plucked up the plant. It is observable
that St. Jerome, confining himself to the Hebrew, calls this sea Jamsuf.
Jam in that language signifies sea, and suf is the name of a plant in
AEthiopia, from which the Abyssins extract a beautiful crimson; whether
this be the same with the gouesmon, I know not, but am of opinion that
the herb gives to this sea both the colour and the