Note 114 — Chapter XII

The geography of this passage is not quite clear. Mare Maggiore appears to be the Mediterranean, which still retains that name: see the Vocab. della Crusca. In French, Mer Majeure is the Black Sea, according to Cotgrave and the Encyclopédie. If we adopt this interpretation, the author states that the plague spread from Asia to the Black Sea and the Mare Tirreno, probably the Tyrrhene or Adriatic Sea, and then returns to trace its progress in the Mediterranean. On the whole, the former interpretation seems the more probable, though it involves some repetition. The first gives a general statement of the course which the disease took from Asia to the coasts of the Mediterranean and Adriatic seas, and then proceeds to particularise. It seems to have spread from India through Persia to Syria, Arabia, and Asia Minor (called in the text Turkey towards Egypt), and from China, or the upper part of India, through the north of Asia to Russia and Greece. The Levant trade introduced it into Sicily, Italy, and the west of Africa, whence it seems to have spread backwards towards Egypt. From Italy it crossed the mountains, and spread northward, even to Denmark, &c., which indeed may have received the infection either from their northern or southern neighbours.