28 ED0UAKD NAVILLE ON 



words:* "Printed in Geneva, in the year 1495, in which 

 year there was such a very strong wind, on the ninth day of 

 January, that it drove back the Rhone into the lake as much 

 as one-fourth of a league above Geneva, and it looked like a 

 wall of water, and it lasted nearly an hour before the water 

 could flow." This extraordinary event could take place 

 when the river was much wider than it is now. The 

 southern part of the city not being built, the river expanded 

 into ponds and marshes ; its depth and the strength of the 

 current were much less than now, since its bed has been 

 restricted everywhere by houses and embankments. A 

 clergyman, Des Gallars, in Latin Gallasius, who wrote a latin 

 commentary on Exodus, in the middle of the following cen- 

 tury, alludes to this fact as proof of the opening of the Red 

 Sea, and he adds that in his time there were still some ocular 

 witnesses of this extraordinary event, f 



The same thing happened again in 1645, and is related by 

 several Genevese historians. $ On the 19th of January, during 

 a very strong wind, between seven and ten in the morning, 

 the inhabitants could go down on dry ground between the 

 bridges, and pass from one bank to the other. Instances of 

 the same kind might be quoted from several other countries. 



* The passage reads thus in its picturesque old French : " Imprinie a 

 Geneve, l'an 1495, au quel an fit si tres grand vent, le IXe jour de Janvier, 

 qu'il fit remonter le Rhone dedans le lac bien ung quart de lieue au dessus 

 de Geneve, et semblait etre une montagne d'eau, et dura bien l'espace 

 d'une heure que l'eau ne pouvait descendre." 



t Nunc ad dividendas aquas et patefaciendam per invia suo populo 

 viani ventum immisit : idque ab Oriente, quoniam ab ea parte vehementior 

 in illis regionibus esse solet. Quuru igitur ventorum vi operatur Deus, in 

 authorem ipsum potius quani in organa quibus utitur aut effectus ipsos, 

 oculos ac mentes defigamus. Novum autem videri non debet, absistere 

 maria ac findi impetu venti, quuni ordinario naturae cursu ipsa, impelli 

 ac veluti in cumulos et montes efferri, atque interdum longe a litoribus 

 summoveri videamus. Intellexi a viris fide dignis, se paulo ante hsec 

 tempora hie Genevas in eo loco ubi Ehodanus lacu exiens alveum suum 

 ingreditur, vidisse aquas Austri violentia ita repressas ut iis velut in 

 acervum cumulatis, alveus siccus fere per horse spatium manserit. Atque 

 eius rei snperstites adhuc sunt oculati testes nonnulli. Nam eo fere uni- 

 versa plebs concurrit. (In Exodum commentarii Nicolao Gallasio authors, 

 p. 88.) 



I T shall quote only one authority, Calandrini, in a note on a Latin 

 poem : Anno 1645, die Dominica Januarii decima nona, horis inter octavam 

 decimamque Genevas tarn terribilis extitit impetus, ut celerem Ehodani 

 fhixum retroageret usque in Lemanum lacum, undaeque muri instar coacer- 

 vatse cursum suum sisterent, adeo ut vado sub binis pontibus locisque 

 vicinis facto, novitate rei numerosa commota plebs deambulaverit quasi 

 in sicco, et pisciculos, etiamque majusculos mauu collegerit quam pluriinos. 



