With the exception of the Red Sea, appropriately colored, the seas are uniformly blue. The lands are left the natural color of the bleached parchment except for a fiery red region in the far south bearing the legend: “Desert uninhabited because of heat,” and a dreary brown waste in the far north marked: “Desert uninhabited because of cold.” Islands are tinted either red or yellow, with green patches in the interior of Great Britain and Ireland. The only other natural features depicted are mountains, rivers, and lakes, although certain deserts are mentioned in legends. Mountain ranges are represented by rows of mounds, alternately red, green, and blue, and each rising symmetrically in two or three steps. Rivers are blue and, as frequently on medieval maps, sometimes connect one sea with another, or at least have common sources. A yellow lake, labeled “Sandy Sea,” lies in the midst of the Sahara. Vignettes of castles, walled towns, and churches stand for cities, kingdoms, and regions. In most cases the names have been written upon the vignettes themselves; since the latter are also colored pink or green, the letters are frequently obscured and quite illegible. Many towns and districts are shown by red dots beside which the names are written in ink, once black but now faded with age. These names were inserted after the vignettes were drawn, for in many instances they are tilted or compressed to fit the available space. The draftsman did not venture to write any name to the left of the dot to which it belongs; as he could not write on the blue of the seas, he was obliged to invert the map in the case of places on south-facing coasts. Names of islands and seas, which had to be written on water surfaces, are inclosed in small yellow panels. The names of the continents, the two inscriptions relating to the polar and equatorial deserts, and the words “Terrestrial Paradise” are in red capitals; but all other names are in minuscule, usually without an initial capital. Besides place names there are a few longer legends. Winds blowing from the four cardinal and four intermediate points of the compass are shown by eight faces around the edge of the disk. Those to the north, northwest, and northeast are blue, suggesting cold blasts from these quarters; the other faces are ruddy. Although decorative, the Leardo map lacks many of the pictorial elements—animals, birds, preposterous monsters—that enliven the blank spaces on other medieval maps. With the exception of the eight wind faces and the symbolic figures of the evangelists no living creatures, whether animals or men, are graphically represented. Sources of Leardo’s Geography