Bruce 1: Approaching the Source of the Nile

Lowes argues that Coleridge's Xanadu resembles the area around the fountain from which the Nile begins. One thread of imagery, then, suggests that the site is the long-sought but rarely found source of the Nile, one of the four sacred rivers that tradition says flowed out of Paradise.

Lowes has stitched together phrases and sentences from eight out of 47 consecutive pages, creating a miniature narrative of Bruce's journey as he approached the source of the Nile. Bruce's guide led him through a very thick wood, in a situation that Bruce found romantic. At that point the Nile was not more than four yards wide, shaded by cedars. The thick groves seemed a cover from which savage animals might burst at any moment. Nearing the source, Bruce hesitated, because the water was enchanted. In the middle of a hill, there was a cliff called Geesh. In that cliff, in the direction of the fountain from which the Nile flows, Bruce found a large cave, suggesting that perhaps the Nile itself came out of those depths. From the cliff, the ground sloped downhill very gradually, descending toward the fountain itself. In these particulars, gathered together into an anthology, the narrative does seem to echo Coleridge's poem.

Text

The (whole mountain) was covered with thick wood, which often occupied the very edge of the precipices on which we stood… Just above this almost impenetrable wood, in a very romantic situation, stands St. Michael, in a hollow space like a nitch between two hills. ….The Nile here is not four yards over. (The whole company) were sitting in the shade of a grove of magnificent cedars …The banks (of the Nile)…are covered with black, dark, and thick groves…a very rude and awful face of nature, a cover from which our fancy suggested a lion should issue, or some animal or monster yet more savage and ferocious …. "Strates," said I, 'be in no such haste; remember the water is inchanted.' ….In the middle of this cliff (at Geesh), in a direction straight north towards the fountains is a prodigious cave …From the edge of the cliff of Geesh….the ground slopes with a very easy descent due north….On the east the ground descends likewise with a very easy….slope. From (the) west side of it…the ascent is very easy and gradual…all the way covered with good earth, producing fine grass. --Bruce III, 589, 593, 563-4, 600, 634, 635-6.

 

Word	Line #	Line	Sources for word
Caverns	4	Through caverns measureless to man	Bartram 5  Bruce 1  Kircher 2  Strabo 2  Wollstonecraft
	27	Then reached the caverns measureless to man	Bartram 5  Bruce 1  Kircher 2 Strabo 2  Wollstonecraft
Caves	34	From the fountain and the caves	Bruce 1  Kircher 2  Maurice 2  Milton 4
	36	A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!	Bruce 1  Kircher 2  Maurice 2  Milton 4
	47	That sunny dome! those caves of ice!	Bruce 1  Kircher 2  Maurice 2  Milton 4
Cedarn	13	Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover	Beckford  Bruce 1  Kircher 2  Milton 1
Cover	13	Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover	Bruce 1
Earth	18	As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing	Bartram 2  Bartram 6  Bartram 8  Bernier 2  Bernier 5  Bruce 1  Burnet 2  Kircher 1  Milton 4  Seneca 1  Seneca 2  Wollstonecraft
Enchanted	14	A savage place! As holy and enchanted	Bartram 2  Bartram 4  Bartram 5  Bruce 1  Bruce 3  Collins
Fountain	19	A mighty fountain momently was forced	Bartram 4  Bartram 5  Bartram 6  Bartram 8  Beckford  Bernier 2  Bernier 4  Bruce 1  Bruce 2  Burnet 1  Burnet 2  Herodotus  Maurice 2  Milton 4  Pausanias  Rennell  Seneca 1  Wollstonecraft
	34	From the fountain and the caves	Bartram 4  Bartram 5  Bartram 6  Bartram 8  Beckford  Bernier 2  Bernier 4  Bruce 1  Bruce 2  Burnet 1  Burnet 2  Herodotus  Maurice 2  Milton 4  Pausanias  Rennell  Seneca 1  Wollstonecraft
Hill	13	Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover	Bartram 4  Beckford  Bernier 1  Bruce 1  Bruce 2  Bruce 3  Bruce 7  Milton 3  Milton 4
Hills	10	And here were forests ancient as the hills	Bartram 4  Bernier 1  Bruce 1  Bruce 2  Bruce 3  Bruce 7  Milton 3  Milton 4
Paradise	54	And drunk the milk of Paradise.	Beckford  Bruce 1  Burnet 1  Kircher 1  Milton 1  Milton 2  Milton 4  Milton 5  Milton 6
Romantic	12	But oh! That deep romantic chasm which slanted	Bruce 1  Rennell
Savage	14	A savage place! As holy and enchanted	Bruce 1  Milton 3
Slanted	12	But oh! That deep romantic chasm which slanted	Bruce 1

Bruce 2: Source of the Nile

Now Bruce gets mad. No more stalling, he tells his guide. He wants to see the headwaters of the Nile. He takes off his shoes, and plunges down the green hill through thick flowers, then through a marsh to an island, with an island, shaped like an altar, in the middle of which rises a fountain, giving life to the Nile. Here is the answer to more than a thousand years of questions; the goal of countless explorers; the mystery behind the ancient holy river. The moment is dramatic enough to stick in anyone's memory, so I find it believable that Coleridge might recall the details when envisioning a wilderness plot, green and fountainous.

But Lowes suggests that the description might also link, in Coleridge's memory, with passages in Bartram, tramping through Florida. Bruce's "hillock of green sod" might chime with Bartram's "swelling green knoll" by the "inchanting fountain." Bruce's hillside "thick grown over with flowers" might echo the flowers in Bartram; the water being "forced itself out with great violence" resembles the Manatee Spring in Bartram, with water bubbling up, intermittently, then settling down.

Lowes imagines that these visual memories link together, and he calls them the "hooks and eyes of the memory." He concludes:

The vivid images of fountains in Florida and Abyssinia, with their powerful ejected streams, have coalesced in the deep Well and risen up together, at once both and neither, in the dream.

So for Lowes, the sacred river flows from Ethiopia, Kashmir, and Florida.

Text

Come, come, said I…no more words; it is now late, lose no more time, but carry me to Gesh, and the head of the Nile directly, without preamble, and shew me the hill that separates me from it. He then carried me round to the south side of the church, out of the grove of trees that surrounded it. "This is the hill, says he, looking archly, that…was between you and the fountains of the Nile; there is no other; look at that hillock of green sod in the middle of that watery spot, it is in that the two fountains of the Nile are to be found: Gesh is on the face of the rock where yon green trees are: if you go the length of the fountains pull off your shoes…for these people are all Pagans…and they believe in nothing that you believe, but only in this river, to which they pray every day as if it were God." ….Half undressed as I was by loss of my sash, and throwing my shoes off, I ran down the hill towards the little island of green sods; …the whole side of the hill was thick grown over with flowers, the large bulbous roots of which appearing above the surface of the ground, and their skins coming off on treading upon them, occasioned two very severe falls before I reached the brink of the marsh; I after this came to the island of green turf, which was in form of an altar, apparently the work of art, and I stood in rapture over the principal fountain which rises in the middle of it

It is easier to guess than to describe the situation of my mind at that moment-standing in that spot which had baffled the genius, industry, and inquiry of both ancients and moderns, for the course of near three thousand years. --Bruce III 596-7

Word	Line #	Line	Sources for word
Fountain	19
	34
Green	13
	x
Greenery	11
Hill	10
	13
Holy	14
Tree	9

Links to

Fountain 19 (2 references) 34

Greenery 11 green 13 (2 references)

Hill 10, 13

Holy 14

Tree 9

Bruce 3: Another discovery of the source of the Nile

Intro

Here's another narrative from someone claiming to have discovered the source of the Nile-Father Peter Paez, who says he stumbled on the two fountains on April 21, 1618. Paez's narrative had been anthologized by Athanasius Kircher, and Bruce translates from Kircher's book into English. In a way, the tale re-enforces Bruce's own description, with water forcing itself out with great violence, and land floating dangerously above water, with fountains.

Texts

Bruce, translating Father Peter Paez, S. I, Historia Aethiopiae, Rome, 1905, II, 256 ff.

The second fountain lies about a stone-cast west from the first: the inhabitants say that this whole mountain is full of water, and add, that the whole plain about the fountain is floating and unsteady, a certain mark that there is water concealed under it; for which reason, the water does not overflow at the fountain, but forces itself with great violence out at the foot of the mountain. The inhabitants…maintain that that year it trembled little on account of the drought, but other years, that it trembled and overflowed so as that it could scarce be approached without danger. Bruce, III p. 619-620

 

Word	Line #	Line	Sources for word
Beware	49
Enchanted	14
Forced	19
Green	13
	xx
Hill	13
Tumult	28

Latin Text in Athanasius Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus, Rome 1652, I, 57-58, as recorded by Lowes, p. 589.

Secundus fons vergit a primo in orientem ad iactum lapidis, huius profunditatem explorantes, immissa lancea 12 palmorum, fundum nullum invenimus; colligatisque duabus lanceis 20 palmorum, denuo rem tenativimus, sed nec sic fundum tenere potuimus, dicuntque incolae, totum montem plenum aquis, cuius hoc signum dabant, quod tota circa fontem planities tremula erat et bulliens, manifestum latentis aquae vestigium, eandemque ob causam non redundant aqua ad fontem, sed ad radices impetus maximo sese egerit; affirmabantque incolae…eo anno terram parum tremuisse ob magnam anni siccatatem, aliis vero annis ita tremere et bulliere, ut vix since periculo adire liceat.

Word	Line #	Line	Sources for word
Beware	49
Enchanted	14
Forced	19
Green	13
	xx
Hill	13
Tumult	28

Links to

Beware 49 (from danger???)

Enchanted 14

Forced 19

Green hill 13

Tumult 28

Bruce 4: Nile twisting and turning

After the Nile emerges, it evidently wiggles back and forth for half a dozen miles. Careful explorer that he is, Bruce counts twenty turns in five miles. On page 580 he says "In this plain, the Nile winds more in the space of four miles than, I believe, any river in the world." And in the following short passage, he enumerates the twists and turns again. In the same way, Bartram's crystal fountain throws up a stream that "meanders six miles through green meadows."

In both authors, we certainly have a watercourse meandering for several miles. So when Coleridge says that the sacred river goes "five miles meandering with a mazy motion," Lowes concludes "That is Bartram and Bruce in one." 372

Text

Makes so many sharp, unnatural windings, that it differs from any other river I ever saw, making about twenty sharp angular peninsulas in the course of five miles. Bruce, III p. 644.

Word	Line #	Line	Sources for word
Meandering	25
Miles new

Link to:

Meandering 25

Bruce 5: Abyssinia

Bruce's narrative takes place almost entirely in Abyssinia, and Abyssinia is the source of the sacred river, the Nile. So perhaps Bruce is also the source of the idea of the Abyssinian maid playing her dulcimer later in the Coleridge's poem. Abyssinia is roughly the Ethiopia of today.

no Text

Word	Line #	Line	Sources for word
Abora	41

Link to:

Abora 41

Bruce 7: Astaboras River

Here's another river with a name that perhaps echoes Abora in Kubla Khan. The Astaboras tears up rocks, forces fragments forward in the stream, terrifying people, sounding like thunder bouncing off a hundred hills. Scary stuff.

Lowes suggests that Coleridge's Mount Abora is a conflation of Astaboras and Abola, two rivers associated with the Nile. Astaboras, then, is a name "which, with little doubt, blended in Coleridge's memory with Abola, to ring about the metamorphosis." On the next page, Lowes is convinced.

Between Abola and Astaboras, accordingly, Coleridge's Abora seems to have slipped into the dream. L 374