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5. Crystal Fountain |
William Bartram:
5. Crystal Fountain
Bartram tended to gush about ebullient fountains-some of which were, indeed,
remarkable enough. Like the one in Kubla Khan, this fountain is enchanted,
and ceaseless, ebbing and flowing, with white sand and small particles of
shell being thrown up, then subsiding and sinking. The imagery does suggest
the ceaseless toil, the vaulting fragments, and the half-intermitted bursts
of the fountain in Kubla Khan.
After emerging from the fountain, the water meanders for six miles through
green meadows. In Kubla Khan the sacred river goes "Five miles meandering
with a mazy motion." Lowes points out that "meander" is one of Bartram's
favorite words, citing other examples on 16 other pages. (Footnote 589)
Text Just under my feet was the inchanting and amazing chrystal fountain, which
incessantly threw up, from dark, rocky caverns below, tons of water every
minute, forming a bason, capacious enough for large shallops to ride in, and
a creek of four or five feet depth of water, and near twenty yards over,
which meanders six miles through green meadows, pouring its limpid waters
into the great bason…is a continual and amazing ebullition, where the waters
are thrown up in such abundance and amazing force, as to jet and swell up
two or three feet above the common surface: white sand and small particles
of shells are thrown up with the waters…when they…subside with the expanding
flood, and gently sink again. --Bartram, 165-6.
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 Other sources
William
Beckford
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