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1. Approaching the source of the Nile 3. Another discovery of the source of the Nile
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James 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 But even Lowes wonders "Why should hints from the names of two rivers have
contributed a mountain to the dream?" His suggestion: Coleridge was also
recalling Mount Amara, as described by Milton, who calls it the citadel of
Abyssinian kings, supposed by some to be the True Paradise, at the source of
the Nile. But before you contemplate Milton's text, look at the raging Astarobas, and see if it suggests the sacred river in Xanadu, and, perhaps
Mount Abora.
Text
This prodigious body of water…tearing up rocks and large trees in its
course, and forcing down their broken fragments scattered on its stream,
with a noise like thunder echoed from a hundred hills….is very rightly
called the "terrible." Bruce III 158
That island…having a twilight of short duration, was placed between the Nile
and Astaboras. Bruce III 605 |
 Other sources
William Bartram |