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Athanasius Kircher
3. Odoardus on the Nile
Kircher quotes Odoardus Lopez Lusitanus on the course of the Nile after it
appears…plunging down through "chasms inaccessible to men," and "pathless
deserts," then meandering down to the Mediterranean sea. Again, if Coleridge
was building up a picture of the Nile, these images may have reinforced the
others in Kircher, leading to "caverns measureless to man," and a meandering
holy river.
Text
Verum Odoardus id negat cum aliis horum locorum incolis, qui
affirmant unanimiter Nilum mox ubi egressus est lacum, per horribiles
quasdam et impenetrabiles valles, per praecipitia hominibus inaccessa ac
deserta invia praeciptatum, ita profundissimis vallibus abscondi, ut ipsis
intimis terrae visceribus exceptus videatur, abyssisque absorptus…
Hinc
vero aliis fluminibus auctus inter angustas montium valles devectus, perque
catadupas in humiles Aegypti campos praeceps actus, tandem multiplici gyro
in mediterraneum mare dilabitur. --Kircher, I, 55.
Lowes'
Translation:
In truth Odoardus denies it, along with others, including the inhabitants of
these places, who affirm unanimously that the place where the Nile barely
comes out is a lake, and is sent plunging through horrible and impenetrable
valleys, through chasms inaccessible to men, and pathless deserts, swallowed
up in valleys so deep that it is as seems to be received in the bowels of
the earth, and absorbed by its abysses.
And then in truth with other rivers it is brought together with other
rivers, and sent through narrow mountain valleys, past cataracts, and it is
brought into the lower plains of Egypt first, and then pours out through
multiple meanders into the Mediterranean sea. |
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