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Strabo
2. Underground cavern with
rivers
Here we have water bubbling up in a dome-like jet, then falling back down; a
huge hidden cavern, through which a river flows, emerging to light; a chasm,
into which another river sinks.
In this survey of rivers, we hear again of
the source of the Alpheius river, and, in the same context, we encounter the
Nile and the Tigris, two of the original rivers flowing out of Paradise.
So
if we were to take the images that this passage has in common with others,
we have a constellation that looks a bit like the river Alph, in Kubla Khan,
going down to caverns measureless to man, then rising again to the surface.
Text
The territory of the Palici has craters that spout up water in a dome-like
jet and receive it back again into the same recess. The cavern near Mataurus
contains an immense gallery through which a river flows invisible for a
considerable distance, and then emerges to the surface, as is the case with
the Orontes in Syria, which sinks into the chasm…and rises again forty stadia away.
Similar, too, are the cases both of the Tigris in Mesopotomia and of the
Nile in Libya…and again, the water near the Arcadian Asea is first forced
below the surface and then, much later, emerges as both the Eurotas and the
Alpheius.
--Geography,
III, 75, 79, 91-2 |
 Other sources
William Bartram |