(fonte citata da J.J.lowes, The road to Xanadu, 1927 )
Ecco come descrive il paesaggio abissino James Bruce ("Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile" (1790)):
The [whole mountain] was covered with thick wood, wich often occupied the very edge of the precipices on wich 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 magnificient 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 wich 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.
ed ecco il paesaggio nel Kubla Khan di Coleridge:
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
Coleridge si ispira anche al paesaggio del Cashmere descritto da J.Rennel
fonti "ispiratrici" del poema di Coleridge citate nel libro di Lowes:
Purchas (Old man of the Mountain) • Purchas (Xamdu) • Bartram • Bruce • Rennel