in so extraordinary a fashion that it is said “Four rivers flow forth from Paradise.”(1) That is, they transcend by far apparent causes, and flow forth instead from the treasury of a nonmaterial Paradise, from the superabundance of an unseen and inexhaustible source.

For example, the blessed Nile, that turns the sandy land of Egypt into a paradise, flows from the Mountains of the Moon in the south without ever being exhausted, as if it were a small sea. If the water that flowed down the river in six months were gathered together in the form of a mountain and then frozen, it would be larger than those mountains. But the place in the mountains where the water is lodged and stored is less than a sixth of their mass. As for the water that replenishes the river, the rain that enters the reservoir of the river is very sparse in that torrid region and is quickly swallowed up by the thirsty soil; hence it is incapable of maintaining the equilibrium of the river. A tradition has thus grown up that the blessed Nile springs, in miraculous fashion, from an unseen Paradise. This tradition has profound meaning and expresses a beautiful truth.

The traveller saw, then, a thousandth part of the truths and affirmations contained in the oceans and rivers. The seas proclaim unanimously with a power

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(1) See, Muslim, Janna, 26. (The rivers, Sayhan, Jayhan, Euphrates, and Nile). [Tr.]