Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 11 -- Straining the Salt
Charles Hutton, whom we'll again encounter in Chapter 12, Superterranean Metrics, raised an
irrefutable challenge in A Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary, Containing an Explanation
of the Terms, and an Account of the Several Subjects (1795).
And though the sand and earth through which the water ascends may acquire some saline
particles from it, they are nevertheless incapable of rendering it so fresh as the water of our
fountains is generally found to be. Not to add, that in process of time the saline particles of
which the water is deprived, either by subterranean distillation or filtration, must clog and
obstruct those canals and alembics.
Natural desalination can't persist if the salt is left to smother the mechanism. Were underground
rivers to work this way, the earth beneath our feet would by now be packed with white crystals.
Had the likes of Pelletier and Kircher pondered the implications of "clog and obstruct," their belief
underground rivers might have been less certain. But as often the case through history, models
rooted in culture are slow to fade.
Thomas Milner (Chapter 10) illustrated that even another century was not suffice for the demise
of an illogical concept.
It is possibly the case, indeed, that the ocean filtering through pores of the earth the salt
particles being lost in the passage may give rise to many springs; but as the preceding cause is
amply sufficient to explain their formation, we need not recur to any other.
As with all the candidate mechanisms of Chapter 8-8.2, salinity comes up short as the engine for
underground streamflow.
Naturalists must have come to wonder why their otherwise-so-productive scientific method again
and again failed to discover the mechanism for desalinating underground rivers. Perhaps -- we
can imagine them at this point lowering their voices as to not invite the scorn of their colleagues --
the cause is absent because such rivers are not in existence.
We'll return to the subject of salt in Chapter 66, Minewaters.
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