Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Theory:
Chapter 12 -- Superterranean Metrics
Verily I find out now that you are a great liar, and if it were true that seawater could be so raised
up into the air and fall afterwards upon the earth, it would be salt rain, so there you are caught
by your own argument.
Practice contends that rivers and springs have no source other than rainfall, for which he is called
a “great dolt” by Theory for contradicting the most excellent philosophers.
Practice refutes that streams must originate either from seawater or from air converted into water.
The concept of gravity weighs against the seawater theory, as sea level would have to exceed
the mountain tops.
I tell you, as a general and certain rule, that waters never rise higher than the sources from
which they proceed.
Spring waters would be saline and would dry up during low tide. Some rivers do dry up, of
course, but,
If the sea were to feed by its nipples all the springs of the universe, they would never dry up
during the months of July, August and September, at which time an infinite number of wells dry
up.
And as maximum tidal levels are associated with the full moons of March and July, wells and
rivers should not go dry during those months.
Even if the sea were as high as the mountains,
Its waters would not reach the high parts of these mountains where the springs originate. This
is because the earth is, in many places, full of holes, cracks and abysses a through which water
that came from the sea would flow back to the plain from the first holes, sources or abysses it
could find.
Practice concedes that water could form in caverns by the condensation of vapor, but in
inadequate amount to sustain rivers. Rather,
Rain water that falls in the winter goes up in summer, to come again in winter... And when the
winds push these vapors the waters fall on all parts of the land, and when it pleases God that
these clouds (which are nothing more than a mass of water) should dissolve, these vapors are
turned to into rain that falls on the ground.
Moreover,
[Soils] retain water from the rain as would a bronze vessel. And the said water falling on these
mountains flows downwards through the soil and cracks and continues until it finds a uniform
and hard bed of stone or solid rock; and when it comes to rest on such a base and finds a canal
or other opening, it emerges as springs, or as streams and rivers, depending on the size of the
openings.
Practice has qualitatively described porous-media groundwater flow as we today understand it.
Significant to our pursuit of underground rivers, while Theory clings to idealized subterranean
channels, Practice demands a mechanism consistent with how water is observed to seep.
As Palissy concluded (in his own voice),
When I had long and closely examined the source of the springs of natural fountains, and the
place whence they could come, I finally understood that they could not come from or be
produced by anything but rains.
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