Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 13 -- Hydrotheology/Theohydrology
who give a sucking and an attractive power to the veins of the earth; yet I find it as a thing
possible, although that part of the sea which lieth opposite to the heads of the fountain, or to a
place where the water first breaketh out, be lower than the ground, that the said water may
neverlesse easily ascend, and not break forth untill it finde a place convenient. Now this
ascent is caused by the sea, which, seeing it is a vast bodie, is very ponderous and heavie,
and cannot be thrust back by the waters at the head of the fountain opposite to it, but rather it
doth potently and strenuously croud on the said water through the hollow ports and passages
of the earth, untill at the last is springeth forth.
It's the weight-of-the-sea engine, a proposed subterranean engine we reviewed in Chapter 10.
4. Whether there be more water than earth?
When God commanded the waters to be gathered, he gathered them into the seventh part of
the earth, and dried up the six other parts.
5. Whether the earth can be founded upon the waters?
The Psalmist seemeth of affirm it.
6. Why the seas be salt, and the rivers fresh?
If therefore Aristotle's aerial vapors have anything to do in this generation, it is as much as
nothing.
This freshness, notwithstanding their salt origin, may be ascribed to percolation and straining
through the narrow spongie passages of the earth, which makes them leave behind (as an
exacted toll) the colour, thickness, and saltness.
We're familiar with Chapter 11's salt-straining earth.
7. What causeth an ebbing and flowing in the sea, rather than in rivers?
It is a great secret of nature, and gives us therefore principall occasion to magnifie the power
of God, whose name onely is excellent, and whose power above heaven and earth.
As revealed theology, Speculum offered little not already centuries old. As natural theology, it
relied on science already disproven. We'll give Swan credit, however, for a start at bridging the
gap.
Neoplatonist and royal chaplain to William III, Thomas Burnet (1635-1715) sought to explain,
The origin of the earth, and all of the general changes which it hath already undergone or is to
undergo till the consummation of all things.
Burnet's Telluris Theoria Sacra (1684) tells how the earth was first fluid chaos until the heavier
parts sunk to form a fiery core, leaving a thin earthen crust upon a watery abyss. The earth was
of perfect mathematical form, smooth and beautiful, "like an egg," with neither seas nor islands
nor valleys nor rocks, "with not a wrinkle, scar, or fracture."
All creation was equally perfect. There were no alternating seasons, storms or rivers. It rained
only at the poles from where the water filtered into the soil and flowed underground to the
inhabited tropics.
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