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Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

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Historical Allusions<br />

Chapter 15 -- The Maelstrom<br />

When in doubt about a legend's genesis, look to Homer.<br />

You will see the other cliff lies lower, no more than an arrow’s flight away. On this there grows<br />

a great leafy fig-tree; under it, awesome Kharybdis sucks the dark water down. Three times a<br />

day she belches it forth, three times in hideous fashion she swallows it down again. Pray not to<br />

be caught there when she swallows down.<br />

But when she sucked the sea-water in, one might look right down through the swirling eddy<br />

while the rock roared hideously around her and the sea-floor came to view, dark and sandy.<br />

Ashy terror seized on the crew. We had looked her way with the fear <strong>of</strong> death upon us; and at<br />

that moment Skylla snatched up from inside my ship the six <strong>of</strong> my crew who were the strongest<br />

<strong>of</strong> arm and sturdiest.<br />

The Odyssey<br />

Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned<br />

Charybdis, and by the other Whirlpool steered.<br />

John Milton, Paradise Lost (1658)<br />

"Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis," a 17th-century<br />

etching by Theodor van Thulden.<br />

DRAFT 1122//66//22001122<br />

Odysseus shipwrecked. After meeting<br />

Charybdis, nothing remained <strong>of</strong> his ship<br />

except the mast and the keel. Drawing by<br />

Bonaventura Genelli, 1798-1868.<br />

Uppddaatteess aatt hhttttpp::////www. .uunnm. .eedduu//~rrhheeggggeenn//UnnddeerrggrroouunnddRi ivveerrss. .hhttml l<br />

158

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