Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 16 -- Underground Rivers in English Fiction
Isolated turrets, domes, and pinnacles came out in gleaming relief against the dark-blue
background of the heavens. The opposite crests of the canyon shown with broad illumination.
All the uncouth demons and monsters of the rock awoke, glaring and blinking, to menace the
voyagers in the depth below. The contrast between this supereminent brilliancy and the sullen
obscurity of the subterranean river made the latter seem more than ever like the Styx or
Acheron.
Literary overkill, but it would have worked a century ago.
Lewis Carroll (Charles L. Dodgson, 1832-1898)
What Carroll first entitled Alice's Adventures under Ground came to be what we know as Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland (1865). We'll pursue the challenge of tunnels through the globe in
Chapter 26, Subterranean Water Bodies, one of many perplexities for our young friend.
"I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll be to come out among the people
that walk with their heads downwards! But I shall have to ask them what the name of the
country is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand or Australia?" -- and she tried to
curtsey as she spoke (fancy curtseying as you're falling through the air! do you think you could
manage it?) "and what an ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking! No, it'll never do to ask:
perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere."
Down in what's now forgotten as being underground, Alice finds the sea,
At this moment her foot slipped, and splash! she
was up to her chin in salt water. Her first idea
was that she had fallen into the sea: then she
remembered that she was under ground, and she
soon made out that it was the pool of tears she
had wept when she was nine feet high.
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