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Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

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Chapter 16 -- <strong>Underground</strong> <strong>Rivers</strong> in English Fiction<br />

"Goldilocks' Adventure in Fairyland Under Old Mount<br />

Tamalpais" by David H. Walker, San Francisco Call,<br />

September 16, 1906, lifts unabashedly from Alice, except<br />

in this case, the heroine gets to sail on the underground<br />

river.<br />

Enter the door that bears the words. "This Way to<br />

Fairyland," as you climb up Mount Tamalpais, and you<br />

shall come on a flight <strong>of</strong> marble steps that leads down,<br />

down, down ever so far going round and round, and<br />

then you will come to see an underground river and a<br />

boat. If you get into the boat it will sail wherever the<br />

fairies wish it to go, only it is sure to stop at some<br />

places or other in Fairyland, the land that is under<br />

Tamalpais Mountain.<br />

Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910)<br />

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

Mark Twain<br />

Cave<br />

$15.95<br />

Twain, on the other hand, wasn't bound by classical precedent. His underground river pointed to<br />

literary frontiers.<br />

With the publication <strong>of</strong> The Adventures <strong>of</strong> Tom Sawyer (1876), McDougal's Cave became a<br />

celebrated tourist attraction and it has been so ever since, by lantern until 1939, electrically lit<br />

since. Tom and Becky's underground adventure has probably been responsible for more candles<br />

and string taken into the dark than can be counted.<br />

When Tom and Becky encounter an underground stream, note Twain's care to describe the<br />

river's role in cave formation.<br />

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

174

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