Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 16 -- Underground Rivers in English Fiction
Presently they came to a place where a little stream of water, trickling over a ledge and carrying
a limestone sediment with it, had, in the slow-dragging ages, formed a laced and ruffled
Niagara in gleaming and imperishable stone... This shortly brought them to a bewitching
spring, whose basin was incrusted with a frostwork of glittering crystals; it was in the midst of a
cavern whose walls were supported by many fantastic pillars which had been formed by the
joining of great stalactites and stalagmites together, the result of the ceaseless water-drip of
centuries... Tom found a subterranean lake, shortly, which stretched its dim length away until
its shape was lost in the shadows. He wanted to explore its borders, but concluded that it
would be best to sit down and rest awhile, first. Now, for the first time, the deep stillness of the
place laid a clammy hand upon the spirits of the children.
It's no wonder Tom and Becky got lost; the cave contains nearly 3,500 meters of passages within
its 6-hectare mapping.
Tom went on to other explorations, but it was Tom's companion, Huckleberry Finn (1884) who
pushed American literature into the arena of social criticism.
What is less well known is the story of the cave itself. Discovered in 1820, the 3-kilometer maze
of crisscrossed passages became notorious in 1849 when its owner, a physician interested in
cadavers, put a wooden door on the cave and locked it. When it became known that the cave
held a copper and glass flask containing the body of the doctor's 14-year-old daughter, the local
citizens intervened.
Robert Lewis Stevenson (1850-1894)
We'd have liked to include Stevenson in our catalog, but his adventures
were under the sun. It wasn't for lack of familiarity with Charon, however.
Suffering from a severe illness in California in 1880, he drew freely on
Charon and the Styx in his correspondence. As noted to his friend, James
Walter Ferrier,
I am fresh from giving Charon a quid instead of an obulus; but he, having accepted the
payment, scorned me, and I had to make the best of my way backward through the mallowwood,
with nothing to show for this displacement but the fatigue of the journey.
In another letter,
I keep returning, and now hand over fist, from the realms of Hades. I saw that gentleman
between the eyes, and fear him less after each visit. Only Charon, and his rough boatmanship,
I somewhat fear.
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