Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 16 -- Underground Rivers in English Fiction
When in a parallel to Plato's cave, Lewis' Lady of the Green Kirtle tries to convince the children
that there is no world outside, Puddleglum notes, "And there's one thing about this underground
work, we shan't get any rain."
John Cheever (1912-1982)
In Cheever's "The Swimmer" (1978), a familiar landscape is seen anew.
This was at the edge of the Westerhazys' pool. The pool, fed by an artesian well with a high
iron content, was a pale shade of green. It was a fine day. In the west there was a massive
stand of cumulus cloud so like a city seen from a distance -- from the bow of an approaching
ship -- that it might have had a name. Lisbon. Hackensack. The sun was hot. Neddy Merrill
sat by the green water, one hand in it, one around a glass of gin.
He had been swimming and now he was breathing deeply, stertorously as if he could gulp into
his lungs the components of that moment, the heat of the sun, the intenseness of his pleasure.
It all seemed to flow into his chest. His own house stood in Bullet Park, eight miles to the
south, where his four beautiful daughters would have had their lunch and might be playing
tennis. Then it occurred to him that by taking a dogleg to the southwest he could reach his
home by water. He seemed to see, with a cartographer's eye, that string of swimming pools,
that quasi-subterranean stream that curved across the county. He had made a discovery, a
contribution to modern geography; he would name the stream Lucinda after his wife.
William Kittredge (b. 1932)
In "The Underground River" (1984), such a river is where one disposes of a body,
Lately, since Lonnie'd left, he had been imagining the water sound even when he wasn't
hearing it. All his life had gone to bed with that murmur, awakened with it, slept beneath it lain
sleepless listening to Lonnie's tubercular breath and the summer water.
A half mile below his house the river vanished underground. Cleve had dreamed of the river,
and because of that dream, because Lonnie's death and the dream were all connected with the
sound of water falling, he wanted to send Lonnie down through the boulders to the place where
the water was sucked into the earth. The water fell between boulders in a long black lava
rockslide to resurface at the bottom of the ridge, over a mile away, and the sound of the falling
was hollow, as if the water dropped a great distance onto a plate of steel.
"Mysterious Pools," Quincy Daily Herald; June 20, 1894, mentions an ominous rumor along this
very line.
North of Gainesville is a pretty any mysterious spot called the "Devil's Millhopper." A large
stream of water comes down a hill with considerable force and disappears in a pool that has no
visible outlet. Near Brooksville is another stream very similar to Devil's Millhopper. A stream of
water pours into it and disappears in a whirlpool in the center. Throw a log in it and it will circle
the pool many times, gradually drawing near to the center. Suddenly the log disappears.
Some gruesome stories are connected to the Brooksville pool. It is said that the place is
haunted, for the reason that many a man, and woman, too, has mysteriously disappeared in it,
never to be heard of afterward. In the pioneer days of that part of the country, so the stories
go, there was a secret society which washed all its dirty linen in that pool. In other words, if a
man or woman gave offense to any member of the society, he or she was gagged, bound and
in the darkness of night thrown into the pool.
The table summarizes the variety of the subterranean hydrologic features envisioned by some of
our authors.
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