Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 19 -- The Stratemeyer Boys Club Serials
Tom Swift in the City of Gold, or Marvelous Adventures
Underground (1912)
"A river! It's an underground river and we can't go any further!
We're blocked!"
They saw rushing along, between two walls of stone, a dark
stream which caused the roaring sound that had come to
them. The tunnel was cut squarely in two by the stream, which
was at least thirty feet wide, and how deep they could only
guess. Swiftly it flowed on, its roar filling the tunnel.
"Well, I guess this is the end of it," remarked Ned ruefully, as
they stood contemplating the roaring stream by the gleam of
their electric flash lamps... "But it seems to me as if this river
isn't a natural one -- I mean that it flows along banks of smooth
stone, just as if they were cut for it, a canal you know."
"Don't you see," continued Ned, "that this river hasn't always been here."
"Bless my gaiters!" gasped Mr. Damon, "what does he mean? The river not always been
here?"
"No," proceeded Tom's chum. "For the ancients couldn't have cut the channel out of stone, or
made it by cementing separate stones together while the water was here. The channel must
have been dry at one time, and when it was finished they turned the water in it... [I]f the river
was turned aside from this channel once it can be done again... We've got to shut that stream
of water off, or turn it into some other channel, then we can cross, and keep on to the city of
gold."
Eradicate, who was searching as eagerly as the others, went back a little, flashing his lamp on
every square of stone. Suddenly he uttered a cry.
"Look yeah, Massa Tom! Heah's suffin' dat looks laik a big door knob. Maybe yo' kin push it or
pull it."
Racism seems to be part of the writing formula.
In a flash Tom did so. For a moment no result was apparent, then, from somewhere far off,
there sounded a low rumble, above the roar of the black stream.
"It's going down!" he yelled, capering about. "Now we can go on!"
"Dish suah am a mighty long tunnel," remarked Eradicate. "Dey ought t' hab a trolley line in
yeah."
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