Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 20 -- More Boys Club Serials
His eyes followed the faint line up the shore in the direction he had been traveling. The silver
phosphorescence turned a faint yellow. Almost out of the range of his vision the yellow was
picked up by the water, like the dimmest moonlight.
He studied it for long minutes, trying to figure out the reason for the phenomenon, then he
almost leaped out of his skin.
"It is true," he continued, "that heavy water has a tendency to sink. Naturally enough, since it is
heavier. But for enough to form on the bottom of a body of water, there would have to be great
depth and complete calm. Any current would stir the water up and the heavy water would
merge with the normal once more."
"In other words, you need a lake like this one."
Edgar Rice Burroughs
What Burroughs’ prose lacked in quality, he made up in quantity. "I write to escape poverty," he
noted of his 68 titles, 25 of which featured Tarzan. And escape poverty he did.
Burroughs’ Pellucidar Series is set in the hollow earth.
At the Earth's Core (1914)
Pellucidar (1915)
Tanar of Pellucidar (1929)
Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929), a crossover, bringing the Ape Man himself into the
adventure
Back to the Stone Age (1937)
Land of Terror (1944)
Savage Pellucidar (1963, posthumously)
The illustration to the right invokes some of Pellucidar’s
hydrologic flavor.
By the next novel, Pellucidar (1915), visitors from above have
grandly made themselves indispensable to the subterranean
world. A la Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's
Court (1889), a resourceful American turns the tide of battle
with the militarization of underground waters.
The upshot of it was that the boat of which the Sagoth
speaker was in charge surrendered. The Sagoths threw
down their weapons, and we took them aboard the ship
next in line behind the Amoz.
Thus ended the first real naval engagement that the
Pellucidarian seas had ever witnessed.
Burroughs' The Land That Time Forgot (1918) is a Darwinian story set on a mysterious island
near the South Pole where dinosaurs survive. While this tale is not set in Tarzan's underworld,
Burroughs works in the sighting of an underground river as a lesson in inductive reasoning.
"Look there!" And I pointed at the base of the cliff ahead of us, which the receding tide was
gradually exposing to our view. They all looked, and all saw what I had seen -- the top of a
dark opening in the rock, through which water was pouring out into the sea. "It's the
subterranean channel of an inland river," I cried. "It flows through a land covered with
vegetation -- and therefore a land upon which the sun shines. No subterranean caverns
produce any order of plant life even remotely resembling what we have seen disgorged by this
river. Beyond those cliffs lie fertile lands and fresh water -- perhaps, game!"
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