Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 20 -- More Boys Club Serials
Of hydrologic interest is the similarity between the two imagined worlds. Both maps show
enclosed basins. The circular water body in Pellucidar is the Polar Sea. Tolkien's world has two
inland seas, the Rhun and the Nurnen on the lower map's right. Both sagas are set on
peninsulas transected by mountain ranges, barriers to be crossed by the heroes. Both worlds are
endowed by multiple rivers which, among other benefits, provide the heroes a means of transport
when the plot needs to move along.
We might correctly surmise that by the time of writing, Burroughs had lived Southern California for
a decade and knew about such events.
Burroughs didn't limit underground rivers to Pellucidar. Here, for example is an excerpt from The
Chessmen of Mars (1922).
His exploration revealed not only the vast proportions of the network of runways that apparently
traversed every portion of the city, but the great antiquity of the majority of them. Tons upon
tons of dirt must have been removed, and for a long time he wondered where it had been
deposited, until in following downward a tunnel of great size and length he sensed before him
the thunderous rush of subterranean waters, and presently came to the bank of a great,
underground river, tumbling onward, no doubt, the length of a world to the buried sea of
Omean. Into this torrential sewer had unthinkable generations of ulsios pushed their few
handsful of dirt in the excavating of their vast labyrinth.
Fremont B. Deering
The Border Boys Across the Frontier (1911) by Fremont Deering
employs the boys-plus-professor formula.
"Comes to my mind now," said Pete, "that it ain't exactly a well.
An old Injun that used ter hang around with the Flying Z outfit
tole us oncet that thar was a subterranean river flowed under
here, and that once upon a time afore all the country dried up,
considerable more water came to the surface here than there
does now."
"A subterranean river?" asked the professor, at once interested.
"Yes, sir," rejoined Pete, "and not the only one in the West,
either. There's one in Californy that flows underground fer
purty near fifty miles, as I've heard tell."
As the book's also cataloged as being by John Henry Goldfrap, we can only speculate on which
is the pseudonym, but we can hazard a guess.
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