Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 20 -- More Boys Club Serials
In Wildest Africa, a Magnificent Complete Story, Introducing Ex-President Roosevelt and Matthew
Quin, Wild Beast Agent, Boys' Friend Library No. 120 (1910) brought on board every Boys Club
favorite politician, but Teddy wasn't with the boys when they crept under the Solomon's fortress.
They were under the foundations of the ancient fortress, and they were also considerably below
the level of the enclosure. They did not know that, however, else they would have felt less
confident of gaining their freedom as they stood peering about them.
It was a place to arouse superstitious terror and make the flesh creep. The flickering glare of
the osier torches revealed on all sides natural walls of granite, and showed overhead a low
ceiling studded with stalactites. The cavern ended close to the right, where there was a
bubbling spring of water, fringed by a strip of hard sand, on which lay a long double-edged
sword and several earthen vessels. To the left flowed the stream, vanishing in a winding tunnel
that was less than half a dozen yards in width.
As with Graydon's other African adventures, this one is typical of the era's prevailing attitude
toward Blacks, as well as having appallingly high death counts of both animals and humans.
The River of Darkness, or Under Africa (1890) was Graydon's tour de force of colonialism, a tale
of British adventures in the Dark Continent. It was doubly dark, actually, because the heroes
escaped black savages via an underground river. Graydon's position on racial matters was more
nuanced, however, than it might seem in modern light. In pre-Civil War Pennsylvania, the
Graydon family was adamant abolitionist. The author, however, who lived much of his adult life in
Britain, also subscribed to the Victorian concept of noble colonialism. The natives in Graydon's
fiction are thus in need of Anglo tutelage, the wise subjects being willing disciples, the foolish
ones, inexcusably resistant.
Melton and Canaris were close behind, and together they went
up into the vast expanse of the cavern. Under foot was hard,
compact sand, and in a moment more the glare of the lamp was
reflected on running water, and they stood on the brink of the
mysterious underground river.
It was impossible to judge of the width of the stream. It might be
very narrow and it might be very broad. The flowing water
made not a sound, and yet the current was swift, for a bit of
paper that Melton tossed in was snatched from sight
immediately.
"If this current continues all the way," observed Forbes, "eight
hundred miles will be nothing at all."
This, of course, was before they meet the sea serpent.
"I don't admire the appearance of that river very much," remarked the colonel. "It comes
through the cliff as though shot by a cannon. No wonder, though, when you think of the terrible
pressure from above."
"We will make up for lost time by rapid traveling, then," said Forbes.
"Ah, you think so?" cried Sir Arthur. "Bless me, I hope we will. I have an engagement to dine
with Lord Balsover at the Hotel Bombay at Aden on the 10th at six o'clock in the evening. He
touches there on his way to India, and I can't disappoint him, you know."
As River of Darkness is too good a title to be so squandered, James Grady employed it in 1991
and Rennie Airth, in 1999. Both titles are metaphoric, a topic of Chapter 29. Grady's tales is
about a has-been CIA agent. Airth's work is about a has-been Scotland Yard detective. As
"Grady" is suspiciously close to "Graydon," maybe the latter is still writing.
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