Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 20 -- More Boys Club Serials
Verrill, we come to discover, wasn't only a writer of fiction. In Rivers and Their Mysteries (1922),
Verrill takes on the role of educator.
In many parts of the world where limestone is the country rock we find rivers and streams
issuing from apparently solid hills, flowing for long distances and then suddenly disappearing as
though swallowed up by the earth. In such localities, too, rivers will at times appear where no
river has been before and after flowing for a variable length of time they will all at once dry up
and disappear. But there is nothing mysterious about this for such rivers do not really flow from
nowhere nor do they cease, but are merely underground rivers which flow above ground for a
portion of their course or which, swollen by floods or other causes, find an outlet from their
underground channels and flow across the land until the excess water has been drained off and
they again resume their original course.
If it is merely a flood which has caused it to overflow its underground banks, the new stream will
dwindle away and disappear as soon as the surplus water has been drained off and the
subterranean river falls to its ordinary size. In many places streams of this character appear
regularly every spring, for mysterious and strange as they may seem they are in reality no more
remarkable or abnormal than the temporary waterways which are formed by ordinary rivers
when the water overflows the banks during freshets. In some places all of the streams are
underground, while in other districts there are both subterranean and surface rivers, for one
stream may find a fissure through which to drop and form an underground river while another
may not, or again, a river may be so large that the greater portion of its water remains above
ground although much of it flows through underground channels.
According to Theodore Roosevelt, "It was my friend Verrill here, who really put the West Indies on
the map.” Perhaps this is why so many Americans are ill-informed about these lands.
It's difficult to reconcile the author's geological proficiency with his fictional creations, but it may
be a case of knowing what sells the most books.
Elliot Whitney
Boys Clubs loved hunting, even if they didn't actually do it.
From The Rogue Elephant (1913) by Whitney,
This lake, it seems, is fed by underground springs -- hot
springs, that spout up and fall like fountains on the water; its
outlet is also by an underground river, so that the lake lies,
sweltering in the sun and surrounded by desert and jungle
and marsh, where no people live.
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