Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 21 -- Boys Club Singles
CHAPTER 21
BOYS CLUB SINGLES
In this chapter we'll meet Boys Club authors who didn't capitalize on serialization. In most cases,
we'll introduce them chronologically.
In Robert Paltock's The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins
(1751), young Peter manages to steal a ship together with other
English waifs and strays, but unfortunately, none of them can
navigate it, and they eventually get lost. Eventually, he begins to
explore in a ship's boat, and is swept by a current into a vast
underground cavern. He sets up house on a small island in
Robinson Crusoe style, investigating and adapting the local flora
and fauna. He keeps hearing voices, which he stoutly dismisses as
those of birds, until one day he finds a beautiful girl unconscious
outside his hut.
Says I, "Quilly, how your cooks dress their victuals. I have eaten
many things boiled, and otherwise dressed hot, but have seen no
rivers, or water, since I came into this country, except for
drinking, or washing my hands, and I don't know where that
comes from. And another thing," says I, "surprises me, though I
see no sun as we have."
We can see why a Boys Club would like this wolume in their library.
In Icosameron (1788) by
Giacomo Casanova,
shipwrecked siblings are
dragged by currents to an
underwater crevice and
then through froth until they
emerge on an island floating
at the earth's center. The
fauna of is similar to that of
Europe except for the flying
horses.
Robert E. Landor, The Fountain of Arethusa (1848) contains an account of a journey through a
physical world in the center of the earth illuminated by its own sun. We won't belabor the likely
influence of John Cleves Symmes.
A few minutes only were sufficient to exchange all this splendour for such solitude as pleased
me even better. By an easy flexure, the river ran half round some elevated land covered with
the shadiest trees, and then lost its way among an infinity of small verdant islands. Even they
who were long familiar with this labyrinth, could hardly have determined what was the water's
breadth, or where its shore! Leaving the midstream, we floated over pools and shallows which
appeared, in some parts, to have been paved with chrysolites and amethysts, in other parts, to
have been filled with flowers like our parterres.
As for the real Fountain of Arethusa, we must wait until Chapter 28, Et In Arcadia Ego.
DRAFT 1122//66//22001122
Uppddaatteess aatt hhttttpp::////www. .uunnm. .eedduu//~rrhheeggggeenn//UnnddeerrggrroouunnddRi ivveerrss. .hhttml l
232