Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 21 -- Boys Club Singles
The title, "Waldon, the Half-Breed" by William H. Bushnell, Flag of Our Union, October 21, 1865,
wouldn't pass muster by today's cultural standards, but as adventure, it lacked little.
Suddenly his feet slipped from under him, and
his hand aching with the recent terrible struggle,
alone rested on the slimy, mossy rock. To
retain his hold was impossible. Slowly but
surely he slipped down, down, but whither he
dared not think. In a moment he was clutching
at the intangible air alone, and with a cry of
despair ringing from his lips, he fell into a
yawning pit, a dark subterranean stream.
The Flag had seen better days, publishing Edward Alan Poe seven times in 1849.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, The Coming Race (1871) tells in turgid
prose of an American's descent into a deep mine, at the bottom
of which is a broad road lit by gas lamps. The road leads into an
underworld of "lakes and rivulets which seemed to have been
curved into artificial banks; some of pure water, others that
shone like pools of naphtha." Unfortunately, Lytton's underworld
also contains descendents from the deluge who plan to emerge
and conquer the surface world.
George Owen's The Leech Club, or Mysteries of the Catskills (1874) draws upon the readers'
knowledge of Greek lore.
Finally they reached a narrow defile bounded on each side by a precipice. From this defile
flowed a stream of water, beside which there was barely room to enter. This they knew from
the description given by the old mountaineer, was the ravine they were seeking. Climbing from
boulder to boulder, wet with the spray of the brawling stream, they make their way into the
defile.
"Ah! Horace! Verily we have entered the infernal regions. I felt, when we were passing
through the defile, climbing, slipping, and sometimes wading through the steam, that we were
really crossing the river Styx, and I thought of calling the ferryman Charon to our aid."
"Indeed," said Horace, "if we don't meet that Stygian boatman or some of his crew here, we
need not seek them elsewhere, but may be content till they come for us of their own accord."
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