Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 21 -- Boys Club Singles
"If I'm not much mistaken," judged the engineer, "that tremendous maelstrom near the site of
New Haven -- the cataract that almost got us, just after we started out -- has something very
vital to do with this situation."
"In that case, and if there's a way for water to come down, why mayn't there be a way for us to
climb up? Who knows?"
King of the Khyber Rifles (1916) by Talbot Mundy was "the most picturesque romance of the
decade," according to its press, although Boys Clubs would have been more taken by the
adventure.
There was only one wild scream that went echoing and re-echoing to the roof. There was
scarcely a splash, and no extra ripple at all. No heads came up again to gasp. No fingers
clutched at the surface. The fearful speed of the river sucked them under, to grind and churn
and pound them through the long caverns underground and hurl them at last over the great
cataract toward the middle of the world.
Rex Stout, Under the Andes (1914) tells of brothers and Desiree Le Mire, the most desirable
woman in the world, who daringly enter a cave that takes them deep below the Andes.
"But where are we? What happened? My head is dizzy -- I don't know --"
I gripped his hand.
"'Tis hardly an every-day occurrence to ride an underground river several miles under the
Andes. Above us a mountain four miles high, beneath us a bottomless lake, round us
darkness. Not a very cheerful prospect, Hal; but, thank Heaven, we take it together!
"Keep your nerve. As for a way out -- at the rate that stream descends it must have carried us
thousands of feet beneath the mountain. There is probably a mile of solid rock between us and
the sunshine. You felt the strength of that current; you might as well try to swim up Niagara."
We dragged ourselves somehow ever onward. We found water; the mountain was
honeycombed with underground streams; but no food. More than once we were tempted to
trust ourselves to one of those rushing torrents, but what reason we had left told us that our
little remaining strength was unequal to the task of keeping our heads above the surface. And
yet the thought was sweet -- to allow ourselves to be peacefully swept into oblivion.
Nature is not yet ready for man in those wild regions. Huge upheavals and convulsions are of
continual occurrence; underground streams are known which rise in the eastern Cordillera and
emerge on the side of the Pacific slope. And air circulates through these passages as well as
water.
I lay on a narrow ledge of rock at the entrance to a huge cavern. Not two feet below rushed the
stream which had carried me; it came down through an opening in the wall at a sharp angle
with tremendous velocity, and must have hurled me like a cork from its foaming surface.
Below, it emptied into a lake which nearly filled the cavern, some hundreds of yards in
diameter. Rough boulders and narrow ledges surrounded it on every side.
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