Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 21 -- Boys Club Singles
"We could send the bottle," he said, "but I don't think we could depend on its bringing a party of
rescuers. It might be days or weeks before the bottle would attract anybody's attention, and
meantime we should starve, for we have not even a day's provisions with us. Even our light
would last but a few hours, and in darkness and hunger we should surely perish."
This part of the cave," said he, seating himself as
calmly as though he were in his chair in the
schoolroom, "was probably formed in part by the
washing and friction of gravel and sand poured over it
by the water coming through that opening above us.
We are now under a portion of the land which was
covered by the great lake caused by the huge ice dam
formed across the Ohio River during the glacial period
in North America."
The professor is incorrect regarding the genesis of the
cavern, as abrasion can occur only in a channel already
large and steep enough to have high velocities. Like all
karst rivers, this one was by dissolution.
Everett McNeil, The Lost Nation (1918) features Aztecs, Toltecs, ape-men and subterranean
monsters.
"Now," and Ith turned quickly to Professor Kendal, "Exitl calls and we must hasten. Look not
down and follow me without fear, though I appear to be walking on air. From this point a
narrow bridge hangs suspended from the ceiling of the cavern, far above the horrors below,
and passes over the river of burning brimstone, even to the Cavern of the Great Jaws of
Death."
H.P Lovecraft's short story, The Beast in the Cave (1918), tells of a man lost from his tour group
and stalked by a wild beast in the bowels of Mammoth Cave, a place we will visit in Chapter 50,
Then, Madam, You Should Go and See the Great Cave in Kentucky.
No Boys Club member would admit to being scared, even by Lovecraft's "The Festival" in Weird
Tales, January 1925.
And then, because that nightmare's position barred me from the stone staircase down which we
had come, I flung myself into the oily underground river that bubbled somewhere to the caves
of the sea; flung myself into that putrescent juice of earth's inner horrors before the madness of
my screams could bring down upon me all the charnel legions these pest-gulfs might conceal.
Abraham G. Merritt, The Moon Pool (1919) features a South Sea escape from reptilians.
Whence came the stream, I marveled, forgetting for the moment, as we passed on again, all
else. Were we closer to the surface of earth than I had thought, or was this some mighty flood
falling through an opening in sea floor, Heaven alone knew how many miles above us, losing
itself in deeper abysses beyond these?
"The Flying Legion," All-Story, November 15, 1919, tells of the Master (a soldier of fortune), the
mysterious masked Alden (a female in disguise) and the Legionaries who enter the hidden city
Ruba al Khali, discover a pyramid of solid gold and in fighting their way out, leap into an
underground river which delivers them to a perilous desert.
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