Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 22 -- Boys' Life
CHAPTER 22
BOYS' LIFE
The most durable Boys Club serial is, of course, Boys' Life, the morethan-a-century
publication of the biggest Boys Club of them all, the Boy
Scouts of America. We've selected 19 issues to illustrate the broad
spectrum of ways in which underground rivers are employed in literature
written for youth.
June 1915
August 1919
"The Moonshiners in the Jungle"
Were it not for an occasional glimpse of the stars through the
leafy roof over the creek, we might easily have imagined
ourselves moving down some mysterious subterranean stream.
We'll see underground river allusions employed to evoke a sense
of drama and about everything else in Chapter 29, The
Underground River as Metaphor.
"Boy Scouts in the Wilderness"
Diving deeply as possible and swimming down with all their
strength and speed they shot past the rock and the bottom and
into the dim, green depths of the shaft below. As they turned to
come up in the clear water they caught a glimpse of what
seemed to be a cave opening into the side of the shaft. There
was a dare-devil streak in Will's make-up and without stopping to
count the cost, he shot into this slanting opening believing that
the cave led up into the heart of the mountain above the level of
the pool.... If the opening reached the air above, the boy's breath
would just last long enough to bring them up...
Not in accord with Boy Scout Manual regarding safety.
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