Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 23 -- Girls, Too!
Change the setting to Africa, and the Kidillin underground river isn't unlike the one within The
Secret Mountain (1941). That's Mafumu below, who with Jack swims through a water-filled
passage, having no idea of its length, twists and turns, constrictions and where it leads.
Fortunately for the swimmers, the underground river leads to a chamber which they proceed to
explore.
Some 60 years later in a posting to the Enid Blyton Society, Ali from New Zealand (whom we
suppose to be female by virtue of her hobby of scrapbooking) reflects on the adventure,
I remember in one of the books I read as a child (and the name escapes me at the moment),
although it was set in Africa and there was a little African boy that the children befriended,
anyway one of the boys was wading through an underground cavern in the mountain and
needed to dive down and hold his breath and swim underwater. I think the description said that
he was bursting for air by the time he emerged to find air.
I found it all very terrifying as a child, imagine if the roof of the cave hadn't lifted and he was in
the pitch black with no air. In fact so terrifying that as a child I used to practice holding my
breath in the bath just incase I should ever find myself in similar circumstances! (although I
don't think I would have risked it.)
Chapter 37, Achluohydrophobia, is about the fear of underground waters and Chapter 90, Why
Do We Believe What We Believe, will suggest that this sort of implant can become a visceral root
of belief, but we'll leave it as simply a childhood memory for now. Adventure fiction can stick with
us.
The Island of Adventure (1944) has gloomy underground
island copper mine that extends from under the sea to a
well on the mainland and the bad guys flood the whole
system with Bill, Jack and Philip still inside!
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