Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 26 -- Subterranean Water Bodies
We'll cite this eminent's geographer's perspective
in a number of chapters, but we can't refrain from
adding the aside that he was also poster-boy, so
to speak, for the Anarchist movement in its turn-ofthe
century heyday.
Elisée Reclus, "Anarchism, An Address Delivered
at South Place Institute, London," July 29, 1895
The International Library of Technology: A Series of Textbooks for Persons Engaged in the
Engineering Professions and Trades or for Those Who Desire Information Concerning Them 36,
1903 notes that underground lakes and rivers have their own watersheds in the manner of lakes
and rivers above.
Each of these underground lakes and rivers -- for these waters may possess both characters --
has no doubt its own watershed or area of absorption whence it is recruited, but the utmost
uncertainty exists as to what the bounds of these areas may be. It is impossible to make
gagings and surveys.
Which is not to say that there are no differences in appearance from the upper world.
From College Physiography (1914) by Ralph Tarr and Lawrence Martin,
Underground rivers differ widely from surface rivers in many important respects. The
underground valley is a rock-walled and rock-roofed cavern; its form and direction are irregular
and unsystematic, as are its tributaries; there is little broadening by weathering; there are no
floodplains and no deltas, for the sediment load is slight; and, since solution is the prime factor
in the development of the underground course, the life history of the cavern valley is wholly
unlike that of a surface valley.
Drawing these thoughts together,
The principals of hydraulics and hydrology are the same, under or upon the earth's surface.
The manifestations may seem rather alike.
This chapter deals our propensity to categorize waterbodies we can't see with the same labels we
use to categorize waterbodies with which we are well familiar, labels such as "river," "stream,"
"lake"and "sea."
We'll first deal with what's real, but because fiction's also part of our journey, then see where this
takes us when to move to waterbodies of the imagination.
Terminology
Let us establish some terminology.
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