Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 26 -- Subterranean Water Bodies
by seepage and evaporation. Lakes below the surrounding land surface drain through the floor to
a lower water body and perhaps lose a little water by evaporation.
For an early illustration of a cave lake, we have
Robert Southwell's plan and section of Pen Park
Hole in Glochestershire in Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society, 13, 1683.
For another cave lake description, one in which the
"lake" nature was a revelation, we've Paul
Raymond,'s "Subterranean River Midroi" by Popular
Science, June 1896, describing the French caves of
the Vercors. The magazine editor must have ruled,
however, that "river," with its connotation of current,
made a better headline.
Starting to explore this river on August 28,1895, and carrying our instruments, our photographic
apparatus, and our boat, the Microbe, with considerable difficulty across the slippery clay
bottom, we passed into a gallery about thirteen feet long and ten feet high, contracting in some
places to a few inches, which offered nothing of special interest. About one hundred and fifty
yards farther on we came to a lake, where my progress had been stopped in a visit made to this
place the year before. Launching the Microbe, we proceeded on our way to the unknown. We
advanced between walls smooth and polished by the water upon this new Styx, which had a
uniform depth of about ten feet. After a few turns the lake became narrower; an arcade, and
then a second, rose before us -- the Gate of Mycenae, as we called them, standing at the
entrance to the second gallery. This was the end of the lake, and for the present, of our sail.
There exists, in effect, in the very heart of the Gausses, a considerable and eminently variable
reservoir of water; it is a real lake, and through the thousand fissures, through all the meshes of
this interior region, flow the waters of the plateau, sometimes by the vent of Rochemale, and
sometimes, and only when rains are abundant and when the vent is not sufficient for its task, by
the River Midroi.
The Subterranean River Midroi
DRAFT 1122//66//22001122
Uppddaatteess aatt hhttttpp::////www. .uunnm. .eedduu//~rrhheeggggeenn//UnnddeerrggrroouunnddRi ivveerrss. .hhttml l
328