Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Precipitation might reach the
lower world through a leak in
the roof. We include a tunnel
for verification.
Subterranean Seas
Chapter 26 -- Subterranean Water Bodies
Chapters 16-25 include a variety of interior seas. Later in this
chapter we'll introduce the idea of contrapositionality, but now we
need only to note that these interior water bodies sprawl about their
fictional worlds much as do the seven seas in our own.
The diagram's left semicircle shows waters arbitrarily distributed on
a gravitational sphere. Within the spinning hollow sphere on the
right, islands align about at a single latitude, north and south.
We need not opine regarding the effect of lunar gravity on an underground sea, as we're provided
detailed information in William A. Taylor's Intermere (1901). A shipwreck survivor is carried to the
ancient country under the Antarctic where he's instructed in technology, economics, government
including term limits, equal distribution of wealth, and motivation for scientific advancement.
More to our interests, however, is the subterranean sea.
Many rivers, limpid and sparkling, coming through level and spreading valleys, and from almost
every point, contribute their waters to the mere.
The current of the mere is phenomenal -- not violent, but distinctively marked. Twice within
every twenty-tour hours it sweeps entirely around the oval, affecting one-half of the mere as it
moves. With the early hours of the morning and evening it sweeps from north to south
throughout the eastern, and with noon and midnight though the western half of the sea.
This current may be described as anti- or trans-tidal; that is, the general water level falls or is
lowered on the side where the current runs, and rises correspondingly in the opposite half.
The effect is this: From 6 a.m. to 12 noon and from 6 p.m. to midnight, throughout the eastern
half, the tide runs in from those rivers falling in from the east, and correspondingly rises and
moves inland in those failing in from the west, and then the current flows north on the western
side from 12 noon to 6 p.m. and from midnight to 6 a.m., so that for half the time the rivers on
either side ebb or flow into the sea, and for the other twelve hours rise and !low to the interior,
east or west as the case may be.
The effect of this is singular indeed, or it was to me. The rivers appear to run inland from the
sea a part of the time, and then run from the landward into the sea for twelve hours, or an equal
period, while the sea itself appears to be a subdivided river forever flowing in an elongated
circle along the opposite shores.
As the observer concedes, the phenomenon is rather "singular."
Contrapositioned vs. Non-Contrapositioned Topography
In an inner world hydrographically contrapositioned to our own, our land lies above its waters and
their waters, below our land.
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