Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

William Miller envisioned a
contrapositioned variation of
the Symmes model in The
Sovereign Guide, A Tale of
Eden (1898).
The inner Eden is inhabited
by various peoples spread
out in continents that
correspond in placement to
the seas of the outer world.
Chapter 26 -- Subterranean Water Bodies
Eden yet exists on the underside, though overgrown, as does the tomb of Adam and Eve.
Unfortunately for biblical archeologists, those sites are under our oceans.
For geographies on either side of a shell to be contrapositioned, the shell's thickness must be the
same everywhere, one side dipping where the other humps.
Muddock's The Sunless City (Chapter 21) describes contrapositionality as Flin pilots his
submarine into a bottomless lake and through a hole lined with gold.
It is a well-known fact, ladies and gentlemen, that we live upon a globe; that is, on the external
crust of a huge ball. There is one thing which science has proved beyond all doubt, and that is,
that this ball is not solid but hollow... and I say that in the centre of the earth are subterranean
rivers and buried seas.
By the light of science it has further been revealed to us that the crust of the earth upon which
we stand in no part attains a greater thickness than fifteen miles; and it is stated as a scientific
truth that if we could dig down to that depth, and break through the inner surface of the crust,
we should come to fire. I assert that that is a monstrously absurd theory; that we should do
nothing of the kind, but that we should break in upon a new world, a new race of beings. That
we should find a land of beauty and fertility; that we should find rivers, seas, mountains and
valleys. The inequalities of the bottoms of our valleys will form mountains there; and our
mountains will be their seas. Like unto a pudding-mould, whereon the fruit and flowers are
convex on one side and concave on the other.
We thus could call this model the "Pudding Mold Layout." Lining the hole with gold seems
excessive, but we'll give it more thought in Chapter 80, Underground Rivers of Gold.
By "non-contrapositioned
topography," we mean that
the underground topography
bears no correspondence to
the landforms above.
As Gardner arbitrarily painted
the interior of his patented
hollow globe (Chapter 14), it
was non-contrapositioned.
Burroughs and Tolkien strove to preserve subterranean geographies from novel to novel. The
hydrologic maps of Pellucidar and the Middle Earth are derived from the respective sagas.
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