Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 26 -- Subterranean Water Bodies
Of hydrogeographic interest is the similarities. Both include enclosed basins. The circular water
body in Pellucidar is the Polar Sea. Tolkien's world has two inland seas, the Rhun and the
Nurnen. Both sagas are set on peninsulas transected by mountain ranges, barriers to be crossed
by the heroes. Both worlds are endowed by multiple rivers which provide a means of transport
when the characters need to move along.
Tolkien's imaginary world is clearly non-contrapositioned to ours. With Burroughs, the evidence
is inconsistent. Maps derived from Burroughs' series -- there being several -- suggest no
geographical correspondence between Pellucidar and our own earth, but the author explicitly
wrote with a contrapositioned scheme in mind.
At the Earth's Core (1914)
“Look,” he cried, pointing to it, “this is
evidently water, and all this land. Do you
notice the general configuration of the two
areas? Where the oceans are upon the
outer crust, is land here. These relatively
small areas of ocean follow the general lines
of the continents of the outer world.”
“We know that the crust of the globe is 500
miles in thickness; then the inside diameter
of Pellucidar must be 7,000 miles, and the
superficial area 165,480,000 square miles.
Three-fourths of this is land. Think of it! A
land area of 124,110,000 square miles! Our
own world contains but 53,000,000 square
miles of land, the balance of its surface being
covered by water."
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Tarzan at the Earth's Core (1929)
When one considers that these land and
water areas upon the surface of Pellucidar
are in opposite relationship to the same areas
upon the outer crust, some slight conception
of the vast extent of this mighty world within a
world may be dreamed.
The land area of the outer world comprises
some 53,000,000 square miles or onequarter
of the total area of the earth’s
surface; while within Pellucidar three-quarters
of the surface is land, so that jungle,
mountain, forest and plain stretch
interminably over 124,110,000 square miles;
nor are the oceans with their area of
41,370,000 square miles of any mean or
niggardly extent.
Emerson's The Smoky God implies that the inner- and outer-world are reversed, at least in the
proportion of land to sea.
About three-fourths of the "inner" surface of the earth is land and about one-fourth water.
There are numerous rivers of tremendous size, some flowing in a northerly direction and others
southerly. Some of these rivers are thirty miles in width, and it is out of these vast waterways,
at the extreme northern and southern parts of the "inside" surface of the earth, in regions where
low temperatures are experienced, that fresh-water icebergs are formed.
The "three-fourths" should actually be seven-tenths, but that's minor.
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