Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 28 -- Et In Arcadia Ego
much vegetable matter and shells. Branches of a thorn several inches long, much blackened
by their stay in the water, were recognized, as also the stems of marsh plants, and some of
their roots, which were still white, together with the seeds of the same in a state of preservation,
which showed that they had not remained more than three or four months in the water. Among
the seeds were those of the marsh plant galium uliginosum, and among the shells a fresh water
species, (planorbis marginatus) and some land species, as helix rotundata and helix striata. M.
Dujardin, who, with others, observed this phenomenon, supposes that the waters had flowed
from some valleys of Auvergne or the Vivarais since the preceding autumn.
Dominique Francois Jean Arago mentioned the same or similar event in Sur les Puits Fore (1834)
in which the spring at a cathedral close to Tours increased by about a third, became turbid, and
for several hours brought up with it pieces of wood and vegetation.
These facts prove without question that the underground water at Tours does not come (at
least not entirely) from filtration through beds of sand. For it to be able to carry shells and
pieces o/wood, it must have moved freely along proper channels.
And we can yet add The Earth: A Descriptive History of the Phenomena of the Life of the Globe
(1871) by Elisee Reclus.
In many places, especially at Tours, the artesian wells have ejected the remains of plants,
branches, moss, snail shells, and other debris which the rains had probably carried away some
weeks previously into the depths of the earth. At Elbceuf [also in France] the water of a well
contained living eels.
Da Vinci's submarine stream originates in Italy, not Arcadia, but given Leonardo's enthusiasm for
ideas, it's not likely he researched his Latin sources.
The chalice tale is again and again cited by classical scholars, an example taken from A New
Classical Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography, Mythology, and Geography (1851) by Sir
William Smith,
Hence it was said that a cup thrown into the Alpheus would appear again in the fountain of
Arethusan Ortygia.
"The Fountain of Arethusa," New York Times, July 7, 1901, remarks on the tourism aspect.
No object is more frequently mentioned in connection with Syracuse than Arethusa, the nymph
changed into a fountain when pursued across the sea by the river Alpheus. The water of this
fountain, much praised in antiquity, has in recent times become brackish by the letting in of salt
water through earthquakes. But what it has lost in real excellence it has gained in stylish
appearance. For the sake of its ancient renown washerwomen have recently been excluded
from it, a fine wall put about it, and papyrus plants added to make it look picturesque.
As the Alpheus below Olympia flows into the sea as a distinct channel at times of high discharge
and as meandering threads in times of drought, the tale of the river god and the nymph seems to
be rooted in river's more-perplexing headwaters. For direct delivery to Sicily, toss the cup in the
river above Megalopoli, not at Olympia.
The Legacy
The mystery of the River Alpheus was an underpinning of Renaissance literary and art, but not
simply as a river that stitched its way across Peloponnese. The deeper mystery was that of life's
metaphorical destination.
Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464), the first of the Florentine political dynasty, sent agents throughout
Europe in search of ancient manuscripts and with these, founded the Academies to study Greek
philosophy.
To writers and artists of the Renaissance having no knowledge of Arcadia's harsh topography,
the land was a seen as a gentle, fertile, idealized landscape, a wishful vision of existence
untouched by the conflicts of contemporary life. Unlike the word "utopia" -- named for Thomas
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