Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 29 -- The Underground River as Metaphor
I journeyed in the Land of the Big Red Apple, where they raise fruit as delicious as that with
which Eve tempted Adam. For Eve knew her business, and the Apple is Some Fruit. And I
saw the trees laden with fruit, and the ground beneath them growing green with Alfalfa.
And I asked, Whence cometh the water, with which these trees are nourished? For the clouds
drop not their rain, neither is there melting snow upon the distant hills.
And they showed me a deep well that went down a hundred cubits. And at the bottom I saw an
Engine that worked with Electric Power, and rested not day nor night.
And the engine lifted the water in a Mighty Stream so strong that when it reached the surface
they had to hurl it against a wall, and divide it into smaller streams lest it tear up the very
ground. And the water flowed unto Many Orchards, and watered the trees.
And the trees brought forth fruit in their season. And there are no years when the crop faileth
for lack of water. For there is a Mighty River that floweth under the ground, and its flow is
perpetual. And everything doth grow, whithersoever the river cometh.
And when I saw these things, I said, Behold there be many men whose lives are Sterile and
Barren of good works, who might Grow and Blossom and Bear Fruit.
For there floweth under the feet of every man streams of Power; and there are in the life of men
Hidden Reservoirs whereof the might Drink and water the ground abundantly.
For there is no need that any life should be barren, or that any man should fail to lift up toward
heaven the evidences of a life that is useful and good and shineth upon the evil and the good.
The sun is in the sky, and there are springs of water in the earth, and no man's life should be
unfruitful.
Few pieces of English literature employ both King James prose and reference to Engines that
work with Electric Power. As for the allusion to an underground river, who amongst us denyeth
that no man's life should be unfruitful?
We'll end our catalog with a metaphoric prognostication by the New York Times, March 1915.
Now, the German and the Englishman are not in the least alike -- except in the sense that
neither of them are negroes. They are, in everything good and evil, more unlike than any other
two men we can take at random from the great European family. They are opposite from the
roots of their history -- nay, of their geography. It is an understatement to call Britain insular.
Britain is not only an island, but an island slashed by the sea till it nearly splits into three
islands, and even the midlands can almost smell the salt. Germany is a powerful, beautiful,
and fertile inland country, which can only find the sea by one or two twisted and narrow paths,
as people find a SUBTERRANEAN LAKE. Thus the British Navy is really national because it is
natural. It has cohered out of hundreds of accidental adventures of ships and shipmen before
Chaucer's time and after it. But the German Navy is an artificial thing, as artificial as a
constructed Alp would be in England.
Made a month before the Lusitania was sunk by a German U-Boat, "As people find a
subterranean lake" turned out to be tragically illusionary.
A well-crafted metaphor can, in fact, be quite literal.
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