Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 30 -- Down to a Sunless Sea
No stream can rise above the level of its source. No life, which lacks a prominent interest as to
its beginnings, can ever, in its entire course, develop any distinguishing features of interest.
This is true of any life; but it is true of De Quincey's above all others on record, that, through all
its successive arches, ascending and descending, it repeats the original arch of childhood.
Repeats -- but with what marvelous transformations! For hardly is its earliest section passed,
when, for all its future course, it is masked by a mighty trouble. No longer does it flow along its
natural path, and beneath the open sky, but, like the sacred Alpheus, runs
Through caverns measureless to man,
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA.
American Journal of Insanity (21), 1865, offers this insight on
certain institutionalized patients.
Life to them had ceased to flow along its accustomed channel,
in the light of day beneath the open sky, but ran "through
caverns measureless to man, DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA."
For understandable reason, the journal was later retitled the
American Journal of Psychiatry.
"The Romance of an Indian Empress," Melbourne Review, January 1877, describes the Taj
Mahal.
It exceeds in its costly grandeur and consummate perfection of architecture the wondrous
structure which Artemisia erected at Halicamassus over the remains of her beloved consort,
and in its fairy-like loveliness that stately pleasure-dome which Kubla Khan decreed in Xanadu,
Where Alf, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns fathomless by man
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA.
In Chapter 51, The Tourist Trade Worldwide, we'll visit the Jenolan Caves in New South Wales.
From The Jenolan Caves: An Excursion in Australian Wonderland (1889) by Sam Cooke,
And as you glance once more along the limestone mountain ridge you wonder what hidden
beauties yet remain to be revealed. To the north from the Devil's Coach-house numerous
caves are known to exist, and it is probable that some of them may present features more
remarkable than any yet discovered. The creek, which runs quietly along, has on its way some
oblique outlets before it sinks into the earth, and recalls, with its surroundings, the pleasureplace
of Kubla Khan,
Where Alf the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA.
"The Golden Fleece," by Julian Hawthorne was a adventure serialized in the Sacramento Record-
Union. From September 17, 1892,
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