Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 30 -- Down to a Sunless Sea
"I should say that her Creator had al ready done that!" said Meschines. "By the way I know a
young fellow -- if he were only here -- who is just the man you want, and can be trusted. He is
a civil engineer -- Harvey Freeman. The Lord only knows in what part of the world he is at this
speaking. He has made a special study of these subterranean matters."
"Don't you remember, papa, Coleridge's poem of Kubla Khan?'
Where Alph, the sacred river ran
Though caverns measureless to man
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA.
"Our sacred river, when we find it, shall be named Miriam."
"It ought to be Kainaiakan," she rejoined, "for, if any body finds it, it will belie."
From the review of Juletty, A Story of old Kentucky (1901) by Lucy Cleaver McElroy, published in
Publications of the Southern History Association, September 1901,
Here are scenes and situations which only a born story-teller-apt in word-craft by instinct and by
art could vividly and sympathetically reproduce; and, as we follow these fascinating pages,
reflecting, as in a mirror, the salient characteristics of the strange environment, our memory
reverts to an old-time summer outing with congenial friends in that quaint, provincial region of
mystery and charm a land of soft sunshine, of broad and fertile ranges; of noble woodlands; of
soft-flowing waters ; of dewy meadows ; of fields of maize and gardens of fruits and (lowers ; of
great silent streams mirroring the slow raft or the swift canoe ; of strange relics of vanished
races known only by their entombed remains; of mighty caverns patiently wrought by crude
cosmical agencies into chambers and corridors of sculpturesque finish and grace; of mysterious
rivers, untouched by human traffic, flowing ceaselessly in subterranean silence,
Like Alph, the sacred river,
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA.
As the "Testing Flow of Underground River," St. Louis Republic, December 26, 1902, concerns
groundwater, we could include it in Chapter 46, Finding the Underground Rivers, but we'll cite it
here for its poetic reference.
The Arkansas River in Western Kansas flows for a distance underground, and the corps has
used an electrical device to find the velocity of the subterranean current. A row of wells is
driven across the channel at regular intervals. An electrolyte is sunk in one of the upper wells
and allowed to dissolve. As the solution passes down to the other wells a needle of an
electrical instrument is deflected. Thus it is shown that the Arkansas flows two and one-half
feet a day under ground. The time may come when the Government survey will investigate that
dream river of Coleridge, who sang,
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA.
We delight in poet Walt Mason's closing lines of "The Funeral" (1911).
So when I up and trundle DOWN TO A SUNLESS SEA,
Let no one blow a bundle to pay for planting me.
I'll slumber just as sweetly in some old basswood box,
As though trussed up completely with silver screws and locks.
In Chapter 51 we'll visit the Lebanese Jeita Caves described by Lewis Gaston Leary in Syria, The
Land of Lebanon (1913).
With the aid of portable rafts, adventurous explorers have penetrated this wonderful cavern for
nearly a mile; but at that distance there was no diminution of the volume of the stream or any
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