Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 32 -- To Cross the Styx
Here Charon stopped his soliloquy and his boat simultaneously. As he rounded one of the
many turns in the river a singular object met his gaze, and one, too, that filled him with
misgiving. It was another craft, and that was a thing not to be tolerated. Had he, Charon,
owned the exclusive right of way on the Styx all these years to have it disputed here in the
closing decade of the Nineteenth Century?
The ferryman fears the arrival of a houseboat, one bearing everyone that's ever died, will put him
out of business, but finds out that he's actually to be appointed the boat's janitor.
What follow are stories set on the houseboat, what
might transpire if departed notables were put in the
same room. We meet Sir Walter Raleigh, Cassius,
Demosthenes, Blackstone, Confucius,
Shakespeare, Washington, Baron Munchausen,
Confucius, Napoleon, Diogenes, Ptolemy, Boswell,
Columbus, Cicero, Henry VIII, Doctor Johnson,
Doctor Livingstone, Samson, Darwin, Mozart,
Tennyson, Thackeray, Burns, Homer, Carlyle,
Noah, Adam, P.T. Barnum, Queen Elizabeth and
Ophelia!
The Odyssean Charon, however, had no such erudite sailing, as evidenced by the spirit's
astonishment that Odysseus could have crossed to Hades from the land of the living. “For in
between lie the great rivers and terrible waters that flow, Ocean first of all.” What Bangs got right
was the fact that the houseboat passengers were all quite deceased.
As we haven't the space to quote from the rest of our Stygian library, we'll just show the covers.
Lawrence Daniel Fogg, Shady
Sinners of the Styx (1906)
Louis Trimble, Cargo for the
Styx (1961)
DRAFT 1122//66//22001122
Hans Jorgen Lembourn,
Hotel Styx (1964)
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