Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 6 -- And Back to the Cross
Bartholomaeus Anglicus (c. 1250) acknowledged
that the sun could evaporate some water from the
sea or that the winds might skim water off its
surface but the chief cause of streamflow lay in the
subterranean connections. From a 1470 English
translation of his De Proprietatibus Rerum,
The fresh water than rains into the sea is
consumed and wasted by the heat of the sun
until it becomes food and nourishment for the
sea's salinity. But Ecclesiastes, the maker of
waters, says that they [the waters] come again in
secret veins of the earth to the well heads and
out of the mother that is the sea, welling and
springing out in well heads.
Ecclesiastes 1:7 explains all that requires explanation.
More than any cleric, however, it was Dante Alighieri (1265-1321),
a poet astute in the theo-politics of his day, who brought classical
lore into line with pious orthodoxy. Dante saw Christian mores in
Greek legend.
Where Odysseus sported quasi-god-like qualities, Dante's Inferno
(1314) follows the quest of a mortal through the levels of hell in
accord with the ideas of the medieval Church.
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Herman Melville's copy
Within an ancient mountain ("Dentro dal monte") of Crete stands the broken statue
of an old man who foreworns Dante and his companion Virgil of the rivers below.
"Their course falls from rock to rock into this valley. They form Acheron, Styx
and Phlegethon, then, by this narrow channel, go down to where there is no
further fall, and form Cocytus: you will see what kind of lake that is: so I will not
describe it to you here."
I said to him: "If the present stream flows down like that from our world, why does it only appear
to us on this bank?"
And he to me: "You know the place is circular, and though you have come far, always to the
left, descending to the depths, you have not yet turned through a complete round, so that if
anything new appears to us, it should not bring an expression of wonder to your face."’
And I again: "Master, where are Lethe and Phlegethon found, since you do not speak of the
former, and say that the latter is formed from these tears?"
He replied: "You please me, truly, with all your questions, but the boiling red water might well
answer to one of those you ask about. You will see Lethe, but above this abyss, there, on the
Mount, where the spirits go to purify themselves, when their guilt is absolved by penitence."
Dante's Lethe, we find, isn't beneath his feet; it's a cleansing stream in Paradise. (Similar
translocation of a stream from the underground would be declared by H.M. Howell, "Christian
Educator," author of The Kosmic Problem Solved (1895), who placed the Edenic rivers within the
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