Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 7 -- The Concept of Circulation
I thought beat therefore to fetch the Origin of these Waters from another source, viz. From
some secret Cistern of Water placed in the inner parts of the Apennine Mountains. And it is
certain, that the inner parts of the Mountains are cavernous, and that there are in them Cisterns
of Water, from whence Fountains and Rivers drawn their Origin.
The arms for the springs are two arms, their motto: "Avia, Pervia," the path of the wanderers.
By 1700, geology had evolved into an emerging objective science in which physical observation
demanded logical, mechanistic and consistent explanation. Whereas Biblical accounts could
never -- according to long-held theology, that is -- be false, God's execution of that truth was via
the forces of nature. And in what power of nature might better explain the remnants of prehistory
-- fossils in the mountains, being an example -- than God's direction of water?
Thus the 18th and 19th-century geological theory of Diluvialism, the intellectual attempt to
reconcile the geological record by reference to Noah's Flood.
John Hutchinson (1674-1737) believed all terrestrial matter at creation was suspended in a hollow
spherical mass of water, in the middle of which was a central mass of air. The solid matter then
separated from the water to form a crust over the central air and beneath the water. When light
was ordained, the internal air expanded and burst out, being replaced by the water.
The Flood itself was caused by an increase in atmospheric pressure, produced by God, which
forced air back into the Abyss, displacing the water. According to The Philosophical and
Theological Works of John Hutchinson (1749), the water then drained partly through holes in the
bottom of the sea and partly via "Fissures, Swallows, and Cracks in the Strata," eroding them into
caves. He believed similarly that the water of springs and rivers comes from the Abyss, rising
through the fissures that had been made by retreating water of the Flood.
Hutchinson's disciple Alexander Catcott noted that the water in Wookey Cave (Chapter 51, The
Tourist Trade Worldwide) "may in some measure indicate the free communication there must be
with the waters in the Abyss in this place."
Catcott's work appeared in A Treatise on the Deluge; containing ... Natural Proofs of the Deluge,
Deduced from a Great Variety of Circumstances, on and in the Terraqueous Globe, and ... the
Cause of Caverns or Natural Grottos; with a Description of the Most Remarkable, Especially
those in England (1761).
From the consideration of things upon the surface of the earth, let us now descend into the
inside, and see what proofs we can aduce from thence of an Universal Flood. And here let us
enter the subterranean Kingdom by those easy and convenient passages, -- the natural Caves
and Holes in the Earth: and in the first place collect what evidence we can for the point in
question from the Caves themselves.
Proof that these caverns were formed by water, or, that rapid currents of that fluid have passed
through them, may be drawn from the multitude of in-land pebbles that are to be found in most
of them ... they are not only to be found at the bottoms or in the lower parts of these Caves, but
even high up in the niches and covered cavities in the sides, and many of these pebbles
consist of a different kind of stone from that of the rock of the cavern, so that they must have
come from far, and the streams that brought them been rapid and strong.
The cave-forming action of the violent drainage surged to and fro, thus having repeated effect.
[The water] returned from off the earth continually ... in going and returning; inflowing
backwards and forwards, in fluctuating here and there; for as the Airs began to ascend before
the Waters began to descend, they would of course impede and in part drive back the waters
and so cause afluctuating or reverberating motion in them
The "airs" which occupied the Abyss while the water flooded over the earth would have interfered
with the draining down in the manner that water emptied from a flask is interrupted by air bubbles
rising against its flow.
Streams today in caves could not possibly have been responsible for their formation.
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