Chapter 23 -- Boys' Life "High Water!" A few hundred feet inside the cave found us in absolute darkness... A hundred feet farther on we found ourselves wading nearly knee deep in a stream of ice cold water which came rushing toward us through the narrow tunnel we were following... Ronnie went up ahead, then came back to announce that the underground stream became a small lake with icy water waist deep. A true adventure, accurate in description of a cave stream issuing from an interior spring. May 1951 "Our National Parks" We'll see the postcards in Chapter 55, Then Madam, You Should Go and See the Great Cave in Kentucky. June 1955 "Terror in the Temple" The boy in the village, half dead from the trip through the underground river, had done it. Driving with all he had left, Joe fought clear of the pool's embrace. The harrowing underground river escape so favored by the type of authors who choose titles like "Terror in the Temple." April 1957 294 DRAFT 8/8/2013 Updates at http://www.unm.edu/~rheggen/UndergroundRivers.html Chapter 23 -- Boys' Life "So You Want to be a Geologist." For example, there are geologists who trace hidden underground water sources in regions having precious little water. One method of doing this is with a radioactive tracer. A water-poor area may have an underground river flowing beneath it. If engineers could plot the hidden course of the river, they could tap the underground water by installing pumping stations along the path. The geologist helps in this task by pouring radioactive material into a river at the point where it disappears underground. Then with radioactive detection instruments on the surface he follows the underground radioactive current and so plot the course of the river. Geologists do still other kinds of work equally exciting and helpful to men. March 1960 "Pouring radioactive material into a river at the point where it disappears underground." For further interesting experiments, the Scout needed the Gilbert Atomic Energy Kit. We'll cover groundwater tracers in Chapter 49, Finding the Underground Rivers. "On the Cahokia Pilgrimage" From the levee the trail winds through a quarry and past a falling spring, appropriately named Falling Springs, where an underground stream pours out about 50 feet up on the side of a bluff. Nonfiction with a common error of nomenclature -- "underground river" again used where the correct term is "spring." July 1961 "Hiking a Raft Down the Underground River" The raft of inner tubes, canvas, and plywood lurched forward a few feet in the murky water -- then ground to a halt on the sandy bottom of the Salinas River. "So this is why it's called an underground river," Brian Dana said. For the tenth time in 15 minutes Brian, Dan Dutra, and Byron Foster jumped from the deck of the raft and tugged on the craft's towropes. A wry observer, Scout Brian Dana. We'll see, however, that the Salinas may have a deeper underground tie in Chapter 94, The Rio San Buenaventura. October 1975 295 DRAFT 8/8/2013 Updates at http://www.unm.edu/~rheggen/UndergroundRivers.html Chapter 23 -- Boys' Life "Down the Drain" by Zolton Malocsay Cenote of the Spirits near the ruins of Tan-Ka in central Mexico. By the time I felt the current, it was too late. I lunged to get away, but the current had me, dragged me deeper under the ledge, into the dark, into the throat of some underground river. I clawed at the ceiling, but my fingernails couldn't hold in the slime. My tanks clonked and scraped, my knees hit rock, my elbows, and suddenly there was nothing but blackness and the rush of water. The plot's standard Boys Club fare, but the Scout learns how to escape from a vertical-walled cenote having a waterfall from the wall fed by an adjacent lake. March 1976 2. Allow cenote to fill until waterfall is Cenote Lake submerged and water level stabilizes. 1. Block outlet You're now floating at lake level and with lose there's no velocity in the waterfall rocks. passage Waterfall 3. Escape via a short dive through the waterfall passage. Outlet "Hawaiians on Ice" Prussiking is a technique used to haul yourself up a rope using sliding friction knots. A longer rope has a loop for your feet on both ends; a shorter rope attaches a harness to your climbing rope... Justin Leong prepares to practice his prussiking skills (see box above).to pull himself out of an underground river. Factual report of a Scout excursion with misuse of "underground river" in lieu of "crevasse." We'll discuss glacial rivers in Chapter 42, Underground Rivers in Caverns other than Karst. November 1999 Although George Ralphson didn't write for Boys' Life, we'll include him in this chapter for his Boy Scouts adventure series, the characters of which embody the slogan "Do a Good Turn Daily." To the Boys and Girls of America, in the fond hope that herein they will find pleasure, instruction and inspiration; that they may increase and grow in usefulness, self-reliance, patriotism and unselfishness, and ever become fonder and fonder of their country and its institutions, of Nature and her ways, is the cherished hope and wish of the author. -- G. Harvey Ralphson, Scout Master 296 DRAFT 8/8/2013 Updates at http://www.unm.edu/~rheggen/UndergroundRivers.html Chapter 23 -- Boys' Life Boy Scouts in Mexico, or On Guard with Uncle Sam (1911) Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone, or The Plot Against Uncle Sam (1911) Boy Scouts in the Philippines, or The Key to the Treaty Box (1911) Boy Scouts in a Motor Boat: or, Adventures on the Columbia River (1912) Boy Scouts in an Airship (1912) Boy Scouts on Motor Cycles (1912) Boy Scouts Beyond the Arctic Circle (1913) Boy Scouts in California (1913) Boy Scout Electricians, or The Hidden Dynamo (1913) Boy Scouts on Old Superior, or The Tale of the Pictured Rocks (1913) Boy Scouts on the Open Plains (1914) Boy Scouts in Southern Waters (1915) Boy Scouts on the Open Plains (1914) Boy Scouts in the North Sea (1915) Some of the Scouts' underground river adventures. Boy Scouts in Mexico (1911), "Water in wells comes from elevations before it gravitates to the bottom of the holes from which we pump it," Shaw declared, in defense of his suggestion. "There may be a reservoir here somewhere." Boy Scouts in a Motor Boat (1912), Jimmie was not at all averse to a swim, for he did not know how cold the water of the underground stream was. So he tossed his light across, seized the end of the rope Jack had used on his return trip, and leaped in. Then his weakness made itself manifest, for he did not seem to have the power to force his way across in the face of the current. He hung on bravely, but made no progress. Jack threw off his coat and, taking hold of the rope on his side, dropped in and drifted down to the struggling lad. Boy Scout Electricians (1913), "Ned thinks there is an underground stream," Frank suggested, "and I move that we go find it while he is away." Almost before the words were out of his mouth, the boy switched on his flashlight and disappeared in the opening. Frank and Harry were at his heels in a moment, and the three went crawling down an incline of about thirty degrees on their hands and knees. Fifty feet or more from the opening they came to a chamber much larger than the cave in which they had stored the motor car. The flashlights showed a swift current lashing against broken boulders. A few paces below, the stream disappeared entirely, falling over a precipice with a sound which, in that confined space, reminded one of thunder. "Say!" Jimmie shouted, speaking in Frank's ear in order that his words might be understood above the roar of the water, "they've set the stream at work down there and they've forgotten their oil can. Don't you hear the machinery creaking?" From the depths of the stream somewhere below its plunge into unknown regions came the sharp, insistent creaking of an improperly cared for shaft. It sounded to the boys like the nerve- torturing screeches heard from the primitive horse cars in New York. Frank sat down flat upon the ledge and turned his flashlight toward the point where the stream disappeared. "We've got it!" he cried; "we've got it! If anybody should ask you, there's the hidden dynamo right down there, under that current!" 297 DRAFT 8/8/2013 Updates at http://www.unm.edu/~rheggen/UndergroundRivers.html Chapter 23 -- Boys' Life "Anyway," Jimmie went on, "I'm going out in there to see how deep that water is. If it isn't too deep, I can drop down to the boulder above where the water disappears, and get a peek into the chute it follows. I might be able to see if there really is anything except a waterfall below." This plan gained the consent of the boys, and in a short time Jimmie dropped off the ledge and started to swim toward the boulder at the head of the drop. To his amazement, however, he found the water was only up to his waist, so he waded along quite comfortably, although the current was very strong. Once or twice be slipped on the treacherous bottom and plunged head first into the water, but the rope always assisted him to his feet, and he went on until he came to the boulder which split the stream at the point of its disappearance.