#2 — Pages 90-91 of Harold T. Wilkins’ book, “SECRET CITIES OF OLD SOUTH AMERICA”, carries a story of a strange underground city beneath northern Brazil:
“The dead cities of gold and mystery lie, as one has said, round the littoral of the old Maranon-Amazon basin, and on the uplands of proto-South America. Many of the expeditions to one region of the unknown, both European and American… and including that of the lost explorer Irwin have been to the little known territory, watered by the branch of the Amazon tributaries, lying between Obidos and Santarem on the west, and Almereiran on the east, at the embouchure of this mighty waterway. Out of this terra incognita will one day come some startling discoveries. In these, an airship or multi-engined airplane will play a valiant part, as the Latin-Americans would say.
“Somewhere in the north of this region, running from the slopes of mostly unknown and unexplored sierras of the Tumac-Humac and the Parairaima, is a great prehistoric highway known as the Inca Way. It apparently linked this territory of gold, gems and ancient mysteries with what was later the Inca Empire of Quito and Cuzco.
“Dense bush and far-spreading forests and jungles, beset with fierce Indians who use blow-pipes and poisoned arrows, cover up much of this ancient imperial highway, whose makers may be coeval with the old Atlantean empire of South America (many of these ancient highways were built long before the Inca civilization came into existence).
“Deep within this region, at a point where a number of affluents merge, and on the fringes of that mysterious land of Oyapoc where lived the Conoris, or white Amazons of Sir Walter Raleigh’s day, is one of a number of dead cities of megalithic date (Compare this following story with the account of another dead city in Chapter 1.).
“The jungle Indians, who shun the place as taboo and sacred, say that gold ingots lie in the dust of the dead city. They say it has pillars in naves of ancient temples and great buildings, grey and weathered with extreme age, that blaze with gold and sacerdotal jewels.
“Around the pillars and the friezes may be seen many hieroglyphic and bizarre letters of no known race. One of these dead cities, far within the forest, and near the slopes of the sierras, is approached by a great stairway of many steps going down, between walls of a towering cliff, to an immense cavern or subterranean.
“The stairway is cut into the solid rock and is slippery with fungi and dripping with dank moisture.
“As one nears the bottom of the stairway, which at this point is inscribed with strange glyphs, one hears the roaring of tumultuous waters. A rushing river goes underground through the middle of the subterranean into a tunnel of more than a mile in length. The roof comes down, and over the lip of a great crack in the rocks, the waters rush into a catadupa — waterfall — at the bottom of which is a maelstrom. None knows what lies beyond.
“Clearly, the spot is very dangerous. It is probable that, beyond this tunnel, lies the dead city… which is said to be about three miles long. The story sounds like a South American version of one of the late Sir Rider Haggard’s novels. Attempts have been made by daring explorers to find the way into the dead city, where, as said, is much gold and many rich jewels, but all have been baffled.
“Within the subterranean approach, there is a hole in the cavern floor at the bottom of which is a quadrate-shaped chamber, clearly of man’s make, in which round the walls are numbers of oblong niches. These niches are for four-fifths of their height walled up with stones neatly laid on each other and cut by skilled masons.”
Chapter 1 of the same book, pp. 23-24 carries a similar story:
“…Here is an account of one in a remote region of Brazilian Guiana, which I take from a travel diary of my own:
“‘I hear of a place where three streams unite and spread out in the waters of a large and deep Lago (lake). I am told that some of the “rare plucked uns” among the New York Four Hundred, young men, and pretty girls, have visited this place. One knows when one is in the neighborhood, for one hears, coming through the aisles of the deep forests, a roar of thunderous reverberations. It is one of the catadupas which frequently figure in the accounts of the travels of the hardy, valiant bandeiristas into the Geraes and the Goyaz and the Matto Grosso, in the eighteenth century.
“‘…Waters vanish over a lip of rock into a great cavity. Here, a great hole yawns in the earth. Close by, many lichened and grey stone steps of a very ancient stairway, ‘half as old as Time’, like the red rose city of Petraea, are cut in the rock of black basalt.
“‘Reaching the bottom of this stairway, one is startled to find unknown glyphs, or, as they seem to be, ancient and unknown letters cut in the rock, which is dank with the spray of the falling waters. One passes into an immense cavern where the air is fresh and cool. Looking up, one sees that the roof is pierced with ancient ventilation shafts, as it might be of a Great Western railroad tunnel in the west of England.
Inside the great cavern, under an archway, one hears an underground stream roaring into the darkness, which is Stygian. No forest Indians will visit the place. But if one can obtain a canoe, one can paddle in the deep darkness to a point where the walls close in, and the roof comes down as in Edgar Allan Poe’s Pit and the Pendulum, in the dungeons of the old Dominican Inquisition in Toledo. Dangerous eddies appear and white foaming waters roar over the brink of a whirlpool.
“‘…One of the war-time frogmen might try his luck beyond, but he had better be accompanied!
“‘…Off the main cave, a labyrinth of passages branches out. It is anyone’s guess what lies beyond the maze. But one passage leads into an eerie mausoleum. Here, in wall-niches around, human skeletons are walled up. Above each partition, however, peers a grinning skull!
“‘Who are these guardians of this mysterious buaca? Why were they walled up, and when? On a frieze, or fresco, over each skeleton, strange hieroglyphs are carved deeply in the rock, or they may be signs of some unknown and ancient syllabary. No one knows if this weird buaca contains hidden treasures, nor what purpose it served. The forest Indians whisper that, if one follows the right path through the maze of passages, one will finally emerge into the grey ruins of a city of the long dead.’”
In his book “THE COMING RACE”, Edward Bulwer Lytton seems to support the idea of dead cities underground which have been abandoned by the ancient inhabitants thousands of years ago as they sought other lands (above or below the surface) where they could re-settle.
The following quote comes from chapter IX of his book:
“…A band of the ill-fated race thus invaded (had) taken refuge in caverns amidst the loftier rocks, and, wandering through these hollows, they lost sight of the upper world forever.
“Indeed, the whole face of the earth had been changed by this great revolution; the land had been turned into the sea, sea into land. In the bowels of the inner earth even now, I was informed as a positive fact, might be discovered the remains of human habitation, — habitation not in huts and caverns, but in vast cities whose ruins attest the civilization of races which flourished before the age of Noah (and perished with the flood), and are not to be classified with those genera to which philosophy ascribes the use of flint and ignorance of iron.”