Note 402 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)

See a very interesting account of these wells, and of the workmen who clean them out when obstructed by sand brought up with the water, in Laurent's memoir on the artesian wells recently bored by the French Government in the Algerian desert, Mémoire sur le Sahara Oriental, etc., pp. 19, et seqq. Some of the men remained under water from two minutes to two minutes and forty seconds. Several officers are quoted as having observed immersions of three minutes' duration, and M. Berbrugger alleges that he witnessed one of five minutes and fifty-five seconds. The shortest of these periods is longer than the best pearl diver can remain below the surface of salt water. The wells of the Sahara are from twenty to eighty mètres deep.

It has often been asserted that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted with the art of boring artesian wells. Parthey, describing the Little Oasis, mentions ruins of a Roman aqueduct, and observes: "It appears from the recent researches of Aim, a French engineer, that these aqueducts are connected with old artesian wells, the restoration of which would render it practicable to extend cultivation much beyond its present limits. This agrees with ancient testimony. It is asserted that the inhabitants of the oases sunk wells to the depth of 200, 300, and even 500 ells, from which affluent streams of water poured out. See Olympiodorus in Photii Bibl., cod. 80, p. 61, l. 17, ed. Bekk."—Parthey, Wanderungen, ii, p. 528.

In a paper entitled, Note relative à l'execution d'un Puits Artésien en Egypte sous la XVIII dynastie, presented to the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, on the 12th of November, 1852, M. Lenormant endeavors to show that a hieroglyphic inscription found at Contrapscelcis proves the execution of a work of this sort in the Nubian desert, at the period indicated in the title to his paper. The interpretation of the inscription is a question for Egyptologists; but if wells were actually bored through the rock by the Egyptians after the Chinese or the European fashion, it is singular that among the numerous and minute representations of their industrial operations, painted or carved on the walls of their tombs, no trace of the processes employed for so remarkable and important a purpose should have been discovered. See Appendix, No. 56.

It is certain that artesian wells have been common in China from a very remote antiquity, and the simple method used by the Chinese—where the borer is raised and let fall by a rope, instead of a rigid rod—has been lately been employed in Europe with advantage. Some of the Chinese wells are said to be 3,000 feet deep; that of Neusalzwerk in Silesia—the deepest in Europe—is 2,300. A well was bored at St. Louis, in Missouri, a few years ago, to supply a sugar refinery, to the depth of 2,199 feet. This was executed by a private firm in three years, at the expense of only $10,000. Another has since been bored at the State capitol at Columbus, Ohio, 2,500 feet deep, but without obtaining the desired supply of water.