A treatise on waterworks for the supply of cities and towns : with a description of the principal geological formations of England as influencing supplies of water ... / by Samuel Hughes.

Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise on waterworks for the supply of cities and towns : with a description of the principal geological formations of England as influencing supplies of water ... / by Samuel Hughes. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    parts of Africa, New Holland, and other uncivilised countries. ]Many of them are so shallow that they are emptied every day, and only supplied by the water which trickles into them during the night. Mr. Ewbank is of opinion, that amongst the first people in the world these wells were superseded soon after the seventh generation from Adam, about which time the discovery of metals took place, and consequently the power of digging and penetrating through rocks. In fact, in the very earliest records which have been handed down to us from the most remote an- tiquity, as for instance in the writings of Moses, we have mention made of wells ; and modern travellers have not hesi- tated to point out the sites of some of the most ancient wells as discoverable at the present day. Many of these wells, whose origin dates from the very earliest period, have passed through both rock and quicksand, and therefore exhibit a knowledge of workmanship and mode of deahng with mechanical difficulties which has not always been associated with such remote anti- quity. Mr. Ewbank, in fact, asserts, that to the constructors of ancient wells in the East we are indebted for the only known mode at present adopted of sinking deep wells through quick- sands by the employment of a curb, which settles and sinks down as the excavation proceeds. Among the most ancient wells in the world are those which bear the name of the Patriarch Jacob and his son Joseph; the former situate near Sychar (the Shechem of the Scriptures) and the latter near Cairo in Egypt. Jacob's Well has been visited by pilgrims in all ages, and has been minutely described by Dr. Clarke, in his Travels. It is 9 feet in diameter and 105 feet deep, made entirely through rock; and when visited by Maundrell it contained 15 feet of water. Joseph's Well at Cairo is 297 feet in depth, and is altogether a much more elaborate work than the other, and indeed more so than most modern v^'ells. The mode of raising the water was by means of an endless rope, carrying earthern pots or buckets, and working over a wheel at top and bottom, similar