176 THE OLD RED SANDSTONE. 
Directly in the gorge of the ravine, where we may see 
the partially wooded banks receding as they ascend from 
the base to the centre, and then bellying over from the 
centre to the summit, there is a fine chalybeate spring, sur- 
mounted by a dome of hewn stone. It was discovered by 
the miners when in quest of the mineral which they did 
not and could not discover, and forms one of the finest speci- 
mens of a true Artesian well which I have any where seen. 
They had bored to a considerable depth, when, on withdraw- 
ing the kind of auger used for the purpose, a bolt of water, 
which occupied the whole diameter of the bore, came rushing 
after, like the jet of a fountain, and the work was prosecuted 
no further; for, as steam-engines were not yet invented, no 
pit could have been wrought with so large a stream issuing 
into it; and as the volume was evidently restricted by the size 
of the bore, it was impossible to say how much greater a 
stream the source might have supplied. The spring still con- 
tinues to flow towards the sea, between its double row of 
cresses, at the rate of about a hogshead per minute —a rate 
considerably diminished, it is said, from its earlier volume, by 
some obstruction in the bore. The waters are not strongly 
tinctured — a consequence, perhaps, of their great abundance ; 
but we may see every pebble and stock in their course envel- 
oped by a ferruginous coagulum, resembling burnt sienna, 
that has probably been disengaged from the dark red sand- 
stone below, which is known to owe its color to the oxide of 
iron. A Greek poet would probably have described the inci- 
dent as the birth of the Naiad ; in the north, however, which, 
in an earlier age, had also its Naiads, though, like the fish of 
the Old Red Sandstone, they have long since become extinct 
the recollection of it is merely preserved by tradition, as a cu 
rious, though by no means poetical fact, and by the name of 
