24 



Two weeks from June 1 were spent in efforts nearly ineffectual to 

 force down the 3^ inch iron tubing. For this purpose, the spring (or 

 undercutting) drills were employed and the bore of the well enlarged 

 to 41- inches in diameter for seventy-eight feet below the bottom of 

 the tube. As I have before stated the friction on the sides of the 

 tube is so great that severe driving is necessary in order to move it, 

 and after driving down about twelve feet, three screw threads were 

 stripped off, and the lower portions of the tube below the fractures 

 so much crushed as to render impracticable any further efforts to 

 sink it. It cannot, of course, be withdrawn for the same reasons. 

 As the well was kept constantly filled up to very near the bottom of 

 the iron tubing, it was then necessary to insert again the copper tube 

 of smaller diameter. This has been done, and we are now engaged 

 in pumping out from the inside of the latter in order that it may sink 

 down as far as practicable. Independently of the danger and incon- 

 venience of working inside of a tube so small, I have little expecta- 

 tion that more than a temporary advantage will be gained by the 

 insertion of the copper tube. 



The strata continue to crumble and fall in below where it can pos- 

 sibly be driven. I am constrained to say after ten months of very 

 severe and unremitted labor that, I fear that, without greater facili- 

 ties and more extensive preparations than could have been secured 

 under the appropriation for this service, or could have been trans- 

 ported without enormous cost, it will be impracticable to overcome 

 the mechanical and physical difficulties of this work. 



I have the most experienced and capable superintendent of boring 

 to be found in the Avest and a full complement of mechanics and 

 borers, who have been for their whole lives employed in such busi- 

 ness, and who, under charge of the superintendent now with me, last 

 bored the deep and difficult well of Belcher & Co., in St. Louis. 



They are all eminently competent, but the difficulties of the work 

 here are foreign to the experience of any artesian well borer in the 

 United States. In my own opinion there are but two ways by which 

 to accomplish this work, and both involve expenditure beyond the 

 reach of this appropriation; tlie first by bringing out very heavy cast 

 iron tubes and the necessary driving apparatus, and the second by 

 bringing 'tubing of all sizes from three inches to twelve inches in 

 diameter. 



In either case the cost would be beyond the reach of any appro- 

 priation likely to be made. 



The certainty of getting Avater in this plain to overflow the surface, 

 is as well settled in my judgment as it ever was, but the mechanical 

 and physical difficulties of executing the work, arising from a most 

 peculiar, extensive, and uncommon succession of crumbling strata 

 Avhich at a depth of one thousand and forty-seven feet still remain 

 of unknown thickness, are beyond measure greater than could have 

 been anticipated. 



The point reached by the boring, and the debris pumped out, are 

 easily identified with the strata outcropping about forty feet above 

 the head spring of Delaware creek and in their immediate vicinity. 



