PREPARATION OF SOIL BY DRAINAGE. 83 



children should be drowned in it. Now something had to 

 be done, and I called in the services of Mr. Caldwell, city 

 surveyor of Newburgh, and to his map I refer the reader for 

 a clearer understanding of my tasks. 



Between the upper and lower swales, the ridge on which 

 the house stands slopes to its greatest depression along its 

 western boundary, and I was shown that if I would cut deep 

 enough, the open drain in the lower swale could receive and 

 carry off the water from the upper basin. This appeared to 

 be the only resource, but with my limited means it was like 

 a ship-canal across the Isthmus of Panama. The old de- 

 vice of emptying my drains into a hole that practically had 

 no bottom, suggested itself to me. It would be so much 

 easier and cheaper that I resolved once more to try it, 

 though with hopes naturally dampened by my last moist 

 experience. I directed that the hole (marked B on the 

 map) should be oblong, and in the direct line of the ditch, 

 so that if it failed of its purpose it could become a part of 

 the drain. Down we went into as perfect sand and gravel 

 as I ever saw, and the deeper we dug the dryer it became. 

 This time, in wounding old "Mother Earth," we did not cut 

 a vein, and there seemed a fair prospect of our creating a 

 new one, for into this receptacle I decided to turn my lar- 

 gest drain and all the v/ater that the stubborn acre persisted 

 in keeping. 



I therefore had a *' box-drain" constructed along the west- 

 em boundary of the place (marked C) until it reached the 

 lowest spot in the upper swale. This drain was simply and 

 rapidly constructed, in the following manner : a ditch was 

 first dug sufficiently deep and wide, and with a fall that car- 

 ried off the water rapidly. In the bottom of this ditch the 

 men built two roughly faced walls, one foot high and eight 

 inches apart. Comparatively long, flat stones, that would 



