A USEFUL CONTRIVANCE. 23 



accounts of instances in which sailors have been 

 reduced to the most terrible extremities for want 

 of fresh water ; and many a time, since navigation 

 began, have men been brought to feel the dread 

 reality of that condition which is so forcibly ex- 

 pressed in the poem of the " Ancient Mariner :" 



"Water, water everywhere, 

 And not a drop to drink." 



Science, however, at length enabled us to over- 

 come this disadvantage of saltness. By the process 

 of distillation, men soon managed to procure enough 

 water at least to save their lives. One captain of 

 a ship, by accident, lost all his fresh water; and, 

 before he could put into port to replenish, a gale 

 of wind, which lasted three weeks, drove him far 

 out to sea. He had no distilling apparatus on 

 board, and it seemed as if all hope of the crew 

 escaping the most horrible of deaths were utterly 

 taken away. In this extremity the captain's in- 

 ventive genius came to his aid. He happened to 

 have on board an old iron pitch-pot, with a wooden 

 cover. Using this as a boiler, a pipe made of a 

 pewter plate, and a wooden cask as a receiver, he 

 set to work, filled the pot with sea water, put an 

 ounce of soap therein to assist in purifying it, and 

 placed it on the fire. When the pot began to boil, 

 the steam passed through the pipe into the cask, 

 where it was condensed into water, minus the 

 saline particles, which, not being evaporable, were 

 left behind in the pitch-pot. In less than an hour 



