Book III. 



EMBANKING. 



713 



drying marl-pits, he, it may be used to advantage in excavating a sufficient passage for the water, without 

 opening a trench. In laying leaden pipes lor the conveyance of water, it is also useful in making a hole 



in which the pipe may be laid, without opening a cut on purpose. For tapping springs, or finding water at 

 the bottom of a hill, either for the supply of a house, or for draining the ground, it may likewise be used 

 with success ; as the water of the spring, when hit on, will flow more easily and in greater abundance 

 through a horizontal or level, than through a perpendicular outlet. 



4318. The manner of rtsing it is this : Suppose a lake or pond of water, surrounded with high banks, to 

 be emptied, if the ground declines lower on the opposite side, find the level of the bank where the per- 

 foration is to be made. There smooth the surface of the ground so as to place the frame nearly level with 

 the auger, pointing a little upwards. It requires two men to turn the handles at top (a), in order to work 

 it ; and when the auger or shell is full, the rods are drawn back by reversing the lower handle (Z). Other 

 rods are added at the joint when the distance requires them. In boring through a bank of the hardest clay, 

 two men will work through from thirty to forty feet in a day, provided there is no interruption from hard 

 stones, which will require the chisel to be fixed on in place of the shell, and longer time to work through. 

 If the length to be bored through is considerable, or longer than the whole length of the rods, a pit 

 must be sunk upon the line, down to the hole, for placing the frame when removed, and the operation 

 carried on as before. 



Chap. II. 



Embanking and otherwise protecting Lands from the Overfloivijig or Eiicroachvicnt of 



Rivers or the Sea. 



4319. Lands adjoining rivers or the sea are frequently liable to be overflowed or 

 washed away, or to be injured by the courses of rivers being changed during great floods. 

 These evils are guarded against by embankments and piers ; or by these constructions 

 joined to deepening or straightening the courses of rivers, and we shall therefore treat 

 in succession of embankments and of improving the courses of rivers. 



Sect. I. Embanking Lands from Rivers or the Sea. 



4320. The great value of alluvial soil to the agriculturist no doubt gave rise to the 

 invention of banks, or other barriers, to protect soils from the overflowing of their accom- 

 panying rivers. The civilised nations of the highest antiquity were chiefly inhabitants of 

 valleys and alluvial plains ; the soil, moisture, and warmth of which, by enlarging the com- 

 ponent parts and ameliorating the fruits of the vegetable kingdom, afforded to man better 

 nourishment at less labour than could be obtained in hilly districts. The country of Para- 

 dise and around Babylon was flat, and the soil saponaceous clay, occasionally overflowed 

 by the Euphrates. The inhabited part of Egypt was also entirely of this description. His- 

 torians inform us that embankments were first used by the Babylonians and Egyptians, 

 very little by the Greeks, and a good deal by the Romans, who embanked the Tiber near 

 Rome, and the Po for many stadia from its embouchure. The latter is perhaps one of 

 the most singular cases of embankment in the world. 



4321. The oldest embankment in England is that of Romney Marsh ; as to the origin of 

 which, Dugdale remarks, " there is no testimony left to us from any record or historian." 

 (History/ of Embanking and Draining.) It is conjectured to have been the work of the 

 Romans, as well as the banks on each side of the Thames, for several miles above 

 London, which protect from floods and spring tides several thousand acres of the richest 

 garden ground in the neighbourhood of the metropolis. The commencement of modern 

 embankments in England took place about the middle of the seventeenth century, under 

 Cromwell. In the space of a few years previous to 1651, 425,000 acres of fens, mo- 

 rasses, or overflowed muddy lands, were recovered in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire. 

 Hampshire, and Kent ; and let at from 2s. 6d. to 305. an acre. {Harte's Essays, p. 54^ 

 2d edit.) Vermuyden, a Fleming by birth, and a colonel of horse under Cromwell, 

 who had served in Germany during the thirty years' war, was the principal undertaker of 

 these works. Some farther details of the history of embanking will be found in tl-e 



