NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BERMUDAS. 383 



many of the poorer inhabitants were reduced to the neces- 

 sity of using well-water only, which had a most injurious 

 effect on the health of those persons, and was rapidly 

 causing the spread of diarrhoea and fever, when a fall of 

 rain happily replenished the many exhausted tanks, and 

 rapidly restored the sufferers to their usual state of health. 



In 1851, Mr. Somers Tucker, the Government Beef Con- 

 tractor, who had upwards of a hundred bullocks in his 

 stalls, and had been out of tank-water for some weeks, told 

 me that he was compelled to make use of the water from 

 the Corporation Well (a well sunk on the margin of 

 White's Marsh, nearly level with the sea), that he drained 

 the well every day and gave the cattle as much as they 

 pleased to drink, but found the water scoured the cattle to 

 an injurious degree, which he endeavoured to counteract 

 by lessening their allowance of Indian meal and increas- 

 ing that of upland hay. 



It is useless to multiply examples like the foregoing. I 

 have stated sufficient to prove that there are no "springs 

 of water " in the Bermudas, and that the vaunted purity of 

 the well-water is somewhat hypothetical. 



The highest land in the Bermudas is Gibbs' Hill, which 

 is about two hundred or two hundred and fifty feet in eleva- 

 tion ; undulations, of a lesser height, dotted with dwellings 

 and groves of cedar, constitute the remainder of the land- 

 scape. All these hills owe their formation to the winds 

 and waves. They stand upon the southern margin of a 

 coral reef, and, when we consider that these hills are all 

 formed from sea-shells which have been pulverised by the 

 heavy breakers of the outer margin of the great reef, and 

 blown into position by the wind, we are led to the obvious 

 conclusion that it would be vain to seek for a supply of 

 fresh water in islands so constituted — that any attempt to 

 do so must end in failure. 



