93 
not deprive the keepers from receiving the gratifica- 
tions attached to their office. Three bronze pullies, 
with hempen cords, and a leather bucket to each end 
of the cords, serve to draw up the water, which is 
rather brackish and heavy, but very limpid. Notwith- 
standing the depth of the well, and the heat of the 
climate, it is hotter when first drawn up than the air. 
It resembles warm water, which proves that there is at 
the bottom a particular cause of vehement heat. It is 
wholesome, nevertheless, and so abundant, that at the 
period of the pilgrimage, though there were thousands 
of pitchers full drawn, its level was not sensibly dimi- 
nished. 
I have four bottles of this water, which I drew my- 
self from the well, and closed up immediately, with all 
the precautions that chemistry requires, to be able one 
day or other to analyse it. In an hour after I had put 
them into some emery, the mouths being previously 
perfectly stopped with some crystal stoppers and seal- 
ed, the interior surface was completely covered with 
small bubbles of extremely subtile air, resembling the 
points of needles. When I shook the bottle, they 
mounted to the superior surface, or united themselves 
into one bubble of the size of a gray pea. It was no 
doubt a gas, which the difference alone of the tern- 
perature sufficed to disengage. 
It is known that this well was miraculously opened 
by the angel of the Lord for Agar, when she was 
nearly perishing from thirst in the desert with her 
son Ismael, after having been sent from Abraham's 
house. 
There is a small house constructed round the well, 
consisting of the room in which is the well; another 
smaller, that serves as a storehouse for the pitchers; 
