1830 .] 
of iv hoi esome Water in Calcutta. 
239 
and sand, which rose upon them. In six hours the water rose 189 feet and 
in a few days within 8 feet of the top of the well. It was found perfect- 
ly good anil wholesome, and thus was saved an annual expense of £2000 a 
year to the government, by this bold and judicious experiment; and what was of 
more consequence, an important defence was rendered available, which till then 
had been of nO use. The same officer succeeded in a similar undertaking at 
Harwich fort, where the surface springs were scanty in supply, and bad in quatitv. 
By cutting through a stratum of rock, he obtained a plentiful supply of excellent 
quality. In Alsace again, the want of springs was so remarkable, as to be a bar 
to the improvement of the country, till the French engineers thought of passing 
through abed of clay 80 feet thick, which they supposed kept them from rising” 
They were rewarded by complete success. At Amsterdam the wells furnished only 
brackish water, till the same experiment was tried of sinking them to a depth of 
232 feet, being far below the level of the Zuyder Zee, from which depth excellent 
water was procured. It appears from these particulars, that even in the most 
unpromising situations— even in the immediate vicinity of the sea, fresh and 
wholesome springs may be found ; and this, as far as the experiments yet made 
enable us to pronounce, within a depth of 400 feet. 
This conclusion, which l conceive is warranted by the preceding details, has a 
particular value for us of the city of palaces, where as none of your readers require 
to be told, we, i. e. the poorer part of us and the natives, labour much under the 
want of wholesome water. And even those of us who are able to make arrange- 
ments for ensuring a supply of rain water for the consumption of our table, would 
have no objection to a more plentiful supply obtainable without any trouble or 
arrangement whatsoever. The water of our wells is brackish to a very great 
degree, more particularly in the hot weather; and excepting a few tanks sparing- 
ly distributed through the town, there is no other supply of really wholesome 
water than what is obtainable from the heavens. Those who cannot afford the 
time, trouble, or expense of collecting the latter, are entirely dependent on the 
few tanks, which are said to furnish wholesome water ; and the nearest of these 
may lie, and often are, at such a distance, that the poorer classes are obliged to 
content themselves with the water of the first stagnant pool they meet with. These 
latter are mostly connected with the surface springs, and are consequently more 
or less brackish ; but independent of this objection, they form such collections of 
vegetable putrefaction in every stage, and indeed of every abomination, that any 
one who has ever seen them, must lament that any human being should’ be coni 
pelled to resort to such places for an element of, to these people, indispensible 
and hourly use. 1 
There is, probably, no other example in the whole world of a city of such im- 
portance and wealth as Calcutta being so ill supplied with this necessary of life 
Placed on the verge of the tropic, and with every facility for such conveniences’ 
we have neither fountains or baths. Even our puny effort to water about a mile 
of road, serves but to render us ridiculous for the waste of means in effectin'-- so 
trifling a good, while it makes the want of such a refreshment in the other parts 
of the town so much the more palpable. But whatever may be thought of these 
deficiencies in a city with such a climate as Calcutta, every stranger must be struck 
with the existence of so important a want as that of good wholesome water for 
domestic consumption. Even our best tanks — such, for instance, as the Lai Uioi 
cannot be said to furnish pure and wholesome water. It is better certainly 
than the brackish water of our wells, hut it is far from pure -—and every 
stranger who has occasion to use it, considers it, in fact, to he bad; as every 
one leaving Calcutta is sensible of the improvement of the water as he proceeds uo 
the river. 1 
Had we been a Roman colony, we should have had an aqueduct brin-rin^ an 
ample supply of good water from the nearest point where it is obtainable” It 
is the more discreditable to us that the resources of science rendering such an 
expense unnecessary, and placing within our reach a cheap and facile means 
ot obtaining good water in any quantity, we will not avail ourselves of* it. 
i he tacts connected with the question of deep-seated springs are, as already 
noticed, sufficently encouraging ; hut what is more to the purpose, the experiment 
has been Actually Tried, and the result found such as to leave no doubt as to 
the existence of springs of fresh water at a depth of something more than 128 feet 
Tiie late General Garstin many years ago paid particular attention to tills sub- 
ject; and though the method of obtaining overflowing springs was neither prac- 
tised or understood at that time, yet it was well known that deep-seated springs 
furnished generally a purer water than the surface- springs, and that the latter 
