employed to obtain an overflowing Well. 327 
it did not rise again by about a foot so high as it had risen 
before. At some days interval water was again drawn out, so 
as to lower the water as before ; which at each time of drawing 
rose less and less, until after some considerable time it would 
rise no more; and the water being then all drawn out, the sand 
remained perfectly dry and hard. I now began to think the 
water lost ; and, consequently, that all the labour and expence 
of sinking this well, which by this time were pretty consider- 
able, had been in vain. There remained no alternative but 
to endeavour to recover it by getting out the sand, or all that 
had been done would be useless ; and although it became a 
more difficult task than sinking a new well might have been, 
yet I determined to undertake it, because I knew another well 
might also be liable to be filled with sand in the same manner 
that this was. The operation of digging was again necessarily 
resorted to, and the sand was drawn up in buckets until about 
60 feet of it were drawn out, and, consequent^, there remained 
only 36 feet of sand in the well : that being too light to keep the 
water down, in an instant it forced again into the well with 
the same violence it had done before ; and the man who was 
at the bottom getting out the sand, was drawn up almost suffo- 
cated, having been covered all over by a mixture of sand and 
water. In a short time the water rose again within 17 feet of 
the surface, and then ceased to rise, as before. When the water 
had ceased rising, the sounding-line was again let down, and 
the well was found to contain full as much sand as it did the 
first time of the water’s coming into it. 
Any further attempt towards recovering the water appeared 
now in vain ; and most people would, I believe, have abandoned 
the undertaking. I again considered that the labour and the 
