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PACIFIC SCIENCE, Vol. XI, April, 1957 
on sand islands making what he called a "lake 
of fresh water held by the sand in the midst 
of the sea.” He shows that with a porosity of 
one-third, a 12-foot layer of sand is equivalent 
to a lake 4 feet deep, and that an acre would 
hold about one and a quarter million gallons. 
He seems not to have considered the relative 
densities of fresh and salt water or of pure 
water and water holding potassium salts in 
solution. 
In the next decade much progress was made 
in Europe. In 1888-89, W. Badon Ghyben, 
a Captain of Engineers in the Netherlands 
Army, as a result of studies near Amsterdam, 
found fresh water under the coastal dunes 
and resting on salt water, and observed that 
the depth to the salt water increased inland 
from the shore. He assumed that the specific 
gravity of North Sea water was 1.0238, from 
which he calculated that the depth below sea 
level to salt water was about 42 times the 
height of fresh water above sea level (1.000/ 
0.0238 = 42.01). 
A better exposition of the idea was pub- 
lished by Alexander Herzberg in 1901, based 
on studies on the island of Norderney. A hole 
was drilled near the middle of the island to 
learn about its geologic structure. Cox’s trans- 
lation reads, "It could not be doubted after 
these observations that the fresh water floated 
on the subterranean salt water.” In another 
place we read, "The deep position of the 
sea- water boundary is a function of the height 
of the ground water table in the dunes above 
mean tide level in the sea.” Herzberg used 
1.027 as the specific gravity of North Sea 
water and from it calculated that the sea water 
boundary was 37 times as far below sea level 
as the water table was above sea level. Al- 
though Herzberg did not publish until 1901, 
he seems clearly to have made use of the 
principle as early as 1889, or even 1886, in his 
work as a consulting hydrologic engineer. 
After Herzberg’s publication, there was 
much discussion of the details of the principle 
by Dutch, Belgian, French, and German 
workers. 
According to Watson (1956), the early Ha- 
waiians had gotten water from small, shallow 
wells dug near the shore. Between 1894 and 
1900 Maui plantations made thirteen large- 
scale basal water developments which were 
gigantic forms of the shallow wells of the 
early Hawaiians. These were large pits sunk 
from ground heights of 20 to 50 feet, and 
large volumes of water were pumped by great 
steam pumps. These installations had two bad 
features. For one thing the water was rather 
saline because the fresh water lens was thin 
in the absence of a cap rock. Secondly, a very 
long pipe line was needed to carry the water 
to the cane fields. 
In 1899, Henry Perrine Baldwin and his 
consulting engineer, Herman F. A. Schussler, 
believed that fresh water extended far inland 
under central Maui, as what we now call the 
"basal ground water body.” A shaft (H. C. 
& S. Co.’s "Kihei,” No. 3) was sunk about 
three miles from the shore from a height of 
303 feet. The shaft was 323 feet deep and the 
water table was 6 feet above sea level. Skim- 
ming tunnels were driven close to sea level 
and a large supply of irrigation water was 
obtained. This was the first "Maui-type basal 
water development,” and has been followed 
in Hawaii by more than 50 others of the same 
general type. 
Thus it is clear that in the Hawaiian sugar 
industry the existence of the great basal 
ground water body was known, even though 
it had not been satisfactorily explained. 
Waldemar Lindgren spent part of 1901 on 
Molokai, and wrote (1903): 
In the absence of any impermeable stratum 
or basins filled by clayey materials, such as, for 
instance, exist on Oahu, there is nothing to 
prevent the sea water from entering the rocks 
freely and assuming a level differing but little 
from sea level. Below a certain level there is no 
reason to expect anything but sea water. 
On the other hand, the rain water also sinks 
freely through the porous rocks until it meets 
the sea water. Here, at the permanent water 
level it is held by the counter pressure of the sea 
water, and in fact rests like a sheet upon the 
