ARTESIAN WELLS IN THE DESERT. 
443 
I do not find such wells described by any trustworthy travel¬ 
ler, and the universal astonishment and incredulity with 
which the native tribes viewed the operations of the French 
engineers sent into the desert for that purpose, are a sufficient 
proot that this mode of reaching the subterranean waters was 
new to them. They were, however, aware of the existence of 
water below the sands, and were dexterous in digging wells— 
square shafts lined with a framework of palm-tree stems—to 
the level of the sheet. The wells so constructed, though not 
technically artesian wells, answer the same purpose; for the 
water rises to the surface and flows over it as from a spring.* 
* See a very interesting account of these wells, and of the workmen 
who clean them out when obstructed by sand brought up with the water, 
in Laurent’s memoir on the artesian wells recently bored by the French 
Government in the Algerian desert, Mtmoire sur le Sahara Oriental , etc., 
pp. 19, et seqq. Some of the men remained under water from two minutes 
to two minutes and forty seconds. Several officers are quoted as having 
observed immersions of three minutes’ duration, and M. Berbrugger alleges 
that he witnessed one of five minutes and fifty-five seconds. The shortest 
of these periods is longer than the best pearl diver can remain below the 
surface of salt water. The wells of the Sahara are from twenty to eighty 
metres deep. 
It has often been asserted that the ancient Egyptians were acquainted 
with the art of boring artesian wells. Parthey, describing the Little Oasis, 
mentions ruins of a Eoman aqueduct, and observes : “ It appears from the 
recent researches of Aim, a French engineer, that these aqueducts are con¬ 
nected with old artesian wells, the restoration of which would render it 
practicable to extend cultivation much beyond its present limits. This 
agrees with ancient testimony. It is asserted that the inhabitants of the 
oases sunk wells to the depth of 200, 300, and even 500 ells, from which 
affluent streams of water poured out. See Olympiodokus in Photii Bibl 
cod. 80, p. 61, 1. 17, ed. Bekk.”— Pakthey, Wanderungen, ii, p. 528. 
In a paper entitled, Note relative d Vexecution Pun Puits Artesien en 
Egypte sous la XVIII dynastie , presented to the Academic des Inscrip¬ 
tions et Belles Lettres, on the 12th of November, 1852, M. Lenormant en¬ 
deavors to show that a hieroglyphic inscription found at Oontrapscelcis 
proves the execution of a work of this sort in the Nubian desert, at the 
period indicated in the title to his paper. The interpretation of the in¬ 
scription is a question for Egyptologists ; but if wells were actually bored 
through the rock by the Egyptians after the Chinese or the European 
fashion, it is singular that among the numerous and minute represents- 
