. [1 May, 1898. QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 413 
Artesian Wells. 
In every arid country there is naturally a strong inducement to resort to 
various means for supplying the deficiency in water. The most natural way, 
and the easiest for man in such a primitive stage as to be lacking higher forms 
of implements than a shovel and pick, was to dig a hole in the ground and 
‘lead the rain waters into it. But when better tools were invented then rocky 
ground presented no obstacle to the digger. Ile sank wells to a great depth 
in the solid rock. ‘Those amongst us who have been to Cairo will remember 
Joseph’s Well. This excavation is 165 feet deep in solid rock, and is 24 feet 
long by 18 feet wide. At the bottom it is excavated into a large chamber, 
and a second well or “ winze,” as miners to-day would call it, is sunk 130 feet 
deeper, where it reaches the water. The wonderful tanks at Aden begun by 
the Moors are a remarkable example of the determination of dwellers in dry 
countries to produce a water supply. The Chinese and Hindoos for hundreds 
of years have used a kind of rock-boring chisel attached to the end of a rope 
to bore through rock, and they still continue to adopt the same means for well- 
sinking. It was the French who in 1818, by the exertions of their Society for 
the Encouragement of Agriculture, first introduced the “ Artesian” bore, so 
named from the system having been begun in the province of Artois in France. 
One of their bores at Passy is 273% inches in diameter, 1,918 feet deep, and 
Bi cercna en uninterrupted supply of 3,795,000 gallons per day (W. Gibbons 
Ox, U.S.) 
No more unlikely spot on earth could have been hit upon for agricultural 
purposes than the Sahara Desert in Africa, where thousands of men and camels 
have perished from thirst and sand storms. Yet in Algeria the French 
Government has put down over 13,000 artesian bores, with the result that 
immense vineyards, olive and date groves, and thousands of acres of wheat, 
maize, barley, &c., are successfully cultivated on what was once a barren, 
scorching sea of sand. Twelve million acres of Algeria owe their fertility to 
the artesian wells. Pye 
In Germany are found the deepest bores in the world; one in Upper 
Silesia was sunk to the enormous depth of 6,565 feet (or 14 miles), and was 
only abandoned owing to the loss of tke chisel. 
But at present we are only concerned with artesian bores in Queensland. 
Tt is a most extraordinary circumstance that, whilst Huropean and Asiatic ~ 
nations were fertilising their barren lands in this manner, in Queensland no 
other means were thought of for watering stock in the dry country than 
scooping out dams and sinking wells by hand. No bore, we believe, was put 
down in Victoria until 1880, when the first was tried at Sale, in Gippsland. 
Certainly it was only 284 feet deep, but the water rose, Mr. Cox tells us, 
16 feet above the surface, and yielded a supply of 36,000 gallons per day. In 
New South Wales the first trial was made by the Government in 1884. 
Queensland was last in the field. The first artesian bore was put down at 
Blackall by the Government in 1886, although attempts had been made as far 
back as 1882, near Cunnamulla, and at Back Creek, near Barcaldine, where 
the water only rose 3 or 4 feet above the surface, but yielded 175,000 gallons 
per day at a depth of 691 feet. The Blackall bore was once abandoned as 
waterless when 1,000 feet had been reached; but after the Barcaldine experi- 
ment, work was begun again on it, and at 1,667 feet a splendid flow of 300,000 
gallons per diem was obtained. . 
