WHY THEY DIDN’T STRIKE WATER.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2413, 30 January 1909, Page 12 (Supplement)

WHY THEY DIDN’T STRIKE WATER.

(By MAX ADELEIt.)

They , have ht'c-n Ijoriifguiu artesian well out at the - iron foundry, and for some time the work seemed to go along very nicely. Tlio boring was done witli a two inch auger fixed in the end of an iron rod, which was twisted round by u wheel worked by two inert. One day, after :.tliffy had gone down a good many f.cs't, they tried to pull the rod out,,'.hut'it would not come. They were ,afi;aid ; to use much force lest the aiigef-pjhquld come off and : lay in the holy; -/and so, as the boring went along well?'enough they concluded to keep on turning, and to trust to the force of the water, when they struck it, to drive the loose earth up from the bole.

When they had gone down about three hundred and fifty feet, they began to think it queer that there were no signs of water: and one day, just ns they were beginning on another hundred, there was an excitement at Murphy’s. Alurphy lives next door to the foundry, and'on the day in question his boy came running into the house, and lo’xl him to come into the garden, quick, for there -was some kind of an extraordinary animal with- a sharp nose burrowing up out of the ground. Murphy concluded that it must be either a potato-bug or a grasshopper that had been hatched in the spring, and he took out a bottle of bug-poison to drop on it- when it came up. AVhen Alurphy -reached the spot there certainly was some kind of a c-reaturo slowly pushing its way up through the sod. Its nose seemed to resemble a sharp point, like steel Murphy dropped some poison on if, but it didn’t appear to mind the stuff, but kept slowly creeping up from the ground. Then Alurphy felt it. and was astonished to find that it felt exactly like the end of a fork prong. He sent the hoy in to cal Pork ins and the rest of the neighbors, Pretty soon a large crowd collected, and by tliis time the animal had emerged to the extent of a couple of inches. Everybody was a mazed to see that it looked exactly like the end of large auger, and two or three timid men were so scared at the idea of such a thing actually growing out of the earth that they suddenly got over the fence ami left. Perkins could > t account for it. but be suggested that maybe somebody might- have panted a gimlet there, and it had taken root and. blossomed out into an auger; but he admitted that lie never heard of such a ihing before.

Alurphy said that if that kind, of thi-ng would work he probably might go into the business regularly, and raise axes by planting hatchets, and guns by sowing pistols. The excitement increased, so tlnu tin- men who were boring the artesian well knocked off and came over to see the phenomenon. It- was noticed that as soon ns they stopped work the anger ceased to grow, and when they arrived they looked at it for a minute, and one of them said :

“Bill. do you recognise that auger?” “I think I do." said Bill. “AVcll. Bill, you go and unhitch that wheel from the other end of the rod. ’ ’

Bill did so: and then the other man asked tho crowd to take hold of the auger and pull. 'J hey did, and out came four hundred and fifty feet of iron rod. That auger had slid off to the side, turned upward, and come to the surface in Murphy’s garden. Then the artesian well was abandoned, and Brown, the foundry manbought a-steam pump and began to get water from the river.