DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4651#0046
36 JOURNAL OF A RESIDENCE
deemed amongst them a rarity, as they are seldom
obliged to proceed to such a depth. They were
piercing a new well when I was there ; had got
to the depth of eighty cubits, and expected oil at
ten or twenty cubits more.
The machinery used in drawing up the rubbish,
and afterwards the oil from the well, is an axle
crossing the centre of the well resting on two rude
forked staunchions, with a revolving barrel on its
centre, like the nave of a wheel, in which is a
score for receiving the draw-rope; the bucket is
of wicker work covered with dammer; and the la-
bour of the drawers, consisting in general of three
men, is facilitated by the descent of the inclined
plane, as water is drawn from deep wells in Hin-
dostan. To receive the oil, one man is stationed
at the brink of the well, who empties the bucket
into a channel made on the surface of the earth
leading to a sunken jar, from whence it is laded
into smaller ones, and immediately carried down
to the river, either by coolies or on hackeries*.
When a well grows dry, they deepen it. They
say, none are abandoned for barrenness. Even
the death of a miner from mephitic air does not
deter others from persisting in deepening them
when dry. Two days before my arrival, a man was
suffocated in one of the wells ; yet they afterwards
* Hackeries, the term for the common carts in India.
deemed amongst them a rarity, as they are seldom
obliged to proceed to such a depth. They were
piercing a new well when I was there ; had got
to the depth of eighty cubits, and expected oil at
ten or twenty cubits more.
The machinery used in drawing up the rubbish,
and afterwards the oil from the well, is an axle
crossing the centre of the well resting on two rude
forked staunchions, with a revolving barrel on its
centre, like the nave of a wheel, in which is a
score for receiving the draw-rope; the bucket is
of wicker work covered with dammer; and the la-
bour of the drawers, consisting in general of three
men, is facilitated by the descent of the inclined
plane, as water is drawn from deep wells in Hin-
dostan. To receive the oil, one man is stationed
at the brink of the well, who empties the bucket
into a channel made on the surface of the earth
leading to a sunken jar, from whence it is laded
into smaller ones, and immediately carried down
to the river, either by coolies or on hackeries*.
When a well grows dry, they deepen it. They
say, none are abandoned for barrenness. Even
the death of a miner from mephitic air does not
deter others from persisting in deepening them
when dry. Two days before my arrival, a man was
suffocated in one of the wells ; yet they afterwards
* Hackeries, the term for the common carts in India.