In all ages and countries, from the most remote periods, a supply of the indispensable article water has been an object of solicitude, and various were the means by which it was obtained and diffused. In Asia, the original home of the human race, where rain seldom falls, and rivers and running streams are rare, wells were early devised. The antiquity, indeed, of this mode of obtaining and collecting water, goes beyond the records of history, sacred and profane and hence we have no clue to the ;
circumstances which led man to penetrate the earth in search of this element.
From very ancient wells which still remain, it is certain that long time anterior to the commencement of history, the knowledge of procuring water by means of them was well understood. On this supposition only can we account for many of them being perforated through rocks, some of the oldest wells known, being dug entirely through that material and to a prodigious depth.* " The Jews," as by the Abbe Pleury, in his Manners of the justly remarked ' is " Ancient Israelites,' owing to their numerous herds of cattle, set a very high value upon their wells and cisterns, more especially as they occupied a country where there was no river but Jordan, and where rain seldom fell." It is to the East we are indebted for the
only known method of sinking wells of depth, through quicksands and loose soil, by first constructing a curb, which. settles as the excavation is deepened, and thereby resists the pressure of the surrounding soil.