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A Memoir of the Construction, Cost, and Capacity of the Croton Aqueduct

King, Charles. A Memoir of the Construction, Cost, and Capacity of the Croton Aqueduct. New York: Charles King, 1843. 252 words

There was a well under the operation of boring, near Yorkville, on the day the Commissioners made their examination. The augur had penetrated 90 feet from the surface of the earth, and no water was produced, and it was intended to descend fifty feet in addition, if found necessary. Several of the wells on Harlem flats were found to average from sixteen to eighteen feet in depth, and to contain from two to three feet of water. At Manhattanville, one of the wells, on the slope of the public road, was forty-two feet in depth, and no water; another, three or four hundred feet below on the same road, was seventeen feet deep, and contained two feet of water. The Commissioners also examined several small

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springs issuing from the high hills near Manhattanville, and one near the Hudson river, and were informed there were several others that had disappeared, caused, as was supposed, by the filling up of a portion of the Harlem Canal. The Commissioners were also informed, that in excavating this canal, which sunk several feet below tide, the wells in the vicinity were deprived of water. The fact is, as the Commissioners think, that the same principle in respect to the obtaining of fresh water, operates in every part of our island, namely, that the earth becomes so saturated, at a depth on a level with the tide on the East and North rivers, that water will not descend lower and in the digging of ;