stance to the rock is reached by driving strong
cast-iron pipe by means of a battering ram. This pipe has a caliber of
about five inches, with walls of one inch in thickness. It is prepared
in joints of about eight feet in length, which are connected together at
the point of contact by wrought-iron bands. When the pipe reaches the
rock, the earth is removed from its cavity, and the operation of boring
is ready to be commenced. Occasionally, however, this driving operation
is interrupted by coming upon a huge bowlder. When this is the case, the
boring operation is commenced, and a hole made through the bowlder
nearly equal in size to the cavity of the pipe, when the driving is
resumed, and the pipe made to ream its way through the stone. Sometimes
in these operations the pipe is fractured, or turned aside from a
perpendicular direction, when the place is abandoned and a new location
sought for.

The boring implements do not differ materially from those used in
sinking artesian wells. As a general thing, bits of two or three sizes
are used, the first and smallest of which only has a cutting edge. If
the hole to be sunk through the rock is to be four inches in diameter,
the bits would be, first, one with a cutting edge two inches in width;
secondly, a blunt bit, three inches wide by one inch in thickness; and
lastly, by a similar bit four inches wide. These bits have a shank about
two feet in length, that is screwed into an auger stem ten or twelve
feet in length and about one inch and a half in diameter. Connected with
this auger stem is an arrangement called, technically, 'jars'--two
elongated loops of iron, working in each other like links in a chain,
that serve to jar the bit loose when it sticks fast in the process of
boring.

Sometimes this auger stem is connected with wooden rods, joined together
with screws and sockets, new joints being added as the work proceeds;
but more generally the connection is with a rope or cable of about one
and a half inches in diameter. To this rope the auger stem is attached
by a clamp and screw, that can be readily shifted as the progress of the
work renders it necessary. The entire weight of these implements is from
four to six hundred pounds. The power applied is sometimes that of two
or three men working by means of a spring pole; but oftener a steam
engine of from four to eight horse power. Midway between the well and
the engine a post is planted, on which is balanced a working be