the people, such as pilgrimages to wells, and building chapels to fountains. At the present time, in some parts of England, remains of well-worship are preserved in the custom of performing annual processions to themr decorating them with wreaths and chaplets of flowers, singing hymns, and reading a portion of the Gospel as part of the ceremonies," These same customs gave rise to the numerous holy wells which formerly abounded throughout the old world, and the memory of many of which is still preserved in names of towns. In the church of Nanterre, near Paris, the birth-place of St. Genevieve, is a well, by the water of which this patroness of the Parisians miraculously restored her blind mother, and many others to sight ! St. Winifred's Well, in Flintshire, England, from its, 1 2 PRELIMINARY ESSAY. sacred character, gave name to the town of Holywell. Mr. Pennant says, the custom of visiting this well in pilgrimage, and offering up devotions there, was not in his time entirely lai'd aside ; " in the summer, a few are to be seen in deep devotion, up to their chins for hours, sending up their prayers, or performing a number of evolutions round the polygonal well." In all ages and countries, from the most remote periods, a supply of the indispen- sable 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 is justly remarked by the Abbe Pleury, in his ' Manners of the 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. The readers of the Bible will not need to be told of the well at which Hagar rested, when she fled from the ill treatment of Sarah, nor of the meeting of Rebecca, at the well of Nahor, with Abraham's servant, whom he had sent to procure a wife for his son Isaac, nor of Jacob's well, at which our Saviour met the woman of Samaria. Numerous wells of great antiquity are still to be seen in Egypt, and among the ruins of Ninevah, a city of which the foundation was laid by Ashur, the son of an antediluvian, is a remarkable well which supplies the peasants with water, to which they ascribe many virtues.! It was a common practice in those Eastern countries, to, erect stations and place guards for the protection of wells against robbers, who, knowing that travellers would of * Ewbank, p. 25. t Capt. Rich's narrative of a residence at Koordistan, and on the site of ancient Nineveh. PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 3 necessity resort there, made them objects of attack ; it is from this circumstance the old traveller, Sandys, speaks of them as " wells of fear." The ancient Egyptians, resident beyond the reach of the inundations of the Nile, irrigated their land from wells, as do the Chinese to this day. It was in digging a well in 1711, that the long buried ruins of Herculaneum were discovered, by the accidental striking upon some pieces of marble and statues, which subsequently proved to be part of a temple, situated in the midst of Herculaneum, buried by an eruption of Vesuvius, 1630 years before ; and it is a fact interesting in itself and not foreign to our subject, to add, that among the remarkable discoveries of this long buried city, was a well in a high state of preservation, which, having been protected by a covering and surmounted with a curb, had been kept free from the lava and ashes. It still con- tains