Gradually the excitement occasioned by my well died out. By many it was looked upon as an accidental discovery and I was put in the list of cranks. I believe that it even caused my credit to suffer, for the banks of Albany, looking upon me as a crank, refused to lend money to a visionary. Nor has the Central of Georgia railroad, which more than any corporation was benefited by my success, ever acknowledged it in any way, or ever extended to me any special courtesy. The boring of my well, which cost eleven hundred dollars, was never a help to me financially. But it was a great satisfaction to me, to know that I was instrumental in procuring the blessing of good water for a great section of my native State, and to know this has been recognized and praised by many.
During the first ten years my little well was used by a large circle of the surrounding population who daily hauled barrels of water from the plantation. No charge for this water was ever made. It was free to all. It was a great satisfaction to me to see how the health on the plantation was improved. Malaria decreased, and hemorrhagic fever, the great curse of the country, almost disappeared. Pure water is a great preventive of sickness.
Times were hard, but I met all my pecuniary obligations, although sometimes paying as high as fourteen per cent. for money loaned on my real estate as security, taking it as valued at one dollar per acre.
I consider the year 1881 the brightest in my life, as it contained two momentous happenings; in August the boring of my artesian well, and in October my marriage to Miss Lulah Hay Ellis of Atlanta, which event was the most important in my life.
I brought my wife to Macon where we lived three years. I then gave up entirely my law practice, and left Macon. I took my family, my wife and two little daughters, to spend the winter months on Cooleewahee, one of my plantations near Albany. My wife became devoted to this plantation. We lived a healthful and happy life in the open. As game was plentiful, Lulah, with her fishing rod, and I, with my gun, supplied our table.
I now return to my work with the water of south Georgia.
During the boring of my artesian well we drilled through a limestone stratum, eighty feet from the surface to one hundred and ten. When this stratum was reached all the water which could be pumped down the pipe would disappear. I considered this a strange thing. I inquired of contractors in Albany and the neighborhood if they had met with similar strata. They informed me that they had. On receiving this information, I felt confident that water let down into this stratum from a pond would disappear. I became so interested in this proposition that I determined to make the experiment.
This section of Dougherty County is not over two hundred feet above the sea level and has on it a great many shallow ponds which have no natural drainage and which, because of the flatness of the land, cannot be drained by ditching. Near the artesian well on my Hickory Level plantation there was a pond of this character. It was not over twelve feet deep and covered several acres of ground. I thought that this stagnant water contributed to the sickness of the place, and to the high death rate from malaria. Later scientific research concerning the mosquito has proved the connection of stagnant ponds and malaria.
I determined to drain this pond into that subterranean limestone stratum eighty feet below the surface. I had a boat built and transported pine logs to the center of the pond, laid them in a square, building this up until it was above the surface. I then had a platform put upon this crib, connected a small derrick, made a large swinging maul, and drove a three-inch pipe down to the hard-rock stratum. I then attached a chisel to a two-inch pipe which was let down in the three-inch one and cut the rock by continually raising it up and down, thus cutting through the rock until we reached that honeycombed stratum which I was looking for. When the chisel struck this porous rock it fell about two feet. A large quantity of air rose to the surface, startling the two negroes who were working on the chisel. The top of my three-inch pipe was several short pieces screwed together. I now unscrewed and left open at the bottom of the pond the three-inch pipe. The roar of the water as it went into this subterranean cavity sounded like a small cascade. The water in the pond decreased gradually for about two weeks, when it disappeared. The drained bottom presented a remarkable sight—many fish, alligators, and trunks of ancient trees were exposed to the sun.