We extemporised a camp filter in the Crimea by knocking out the bottom of a common claret bottle, turning it large end upwards, fastening a piece of doubled rag over the orifice intended for the cork, stuffing the neck tightly with sponge and sand in alternate layers, hanging it up with twine over another bottle, and then filling it with the by-no-means clear fluid brought to the tents by the water carriers.
Ice, even when taken from a very dirty puddle, is comparatively pure, as in freezing most of the impurities are set free.
Very impure water from stagnant pools should, before use, be boiled in the camp-kettle with a good netful of charcoal. This process not only tends much to purify it, but kills all water insects, their ova, and the legions of animalculæ which inhabit the pools of the tropics.
In some parts of the world, Central India for example, the waters in certain wells, although perfectly bright and clear, is so highly charged with saline matter as to be perfectly undrinkable.
INDIAN WELL.
Water raising.
The accompanying full-page illustration represents one of the modes by which ox-power is, in the East, brought to bear on water raising. The greater number of the extensive tracks of irrigated land devoted to the growth of the opium poppy, the cotton plant, and the various native grains are watered by its aid. The form of the water-bag, or bucket, differs somewhat in particular localities. By some makers it is formed from tanned hides fastened to an iron frame; by others, the hides are merely tanned (according to directions given further on), spread open at the top, and tapered off to a long narrow open bag at the end. To explain the use of this contrivance, we will suppose that the bag is at the bottom of the well, at the end of the well rope and point guide, which latter cord is fastened to the taper end or delivery mouth of the bag. Now this guide being shorter than the main well rope, on which all the strain falls, draws up the tapered point like a doubled coat-sleeve above the level of the bag’s mouth. At a signal (usually a shrill yell) from the well boy, the well-trained ox walks away down an inclined plane, hauling on the main well rope, which works over a smooth round stick fitted above the well, whilst the point guide rope works over another fitted at the side. Now it will be seen that as the great leather sack, with its doubled-up sleeve bottom, reaches the mouth of the well, the point guide will draw the cuff of the sleeve out over the round stick, which will then be considerably lower than the mouth of the bag, or bucket; all the water will then gush out through the sleeve, which will be as the small end of an enormous funnel. The water thus poured out is usually received in a sort of pond made from pieces of matting filled with earth. A large hollow tree trunk is then fitted to one side, or the end, for the water to flow through into the main canal of the system of irrigation.
In Tartary, water is raised in much the same manner; but a man on horseback makes the line fast to his girth or saddle, and gallops from the well up to a mark previously made at a proper distance from the well, and which should be a trifle more than the actual depth from which the water is to be raised.