This stupendous well is an oblong square, twenty four feet by eighteen, being sufficiently capacious to admit within its mouth a moderate sized house. It is excavated (of these dimensions) through solid rock to the depth of one hundred and sixty-five feet, where it is enlarged into a capacious chamber, in the bottom of which is formed a basin or reservoir, to receive the water raised from below (for this chamber is not the bottom of the well). On one side of the reservoir another shaft is continued, one hundred and thirty feet lower, where it emerges through the rock into a bed of gravel, in which the water is found, the whole depth being two hundred and ninety-seven feet; the lower shaft is not in the same vertical line with the upper one, nor is it so large, being fifteen feet by nine. [Illustration: TWELFTH CENTURY.] [Illustration: ASIATIC PULLEY AND BUCKET.] As the water is first raised into the basin, by means of machinery propelled by horses or oxen within the chamber, it may be asked, how are these animals conveyed to that depth in this tremendous pit, and by what means do they ascend? A spiral passage-way is cut through the rock, from the surface of the ground to the chamber, independent of the well, round which it winds with so gentle a descent, that persons sometimes ride up or down upon asses or mules. It is six feet four inches wide, and seven feet two inches high. Between it and the interior of the well, a wall of rock is left, to prevent persons falling into, or even looking down it (which in some cases would be equally fatal), except through certain openings or windows, by means of which it is faintly lighted from the interior of the well. The animals descend by this passage to drive the machinery that raises the water from the lower shaft into the reservoir or basin, from which it is again elevated by similar machinery and other oxen on the surface of the ground. In the lower shaft a path is also cut down to the water, but as no partition is left between it and the well, it is extremely perilous for strangers to descend. NOTE.—However old and numerous wells with stairs in them may be, most of the ancient ones were constructed without them; hence the necessity of some mode of raising the water. From the earliest ages, a _vessel suspended by a cord_, has been used by all nations—a device more simple and more extensively employed than any other, and one which was undoubtedly the germ of the most useful hydraulic machine of the ancients. The figures shown on this and a few succeeding pages are from the collection made by Ewbank—to whom reference has been made in another portion of this work. [Illustration: PULLEY AND TWO BUCKETS. (ANCIENT.)]