Block-Sinking; Or Brick And Mortar Reminiscences In The East.

personage in cases of accident—in fact , he seems to have been wisely and specially created to ge t well-sinkers out of their scrapes , and that , too , without the aid of Siebe ' s or any other wonderful patent diving apparatus . It struck an outsider like myself very forcibly

that no self-denying , cylindrical-tiled , swallowtailed Feringhee would wish to change places with this " man and a brother , " on a cold windy morning , as he stands on the edge of the well preparing to slip down the rope on his watery errand ; or again , when reappearing from the deep , after a

wonderfully long time it appears , dripping , shivering , and the very picture of misery , to warm himself by the few embers always kept at hand for these resuscitating purposes . The blocks above described take from twelve to sixteen days sinking the first 12 ft ., after which , the

remaining 8 ft ., are built up , and the undersinking recommenced as before . This last is a much more tedious operation than the first , for several reasons , and occupies from twenty to thirty days . Blocks are always found difficult to start again after a long rest , from being so tenaciously gripped by the sand which , has settled about them

in the interim ; herein , though , consists the secret of their future immovability and perfection as a means of support for any weight that may be put upon them . The jham poles , moreover , become of unwieldy length ; much of the sand , too , gets washed off- —and has to be hauled up again , of

course—in its ascent through the ever increasingdepth of water ; add to this the friction against the sides of the monster when deeply submerged . Blocks are often capricious in their movements , and , from some unexjolained cause or other best known to themselves , will stick hopelessly , even

unto being abandoned sometimes after months of patient and unremunerative toil , as may be gleaned from the ancient chronicles of block-sinkers . Various outrigging expedients are resorted to for loading blocks , as weight is an . element of the first importance in helping them down to their

subterraquean destination ; in fact , but for the inconvenience in various ways of sinking blocks 20 ft . high , and their provoking tendency in so doing to get out of the perpendicular—especially in _ their first or tottering stage—they should on this account be built up first of all to their full height , and thus derive the benefit of their whole weight .

The foregoing remarks have been confined to blocks with four wells in them , and which are comparatively easy to sink , as by an intelligent use of the windlasses they can be kept straight ; but there were a number of disorderly , narrow two-well blocks which seemed to resist in a most

pertinacious and obstreperous manner all attempts to get them down ; some of these gentry were as much as 4 ft ., and even 5 ft . out of the perpendicular , as ascertained from actual measurement —• the fellows manning- the crazy-looking craft were

obliged to hold on by the main brace . Most of these blocks were fitted up with the outrigging apparatus above mentioned , and heavily loaded with sand , one side or the other , in the vain hope , alas ! of restoring them , to their lost equilibrium , the sand only holding them up . To follow up the

metaphor with a simile , the grotesque appearance , from a distance , of these leaning towers , with , their strange-looking appendages , reminded one of ships with studding-sails set rolling about in . a . heavy sea . I prefer this , at least , to the " drunken man" simile which , was current at the epoch .

Another essential element of success in blocksiuking , I found to be the prevailing idea , is uninterrupted progress day and night . Some of . the . ill effects caused by stopping work to 'build up the last 8 ft . have already been noticed , and they must be proportionably less , no doubt , when sinking

operations are suspended at the end of the day , and not resumed until the following morning , especially when a Sunday intervenes . Any cessation of work then must cause a loss of time in restarting the block , which , when once on the move , should , as far as its own interests are concerned ,

have no repose , nocturnal or Sabbatical , until finally disposed of . Night sinking is dearei-, of course , than day sinking , for the simple and universally believed reason , that blackey never works properly unless he is properly looked after ; and a dark nihtwith the darkness rendered more

g , visible by torchlight , is not very favourable , it must be admitted , for exercising the vigilance of the watchful eye . If night sinking economise time , to what extent , if any , it is pecuniarily profitable deponent sayeth not , because no one could enlighten him .

It has been observed that these undersinking operations are necessarily restricted to the dry season of the year , and , as enterprising people are generally ambitious of doing more than they can well get through within a given time , the latter , commodity is therefore very precious with our

block-sinkers , and their brick-and-mortar pets are always on the move long before they are sufficiently hardened for the trials in store for them ; the consequence is that , as the four walls cannot all be operated upon exactly alike , an unequal strain is thus brought to bear upon the timbers underneath

, and the walls are given to splitting in divers directions . On looking aghast at these cracks of ominous import , I was assured , with unsurpassed equanimity , that they would all close up again as the blocks went down , and that the cracks were really only formidable in a superterrestrial point

of view . It need only be said , then , that the results fully justified this disregard of any such trifles as would drive a house-builder to commit suicide on the spot . If a block did come to grief , however , when far clown , its disjecta membra , I opined , would be an insuperable obstacle to sinking a new one in its place . To the practical mind , "hoop-iron" bond had