feet
thick, and with a stone revetment nineteen and a half feet thick; we
therefore want a well 60 feet wide and 900 feet deep. This large work
must be terminated in nine months. You have, therefore, 2,543,400 cubic
feet of soil to dig out in 255 days--that is to say, 10,000 cubic feet a
day. That would offer no difficulty if you had plenty of elbow-room, but
as you will only have a limited space it will be more trouble.
Nevertheless as the work must be done it will be done, and I depend upon
your courage as much as upon your skill."

At 8 a.m. the first spadeful was dug out of the Floridian soil, and from
that moment this useful tool did not stop idle a moment in the hands of
the miner. The gangs relieved each other every three hours.

Besides, although the work was colossal it did not exceed the limit of
human capability. Far from that. How many works of much greater
difficulty, and in which the elements had to be more directly contended
against, had been brought to a successful termination! Suffice it to
mention the well of Father Joseph, made near Cairo by the Sultan Saladin
at an epoch when machines had not yet appeared to increase the strength
of man a hundredfold, and which goes down to the level of the Nile
itself at a depth of 300 feet! And that other well dug at Coblentz by
the Margrave Jean of Baden, 600 feet deep! All that was needed was a
triple depth and a double width, which made the boring easier. There was
not one foreman or workman who doubted about the success of the
operation.

An important decision taken by Murchison and approved of by Barbicane
accelerated the work. An article in the contract decided that the
Columbiad should be hooped with wrought-iron--a useless precaution, for
the cannon could evidently do without hoops. This clause was therefore
given up. Hence a great economy of time, for they could then employ the
new system of boring now used for digging wells, by which the masonry is
done at the same time as the boring. Thanks to this very simple
operation they were not obliged to prop up the ground; the wall kept it
up and went down by its own weight.

This manoeuvre was only to begin when the spade should have reached the
solid part of the ground.

On the 4th of November fifty workmen began to dig in the very centre of
the inclosure surrounded by palisades--that is to say, the top of Stony
Hill--a circular hole sixty feet wide.

The spade first turned up a sort of black soil six in