Cape Breton's Magazine

and they were getting salty water to wash the cars. You could see a grey rim around the fenders of the cars, you know. So the head man from Shell came from Montreal, and he called me up and he says, "You're an expert on water. Do we have to drill a- gain?" I said, "No. Pull your section back 40 feet and see what happens, and if that doesn't work, pull her back another 20 feet." So they did that and my God, the well is all right. They haven't got as much of it, but it's all right. Yes, fresh water rides on top of sea water every time! A lot of things like that, we don't know. You don't get this in school, you've got to go out and learn it the hard way. When you learn it the hard way, you won't for? get it! I was up to New York and I was out in Sac? ramento. I tried 3 or 4 of them out there. I was very lucky at it. I was very lucky. Once I was up in Indian Lake, New York, and there I spotted a well for 250 homes. That's right. There was an old settlement there. I followed the vein for 4800 feet. There was nothing there but a stale lake down below. They had speedboats on the lake, and they couldn't drink the water. Old friends of my wife Kitty Margaret called me up. They used to come down here on vacation, and they remembered I was a well driller and used divining rods. So they met me in Montreal, and I went with them 180 miles from Montreal to Indian Lake. By God, when we got there I followed the vein--I got this little vein about a foot wide--and I followed it for 4800 feet! I used three spools of pink tape on the bushes--you couldn't cut the trees--and I followed it going south. I got into a bunch of spruce--big enough for pulpwood, you know. What was this but that the land was cultivated about 70 years ago. When they checked on the report in the records, Angus with friends in New York City PHARMACIE ACADENNE t?o' PHARMACY 7 ARICHAT 226-2214 'A P.O. Box 1644 Sydport Industrial Park Sydney, Nova Scotia Canada BIP 6T7 Phone: (902) 564-5461 Telex: 019-35296 Contact: JOHN J. CAMPBELL Cape Breton Offshore Fabricators Limited Steel fabricating plant. - Automatic "MIG" welding machines - Photo-cell profile burner - Overhead cranes - A large variety of machine shop equipment We do all types of light and heavy duty fabrication. Looking forward to doing work for offshore related industries. (58) it was owned by some Kennedy, and he was 12 feet away from the right spot with his well. I found the old dug-out. There was an old part of a well house--log cabin-- after caving in and falling down. He was 12 feet away from the right spot. If he had been over 12 feet, he would've had a gusher there! It was interesting. I didn't know anything about this--about the well house being there--till I came right a- cross it. I saw this pile of junk; it looked like an Indian wigwam that rotted away, you know. (Do divining wires ever fail?) Well, once, they did. It was for a friend of mine. He had a big rotary drill out at Hammonds Plains. He got a 3-foot cave in the rock in place of water! The stinky air was cased in there since the world was made, I guess! You could smell it about a half a mile down the road. It was like rotten eggs and sulphur, you know. But no water. They couldn't drill because the bit wanted to go slantways. The angle of the rock must have been coming in about 75 degrees, and he was going 90 degrees, and she went and sheared and twisted his bit off. So, he pulled over and drilled another one 30 feet away. He went 400 feet before he got water. CONTINUED r • ' Winner of the Canadian Historical Association Regional History Award for Meritorious Publications and Exceptional Contributions to Regional History 'Mining Photographs and Other Pictures' 1948-1968 A selection from the negative archives of Shedden Studios, Glace Bay. Available from: University College of Cape Breton Press, P. 0. Box 5300, Sydney, N. S. BIP 6L2 Also available in local retail outlets A co-publication of NSCAD and UCCB