Page 54 - Water Divining: Angus J. Gillis, Mabou Hbr.

ISSUE : Issue 37

Published by Ronald Caplan on 1984/8/1

Water Divining: Angus J. Gillis, Mabou Hbr Interviewed by Sheila L. MacDonald Angus Gillis: Water runs in cavities in the bowels of the earth. The water divin? ing rod shows you where the crevices and cavities are. You just walk quite a little way and they open out. Mostly the main strata I run is from north to south and it's just like the ribs of a boat. The wa? ter travels at 34 miles in 7 days and 7 nights in those cavities underneath the soil, underneath the ground. Goss was one of the best diviners. In 1852 three British geologists were in Bermuda. They dug holes there for awhile in the sand, with natives doing the work. What did they get but sea water coming in the bottom of the hole. Say that the hole was 20 feet deep--there'd be 5 feet of sea wa? ter in the bottom and maybe a couple of feet of fresh water on the top. So they said it can't be done. So this Goss fellow, he was very good at finding water. He was from Vermont, and he dreamt one night that he could find water out there with divin? ing rods. He used the wooden ones which are slow in reacting; they're not like the steel and the bronze. He dreamt of this. He got a freighter, and three months later he was out in Bermuda. He surveyed around and he got two places where they could get water. And today that's where they're get? ting water through artesian wells. They went through the riverbed and through the sand. There was- about 60 feet of quicksand, (Sheila L. Macdonald: Speaking of wooden divining rods....) Angus: It was all right in the older days, because in the olden days we didn't have the pollution we have today. (Did you use a wooden divining rod at any time?) No, no, they don't work for me. (They only work for certain people?) Well, that's right. (Is it a gift?) I wouldn't say that. It must be some sort of a gift, I suppose, because wires won't Angus J. and Katie Margaret Gillis with their sons. Above, Angus at a drill. work for all people either. (Is that what you use--wires?) Yes. (What are wires?) One is soft steel and the other is bronze. They're 28 inches long with a 6-inch handle and they swing right out. Say in Sackville. There's a hun? dred feet of overburden in Sackville. Over? burden is ground and rock and mud and sand on top of the bedrock. Well, I'm walking a- long the grass here and there. I can say. You drill right down there and you're go? ing to get a break in the rock--very splin? tery and very shaley stuff, and the water runs in those seams there. You never get water in the solid rock, suppose you went ten thousand feet. No, no. It's in the crevices and cavities, and it's up to us to find them. Today now, they're awful in building houses and homes--they never look at a water course. They may put a cesspool right over the water course and then put the well at the other end of the house, and they're going to be drinking their own dirt. (Does that really happen?) I was ta? ken to court 3 or 4 different times for chief witness in lawsuits. (Tell me a little more about water divin? ing.) You've got to know a little bit a- bout rock. Now, there's a lot to it. It's not that easy to explain, you see. I find that along the coast of Nova Scotia--along the continental shelf--that there's a lean in the rock. If you're going to get water, you better step 7 feet over from the vein, because the cranks and the cavities and the crevices that's in the mother bedrock took a lean when the world was being made, It seems it's just like a big snowball falling in a pot of porridge or a pot of babbit and she vibrates and shivers. And the shivers stayed in the rock till it hardened and encrusted, like. Wherever there was limestone, you always got blis- (54)

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