Overflowing privy-vault within twenty feet and on higher ground, the soakage and surface washing from which had permeated the soil around and under the building.
That which reaches it below the surface, by springs and by soakage from the lower portions of adjoining land.
This is especially true of water impregnated with soakage from privies and sewers; and yet epidemics of diarrhoea cannot as often be clearly traced to this source as can outbreaks of typhoid fever.
Water should not be used which could in any way be tainted with soakage from privies, barnyards, or other places where animal decomposition is going on.
Inconsiderable as this European soakage into the fringe of the neighbouring continent must have seemed at that moment, we know that it was inaugurating a process which ultimately would affect profoundly all the history of Hither Asia.
Dug a soakage along the creek a bit and got it," the Dandy explained; and as we blessed him for his thoughtfulness, he lifted up a clean cloth and displayed a pile of crisp Johnny cakes.
Daily the soakage yielded less and less water, and daily Billy Muck and Cheon scrimmaged over its yield; for Billy's melons were promising to pay a liberal dividend, and Cheon's garden was crying aloud for water.
Then the billabong "petering out" altogether, and the soakage threatening to follow suit, its yield was kept strictly for personal needs, and Dan and the Maluka gave their attention to the elements.
We crossed a soakage running through sand; there were dense patches of scrub near the lagoons, and I had an impression that it was not safe to go farther on foot, and said I would go back.
I found this well was not on any stream, but that a drive had been put in to drain the soakage from a sandy creek, which was in close proximity, and the season being a dry one, this had also failed to give any soakage.
Hubbe dug it out to bedrock and proved it to be merely a local soakage in the gravelly bed of a narrow gully.
So we decided on the northern course, and chose Mount Shenton, near which a soakage was marked, as our objective point.
The visible supply of water was small, and we had grave doubts as to any soakage existing!
A soakage it must be, for no open rock-hole could hold water in such terrible heat; and its clearness would suggest the possibility of an underlying spring.
The Dwarf Well had a better supply than any we had seen, and it is possible that there is somesoakage into it from the surrounding country.
