"BLOWERS” OF ANEGADA

Evening Star, Issue 19326, 12 August 1926, Page 9

"BLOWERS” OF ANEGADA

WONDERS OF A PACIFIC GOBAL ISLAND Anegada or “ Drowned ” Island, one of the Virgin Group belonging to Britain in the West Indies, possesses a number of tho world’s most remarkable fresh-water wells, upon which Die inhabitants depend for supplies, states ‘ Overseas,’ Though the others of this group of islands, once famous in the piratical annals of the sea, are primitive rocks without any traces or volcanic agency, Anogada owes its origin to coral animalculffi building upon an under-water mountain, and possibly it is through this foundation of coral and limestone that the wells owe their existence.

On the north-east side of the island, which is some nine miles long and two at its broadest, and is so low that in a heavy gale the soa breaks over parts of it, there is a range of shelf boles near Loblolly Bay that are filled with pure, cool, fresh water. The formation of these wells is extraordinary and not met with elsewhere. The mouth is from 10ft to 25ft wide and slopes downward in the fo'rm of a funnel to a depth of from 40ft to 90ft. Usually they flow and ebb with the soa. But often during the torrid calms of the hot season and sometimes during rough weather the water contained in thorn shoots up to a height of 100 ft, as if forced by some pressure from beneath. A similar phenomenon takes place in scve®al of the extensive fresh-water ponds, or lagunas, on the island. The banks surrounding the sheets of water are, on the whole, 2ft higher than the average depth, yet often, even in the dry months, when no rain falls, the water wells up suddenly and in such abundance that it overflows the banks and floods the south side of the island. At other times it sinks so low in the lagunas that only a thin film of water and scum covers the bed of the ponds. The explanation of movements is that the water is forced up from submarine reservoirs and absorbed again through the lower strata. Occasionally tho “ blowers jump,” as the islanders