THE MELON ISLANDS, AND IRRIGATING WHEEL

Artist: Thomas Allom ____________ Engraver: H. Adlard

Note: the title in the table above is printed below the engraving

AN ANTIQUE STEEL ENGRAVING MADE IN THE EARLY 1840s !! ITEM IS OVER 150 YEARS OLD!

VERY OLD WORLD! INCREDIBLE DETAIL!

FROM THE ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION: Modes of raising water with facility from wells and rivers, for domestic and agricultural purposes, must have been peculiarly studied by Eastern nations, where the soil is arid, and the atmosphere sultry. The Athenians, in their earliest ages, had no other beverage than water, hence the loud praises of its merits by their chiefest poets: but they did not then possess any mechanical contrivances for raising it to the surface. Near the mouth of each public well a cylinder of marble was fixed, up the side of which the laden bucket was drawn by a hand-rope, a fact distinctly attested by grooves of some inches in depth, worn in the stone by the friction of the rope. To this rude mode the aqueduct succeeded, on which the great cities of antiquity appear to have expended an extravagant share of labour. The Thracians improved on the Athenian plan, by cutting a spiral staircase down into the rock, and arching over the well, by which the rope and bucket were superseded. Before the invention of pumps the Thracian well was familiar in Great Britain, and, an act of parliament was passed in the Vlllth Henry's reign for the special protection of one of these primitive fountains at Hampstead, about five hundred yards below the church, " that the citizens of London might obtain water from the bottom of the heath." In Roumelia, water for irrigation was raised by means of a large lever, having a bucket at one end with a counterpoise of stones at the other; a plan still practised by the Chinese. There, every cavity is made tributary to the supply or preservation of water ; and fountains, or large reservoirs, are almost held in reverence.

It is unnecessary to dwell upon the care bestowed by ancient governments in affording a sufficient supply of pure water to large assemblages of people. The Claudian aqueduct extended fifteen miles, and was carried to Rome on arches a hundred and nine feet high. There were besides fourteen similar aqueducts, with seven hundred cisterns for the public supply, and every house was furnished with separate pipes and channels. Beneath Constantinople is an ancient reservoir, three hundred and thirty-six feet long, one hundred and eighty broad, and covered with marble arches, which three hundred and thirty-six pillars support. The aqueducts of Carthage in Africa, and Segovia in Spain, as well as the cisterns of Alexandria, are amongst the most amazing monuments of civilization in existence. Of all these nations, none so much resemble the Chinese, in their mode of raising and conducting water for irrigation, as the Egyptians. To distribute the inundations of the Nile advantageously, they constructed eighty canals, some of them a hundred miles in length, and excavated three artificial lakes, Moeris, Behira, and Mareotis. From these vast cisterns the water was raised over mounds and other obstructions by a series of buckets connected by chains, and moved by a wheel, each bucket discharging its contents as it crossed the summit of operations. Oxen were employed occasionally to work the irrigating machinery, and it is said that Archimedes borrowed from this ancient device his idea of "the cochlion or screw" for raising water. One mode employed by the Chinese resembles that already noticed as familiar to the Turks of Roumelia; and their chain-pump, the type of the English tread-mill, is identical with the Egyptian system of buckets. A third contrivance of the Chinese agriculturist, still better entitled to the claim of ingenuity, is the bamboo water-wheel, although the praise of its first invention has been claimed by others. The great moving power, called the Persian water-wheel, because that people disfigured its simplicity, is fitted in a strong-wooden frame, and, when employed for raising water, float-boards are attached to the outside of its circular rim. From the inside of the rim strong iron rods project horizontally, from each of which a square bucket is suspended by iron loops, so that, in ascending and descending with the revolutions of the wheel, all may hang perpendicularly, except those that are dipped in the water, and that one which is at the highest point. Near to the top of the frame, and at the side opposite to that on which the wheel revolves, a trough projects so far as to intercept the buckets and tilt them, compelling each to resign its contents to the trough in turn. Springs are affixed to that side of the bucket which comes in contact with the trough, by which the shock is alleviated, and the tilling made more effectual.

The Chinese water-wheel, which has been described in another part of this work, is precisely similar in its principle and effects to that used in Persia. It is formed wholly of bamboo: short pieces of large diameter, having one end stopped up, are fixed at equal intervals on the outer rim of the wheel. Not precisely horizontally, but at such an angle as allows them to dip into the stream, fill themselves, and, retaining their burden during a semi-revolution, discharge it into the trough prepared for its reception. Such wheels prevail extensively in the flat district of the Melon Islands, which is intersected by the branches of the Kan-keang just before their influx into the Poyang lake. There the coup d'ceil takes in a hundred wheels at a time, each capable of raising three hundred tons of water every four and twenty hours.

 

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Thomas Allom (1804-1872) was a Topographical Illustrator and Architect. He was born in London, England and in 1819 he was apprenticed to the architect Francis Goodwin. He produced designs for buildings, churches, workhouses and a military asylum in London and carried them out himself as well as working with the architect Sir Charles Barry on numerous projects. He found time to produce an enormous number of views, and like his contemporary William Henry Bartlett, illustrated places rather than people or still life. Allom was a founder member of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA). He died at the age of 68 in Barnes, London, England.

Though he traveled widely in the course of his work, Allom produced his drawings of China, probably his most successful series, by merely crossing the road from the house in Hart Street to the British Museum. It was obviously an economical solution for his publisher, who had managed to convince himself that 'Having dwelt in "the land of the cypress and myrtle", Mr. Allom's talents were fully matured for the faithful delineation of Oriental scenery. His designs were based entirely on the work of earlier artists who had traveled in China, and although he has been justifiably criticised for failure in some instances to acknowledge the original sketches, Allom displays considerable resourcefulness and ingenuity in the way he borrowed and gathered his material from them. Acknowledgement was made to three amateurs, eight of the plates to Lieutenant Frederick White R.M., fourteen to Captain Stoddart, R.N. and two to R. Varnham (who was the son of a tea planter and a pupil of George Chinnery (1774-1852). Nine designs are taken entirely or partially from Sketches of China and the Chinese (1842) by August Borget (1808-1877)," which had been published in England the previous year. He made neat pencil sketches from an album of Chinese landscapes water colours by anonymous Chinese artists that he then turned into fourteen designs. "Another group are based on a set of anonymous drawings that show the silk manufacturing process. Allom made particularly ingenious use of the drawings of William Alexander (1767-1818). Having first traced over a number of Alexander's watercolors in the British Museum (a practice which would certainly be frowned upon today) he used these tracings' either in part or combination in about twenty of his designs. But he never uses exactly the same scene as Alexander without altering the viewpoint or changing the details, his knowledge of perspective enabling him 'to walk round' a view of a building as in his Western Gates of Peking, which takes a viewpoint to the other side of the river. He uses background to Alexander's more peaceful seascape of 1794, The Forts of Anunghoi saluting the 'Lion' in the Bocca Tigris, and updates it to an event sketched by White during the First Opium War of 1841 when the Imogene and Andromache under Lord Napier forced a passage through the straits. Two of Alexander's drawings are sometimes combined - his Chinamen playing 'Shitticock' (sic) are placed by Allom in front of the Pagoda of Lin-ching-shih taken from another Alexander drawing.

The prints were a welcome addition to Fisher's series and became the best known source on the subject of China. Until the Treaty of Nanking in 1842 China had been almost totally inaccessible to the European traveller but the first Opium War had created a new sort of interest. The admiration of the 18th and early 19th centuries for Chinese culture and decoration was replaced by a more critical and inquiring attitude. Until photography gave a more accurate picture, a great many people's perception of China and the Chinese people was probably influenced by Allom's idealised images. An interesting use of these, on the ceramic pot lids produced by F. & R. Pratt and Co. throughout the second half of the 19th century, demonstrate how Allom's images, themselves derived from such a variety of sources, became in turn a design source for other ornamental applications. Because of their decorative appeal wide use is still made of reproductions of these illustrations.

SIZE: Image size is 5 inches by 7 1/2 inches. Print size is 7 inches by 10 inches.

CONDITION: Condition is excellent. Bright and clean. Blank on reverse.

SHIPPING: Buyers to pay shipping/handling, domestic orders receives priority mail, international orders receive regular mail.

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Please note: the terms used in our auctions for engraving, heliogravure, lithograph, print, plate, photogravure etc. are ALL prints on paper, NOT blocks of steel or wood. "ENGRAVINGS", the term commonly used for these paper prints, were the most common method in the 1700s and 1800s for illustrating old books, and these paper prints or "engravings" were inserted into the book with a tissue guard frontis, usually on much thicker quality rag stock paper, although many were also printed and issued as loose stand alone prints. So this auction is for an antique paper print(s), probably from an old book, of very high quality and usually on very thick rag stock paper.

EXTREMELY RARE IN THIS EXCELLENT CONDITION!