"Cornish well-sinker, was sentenced by the late Mr. Justice Coleridge to twenty months 'imprisonment for chalking some "blasphemous" words on"
"Not only here, but over the whole county of Norfolk, the well-sinker might carry his shaft down many hundred feet without coming to the end of the chalk; and, on the sea-coast, where the waves have pared away the face of the land which breasts them, the scarped faces of the high cliffs are often wholly formed of the same material."
"The well-sinker returns to the other workers, who arch their backs, and the load progresses a finger's-breadth towards the point recognized as favourable."