80 Miss. 535 | Miss. | 1902
delivered the opinion of the court.
The bill in chancery of the county charges that it had an artesian well in its courthouse inclosure, which furnished an abundant supply of water for its purposes, and that there were fourteen other such wells, of private ownership, in the' county town, of great value to the persons owning them; that appellee,
It is to be noted that in the bill there is a charge that the water supplying all the wells was from a “distinctly defined underground current or stream,” and that this is denied in the answer, and that the proof does not sustain the charge. It is plain from this record that no man or corporation boring a well on his own land had any reason to suppose that the use of it could affect the wells of others. Clearly, there was no surface indication of an underground stream. The well of the county was not “dried up,” but the supply was diminished. It must further be noted that there is no pretence in the bill, or squint in the proof, that appellee ascertained or designed, expected or contemplated, that any such result would follow. The good faith of appellee is quite apparent, as is the fact that it foresaw no damage to others. The boring of a multitude of private wells might easily have caused the same result, and it will not be contended that private landowners could not bore at will for water for any purpose for their own use. It is shown that the numerous artesian wells in the town were widely separated over a large scope of territory, striking water at various depths, from one hundred to two hundred feet, and this is inconsistent with the inference of a defined channel, and conclusive that the water was from percolation, or a multitude of independent wandering rivulets, which the authorities put under the same rule with percolation. It might suffice to dispose of this case to note that the only issue tendered is the charge in the bill, “on information and belief,” that the wells were all “supplied with water from a distinctly defined underground current or stream.” This charge was denied, and the proof utterly fails to sustain the allegation of the bill. But ■without so disposing of this record we will look a little into the principles applied to subsurface waters. There is a
Affirmed.