The wells are worked by the ordinary South Indian bullock-lift, and the kabalai, also used in Mesopotamia, and probably, both in India and in Mesopotamia, of immemorial antiquity. The oxen [S. 21] Work on an inclined plane which slopes downwards from the edge of the well. Descending the slope they drag up the kabalai, then they are made to back up the slope, and the kabalai is lowered to the water level. The kabalai is a big bucket of leather or metal somewhat less than two feet in diameter, continued below in a leather tube about four or five inches in diameter, and between two and three feet long. When the kabalai is being raised from the water, the top of the bucket and the end of the leather tube are level, each being attached to its own rope, and the two ropes being dragged simultaneously by the oxen. But the rope attached to the bucket passes over a pulley about four feet above the ground level, that attached to the tube, over a roller at the ground level. When the oxen are near the end of their run the open end of the tube is pulled over the roller, and as the bucket is raised still higher towards the pulley, the whole of the water in the kabalai is poured out and flows by a prepared channel in the desired direction.