The acts of the divorce Ring are no secrets in New York. Yet neither the judges nor the Bar Association make any efforts to rid the courts of such wretches. “A citizen of New York, whose misguided wife had secretly obtained a fraudulent divorce from him through such practice as we have described, and who, in turn, had successfully sued in the legitimate way for the dissolution of marriage thus forced upon him, sought to induce his legal adviser, a veteran metropolitan lawyer of the highest standing, to expose the infamous divorce ‘Ring’ before the courts, and demand, in behalf of his profession, that its practitioners should be at least disbarred. The response was, that the courts were presumed to be entirely ignorant of the fraudulent parts of the proceedings referred to; that the offenders could be ‘cornered’ only through a specific case in point against them, and, besides, that the referees in their cases were nearly all connected, either consanguinely or in bonds of partnership interest, with the judges who had appointed them, and before whom the motion for disbarment would probably come! For
this last curious reason no lawyer could, consistently with his own best interests, inaugurate a movement likely to involve the whole referee system in its retributive effects. A lawyer so doing might, when arguing future cases in court, find a certain apparent disposition of the Bench to show him less courtesy than on former occasions—to snub him, in fact, and thereby permanently prejudice his professional future likelihoods in that jurisdiction!”
LXXIII. THE CROTON WATER WORKS.
There were many plans for supplying the city of New York with fresh water, previous to the adoption of the Croton Aqueduct scheme, but we have not the space to present them here. They were all inadequate to the necessities of the city, and all in turn were thrown aside. The most important was one for obtaining the water supply from the Bronx River. It was believed that a daily supply of 3,000,000 gallons could be obtained from this stream, but nothing was done in the matter, and it was not until the prevalence of Asiatic Cholera in 1832 had impressed upon the people the necessity of a supply of pure water, nor until the great fire of 1837 had convinced them that they must have an abundance of water, that the scheme for supplying the city from the sources of the Croton River was definitely resolved upon. De Witt Clinton gave his powerful support to the scheme, and the citizens at the municipal elections expressed themselves unqualifiedly in favor of a full supply of fresh water. It was decided to obtain the supply from the Croton River, and in May, 1837, the work on the aqueduct which was to convey it to the city was actually begun, and on the 4th of July, 1842, the Croton water was distributed through the city.
The first step was to throw a massive dam across the Croton River, by means of which the Croton Lake was formed, the water being raised to a depth of forty feet by the obstruction. From this dam an aqueduct, constructed of brick, stone, and cement, conveys the water to the city, a distance of nearly forty miles. It is arched above and below, and is seven and a half feet wide, and eight and a half feet high, with an inclination of
thirteen inches to the mile. It rests on the ground for a portion of its course, and in other parts is supported by a series of stone arches. It crosses twenty-five streams in Westchester County, besides numerous brooks, which flow under it through culverts. It is conveyed across the Harlem River by means of the High Bridge. The water flows through vast iron pipes, which rest upon the bridge. The bridge is a magnificent stone structure, 1450 feet long, with fifteen arches, the highest of which is one hundred feet above high water mark. Its great height prevents it from interfering with the navigation of the stream. The High Bridge is one of the principal resorts in the suburbs of New York. The structure itself is well worth seeing, and the scenery is famed for its surpassing loveliness.
There are two large reservoirs at the city end of the bridge, the “Storage Reservoir,” and the “High Service,” the latter of which is designed for supplying the elevated section of
Washington Heights. From here to the distributing reservoirs in the Central Park, which have already been described, the distance is two and a quarter miles. The distributing reservoir for the principal part of the city is on Fifth Avenue, between Fortieth and Forty-second streets. It covers about four acres of ground, and is built of granite. It is forty feet above the street, is divided into two parts, and will hold 20,000,000 gallons of water. It is exactly forty-one miles from the Croton Lake.
