MAP OF CROTON AQUEDUCT.
If we could cut away all the earth of the island, leaving the water-mains bare, and if we could tear down all the buildings of the city so as to allow the water-pipes to stand up, bare and naked, just as they now stand up in their covers of brick and plaster, I suppose the sight of that wonderful forest of big and little pipes would be as surprising as anything that any human being ever saw. Just try to fancy Manhattan Island all under a tangle of towering pipes and crisscrossed tubes, and then, while we are about it, just fancy a lot of savages landing here and tampering with those pipes until one of them should touch some cock and turn on the water. What a rain there would be, in big streams and middling streams and tiny little streams, out of millions of fixtures! No shower bath that was ever conceived or heard of would compare with it. And yet—see how small and weak man is, after all—it would not begin to equal an ordinary rain-storm.
Of water mains—or big pipes sunk in the streets to distribute the Croton water from the reservoirs—there are no less than 715 miles, but when the reader thinks how at every twenty-five feet smaller pipes branch out of the mains to carry the water to every floor of every building and sometimes to every office or room, he will see that of smaller pipes there must be tens of thousands of miles, making up that grand tree which is as much the "tree of life" of a great city as the arterial system is the tree of life of each of our bodies. To carry off the water that courses through all these thousands of miles of pipes we have 456 miles of sewers—or much bigger pipes; some of which men can walk through or even paddle a boat in.
One hundred and fifty years ago, when New York was considered rather an ancient town, the people got their water for drinking from the "collect," where the Tombs prison stands, and from the little springs and streams that ran into that pond. A very few had wells, public or private, near their houses. It was not until 1750 that pumps were set up to make the getting of water easier. It will surprise the reader to know that hundreds of these old wells still remain upon the island. Two or three still have pumps affixed to them, and are used for giving drink to horses, but the rest are covered over and, in most cases, their existence is forgotten. It is not possible, even in case of war, when our water supply might be cut off, that we will ever revert to the use of these wells, for they yield a polluted water that is as bad to drink as poison. Just before the Revolutionary War a man named Colles built a little reservoir above the City Hall, but it yielded such bad water that the people who could afford to do so bought water that was hawked in the streets from carts. It was not until 1842, when we had a population of 350,000 souls, that New York got its water systematically and in such plenty that mothers did not scold their children and Mayors did not remonstrate with the people for wasting it.
New York has never been a boastful city. It never has filled the world with the noise of its greatness or the parade of its wonderful achievements. Its Broadway is the longest thoroughfare in Christendom, I believe; its suspension-bridge is only excelled by one bridge of another kind; its actual size and population are second to those of but one city; but such facts one must glean from the encyclopædias and the letters of travellers. The New-Yorkers say nothing about them. Therefore it is but little known that the aqueduct which carries our water to us is the greatest—many times the greatest—tunnel in the whole world. It is more than thirty-three miles in length, and far from being a mere trench, averages a depth of 170 feet below the surface, and is in places 380 feet underground. It is from ten to thirteen feet high, and averages nearly as great a width. Its way is hewn through solid rock in places, and it is everywhere built of brick and granite. It passes under several rivers, and at the Harlem River, the northern boundary of this island, it is in the shape of a siphon upside down, sloping for 1300 feet under the river, and then rising 400 feet straight up through the Manhattan Island bank of the stream. It cost nearly $27,000,000, and it brings, without pumping, by the incline of the tunnel, nearly 100 gallons of water a day for each of the 1,900,000 persons in the city, or about 171,000,000 gallons of water a day for all of us. It is a solid cube of water running at the rate of two miles an hour, eight or ten feet thick, and ten or a dozen feet high.
RESERVOIR IN CENTRAL PARK.
We are in the habit of saying that the water we drink comes from Croton Lake, thirty miles north of the city in Westchester County, but that is only a part of the truth. The fact is, that Croton Lake was made by damming the Croton River when our system was begun in 1835-42. We now take that water, and the water of several other lakes, ponds, and rivers that are in a great valley or depression in the earth called the Croton watershed. We keep stored up and ready for use about 17,000,000,000 gallons of water in the following natural and artificial reservoirs: Croton Lake, Lake Mahopac, Lake Gilead, and Kirk Lake, Middle Branch, East Branch, Bog Brook, and Barrett Pond. Their names sufficiently describe the character of these great goblets of crystal water which nature and man have arranged for the needs of the great city. But these are so insufficient that, although it is believed we could draw 250,000,000 gallons a day even in dry weather, we are going to take into our system three more reservoirs, which will allow us to store 13,000,000,000 gallons more than we can store at present. And as even these will not long supply our growing needs, we are about to build the greatest dam the world ever saw. It is already called the Quaker Bridge dam. It is to be built five miles south of Croton Lake, back of the town of Sing Sing, where the great State-prison is. It will be a great pyramidal-shaped wall of solid masonry 264 feet high, and 1500 feet long, and will cost, the officials think, at least $6,000,000. When it is finished, a magnificent rich farming country will be flooded and turned into one immense glass of water for old Father Knickerbocker (as we call our patron saint) and his children. The water that will bank up against that dam will rise up over many, many farms and houses and barns and villages for a distance of no less than sixteen miles, and the present dam at Croton Lake will be thirty-five feet under the surface of the water. Now we store 17,000,000,000 gallons of water, but then we will have a liquid treasure of 84,600,000,000 gallons.
THE OLD WAY.