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.
[Illustration: AQUEDUCT TUNNEL UNDER THE HARLEM.]
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.
[Illustration: RESERVOIR IN CENTRAL PARK.]
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.
