" After a deliberate survey of the various hydraulic contrivances for supplying Conwith water, one is at a loss to know which to admire most, the native stantinople good sense which pointed out the necessity and importance of furnishing the capital and its suburbs with pure and wholesome water, the ingenuity displayed in conquering almost invincible obstacles, or that wise and liberal economy which considered no expense too enormous, no sacrifices too great, in comparison with the health and comfort of the people.

PRELIMINARY ESSAY. 45

The various water-courses about Constantinople must exceed fifty miles in length, and the expenses of the various reservoirs and aqueducts could not have been less than fifty millions of dollars." In addition to its aqueducts the ancient city used water gathered into enormous subterranean cisterns, which still exist, and in some instances are yet supplied with water. In Gyllius's Antiquities of Constantinople, the exploration of one of these vast ancient cisterns, of which the construction is ascribed to Constantine the Great, is thus related :

" The whole ground was built upon, and made it less suspected that there was a cistern there. The people had not any notion of its existence, although they daily drew their water out of wells that were sunk into it. I went by chance into a house from which there was a descent into a cistern, and embarked in a little skiff on its waters. The master of the house having lighted torches, rowed us to and fro between the pillars, which lay very deep in the water. He was very intent upon catching fish, with which the cistern abounds, and speared some of them by the light of the torches. A faint light descends from the mouths of the wells, and is reflected upon the water, and here the fish usually go for air.