This munificent prince laid the foundation of it in 1713, and in thirteen years the whole was completed.

The city of Lisbon, in testimony of gratitude raised an arch to his memory, bearing a flattering inscription, in the Latin tongue, importing that he had not only conferred

wealth, glory, strength and peace on his kingdom, but that, overcoming nature as it were, he had introduced perennial waters into the city, and hailing him therefore as the best of princes, and the author of a great and useful public work.

Manuel dal Maga was the architect, and the expense was defrayed in part, by a tax of one rei, something less than one tenth of a cent, on every pound of meat sold in the

capital. Murphy, in his travels, in recording this fact, states the quantity of butchers meat sold in Lisbon, in the year 1789, at 12,212,160 pounds. " The " is consumption of flesh," he adds, greatly reduced here, by the quantity of fresh and salt fish with which the markets are constantly supplied."*

It is singular that Murphy, who was an architect, should not have furnished details of

the mode of construction, nor of the cost of this noble work, nor given any hint of the

quantity of water brought into the city by it. The supply of this aqueduct is derived from the mountains of Cintra. Its course is

between 8 and 9 miles, and it terminates in the city, in a Chateau d'Eau or Castellum, whence the waters are distributed to numerous fountains. Lisbon is built upon the slope of a hill, over the top of which, the waters of the aqueduct are introduced.