Chollar and Ebenezer Jones, made the twenty-third of October, one thousand eight hundred and forty, for iron pipe their contract with S. V. Mer- ;

rick and John Town, for seven hundred tons of thirty-inch iron pipe and also their con- ;

tract with T. H. Wintersteen and David I. Myers, for five hundred tons of iron pipe all;

which said contracts are deposited in the office of the Comptroller of the city of New York.

The relative rights and duties of the parties being thus authoritatively settled, each proceeded, in his own sphere, to accomplish the matter in hand.

It being strenuously desired that the city should, in the summer of 1842, be in the

possession and enjoyment of the water, every effort was made to ensure such a result. Obstacles, however, arising from the great difficulty of the principal operations yet unfinished, disappointed partially, the hopes of the engineers and Commissioners. The contractors for the new dam in the Croton, for instance, were bound to have it in such an advanced stage by 1st November of this year, as to throw two feet water from the lake into the aqueduct. The next disappointment was in the bridge over the Harlem, arisin g from not finding, as the soundings had indicated, a rocky bottom on which to rest the foundation of some of the piers of the bridge. Nevertheless, the Commissioners and the

engineers still adhered to the opinion that the 4th of July, 1842, would witness the introduction of the Croton into the houses and fountains of the city.