We have also arranged with the contractors,

CROTON AQ.UEDUCT. 193

to settle all their claims for this departure from the original plan, and for the material which they had provided for the arches, for the sum of $4,500. The excavation of about 50,000 cubic yards of rock has been dispensed with in the receiving reservoir, of which about 45,000 lie in the northern division. This constitutes a saving of $50,000, one dollar per cubic yard being the price for excavatin g.

The unfinished work on this island, is on sections Nos. 88, 89, 90, 91, 94, 96, including the receiving reservoir, 97, 98, and the distributing reservoir, all of which can be completed early in the ensuing season. ENGINEER DEPARTMENT. Under the direction of the Board, the chief engineer has reduced the corps to one chief, one principal assistant, and two resident engineers, with the assistants and inspectors mentioned in his report.

The total expenditures up to 31st December, 1841, for all objects connected with the aqueduct, were $7,107,463 03. . The early part of the working season of 1842 was rainy, and occasioned some solicitude lest the contractors, especially those for the dam, should not be able sufficiently to advance their work, to realise the expectations of the citizens to behold the Croton flowing in their streets on the 4th of July but after the state of the weather permitted opera- ;

tions to be resumed, the work on the dam was carried on with such diligence and energy, that the water in the Croton lake was raised sufficiently high to flow into the aqueduct with a depth of 18 inches, on the morning of the 22d June.