Its capacity is 100,000,000 gallons a day, but this supply was found to be inadec[uate for the rapidly growing city, and a new aqueduct, commenced in 1884 and finished in 1890, was constructed to the east of the earlier one. This has a capacity three times as great as the first, and taps the numerous lakes of a watershed embracing between three and four hundred square miles. Above the ba}^ into which the Croton enters is the old house of the Van Cortlandts, for we have now passed from the domain of Philipse to that of his neighbour and brother-in-law. From a paper pul3hshed by Benson J. Lossing in Harper's Monthly, about ten years after his Hudson appeared in book form, we quote the following description of the Van Cortlandt manor-house :
Up the narrowing bay at the east, below Croton Point and beyond the line of the Hudson River Railroad, may be seen, near its head, a quaint old mansion. The water, once deep, now rapidly changing into salt meadow land, is Croton Bay, in which Henry Hudson anchored his little exploring vessel. The mansion is the Van Cortlandts' manorhouse, one of the most ancient and interesting, in its association of its class upon the Hudson. Recent [1876] discoveries, while repairing it, of loopholes for musketry near the floor of the diningroom clearly show that it originally composed a fort, which was probably built by Governor Dongan. John Van Cortlandt enlarged itto its present dimensions in the early years of Queen Anne's reign. . . . Over the main entrance to the manor-house hangs the strong bow of Croton, the Sachem whose name has been given to the Kitchawan River and Bav, and within the mansion are interest-