. The mastery of water. he aqueduct alone was nearly£4,000,000, which brought the total cost of the Crotonwater supply up to ;£5,500,000. Invigorated by this plentiful stream of water. NewYork continued to grow like a cabbage. The populationincreased by leaps and bounds, so that, by 1905, it wasseen that not 300,000,000, but 1,000,000,000 gallonswould ultimately be required. This timt; it could not behad so close at hand, and the engineers had to go morethan eighty miles away to find a suitable collectingground. Their choice fell upon the Catskill Mountains,which lie in a direction from
. The mastery of water. he aqueduct alone was nearly£4,000,000, which brought the total cost of the Crotonwater supply up to ;£5,500,000. Invigorated by this plentiful stream of water. NewYork continued to grow like a cabbage. The populationincreased by leaps and bounds, so that, by 1905, it wasseen that not 300,000,000, but 1,000,000,000 gallonswould ultimately be required. This timt; it could not behad so close at hand, and the engineers had to go morethan eighty miles away to find a suitable collectingground. Their choice fell upon the Catskill Mountains,which lie in a direction from the city. Here atract, 900 square miles in area, which is drained by fourrivers—the Catskill, Rondout, Esopus, and Schoharie—is estimated to provide 600,000,000,000 gallons per dayall the year round. A beginning was made by damming the valley of theEsopus at a place called Olive Bridge. The embankmentis partly earth and partly masonry, with a total lengthof 5,000 feet and a height of 220 feet. The middle section,. 60 THE MASTERY OF WATER 1,000 ft. in length, is of masonry, of which it contains1,000,000 tons. This is continued towards each side ofthe valley by huge walls of earth having a volume of6,000,000 cubic yards. Behind this is a lake twelve mileslong and two miles wide, holding 120,000,000 gallons. The water is conveyed to New York by an aqueductwhich puts all the others in the shade. It is not so longas that which brings water from Thirlmere to Man-chester, but it is capable of carrying twelve times asmuch water. Imagine a diameter of seventeen feet —nearly as large as an ordinary railway tunnel, and halfas large again as one of the London Tubes ! Rivers andmountains lie across the path it has to take. To getunder the rivers, three times does it drop down a verticalshaft, run for several miles underground, and then rise inanother shaft. In one instance a shaft is 480 feet deep,in another, 750 feet, and in a third, nearly 1,000 feet ;and in two of these the unde
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjectwatersupply, bookyear
