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First Department - Physical Science and the Arts. President, and ex-officio one of the Vice Presidents of the Institute, THOMAS HUN, M.D.

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Second Department-Natural History.

President, and ex-officio one of the Vice Presidents of the Institute,
JAMES HALL, LL.D.

Recording Secretary,

MERRILL E. GATES.

Vice President,
ARTHUR BOTT.

Corresponding Secretary,
VERPLANCK COLVIN.

Third Department - History and General Literature. President, and ex-officio one of the Vice Presidents of the Institute, ISAAC EDWARDS, LL.D.

Vice President,

JOSEPH H. RAMSEY.

Recording Secretary,

Wм. H. HALE, PH.D.

Corresponding Secretary,
JOHN W. MCNAMARA.

Curators of the Collections in Natural History and the Arts.

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TRANSACTIONS.

1

The Water Supply of Constantinople. By HENRY A. HOMES.

[Read before the Albany Institute, June 4, 1872.]

In eastern countries pure water is ever a theme of popular interest. The numerous "dry and thirsty lands where no water is," and the liability to droughts in more favorable positions, will always make the question of a supply of water of the utmost importance. The simple habits of the people, using no beverage in large quantity but water, render the matter of its abundance and quality, a fertile topic of conversation. The population that now inhabit Asia Minor and European Turkey, emigrating from a more arid country, retain as a hereditary gift an anxiety about, and a love for water, not because they need it more or use it more than other people, but because they appreciate it with more intense emotions. The records of the Bible are full of references to artificial arrangements for water by wells and cisterns, even for rural or nomadic tribes. The selection of the sites of the great cities of the old world of Asia has been controlled by their easy supply of water, such as Broosa, Cairo and Damascus. But when Constantinople was determined upon as the new capital of the Roman empire, the fact of its position as a place from whence to command two continents predominated over all considerations of an abundance of water. Before giving an account of its supplies of water, allow me to recall to your minds the prominent features of its geography.

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Constantinople is built on the rocky heights of seven hills on the north shore of the sea of Marmora, and just west of where the Bosphorus strait opens into that sea from the Black sea. The distance between the Black sea on the north and the Marmora on the south, is not more than twenty miles, for a distance of thirty miles from the Bosphorus towards the west. The general height of the tableland in the vicinity of Constantinople is about 150 to 200 feet, which is intersected with valleys, where are still, or have been small streams.

Down to the northern shore of the Bosphorus, from the west, comes a spur of the Hæmus or Balkan range of mountains, its water-shed to the north and south being at a distance of five or six miles from the Black sea, and fourteen miles from the city. Nearly all the artificial ponds for the aqueduct water supply of Constantinople are close upon the south side of this range of hills, the highest point of which may be about 770 feet. This region is commonly called the forests of Belgrade, and has acquired a prominence in English literature on account of the letters written from the village of that name by Lady Mary Wortley Montague, while residing there in 1717. A vast quantity of moisture in the form of snow and rain falls in this region during the winter season, which naturally collects in the ravines, in two small streams, that finally becoming one, empty into the harbor of the city, the Golden Horn.

When, in the year 330, Constantine the Great came to Byzantium, and founded New Rome, which the Greeks preferred to call Constantinople, in addition to the one hill of Byzantium, he enclosed six contiguous hills; and recalling the unsurpassed length and grandeur of the aqueducts of old Rome, and stimulated by an ambition full of reminiscences of its magnificence, he commenced immediately on the same imperial scale with all his expenditures,

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