A Visit to the Water Works

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A VISIT TO THE WATER WORKS.

Some of the Water Commissioners and other prominent citizens and officials paid a visit of inspection to the works, now speedily advancing to completion, yesterday. With his usual courtesy to the Press, ex-Mayor Wall¹ tendered our Reporter an invitation, and a seat in his carriage.

So much has been written about the works, and their present stage of advancement has been so fully set forth in the last communication of the Commissioners to the Common Council, that no detailed description can be either needed or expected here.

The party was not large; it consisted of Commissioners Wall, Brevoort,² Sullivan,³ Wyckoff⁴ and Van Voorhees,⁵ Mayor Powell,⁶ ex-Senator Smith,⁷ E. W. Dunham, Esq.,⁸ Alderman Maujer,⁹ &c. &c.

The first point visited was the pump well, where men were seen working hip-deep in water, eleven hours per day, for a dollar. Here were two steam engines constantly at work—one pumping out water (from the excavation where the well is to be built), at the rate of a hundred barrels per minute; the other hauling dirt trucks to a distance as fast as the laborers filled them with earth.

From the pump well the party proceeded, alternately riding and walking, along the banks of the nearly completed conduit, sometimes descending inside it. All were satisfied with the stability and strength of the work, and the thorough manner in which it was being executed. The conduit is nearly circular in form, and about eight feet in diameter.

Arriving at Baiseley's pond,¹⁰ the party inspected the place where the mastodon¹¹ was found, and walked over the extensive surface of the pond, from which six feet thickness of peat, the vegetable deposit of ages, had been excavated. The march from place to place on the area of the pond was effected on planks temporarily laid by the workmen; and when there was any doubt about the ground being hard, or the planks strong enough to support their weight, the portly form of Ex-Senator Smith was placed in the van; the rest being satisfied that he was an eminently safe man to follow, under such circumstances.

The Ex-Senator was the life of the jovial dinner party which afterwards assembled around Mr. Ryder's¹² hospitable board, at the Engineer's head quarters. His bon mots, his repartees, and above all, his history of the Smith family, of which he is so distinguished a member, and whose existence he traced back to the Creation itself—made his company as pleasant, as his subsequent conversation on city affairs was instructive. Could we reproduce those annals of the Smith family in a style half so felicitous as that which marked their narration, we would gladly do so: suffice it, however, to say that the Senator proved beyond a doubt that Adam was merely the given name of the First Man, and that Smith was the family appellation which he owned and transmitted to his descendants (or most of them).

After dinner, a drizzling rain commenced, and induced Commissioner Brevoort, more scientific and learned than weatherwise, to apprehend a deluge; hence he deserted his colleagues and drove home. With him was Mr. Everett,¹³ a son of the Great Orator, who, under the patronizing care of Mr. Brevoort, his father's friend, is studying practical engineering on the Water Works.

The remainder of the party proeeded to the furthest ponds, inspected them and the incomplete canal, and before returning home turned aside to the Reservoir, covering 28 acres, whose vast embankments are nearly completed.

Within the next three months the ponds will be cleaned, and conduit, reservoir and pump-wells will be completed. Then the setting up of two monster engines, of the size of those of the Collins and Cunard steamers, will supply the requisite power for lifting the water into the reservoir, by next Fall. Meanwhile a continuous row of 36 inch iron mains, coated with coal-tar and soldered together, will bring ten million gallons of water—the first of two equal instalments of the ultimate supply—from Cypress Hills through the principal streets in both districts, thence to be conveyed to every house. Contractors, Engineers and Commissioners concur in saying that October next is the month that will first witness this consummation, so devoutly to be wished.

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