Part 6

History repeats itself. The march of progress is onward, ever onward, but it moves in cycles. A center of civilization springs up, flourishes for a time then decays; and from the ashes of the perished civilization, phœnix-like, there springs a larger, grander, more enduring civilization. Nowhere in the cycle of progress is this more noticeable than in the history of sanitation. Centers of civilization, like Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and Carthage, arose to pre-eminence in sanitary matters, built sewers, constructed aqueducts and provided for the inhabitants magnificent baths the equal of which the world has never since seen. After the splendors of Carthage and Rome, darkness succeeded; a darkness from which we slowly emerged in the sixteenth century and are now speeding on to eclipse the sanitary splendors of even the old Roman empire.

In its broadest sense, a history of sanitation is a story of the world's struggle for an adequate supply of wholesome water, and its efforts to dispose of the resultant sewage without menace to health nor offence to the sense of sight or smell. In ancient as in modern times, water was the chief consideration of a community. Centers of population sprung up in localities where water was plentiful, and where for commercial, strategetic or other reasons, a city was built remote from a water course, great expenditures of labor and treasure were made constructing works to conduct water to the city from distant springs, lakes or water courses. Ruins—still standing—of some of those engineering works give us some idea of the magnitude of the water supply for ancient cities belonging to the Roman empire.

In the early days of primitive man, sanitation was among his least concerns. He obtained water from the most convenient source, and disposed of his sewage in the least laborious way. Those who lived in the vicinity of streams solved the problem by moving to the bank, where, like their more highly civilized descendants of to-day, they drew water from the up side of the stream and returned the sewage to the water to pollute and possibly contaminate it for their neighbors lower down.

Communities living remote from natural water courses soon learned the value of wells as a source of water supply. Many mentions of wells are made in the Book of Genesis, and it is affirmed by Blackstone that at that period wells were the cause of violent and frequent contention; that the exclusive property or title to a well appeared to be vested in the first digger or occupant, even in such places where the ground and herbage remained in common.

While this statement might be true of many instances, there can be no doubt that public wells were dug even in those remote times. Indeed, the first mention made of a well, in the Book of Genesis, would indicate that its waters were free to all. Abraham's oldest servant, Eliezer, had been entrusted with the duty of selecting a wife for Abraham's son, Isaac. The servant journeyed to the ancient city of Nahor, and there "he made his camels to kneel down without the city by a well of water at the time of the evening that women go out to draw water." And he said: "Behold, I stand here by the well of water; and the daughters of the men of the city come out to draw water, and let it come to pass that the damsel to whom I shall say, Let down thy pitcher, I pray thee, that I may drink; and she shall say, Drink, and I will give thy camel drink also; Let the same be she that Thou hast appointed for thy servant, Isaac. And it came to pass that Rebekah came out, and the damsel was very fair to look upon, and she went down to the well and filled her pitcher, and the servant said, Let me I pray thee drink a little water of thy pitcher. And she said, Drink, my lord, and when she had done giving him drink, she said, I will draw water for thy camel also. And she hastened to empty her pitcher in the trough and ran again unto the well to draw water for all the camels."

In Assyria and Persia from earliest times, water has been conveyed to towns from astonishing distances in open channels, and in Egypt, also in China, gigantic works for conveying water both for domestic use and for irrigation have been in existence from remote antiquity. In China, a knowledge of the art of well drilling has existed for centuries. Travelers speak of wells drilled by Chinese, centuries ago, to a depth of 1,500 feet.

In the valley of the Nile are many famous wells. Joseph's Well at Cairo, near the Pyramids, is perhaps the most famous of ancient wells. It is excavated in solid rock to a depth of 297 feet and consists of two stories or lifts. The upper shaft is 18 by 24 feet and 165 feet deep; the lower shaft is 9 by 15 feet and reaches to a further depth of 132 feet. Water is raised in two lifts by means of buckets on endless chains, those for the lower level being operated by mules in a chamber at the bottom of the upper shaft, to which access is had by means of a spiral stairway winding about the well.

In America, the use of wells as a means of water supply is of great antiquity, dating back to pre-historic races. In the United States, along the valley of the Mississippi, artificially walled wells have been found that are believed to have been built by a race of people who preceded the Indians. Primitive tribes that lived in the hills sometimes had their ingenuity taxed to provide a water supply. In the hills or mountains of Yucatan, at Santa Ana, in the Sierra de Yucatan, there exists a well of great antiquity that shows the difficulty under which the aborigines labored in their search for water. The well is located on the Rancho Chack. It is not known whether this well was constructed by hand labor or is one of the numerous caverns in the rock, fashioned by the boundless forces of nature, and with which the hills abound. Water is reached after descending by ladder a distance of over 100 feet and traversing a passage 2,700 feet long or about half a mile in length. The rocky sides of the tunnel are worn smooth by the friction of clothes or bodies brushing against the surface, and the roof of the tunnel is black from soot and smoke from countless torches that have lighted water bearers to the spot where a pool of clear, lukewarm water bars the passage. How many centuries this little subterranean pool has supplied water to the natives of this region there is no means of ascertaining. The well is used at the present time, and perhaps when Carthage was a village, Rome a wilderness, and Christianity unthought of, this little pool of water hidden in the bowels of the earth and accessible only after traversing a dark, slippery, perilous passage, was to the Indians of that locality what the old oaken bucket was to the New England villagers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

GREEK PEASANTS WASHING CLOTHES

From Stereograph, copyright 1908 by Underwood & Underwood, N. Y.

(See page iv)]

SYNOPSIS OF CHAPTER. Cisterns—Early Mention of Cisterns—Cisterns of Carthage—Early Methods of Raising Water—Water Carriers—Pool of Siloam—Pool of Solomon—Aqueducts—Carthagenian Aqueduct—Aqueducts of Rome—Aqueducts of Segovia, Spain—Trophies of Marius.

The storage of water in cisterns or reservoirs is by no means a modern practice. The earliest tribes of whom we have any traditions or records resorted to this method for providing a supply of water. In xi Kings, 18-31, the first mention is made of cisterns in "Drink ye every one the water of his cistern." The methods employed by the ancients to construct cisterns must have been laborious and unsatisfactory. Cement at that time was unknown and bricks were not made, so that the modern cistern, as we know it, could not have existed. No doubt in some localities where clay was plentiful the cisterns were scooped out of the earth and puddled with clay, just as many reservoirs of to-day are made. This method of constructing a cistern, however, would limit the form to a cup-shaped affair, which would be very difficult to roof over. If the cisterns were not covered, as much water might be lost by evaporation as would be used by the inhabitants, so that at its best a clay-puddled cistern must have been an unsatisfactory affair. In the locality of mountains and quarries, cisterns were hewn out of the solid rock. "They have forsaken me the fountain of living waters and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water."—Jer. 2-3. Rock-hewn cisterns must have made ideal storage reservoirs for water. The darkness of the cavern would prevent the growth of vegetation, while the thick walls of rock, affording a shelter from the sun, would keep the water cool and refreshing.

It is worthy of noting here that the ancients seem to have been aware of the movement of ground water through the soil, a fact that was forgotten and rediscovered in comparatively recent times. In Prov. 5-15 the statement, "Drink waters out of thine own cistern and running waters out of thine own well," would lead to this conclusion, unless, indeed, they classed a bubbling spring as a well.

The earliest known cistern or reservoir of which we have any authentic knowledge are the masonry cisterns or reservoirs that stored water for the supply of the ancient city of Carthage. These cisterns, which are wonderfully well preserved, are still to be seen on the site of the ancient Punic city, but outside of what was the walled city, before it was totally destroyed by the Romans.

These cisterns were originally covered with earth, and it is due to that fact, perhaps, that they escaped destruction when the Romans razed the city. It is easy to criticise the judgment of others, and no doubt if all the facts were known, there were good and sufficient reasons why the Roman general did not destroy the cisterns and cut off the supply of water from Carthage during the siege of that city. But in the light of our present knowledge of warfare, when a water supply is considered a vulnerable point, most carefully guarded by the besieged, and the point of most furious attack by the besiegers, when the fall of the city is considered almost accomplished when its water supply is taken, it seems an oversight on the part of the Romans not to have discovered and destroyed the cisterns, particularly as the destruction of everything in the city and environs was their mission at Carthage. It is an oversight, however, for which we may be thankful, since it preserved for future times an interesting engineering work of great magnitude for that period.

The cisterns of Carthage are eighteen in number, and each 100 feet long, 20 feet wide and nearly 20 feet deep. They lie in two long parallel rows and empty into a common gallery situated between the rows. From this center collecting gallery the water was delivered through conduits direct to the city of Carthage.

The earliest method of raising water from a well, cistern or other source of supply was by hand. This method, however, was laborious and unsatisfactory, particularly when necessary to raise large quantities of water for irrigation purposes, or to supply the inhabitants of a community at a great distance or high elevation, and it was not long before the mechanical ingenuity of our ancestors devised means for transferring this arduous duty to oxen, asses or other beasts of burden. Sometimes, as in the case of the Romans, this work is made a penal punishment, and persons found guilty of certain offenses were sentenced to the water-wheel.

About the earliest known device for raising small quantities of water was the pole and bucket, which was commonly employed in Italy, Greece and Egypt. The great antiquity of this method of raising water is proved by representations of it in Egyptian paintings. It consisted of a bucket attached to a pole that was suspended by trunnions so located that when the bucket was filled with water the thick end of the pole would just balance the combined weight of bucket and water. This permitted its use for many hours at a time, when raising water for irrigation without greatly fatiguing the operator.

The most ingenious and highly involved form of ancient water-raising machine was a water-wheel. The method of operating a water-wheel depended much on the region where used. In Egypt, along the Nile, oxen were employed for this purpose. In China, coolies were found more satisfactory even in raising large quantities of water for irrigation purposes, which they did by walking a simple form of treadmill on the outer edges of the water-wheel. The Romans, slow at originating, but, like the Japanese, quick to recognize the value of anything new and adapt it to their purposes, borrowed the idea of the water-wheel from the Greeks or Egyptians, but made it automatic when used in streams and rivers by adding paddles that dipped into the running water and were moved by the current of the stream. Water-wheels operated by oxen were in use at Cairo up to the twelfth century, where they raised water vertically a distance of 80 feet from the Nile to an aqueduct that supplied the citadel of Cairo.

Our present elaborate system of water distribution was of humble origin. It was not a rapid growth, but a gradual evolution. Its four principal stages were: First, distribution from natural sources by water carriers; second, aqueducts conveying water to communities where a system of sub-conduits or aqueducts conveyed the water from the main aqueduct to reservoirs at different points in a city; third, a system of distributing mains through which water was furnished to householders at certain hours only during the day; and fourth, our present system of continuous supply at all hours of the day and night. In the first stages of water distribution, water was carried on the backs of water carriers in earthenware jars constructed especially for the purpose, or in goat or other animal skins properly tanned and sewed to hold water. While this method of water distribution is of great antiquity, it is still practiced in most tropical countries, and to this day water carriers, some with the burdens on their backs, others with goatskins of water on donkeys' backs or with jars of water in two-wheeled carts, may be seen plying their trade in Mexican and Egyptian cities.

The earliest record we have of any effort to supply a community with water conveyed in tunnels or aqueducts from a great distance, dates from the year 727 B. C. King Hezekiah or Ezekias, who reigned in Jerusalem at that time, was much troubled over the poor quality of water furnished to the city and undertook to provide a better supply.

He had built at the gates of the city a vast reservoir, the "Pool of Siloam," but when it was completed, found that a sufficient quantity of water could not be had without conveying it from a distant source on the easterly side of a range of hills of solid rock, over which it would be impossible to convey it. In no way daunted he set to work to pierce the hills with a tunnel or aqueduct, capable of supplying the city with water. Work was commenced simultaneously at both ends of the tunnel and progressed uninterruptedly until the workmen met in the center under the mountain or hill. An inscription in old Hebrew characters, found close to Jerusalem and preserved in the Constantinople Museum, throws some interesting light on this, for that period, remarkable engineering work. Translated, the inscription reads: "The piercing is terminated. When the pick of one had not yet struck against the pick of the other, and while there was yet a distance of 3 ells, it was possible to hear the voice of one man calling to another across the rock separating them, and the last day of the piercing, the miner's pick met against pick. The height of rock above the heads of the miners was 100 ells. Then the water flowed into the reservoir over a length of 1,200 ells." This tunnel was cut through a mountain of solid rock. The tunnel varied in dimensions from ⅝ of a yard to a yard in width, and from 1 to 3 yards in height, according to the hardness of the rock.

The magnitude of this undertaking can be realized only when it is considered that the tunnel was constructed without the aid of blasting agents, machine drills, steam, electricity or any of the great forces or devices now controlled by man and used in modern engineering construction.

At a later period in the world's history, Roman engineers, tunneling through the rock, used fire as well as chisels to disintegrate the rock. The usual method of procedure was to build an intensely hot fire against the rock, and when the rock had been heated to the right temperature it was drenched with cold water to crack and disintegrate it. According to Pliny, vinegar was sometimes used instead of water, under the impression that it was more effective in disintegrating rock.

It is doubtful if this method was used in constructing the tunnel at Jerusalem. In fact it can be stated with considerable assurance that the entire tunnel was cut by drilling and chiseling, as the tool marks are plainly discernible. It further is evident that, as stated in the tablet found near Jerusalem, the tunnel was worked from both ends until the miners met in the center. This is evidenced by the direction of the tool marks, which plainly show that the cutting on each side of the center was done in different directions.

Prior to the construction of the tunnel, the ancient city of Jerusalem was supplied with water through two aqueducts, one of which supplied water from the famous pools of Solomon, to the south of the city, and the other poured its contents into the pools of Hezekiah, outside the walls of the city.

The Greeks were the next in point of time to construct tunnels in connection with the building of aqueducts. In 625 B. C. the Greek engineer Eupalinus constructed a tunnel 8 feet broad by 8 feet high and 4,200 feet long, through which was built a channel to supply the city of Athens with water.