sunk at Amwell, Cheshunt, Hampstead-road,
and Hampstead Heath; the Cheshunt reservoirs;
seven ponds at Highgate; and seven
ponds at Hampstead; from which an unfiltered
supply is drawn by a separate system of mains
for street watering and like purposes; and the
river Lea at Hertford, which now feeds it with
the greatest proportion of the water it conveys
through London. Its reservoirs, to maintain a
stock in hand, are very large and numerous.
There are the store and settling reservoirs,
consisting of the old river channel, twenty-eight
miles long, and perhaps about five yards broad,
which has a capacity to store about one hundred
and seventeen millions of gallons, or about a
day's supply for all London; two reservoirs at
Cheshunt, which can store about seventy-five
and a half millions of gallons; another reservoir
at Hornsey, capable of holding thirty-nine
millions of gallons; two more at Stoke Newington,
formed in 1833, capable of holding one
hundred and thirty millions of gallons; and the
ancient "round pond"—the one original reservoir
—at the New River Head, which contains
at least two millions one hundred and sixty-two
thousand gallons.

The reservoirs at Stoke Newington are like
two vast inland lakes, and their stone-piled
borders look like a rocky sea-shore. The engine-
house is built to resemble a fortress, and the
water, instead of being pumped up pipes that
are like gigantic upright trombones, to reach an
artificial level, and so supply a point several
hundred feet higher than the reservoirs, is
forced by the most fearful Cornish engines ever
made, up into a turret of a watch-tower. Everything
has been done to make the artificial look
as picturesque as possible; but still the old river
channel at the side, with its grassy banks, its
overhanging willows, its patient anglers, and
the accumulated sentiment of two centuries and
a half, is the stream that flows the most readily
into our hearts. There is as much difference
between the two, as between an ancient footway
across the fields, worn into breadth and
distinctness by the footsteps of generation after
generation, and a new, straight thoroughfare,
plastered on each side with stucco, full of right
angles, and stamped at every corner with traces
of the compass and the rule.

The New River Company, which now includes
the old London-bridge Water Company and the
older Hampstead Water Company, has eight
more store reservoirs for filtered water at
different parts of its works, capable of storing
about twenty-three and a half millions of
gallons. All these reservoirs are covered, with the
exception of one at Hornsey, which is exempted
on account of its distance from town. The
company has eleven filtering beds—three at Hornsey,
five at Stoke Newington, and three at the New
River Head—possessing a joint sand area of
nine and a half acres, and capable of storing
eleven millions one hundred and sixty-three
thousand gallons. The filtering medium is five
feet in thickness, two of which consist of sand,
and the rest of gravel in layers increasing in
coarseness towards the bottom. Besides these
store chambers, it has further storage for water
supplied for purposes not requiring filtration,
in ponds, before alluded to, at Hampstead
and Highgate, which hold about sixty-seven
millions of gallons, and one reservoir at Camden-
square which holds about two millions of gallons.
Summed up roughly, this storage amounts to
forty-one reservoirs, counting the river channel
as one, having together an area of two hundred
and fifteen acres, and holding four hundred and
sixty-seven millions of gallons, or water equal to
supply the company's district for eighteen days.

There are ten engine stations at different
points of the works, having eighteen engines,
possessing together about sixteen hundred
horses' power; of which, one thousand is at
the Green-lanes pumping-station—the castle
just described. Besides this, there are several
large water-wheels; and the engines and wheels
are arranged for the working of fifty-one pumps.

The daily* delivery of water by this machinery
is now about twenty-five millions of
gallons—nearly one-third of the water supply—or
something like nine thousand millions of gallons
annually. Of this yearly quantity, three
hundred and fifty millions of gallons is consumed
by trades; forty-five millions and a half gallons
for flushing sewers, and other sanitary
purposes; fifteen millions of gallons for fires;
ninety millions of gallons for street watering;
and about eight thousand five hundred millions
of gallons for domestic service.

* The phrase "daily" concerning all the water
companies' supplies, means six days a week. The
Sunday supply is always much smaller.

The company's town district has an area of
about seventeen square miles; about one
hundred and eight thousand houses are supplied;
and the highest point to which the water is sent
is at Hampstead—four hundred and fifty-four
feet above Trinity high-water mark. No water is
now drawn from the Thames by this company.

The distribution of this endless stream is
made by about six hundred miles of cast-iron
pipes, varying in diameter from four feet to
three inches; and the tenants' communication
lead pipes, which branch out from the mains,
must have a joint length of at least fifteen
hundred miles. To these underground tubes we
must now add about a mile of broad iron tunnel,
which has sucked up the New River channel
from Sadler's Wells Theatre to the Lower-road,
Islington, burying it from the public gaze as an
extinct town river, after an honoured existence
of two hundred and fifty years.

In all these iron pipes there are about four
thousand five hundred sluice cocks, of diameters
varying from three inches to four feet; and
about eleven thousand fire-plugs, which have
been fixed and are maintained at the company's
cost. Water is annually supplied gratuitously
to more than a thousand fires, and about one
hundred pounds is annually paid by the
company in rewards to persons who are first to call
turncocks to fires. The capital of this enterprise
is now nearly two millions and a half