106 Mr. John H. Balfour Broivne [March 17, 



in France, which was bad in design and faulty in construction, gave 

 way with the pressure of 1^ tons to the square foot. 



On January 13 of this year a dam of a reservoir containing 

 250,000 cubic metres of water, which belonged to the Huelva Copper 

 and Sulphur Company, Spain, owing, it is said, to a hidden spring 

 under the masonry, gave way, and eleven people were drowned. That 

 is near to-day, and affects us like a new wound. But even if none 

 of us have memories which go back to 1849, tradition has told us 

 of the bursting of the Bradfield Reservoir, which drowned the town 

 of Sheffield, and put the country round for a distance of 12 or 14 

 miles under water. In that catastrophe 250 lives were lost, and 

 property was destroyed to the extent of £827,000 in value. The 

 Holmfirth Reservoir, which bad an embankment 90 ft. high and 

 150 yards long, after heavy rains burst in 1854, and 100 people were 

 drowned in that night, and property valued at £600,000 was destroyed. 

 In most of these cases, however, the calamity can be traced to the 

 defective engineering skill which went to the construction, or subse- 

 quent carelessness in the maintenance. But many engineers would 

 tell you that they have sleepless nights when one of these great 

 cauldrons are filling with water for the first time — and people in the 

 valleys below may well hold their breath until the stability of these 

 great walls has been proved. In the case of the Bradfield Reservoir 

 the burst reservoir filled the Don Valley with a mad flood. In the 

 town of Sheffield the water rose to the height of the roofs of low 

 buildings. Dead cattle were carried down by the waters, and in some 

 cases deposited on house-tops, and as in the days of Horace " fishes 

 roosted in elms." One incident of that great calamity is not un- 

 interesting. "When the flood was at its highest an old box-cradle 

 came sailing on the dirty waters, and in it there was an infant safe 

 asleep. No one claimed the little Noah, or his ark ; no one knew 

 what had become of its father or mother, although it was assumed 

 that they and all who knew the new comer, Avere amongst that 250 

 dead. The parish had to adopt the foundling, and with a sense of 

 propriety which is rare in parish authorities, they had the boy 

 christened John Flood. 



The dam on the diagram is shown at B, and the impounded water 

 in the reservoir C. The water there stored in the supposed case has 

 to supply the town, which the artist has indicated by a church spire, 

 but has also to supply what is called the compensation water to the 

 stream R. Before the reservoir was formed, the riparian owners had 

 all the water that fell on the gathering ground A passing their land. 

 Now, however, that the reservoir is there, the greater part of the 

 water is to be carried away in pipes and supplied to the towns. The 

 Waterworks Clauses Act, 1847, seemed to contemplate the compensa- 

 tion of any person who was injured by the construction of the works, 

 by which the water was diverted, in money ; but it has been found 

 more convenient to compensate them in water. The arrangement 



