HAMBURG: GENERAL IMPRESSION'S 65 



happen, however, most cellars of the old city become 

 uninhabitable, and one sees every portable piece of prop- 

 erty piled up along the sidewalks, all of which is but the 

 work of a few minutes, as the second and third alarm, 

 suffices to put the cellar-dwellers on their guard. The 

 Bight, particularly when it happens at night time, is often 

 heartrending; imagine distracted citizens, sick or well, 

 old or young, with babies in arms, driven into the street 

 during an icy winter night. Fortunately, even this con- 

 dition is looked upon by the long-suffering people as an 

 unavoidable evil, and is therefore taken philosophically. 

 These floods, aside from the great inconveniences just 

 described, leave always an army of rats and other unwel- 

 come guests behind, with which all seaports are more 

 or less infested. 



Fire and water remind me of an extremely practical 

 though very expensive arrangement. Here and there the 

 visitor observes in the middle of the street a funnel- 

 shaped opening about three feet in diameter, which leads 

 into an immense out-fall sewer, the building of which 

 has cost the city millions of marks. These sewer chan- 

 nels are six feet deep and four feet wide and form a well- 

 laid sewer system, extending throughout the city, having 

 for its only object the removal of sewage from the houses 

 and streets to the Elbe. This system was introduced by 

 an English engineer shortly after the conflagration of 

 1842. An obstruction of this sewer has never occurred 

 so far, and strange as it may seem, the city has never had 

 a cent's worth of repairs on this sewer since the opening 

 nearly ten years ago. The cause may be found in the 

 spacious and solidly built channels, which are thoroughly 

 cleaned by flushing, at least once a month. This clean- 

 ing is done by opening a single water gate of the Outer- 

 Alster, whereupon the water rushes with a thundering 

 roar into the subterraneous tunnel-like conduits, remov- 

 ing thereby every particle of garbage and refuse in a 

 very few hours, as if thousands of shovels and brooms 

 had been at work. To give you a more exact estimate of 

 the power with which the water removes all sewage, the 



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