2 



The Water Supply of Constantinople. 



Constantinople is built on the rocky heights of seven hills 

 on the north shore of the sea of Marmora, and just west of 

 where the Bosphorus strait opens into that sea from the 

 Black sea. The distance between the Black sea on the 

 north and the Marmora on the south, is not more than 

 twenty miles, for a distance of thirty miles from the Bos- 

 phorus towards the west. The general height of the table- 

 land in the vicinity of Constantinople is about 150 to 200 

 feet, which is intersected with valleys, where are still, or 

 have been small streams. 



Down to the northern shore of the Bosphorus, from the 

 west, comes a spur of the Hoemus or Balkan range of 

 mountains, its water-shed to the north and south being at 

 a distance of five or six miles from the Black sea, and 

 fourteen miles from the city. Nearly all the artificial ponds 

 for the aqueduct water supply of Constantinople are close 

 upon the south side of this range of hills, the highest point 

 of which may be about 770 feet. This region is commonly 

 called the forests of Belgrade, and has acquired a pro- 

 minence in English literature on account of the letters 

 written from the village of that name by Lady Mary 

 Wort ley Montague, while residing there in 1717. A vast 

 quantity of moisture in the form of snow and rain falls in 

 this region during the winter season, which naturally 

 collects in the ravines, in two small streams, that finally 

 becoming one, empty into the harbor of the city, the Golden 

 Horn. 



When, in the year 330, Constantine the Great came to 

 Byzantium, and founded New Kome, which the Greeks 

 preferred to call Constantinople, in addition to the one hill 

 of Byzantium, he enclosed six contiguous hills ; and re- 

 calling the unsurpassed length and grandeur of the aque- 

 ducts of old Home, and stimulated by an ambition full of 

 reminiscences of its magnificence, he commenced imme- 

 diately on the same imperial scale with all his expenditures, 



