8 



The Water Supply of Constantinople. 



parts of the city. But owing to the carelessness of the 

 Turks, and possibly to different notions of the best method 

 of disposing of the water, they may be said to be all of 

 them either in ruins or not used for the purpose for which 

 they were created. The location of them all is now known, 

 and can be pointed out. Some of them have been unroofed 

 (if they were ever covered), and converted into vegetable 

 gardens, or filled with houses; in one is a mosque. Into 

 others one can grope, as into the subterranean regions of 

 a palace in ruins. The most famous of these cisterns is 

 the Bin Mr direk, or Thousand and One Columns, which is 

 still complete in its outline. You descend from the street, 

 to the bottom of it, about fifty feet, and find a few score of 

 people, squalid and unhealthy, availing themselves of the 

 humidity of the atmosphere, to pursue their profession of 

 twisting silk. Its vaulted roof is supported by 224 marble 

 columns, symmetrically arranged, about twenty feet apart, 

 and seventy feet high ; one-third of their height being 

 buried in accumulations of earth. Grated openings have 

 been made in angles at the top to furnish a dim light. At 

 three points near the top maybe seen channels worn where 

 the water formerly ran in. It has been estimated to cover 

 an area of 20,000 square feet, and that it would have con- 

 tained 1,238,000 cubic feet of water, and would alone have 

 sufficed for the consumption of the city for fifteen days. 

 The pillars bear occasionally an inscription in Greek, Euge 

 Philoxene: Hail! stranger's friend ! 



Another cistern, the knowledge of which has been gained 

 and lost several times since the Mohammedan conquest, is 

 called the Yere Batan Serai, or the sunken or engulfed 

 palace, such is its vastness and the mystery with which the 

 perhaps fabulous reports of its extent cause it to be re- 

 garded. It is in the neighborhood of the Mosque of St. 

 Sophia, and was built by Constantine. It has also a vaulted 

 roof, and is supported, as far as examined, by 336 granite 



