10 The Water Supply of Constantinople. 



takings in architecture were almost entirely religious or 

 commercial. Although they have suffered these cisterns 

 to be disused or ruined, they might some of them be con- 

 verted to their original purpose. The ground on which the 

 houses stand has been gradually raised by the debris of 

 four centuries, and in digging for the foundations of 

 modern edifices, accidents occasionally reveal crushed 

 cisterns of greater or less extent. 



The large use of the public water for public fountains 

 appears to be the Turkish substitute for the public cistern. 

 The word fountain as employed in Turkey never suggests 

 the mere use of water in an ornamental jet d'eau. It refers 

 to the place where the water carrier or the people may go, 

 and by means of a faucet draw water for themselves, im- 

 mediately closing the faucet. The structure over and 

 around the pipes may be the most costly, of the richest 

 stones and covered with gilding, so that one is astonished 

 at its elaborateness and magnificence, yet no water is freely 

 flowing, except when some one is waiting with a vessel to 

 be filled. The fountain is but a public pump. 



Some of the fountains, especially in the Christian quar- 

 ters, are as plain as it is possible for stonework to be made. 

 In the Mohammedan quarters they are very numerous, 

 because there is no pious work in which a rich man so 

 readily engages as the construction of a fountain, which 

 bears his name inscribed in poetical lines, for the benefit 

 of the people of his quarter, although the water is drawn 

 from the public aqueducts. 



The water-carriers are under the control of the water 

 superintendent, and receive a fixed and moderate price for 

 each skin of water which they empty at your house. 

 Twenty years since it was not more than a penny, or a 

 penny and^ a half according to the distance for the ten 

 gallons of water the skin would hold ; the water itself is 

 public and free without tax of any kind. In my own house 



