april — june, 1857.] Memoir on the Aden Reservoirs. 31 



A reference to Table A will show that tanks of the aggregate ca- 

 pacity of 3,538,715 imperial gallons have been completed at an ex- 

 penditure of 11,543 Rupees, in other words, that a permanent and 

 tolerably reliable water supply has been secured to Aden, at the rate 

 of five annas and three pies of original outlay, for a constant supply 

 of one hundred imperial gallons per annum. The best comment I can 

 offer on this is the fact, that at present, Government is paying to the 

 Haswah water contractor, one Rupee and twelve annas for every 

 hundred gallons of water supplied by him to the vessels of war in 

 the harbour and the various public departments located outside the 

 Main Pass, and the merchant vessels are paying nearly double that 

 price for worse water. 



It is much to be regretted that no regular register of the Pluvio- 

 meter has ever been kept in Aden ; but an imperfect series of me- 

 moranda exists in the records of the Jail, from which Table D has 

 been framed. 



The falls numbered 5 and 8 and the two unrecorded, in Septem- 

 ber 1853 and March 1854, would have sufficed to fill all the reser- 

 voirs in the Peninsula, and those numbered 1,12 and 18 would pro- 

 bably have given not less than 6,000,000 gallons each. Thus in 

 the course of five years the reservoirs would have been entirely fill- 

 ed four times, and about twenty million gallons of water would 

 have been collected in addition at intermediate periods, or calcu- 

 lating the entire contents of the reservoirs, when all shall have 

 been cleaned out and repaired, at twenty million gallons, we may 

 expect to have an annual supply of twenty million gallons, in ad- 

 dition to that afforded by the wells. 



This of course may be multiplied indefinitely by constructing 

 new reservoirs at Steamer Point and other localities where they do 

 not at present exist. 



The above is of course merely conjectural, the tanks have never 

 been filled, and it is impossible to frame any calculations regarding 

 them, with even approximate accuracy, but I trust that sufficient 

 has been shown, to remove any doubts as to the advisability of car- 

 rying on the work, and restoring all that have been discovered, the 

 more so as the expense cannot be very considerable. 



