IN AND ABOUT THE CITY. 
culture of grapes, under Spanish 
rule grape growing was prohibited 
because it would interfere with 
the home industry, just as in the 
seventeenth century tobacco grow¬ 
ing was not permitted in Ireland 
because it would conflict with the 
tobacco interests of the infant 
colony of Virginia. Drunkenness 
is rarely observable in Havana. 
Havana draws its water supply 
from the springs of the Almen- 
dares River at Vento, nine miles 
south of the city. There is here a 
group of 400 springs which are 
inclosed by a heavy wall of 
masonry, 60 feet high and 250 feet 
wide at the top. The water is car¬ 
ried under the river in an in- 
Vegetables. verted siphon consisting of two 
heavy iron pipes in a masonry tun¬ 
nel, and thence flows by gravity in an underground aqueduct six miles to 
the Palatino Reservoir in the suburbs of Cerro, and from the reservoir is 
distributed through the city, and 
to Regia, Casa Blanca and 
Cabana across the bay. The daily 
supply is 40,000,000 gallons of 
pure water, which is free from all 
organic matter, but is somewhat 
hard because of the limestone in 
solution. The aqueduct, con¬ 
structed at a cost of $5,030,000, is 
named after Albear, the distin¬ 
guished Cuban engineer, who 
planned and built it, and to whose 
memory there is a monument in 
Monserrate Plaza. (Page 52.) 
Before the . construction of the 
Albear Aqueduct, the water was 
brought through an open ditch, 
which succeeded another open 
ditch, or Zanja, which was built 
in 1592, so that for 300 years 
Havana has received its abundant lechero — milkman. 
