498 JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
and Commonalty . . . Another advantage attending the bringing 
of this water to the town was its enabling the corporation to erect 
corn mills.” | 
The Panorama of Plymouth takes a more pronounced view : 
“To the munificence and enlightened exertions of our countryman, 
the renowned Sir Francois Drake, Plymouth is indebted for. a 
perennial and ample supply of fresh water. That enterprising 
navigator, whose versatile and commanding genius was the wonder 
of his contemporaries, conquering obstacles at that time deemed 
insurmountable, conducted the stream from the skirts of Dartmoor, 
by a circuitous course of twenty-four miles. The Act of Parliament 
for this purpose received the sanction of his royal mistress in the 
twenty-seventh year of her reign.” * . 
The Tourist’s Companion printed by Johns, of Dock, in 1823, 
follows the Picture ; and this is the case with the later edition of 
that work, to which the name of John Sandford is prefixed. 
R. Brindley, in his Directory, is the first of our local topo- 
graphical writers who seems to have suspected the truth, endorsed 
in the main by “ Perambulator,” but incapable of plain proof until 
the recovery of the missing book. He says the water “was con- 
ducted by the renowned circumnavigator of the globe, Sir Francis 
Drake, at the expense of the corporation, and not at that of the 
engineer, as has hitherto been asserted, he being remunerated for 
his services, and also receiving compensation for cutting through 
some portion of the ground which he possessed ; the same being 
made to other possessors through whose grounds the water flowed.” + 
Nettleton’s Guide{ simply says, ‘Plymouth is supplied with 
water by a rivulet or leat, which conducts from a source on 
Dartmoor, twenty-four miles distant. .. . This good work was 
effected pursuant to act of 27th of Elizabeth, by Sir Francis 
Drake ; and a contest has been for some time actively carried on 
between John Collier, Esq., M.p., and the Corporation, as to the 
right of the latter in the property of the water.” Without ex- 
pressing any opinion on the “merits of the arguments,” “the 
humble author of this humble book” remarks “that they have 
involved a decided case of ‘spirits and water’ occasionally con- 
ducive to moral inebriety.” 
* (Rev. S. Rowe), pp. 4,5. (1821.) f p. 12. (1830.) 
+ (G. Wightwick), p. 30. (1836.) 
