Writ in Water : A Journey of Discovery 9783838272443

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Nina Selbst

Writ in Water

A Journey of Discovery

Note on the Title Twenty-four years old and dying of consumption, the poet John Keats spent the last months of his life in Rome in lodgings overlooking the Spanish Steps. From his window he had a view of the La Barcaccia Fountain in the square at the foot of the steps. This was a battered bronze boat that spouted water from its many holes and seemed about to sink beneath the sea without trace. Perhaps it was this sight that inspired the anguished epitaph he wrote for himself:

My life is writ in water Yet water leaves its indelible stamp everywhere. No poetry, no human life, indeed no life at all, would exist on earth were it not for the presence of water. This book is a series of variations on the theme that what is writ in water is not ephemeral, but an enduring part of the human experience.

Fig. 1:

Source: Giovanni Battista Piranesi | Public Domain

A Seventeenth Century view of the la Barcaccia Fountain

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Nina Selbst

WRIT IN WATER A Journey of Discovery

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. Cover picture: The Lovely Arab Maiden (1890). From Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA) | https://hdl.handle.net/1911/21414 | The image is subject to the license terms of Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Generic (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/). First edition copyright © 2015; licensed from eBookPro Publishing (www.ebook-pro.com). Images marked CC0 1.0 on pages 174 and 266 are subject to the license terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en). Images marked CC BY 2.0 on pages xx, xxiii, xxiv and 120 are subject to the license terms of Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/). Images marked CC BY-SA 2.0 on pages xxxvi, 251, 259 and 269 are subject to the license terms of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/bysa/2.0/) The image marked CC BY-SA 2.5 on page 104 is subject to the license terms of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 Generic (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/deed.en). The image marked CC BY 3.0 on page xxxiv is subject to the license terms of Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en). Images marked CC BY-SA 3.0 on pages xv, xviii, xix, xxix, xxxii, xxxv, 9, 88, 97, 111 and 308 are subject to the license terms of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en). Images marked CC BY-SA 4.0 on pages xi, xvii, xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxvii, xxviii, xxx, xxxi, 11, 76, 77, 83, 103, 110, 111, 173, 222, 232, 309, 311, 317, 318, 319 and 327 are subject to the license terms of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ deed.en).

ISBN-13: 978-3-8382-244- © ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart 2020 Alle Rechte vorbehalten Das Werk einschließlich aller seiner Teile ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung außerhalb der engen Grenzen des Urheberrechtsgesetzes ist ohne Zustimmung des Verlages unzulässig und strafbar. Dies gilt insbesondere für Vervielfältigungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und elektronische Speicherformen sowie die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen Systemen. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

In memory of my parents Betty and Joseph Herbstein my husband Yak my brothers Frank and David

For Yoram and Dafna, Talya and Rami, Amitai and Nurit, For Hadas and Uri, Tamar and Ori, Mayanne, Ella and Asa, Gye, Stav, Dotan and Omer, Nadav, Nuri and Amit

Preface This book is a report on a journey of discovery. Most of my working life was spent as an economist and civil servant in the field of water management. When, on retirement, I was freed from dealing with work-a-day problems, I set off on a private search for a rather broader perspective on the human experience and quite naturally started out from the familiar. I have wandered far and wide on a meandering journey, like that of water itself. I have explored the interface between humankind and this deceptively bland, colorless, tasteless and odorless substance. I have delved into creation myths; looked at the emergence of civilizations and their decay; pondered the place of water in the human psyche, as expressed in art and poetry and folklore; considered its role as a factor of production, a source of energy, a conduit of transportation and a consumer good. In passing, my attention has been caught by wishing wells and water closets, changing concepts of physical and spiritual cleanliness, and a miscellany of comic and curious trivia. And I have turned to the natural sciences in search of answers to the question why this one simple substance should have such an all-pervading influence on our lives. The book has no pretensions to being an academic work. Lacking the tools to deal more than superficially with most of the subjects touched upon, I turned to the insights and scholarship of others for help. This will be abundantly clear to anyone glancing at the quotations that grace the text, or browsing through the bibliography and endnotes. I have done my best fully to acknowledge my indebtedness to others and if I have failed anywhere I take this opportunity of apologizing most sincerely. Errors of interpretation are of course entirely my own. In summary, this is a monothematic essay, a look at the world through one lens—the rippling, complex lens of water. One can catch glimpses of other perspectives on the human story, with emphasis on economics, politics, religion, ideologies, cataclysms and so on. While these have added color to my central topic, they have not diverted me from it. The one claim this essay may have to merit or originality is that it highlights and illuminates the amazing variety and diversity of the interactions between water and humanity. Perhaps it may contribute a little to restoring a sense of wonder at this elixir of life in the exploding number of city dwellers, who give it scant attention as long as it flows from their taps; and to a heightened caution in harnessing it for short-term material benefits, with cavalier disregard for the unpredictable consequences for generations to come.

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Preface to the Second Edition At the beginning of the first edition of Writ in Water, I posed a question to myself: What better place to start this journey of exploration of the multiple links between water and humanity than at the very beginning? I responded to my own question by devoting the first three chapters of the book to the many stories of the creation of the world that peoples have told themselves, somehow always placing water at the center of their tales. On reconsideration I have come to feel that something was lacking in the choice of this starting place and that there was a call to peer deeper into the past. The setting for this book, the last ten thousand years or so from the earliest flickers of civilization to the present day, are a mere nanosecond in the history of our planet. To even begin to understand the environment in which homo sapiens emerged, the ambience in which the actions and passions touched on in this book came into play, one needs to dig deeper and take at least a passing glimpse at the endless twists and turns that have shaped the earth and its inhabitants. Hence this prologue.

Prologue: Setting the Stage Planet Earth is commonly portrayed as a sphere of four concentric layers. Moving from the center of the earth outwards they are the inner and outer cores, the mantle and the crust. Apart from their positioning, these layers differ from one another in their thickness, their temperature and their physical and chemical composition.

Source: United States Government | Public Domain

1=crust (oceanic and continental); 2=mantle; 3=core(outer and inner); 6=outer core; 7=inner core

Fig. i:

Cross Section of the Earth

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The core of the planet is made up predominantly of metals, mostly iron and nickel. It is rendered dense and tightly packed by the enormous pressure exerted on it from above. The inner core is solid, while the outer core is kept fluid by the heat generated by the breakdown of radioactive elements in the inner core and carried upward by convection currents. The mantle above the core is solid rock, composed mostly of silicate minerals rich in iron and magnesium. Its high temperature comes from two sources. One is conduction, whereby heat is drawn from the core by the collision of atoms moving at very high speeds. It takes place only in solids. The other is convection whereby heat is circulated within the mantle by currents of gases and liquids moving through the spaces in the rocks. The crust is the thin, uneven, cold, cracked and brittle shell that covers the surface of the earth. It is made up of a mixture of igneous, metamorphic and sedimentary rocks. Great oceans cover part of the crust. The rest is dry land exposed to the atmosphere. Measured from the peaks of the highest mountains it may be as much as sixty kilometers thick. Measured from the deepest trenches of the ocean, it diminishes to no more than three or four kilometers. Geographically it is the continental crust where nearly all the goings on described in this book take place but it is constantly receiving reminders of its connections to the layers beneath and the universe above. It is subject to stresses and strains that keep it in a state of flux. It is affected by processes going on in the depths of the earth, by the gravitational pull of the moon as it circles the earth and by random cataclysmic events originating in outer space. The interplay of these forces shifts and tilts and folds enormous blocks of rock. It forces molten lava upwards from the mantle. It sends earthquakes to fracture the rock and build up high mountain ranges, and erosion and gravity to work in the opposite direction. Water acts on the restless crust as a great leveller. Rain, turned slightly acid by carbon dioxide and oxygen accumulated in its passage through the atmosphere, falls on mountains and hills and dissolves minerals. Raindrops hitting exposed rock surfaces dislodge tiny fragments of loose material. The water, powered by gravity, moves downwards carrying this material with it. Trickles join together and grow into streams. Streams gain momentum and move larger and larger aggregates of material—always downwards. Hard rocks such as granite are resistant to the process and it may take a million years to wear down a granite hill. Softer rocks, such as sandstone and shale are more easily torn apart. Clay that becomes slippery when impregnated with water from heavy rains may slither downhill in veritable landslides. Water seeking the path of least resistance on its downward journey penetrates cracks and fissures in the rocks. When it freezes at the sub-zero temperatures of high altitudes it expands and increases in bulk by about eleven per cent, generating sufficient force to burst apart great boulders, increasing the exposed surface area of the rock and accelerating erosion. Left to themselves for a long enough time, many millions of years, water and gravity would grind the crust of the earth down to a uniform, level surface. This of course has never happened for there is no surcease. Over x

Prologue

many eons great mountain ranges have been raised up and worn down, great depressions formed and filled with decayed rock or water. Sculpting the landscape as it erodes the land, water creates rivers and waterfalls and lakes. These features of the landscape provide much of the scenic grandeur that has stirred human hearts and piqued curiosity, challenging some to undertake daring expeditions into the unknown, following the courses of great rivers like the Columbia and the Amazon, searching for the sources of the Nile and the Niger; others to frivolous and dangerous displays of machismo, like crossing the Niagara river on a tightrope or going over the Niagara Falls in a barrel. None of these natural features of our planet are ever at rest. They come into being, develop and decay.

Rivers Rivers begin and end their lives in the ocean but between these two extremes their waters follow chequered paths. The heat of the sun causes water to evaporate from the oceans and rise into the atmosphere. Wind carries the water vapor inland. It cools and condenses, forms clouds and falls to earth as rain and snow. Rainfall that hits the highlands, and melting snow, flow downhill. Economising on energy use it seeks out paths of least resistance, follows convenient cracks and folds in the rock. Where it traverses soft rock, it cuts deep gorges. Where it comes up against hard rock formations it flows over or skirts around them. It seldom travels the shortest distance between two points. As it progresses on its way, runnels and rivulets join together to form brooks and streams and then full-fledged rivers containing waters from a hundred brooks and a thousand little springs, drained from a thousand square miles of land.

Fig. ii:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Krzysztof Golik/CC BY-SA 4.0

The Aveyron River at Source xi

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What is visible to the eye is only a small part of the story. Surface flow is not the main source of water feeding rivers. In most climatic zones there are seasons without rainfall or melting snow to replenish them and yet most continue to flow throughout the year. They are nourished through their banks by a great reservoir of groundwater, stored in the spaces between grains of sand and soil, and in fissures in the rock. Built up over time by percolation from the surface, this stock of water in the underground strata is paid out slowly over long periods, acting as a regulating mechanism. It also provides a quality bonus. Unlike the surface flow that, on its turbulent course, picks up and carries along large quantities of mud and debris, the groundwater is free of suspended matter and is either crystal clear or slightly coloured by dissolved minerals Rivers are in constant flux. Their behavior varies, not only over their courses from source to sea but also over time. They have long and checkered histories, responding to the play of natural forces and, more recently and to an increasing extent, to human intervention. The idioms used to describe this behavior even in serious geological texts have a distinctly anthropomorphic flavour. The juvenile river is fast-flowing with a steep gradient, twisting and turning and carrying with it a lot of suspended material which scours its bed and helps to cut deeper and deeper into its valley. Frequently it will have stretches of rapids and waterfalls. Often it is one of a system of adjacent streams in competition with one another. Eventually the most energetic of them, with the strongest flow, or perhaps one that has managed to cut deepest into its valley, will eventually capture the others and turn them into tributaries. Over time the juvenile river matures. Down-cutting reduces its gradient. Erosion of its banks, by drainage and the action of the roots of plants and trees, widens its bed. These processes slow down its rate of flow and its progress becomes more leisurely. The number of its tributaries increases. At every slight bend in its course, the faster flowing current on the concave side of the curve cuts into the bank and scours it away. The slowing down of the current on the convex side leads to precipitation of suspended matter onto the stream bed, extending and reinforcing the bank on that side. For most of the year the typical mature river meanders rather sedately across a shallow valley. In the wet season, with its flattened bed, it may burst its low banks and flood the surrounding countryside. As its existing channel silts up, it may even abandon it altogether and cut an entirely new one. With aging the path of the river meanders more and more. Sometimes it may even backtrack on itself and rejoin its own bed, creating an oxbow lake on the way.

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Fig. iii:

Source: USDA/FSA Aerial Photography Field Office | Public Domain

Oxbow Lakes Red River

Approaching the ocean, the rivers flows lethargically. How their journeys end is determined by the nature of the coastline. Where coastlines are stable or rising, the rivers penetrate seawards and deltas may form. These appear at the mouths of rivers that carry heavy loads of suspended matter. The flow of the river becomes too sluggish to hold even the finest silt in suspension. Tiny particles of clay and of plant and animal wastes sink to the bottom instead of being carried away by the ocean current. They pile up in a shape that resembles the Greek letter delta (Λ). Hence the name. Deltas may build up over thousands or even millions of years, as the flow of the river keeps channels open along their margins. Their deep, rich soils, laden with minerals and nutrients, are attractive to plant and animal life and have provided the underpinnings for intensive human settlement.

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Source: Jacques Descloitres, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC | Public Domain

Fig. iv:

Nile River and Delta

Estuaries are formed where shorelines have subsided and high tides make their way up the mouths of rivers. These tides carry sand that is deposited to build sand spits or even small islands, blocking the river mouth. Vast shallows are created where river and ocean waters intermix and flora and fauna, specially adapted to these conditions, develop. One of the peculiarities of estuaries is due to the Coriolis force, the displacement of air and water currents by the rotation of the earth. In the northern hemisphere tides penetrate further upstream on the right than on the left of the river mouth, in the southern hemisphere the reverse. Salt water and fresh cling to opposite banks. Chesapeake Bay provides an example of the magnitude of the forces at work. Points of equal salinity on opposite shores of the bay lie eighty kilometres from each other.

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Fig. v:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Crankelwitz/CC BY-SA 3.0

Estuary Mouth of the Yachats River Estuary in Oregon

This is a very schematic picture of the life of rivers. A single river may be at different phases of development along its course. Rivers may disappear underground and then resurface many kilometres downstream. On entering desert regions where the water table is very low, they may disappear altogether leaving behind great fans of alluvial material. Mature rivers may suddenly be rejuvenated when movements of the earth’s crust restore gradients and send them on their way with renewed power and speed. Certainly each river has its own unique pattern of behaviour and development, shaped by climate and geology and, in recent times, by quite massive human intervention.

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Lakes Lakes are among the pleasantest gifts of man to nature. They are usually beautiful to look at, interesting to fish in, cool to swim in, and breezy to sail on. They are home for birds and fishes and other animals. They supply us with water. They give us a feeling of space in a crowded world. It is a pity that lakes are so rare and that, geologically speaking, they are so short-lived. Jerome Wykoff Our Changing Planet Throughout the Ages Standing bodies of water cover about 2.5 million square kilometres, or 1.7% of the earth’s surface. The beds of lakes are hollows which represent and imbalance in the equilibrium profile of a body of running water, and as such are a transient phenomenon, over geological time, an ephemeral feature of the landscape. Eberhard Czaya Rivers of the World, 1981

A variety of natural processes lead to the formation of basins with impermeable or semi-permeable floors situated beneath the water table. Where water flows into such basins they become lakes. Tectonic lakes are the result of the faulting of the earth’s crust along lines of weakness. This faulting leads to vertical movements of great sections of the crust relative to one another, blocking valley exits or forming trenches. Lake Baykal in southern Siberia, the greatest lake of them all, six hundred and seventy kilometers long and sixteen hundred metres deep, holding twenty percent of the world’s fresh water, is the consequence of such activity. So are Tanganyika and Nyasa, the two most southerly lakes of the Syrian-African Rift Valley system. They are surpassed in their dimensions only by Baykal. Lake Tanganyika is over fourteen hundred metres deep and six hundred and fifty kilometres long. Lake Nyasa is over seven hundred meters deep and more than five hundred and fifty kilometers long.

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Fig. vi:

© Sergey Pesterev/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 4.0

Lake Baikal in Winter

Folding of the earth’s crust also leads to the formation of natural basins and the creation of lakes. These may cover very large areas but, in stark contrast to tectonic lakes, they are quite shallow. Central African Lake Victoria for instance extends over sixty eight thousand square kilometers but nowhere reaches a depth of more than eighty meters.

Source: Damiano Luchetti | Public Domain

Fig. vii: Lake Victoria at Sunset xvii

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Other lake basins are created by erosion. In arid regions, winds weather and pulverize the rock and blow away loose sand. With changes in climate that bring greater humidity depressions formed in this way may become lakes. Erosion of soft rock by the scouring action of glaciers has a similar effect. Barrier lakes, as their name suggests, occur when something occurs to dam the natural flow of water. Most of these lakes owe their existence to climatic changes of the past. The melting of some Ice Age glaciers, which had cut deep gorges in mountain valleys, led to great landslides that blocked valley exits. The lake at Flims in Switzerland was formed in this way. Other glaciers deposited huge quantities of debris that piled up to form terminal moraines and block valley exits as the ice melted. The great Alpine lakes, extending as far south as Como, Lugano and Maggiore, fill such valleys.

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Daniel Hohl/CC BY-SA 3.0

Fig. viii: Lake Maggiore after Sunset

Crater lakes form where the crater floors of extinct volcanoes are sealed by layers of impermeable lava. A special fascination lies in those lakes whose waters are coloured by volcanic gases seeping up from below. The Gilmitu volcano, on the island of Flores in Indonesia has given rise to three small crater lakes, whose waters are described as bluish-green, wine-red and cloudy yellow.

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Fig. ix:

Inyo Crater Lake

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Dicklyon/CC BY-SA 3.0

In limestone regions lakes may result from the formation of depressions in the easily soluble rock. Many of the sinkholes typical of such regions contain lakes. Famous among these is the holy lake of the Mayas, at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan. xix

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Fig. x:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Tony Hisgett/CC BY 2.0

Cenote at Chichen Itza

Finally there are artificial lakes, deliberately created by human beings to meet the needs of water storage and regulation of supply, to generate power and for aesthetic pleasure and leisure time activities. Small reservoirs go back to the earliest times but the first of the great artificial lakes, Lake Mead, was created by the building of the Boulder Dam on the Colorado river. Others of world renown are Lake Akisombo, formed by the damming of the Volta river and Lake Nasser resulting from the damming of the Nile. These are works of heroic proportions. They have brought great benefits but also incurred costs that extend far beyond the labour and the concrete that was poured into the high dams. The homes of many tens of thousands of people disappeared under their spreading waters, taking with them the fragile ties that held people together in meaningful communities. No financial indemnification or alternative housing, however generous, could fully compensate for losses of this nature.

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Fig. xi:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Gaellebadr/CC BY-SA 4.0

Lake Akisombo on the Volta River

Measured on a geological time-scale, lakes are ephemeral phenomena. Life expectancy is only about thirty thousand years. The moment of their creation is also the beginning of their destruction as sediment slowly fills their basins, while erosion enlarges the avenues through which their waters escape. Their collective vital statistics are unimpressive. They are an almost negligible part of the landscape. Yet they offer a multitude of benefits that have always drawn human settlers to their banks. There are the obvious ones of food and water, convenient means of transportation and of waste disposal, settings for leisure and recreational activities. There are also less tangible benefits. They have a moderating influence on extremes of temperature and they mitigate the effects of drought. They offer ecological diversity, as they provide habitat to aquatic and semi-aquatic plants and animals and to the terrestrial animals that feed on them. It is unfortunate that in so many places in the world lakes are overexploited. To enjoy the benefits of cheap power and irrigated agriculture more water is drawn from them than they can continue to supply in the long run. The consequences are pollution and degradation and lake ecosystems in a state of stress, with greatly diminished bounty to bestow on human beings or on the plants and animals on which they depend.

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Waterfalls The river poured in thunder through the opening, lumps of shattered water, foam and spray, amber and ivory. You cannot compare it to water at all. It was a substance compacted of air and liquid and froth, and yet there was nothing light or airy or foamy about it. The rush and the stress and the drive of it hammered into a solidity; and yet it had that sameness of outline, that moving quality, which is given you by the unchanging movement of a great waterfall; for it is always changing, never the same, tossed and twisted and tortured now into this shape, now into that. Hills and Dubar on their first sighting of the Guayara Waterfall between Brazil and Paraguay.

Waterfalls provide the greatest and most exciting shows on earth but they are comparatively rare because they are created only under very special geological conditions and have their own ‘built-in’ self-destruct mechanisms. From time to time a river on its downward journey from the mountains to the sea will come to a steep cliff due to a fault in the earth’s crust. The water will plunge over the cliff to form a waterfall, and then continue on its way. If the cliff is of soft rock the tremendous force of the water will wear it down and in a fairly short time, geologically speaking, all that will remain will be a series of rapids. If the soft rock is covered by a layer of harder rock, the water going over the falls will erode this softer rock first. This will leave an overhang of hard rock that will break off and crash to the river bed below when it can no longer support its own weight. The waterfall will creep gradually upstream as the process repeats itself over and over again. This is what is happening to the Niagara Falls today. It is moving backwards towards Lake Erie at a pace of more than a meter a year. By the time it has progressed about three kilometers upstream it will have eaten through the hard rock and will bring about its own demise.

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Fig. xii: Niagara Falls

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Paul Bica/CC BY 2.0

Some waterfalls originate in huge fields of lava dating back to earlier geological periods. These fields are layered horizontally, with an additional layer formed each time a new stream of lava flowed over the field. Such fields develop networks of vertical cracks. Blocks of lava break off along these cracks, leaving perpendicular ridges. The Victoria Falls in Central Africa and some of the great South American waterfalls have been formed by water pouring over such ridges.

Fig. xiii: Iguazu Falls

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Bernard Gagnon/CC BY-SA 4.0

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Water in the Life of Plants and Animals Water in the Life of Plants Plants are complex and open-ended hydraulic systems. Columns of water travel from the soil through their roots and stems to their leaves. They retain little of this water and recirculate none. About nine-tenths finds its way into the atmosphere as water vapor. The journey from roots to leaves defies gravity. It involves complex processes of push and pull. Water is drawn into plants through short, slender, single-celled root hairs concentrated at the apex of the roots.

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Oregon Caves from Cave Junction, USA/CC BY 2.0

Fig. xiv: Root Hairs

Flexible enough to push their way between soil particles, they expose large surfaces to the surrounding soil from which they absorb water. This process is known as osmosis. It drives molecules of water in search of equilibrium from less saline to more saline regions. This increases pressure in the root zone and pushes water upwards through the plant. Two physical forces assist in the process. Cohesion, the attraction of like to like, helps to keep the moving columns of water intact as the water moves upward. Adhesion, the force of attraction of unlike molecules for one another, leads the water to cling to the narrow capillary tubes in the stem and helps support the weight of the columns. Transpiration, evaporation from the leaves, also helps to pull the water up the stem and so complete its journey from the soil through the plant to the atmosphere. In this whole process mineral salts essential to the plant are moved through the system and leaves are kept from overheating. xxiv

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Photosynthesis Plants manufacture their own food. They build organic compounds from inorganic substances, predominantly water and carbon dioxide, by a process known as photosynthesis. It is driven by the energy of the sun that is trapped by chlorophyll, a substance found in the leaves of plants. The end products are carbohydrates, mainly sugars, and oxygen that is discharged into the atmosphere.

Fig. xv:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/At09kg/Wattcle/CC BY-SA 4.0

A Schematic View of Photosynthesis

Water plays a double role in photosynthesis, acting both as a solvent and as direct participant in the chemical process. Acting as a solvent, it makes it possible for atmospheric carbon dioxide to diffuse into the photosynthetic cells, whose membranes are almost impermeable to gaseous carbon dioxide. It also carries dissolved mineral salts, such as nitrates, phosphates and sulfates, which are needed for the synthesis of proteins, from the soil through the root systems and stems of the plants, to the leaves. In its participation in the chemical process itself, water splits into its component elements, oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen is released as a gas, providing the one source of this vital element available to replenish its stock in the atmosphere. The hydrogen participates in the reduction of carbon dioxide to form carbohydrates.

Water Balance Maintenance of the right balance among the processes described above, between energy and carbon dioxide gain and water loss through transpiration, is vital to the successful functioning of plants. The ways in which the balance is achieved vary with climate. xxv

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Over millennia of evolution plants have found ways of functioning efficiently and managing their water economies to the best advantage in all the different climatic zones of the planet. They have met the challenges of survival and reproduction in extreme conditions of heat and cold, of humidity and desiccation. They have come to flourish in environments that offer relatively stable conditions and in others with great diurnal, seasonal and perennial fluctuations. They have adapted by shape and size, by color and physiology. In so doing they have created a rich variety of ecosystems opening up opportunities for human beings, and of course many other species of animal life, to develop and diversify. Painting the canvas with the broadest of brushes, the earth can be divided into a number of biomes, great bio-geographical regions that span the continents. Dominant among them are the arctic tundra, the taiga, the great belts of coniferous, deciduous and tropical forest, the grasslands and the deserts. Each region has its own populations of flora and fauna and its own particular solutions to water management problems. All have undergone change over time. In particular they have been dramatically affected by the growth and spread of the human species. Human beings in return have felt the impact of the deterioration in their natural environment, so largely attributable to their own presence and intensive activity. Concern about what the future holds has come to occupy a central position on the global. It is difficult to believe that not so very long ago water was one of the favorite examples used by economists of a free good. The Tundra is the treeless biome that stretches across the arctic circle, covering about ten per cent of the earth’s surface. It is cold and windy, with temperatures normally far below zero, snow most of the year and scant rain. The summer growing season during which there is daylight twenty four hours a day lasts no more than fifty or sixty days. The most significant feature of this biome is the permafrost that is literally the foundation of the ecosystem. It is a layer of frozen soil and dead plants more than four hundred meters thick. Some melting occurs in the more southerly parts in the summer, leading to the formation of bogs and lakes and the growth of enough vegetation to sustain large animals, both herbivorous and carnivorous. These manage to survive through the harsh winterss by hibernation or migration.

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Fig. xvi: Spitzbergen Reindeer

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Zairon/CC BY-SA 4.0

Some hardy humans also manage to eke out a living, mining the rich mineral resources, and somehow coping with swarms of mosquitoes and other insects that pester them during the summer. From the human viewpoint the climate changes forecast for the coming decades may be expected to bring both benefit and harm. On the one hand rising temperatures will make great swathes of virgin land available for cultivation. On the other hand the melting of the frozen ground will convert it from being a carbon sink that now holds more carbon than there is in the atmosphere, into a massive contributor to the build-up of greenhouse gases.

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Source: Wikimedia Commons/Andreas Weith/CC BY-SA 4.0

Fig. xvii: Dense Summer growth of Moss in Tundra of Svalbard

The sub-arctic Taiga lies in the zone between the tundra and the deciduous forests to the south. It is a biome characterized by coniferous forests of evergreen trees, such as pine and spruce. In these trees needles have replaced leaves in order to minimize water loss. As human settlement has become more and more intense in these regions, the demand for lumber for construction has led to heavy deforestation.

Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration | Public Domain

Fig. xviii: Pine and Fir in the Taiga

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Deciduous forests developed in temperate zones with considerable temperature variations among the seasons. The trees typical of the biome are the broadleaved oak, maple, beech and chestnut. Growth is concentrated in the warm summer, with loss of leaves in the eponymous fall, followed by dormancy in the fairly mild winter and recovery of growth in the spring. The climatic conditions of this ecosystem proved to be very well-suited to many human activities, such as hunting and farming, mining and logging, and resulted in intensive human settlement and urbanization. Little remains today that bears resemblance to the primeval biome.

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Norbert Nagel/CC BY-SA 3.0

Fig. xix: Autumnal Deciduous Forest

The Grasslands occupy the latitudes between the temperate deciduous forests and the great deserts, with rainfall intermediate between that of those two biomes. Changes in climatic conditions can tilt the vegetation one way or the other. Grasses are perennial plants and leave little space for annuals. Historically they provided the food for great herds of herbivores, like the buffalo of the North American plains and the eland and smaller buck of the African veld, and so indirectly for the great predators that fed on them. Agriculture has transformed the vegetation of much of this grassland. Lack of understanding of the delicate natural balance it represents has led to its tragic denigration in such disasters as the dust bowls of the United States and the drought belts of the African Sahel.

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Fig. xx:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/L. Braun/CC BY-SA 4.0

Canadian Grasslands

Tropical Rain Forests Warm temperatures assure a year-round growing season. The central problem of the flora of these regions is how to make effective use of scarce mineral nutrients. Plants have adapted by making immediate use of whatever replenishment reaches them dissolved in rainwater, before it escapes to river or ocean. These forests are dominated by broad-leaved, evergreen trees, with different species spread thinly over huge areas. Epiphytes flourish, existing between heaven and earth, supporting themselves on other plants but not living parasitically on them, drawing their moisture and nutrition from the saturated atmosphere, not from the soil that they never touch. Indigenous peoples have a long history of a lifestyle in harmony with their surroundings but this is now under threat by mining and by clearing of forests for new highly mechanized agriculture that cannot be sustained on soil leached of nutrients. In the Brazilian rainforests in particular devastating fires are wreaking irreversible damage.

xxx

Prologue

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Peter Angritt/CC BY-SA 4.0

Fig. xxi: Tropical Rain Forest

Tropical Deserts are found in the great high pressure belts that flank the tropics at about 30⁰ north and south of the equator. Temperatures are high and rainfall low. Diurnal temperature fluctuations are large. Rainfall is scarce and often evaporates in the heat before being much benefit either to plants or animals. The sparse vegetable cover does little to moderate heat gains and losses. Perennial plants that are ill equipped to weather long periods of desiccation fare badly. Annuals do better. Their seeds survive for years on end without water. Then, with the sparsest rainfall, they germinate, grow, produce masses of flowers and complete their life cycle at an accelerated rate. A desert in bloom after the rains is a beautiful sight, but one of very short duration.

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Lucia Maria Teresa/CC BY-SA 4.0

Fig. xxii: Desert in Bloom after Rain Southern Australia xxxi

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Animals that have successfully adapted to life in desert conditions—rodents and reptiles—tend to be small so as to be able to burrow in the sand or to take advantage of small patches of shade to protect themselves from heat and dehydration. Camels and dromedaries are of course exceptions. So too are human beings. Some have clustered in settlements at the rare points where oases of water have made life, and indeed culture, possible. Others, like the Taureg, have made their living over the centuries,by trade, carrying essential commodities over endless stretches of waterless land.

Animal Life in Water and Out Water provided the ambience for the emergence of animal life on the planet. Starfish, sea anemones, spider crabs and other lowly creatures on the evolutionary ladder first made their appearance in the ocean. With their bodies perfused with sea water they were perfectly adapted to this environment. They were not challenged to develop mechanisms to cope with change and remained tied to the sea for survival.

Fig. xxiii: Starfish

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Nick Hobgood/CC BY-SA 3.0

Inevitably change did take place and some creatures found themselves in less friendly environments, in estuaries with water of lower salinity than in the ocean, and then encompassed by the sweet water of rivers and lakes. Their survival depended on the ability to adapt to their new circumstances.

xxxii

Prologue

Primarily they had to find means of protecting themselves against the disruption of their osmotic balance. In osmosis molecules of water, in search of equilibrium, move through semi-permeable membranes from regions of low concentration of dissolved matter to regions of higher concentration. It is of existential importance to all members of the animal kingdom from the lowly amoeba to the human species. Its role dates back to the time when animal life first emerged from the primeval ocean. It orders and coordinates the functioning of all the several parts of the body at the level of cells, tissues and organs. It regulates the relationship between living creatures and their environment. The fluid surrounding any organism is in one of three states relative to the organism itself. It is isotonic to it if the concentration of solutes is the same on the two sides of the membrane that separates them. This is a state of equilibrium. It is hypertonic to the organism if the concentration of solutes in the external fluid is higher than in the organism itself. Water molecules flow outward from the organism into the surrounding fluid. It is hypotonic to the organism if the external concentration is lower. In this case the flow of the water molecules will be from the fluid into the organism. To maintain its proper shape and not to wrinkle up like a raisin, (laking or crenation), or to swell, perhaps to the point of bursting like an overinflated balloon (haemolysis), any living organism must either exist in an isotonic ambience, or it must devote a great deal of its energy to osmo-regulation, the maintenance of its osmotic pressure. The creatures that migrated from the ocean to estuarine waters and from there to the fresh water of rivers and lakes did not dilute their body fluids to protect themselves against the disruption of their osmotic balance. in their match their changed environment. Instead they either expelled the excess water as fast as it flowed inwards without allowing it to carry dissolved salts away with it, or else they increased their salt intake. Both these activities involve movement against a concentration gradient. Both require significant expenditures of energy. Both are used by living creatures to this day. The teleosts, bony fish that thrive in fresh water are among the best examples of successful adaptation. Most of the surface area of their bodies is well protected by an impermeable coating of scales but they still have to deal with the osmotic inflow of water across the gills, and through the membranes lining the cavities of the mouth and pharynx. This they do in two ways. The first is by having a very high rate of filtration in the kidney. They reabsorb most of the salts in the renal fluid back into the bloodstream and discharge a dilute, hypotonic urine. The second is by the active uptake of salts from the surrounding water. To this end they have developed a specialized set of cells, the chloride secretory cells, in the gills. The net result is that the chloride concentration in their blood is successfully maintained at a level about eight hundred times as high as that in the surrounding water.

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Source: Wikimedia Commons/Sailko/CC BY 3.0

Fig. xxiv: Trout Painting by Gustave Corbet 1873

After learning to live in fresh water, the next step up the evolutionary ladder was adaptation to life on dry land. Creatures stepping onto the land were surrounded by air, not water. They were threatened by dehydration resulting from evaporation of water through the permeable surfaces of their bodies that were in contact with the atmosphere. Dry land creatures have met the challenge in various ways. Some creatures insulate their bodies against the loss of water by a covering of scales or skin. Insects are quite remarkable in this respect. Their bodies are efficiently waterproofed by microscopically thin layers of wax covering the epidermis. Other turn to water-conserving ways of getting rid of nitrogenous wastes. Mammals and amphibians excrete urea, which is much less toxic than ammonia and so needs less dilution. Birds carry the process a step further. They excrete insoluble uric acid as a sort of semi-solid sludge. Insects and reptiles do the same.

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Prologue

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Mike Young/CC BY-SA 3.0

Fig. xxv: Springbok Beetle on Leaf

In addition to using physiological devices to maintain water balance, animals adapt their behavior to climatic conditions. At its simplest, this means avoiding exposure during the hottest hours of the day. A more extreme measure is going into a state of aestivation, a mirror image of hibernation, throughout the long hot and dry summer season. Lung fish in Africa and South America manage to survive the complete drying up of their habitat by breathing air.

Source: J. F. Horrabin | Public Domain

Fig. xxvi: Australian Lungfish Breathing Air xxxv

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Some animals have learned to live with water losses which would bring others to their death. Camels head the list of these. They can go without drinking for months, compensating for the loss by metabolizing the fat stored in their humps. They can tolerate losses of thirty per cent of body weight and still go on functioning satisfactorily until the opportunity comes to replenish its body water and build up the fat stock in the hump. Human beings could not survive even two-thirds of such a loss.

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Ishai Parasol/CC BY-SA 2.0

Fig. xxvii: Camels in Jordan valley

Inside the Living Organism—Transport in an Aqueous Medium Animals lack the ability to synthesize the organic compounds they need for their own nutrition from inorganic materials. For this service they are totally dependent on plants, whether directly as herbivores or indirectly, as carnivores. This shortcoming has forced them to develop attributes which are irrelevant for plants. Unable to manufacture their own food from elementary and universally available raw materials, animals have to go out and search for it. To succeed in this search they have had to develop a high degree of mobility and of sensitivity in their response to their environment. They have needed to develop specialized nerve and muscle tissues, sense organs and organs for digestion. Remarkably, it has been the lack of the capacity to perform photosynthesis, a chemical process carried out so efficiently by plants, that has driven members of the animal kingdom to a level of organization quite different and far more complex than that achieved by any plant.

xxxvi

Prologue

The smallest unit of organization in the living organism is the cell. The typical animal cell is only about one-fiftieth of a millimeter in size. It consists of a nucleus containing all the genetic information needed for reproduction. and the protoplasm that contains the living content of the cell, amino acids, mono- and polysaccharides, nucleic acids, proteins, lipids and more, together the physical basis for life in all its forms. All this is enclosed in a thin semi-permeable membrane. Even the simple cell is a very complex structure and cells which perform different tasks are very different from one another in their form and chemical make-up. In all but the most elementary of organisms there are a large number of different types of cells. Cells of the same type are massed together to form specialized skeletal, nerve, muscle, blood and reproductive tissues. These in turn combine together to form the organs - heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, stomach and intestines, and so on – to perform all the varied functions of the body.

Source: LadyofHats Mariana Ruiz | Public Domain

Fig. xxviii: The Cell Membrane – Common to All Living Cells

Specialization and differentiation are a sine qua non for the efficient functioning of all but the very simplest forms of animal life. All the parts of the living organism are bound together in a web of interdependence. No individual cell, tissue or organ functions on its own. A multitude of biochemical transactions go on ceaselessly, within the cells and between them and their surroundings. A host of substances are kept constantly on the move. The presence water as the medium of transport is what makes complex animal life possible. Two processes serve to convey substances in aqueous solution. In osmosis it is the water, the solvent, that moves between an organism and the surrounding environment or through membranes within the organism itself. In diffusion the active role is played by the solute, not the solvent. As a consequence of random movement, molecules in solution move away from regions in which they are highly concentrated to regions of lower concentration. This process becomes inefficient when relatively large distances have to be covered by the diffusing molecules. It is also slowed down or prevented altogether when the passage of large molecules is obstructed by the membranes that separate cells from one another. xxxvii

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In the larger animals, with circulatory systems, diffusion is important for a limited number of physiological activities. One of these is respiration. Cell membranes are almost impermeable to oxygen and to carbon dioxide in the gaseous state, but becomes permeable to them if they are when dissolved in water. Respiration uses up oxygen in the cell. It lowers its concentration there below that in the surrounding blood and tissue fluids. The imbalance is corrected by the diffusion of oxygen molecules into the cells from these fluids. For carbon dioxide, the direction of the diffusion is reversed, as the concentration of CO₂ is higher in the cells, where it is manufactured, than in the surrounding ambience. In popular parlance, oxygen is breathed in and carbon dioxide is breathed out. Diffusion is a continuous process. Equilibrium is never reached. The concentration gradient is maintained as the circulatory system constantly carries away the diffused substances.

Source: Leonardo da Vinci | Public Domain

Fig. xxix: Old Man Absorbed in the Study of Water

To sum up, while this prologue is without doubt a truncated and fractured account of the enormously complex story of the shaping of the planet and of the life on it, it does allows one conclusion to be drawn without trepidation. Emergence from the ocean did not provide living beings with an escape from their total dependence on water. To this day even the most sophisticated members of the animal kingdom not only carry within themselves their own private oceans but also spend much time and energy interacting with the water in their surroundings. The consequences of these circumstances for human beings and the ways in which they find expression in the human experience are explored in the following chapters. xxxviii

List of Illustrations Fig. 1: Fig. 2: Fig. 3: Fig. 4: Fig. 5: Fig. 6: Fig. 7: Fig. 8: Fig. 9: Fig. 10: Fig. 11: Fig. 12: Fig. 13: Fig. 14: Fig. 15: Fig. 16: Fig. 17: Fig. 18: Fig. 19: Fig. 20: Fig. 21: Fig. 22: Fig. 23: Fig. 24: Fig. 25: Fig. 26: Fig. 27: Fig. 28: Fig. 29: Fig. 30: Fig. 31: Fig. 32: Fig. 33: Fig. 34: Fig. 35:

A Seventeenth Century view of the la Barcaccia Fountain ii Marduk with the symbols of kingship—the crown, the ring and the rod 6 Ra, the Sun God 9 The First Day of Creation Daniel Heller 11 The Second Day of Creation Daniel Heller 11 The Curled up Serpent 20 Arid region after rains 35 The World with Jerusalem at its Center Henricus Bunting (1545–1606) 67 The Inscription 70 The Siloam (Shiloah) Pool to which the waters of the Gihon were diverted  71 A 21st Century View of Hezekiyahu’s Tunnel 72 The Struthion Cistern 75 The Mamila (upper Siloam) Pool that collected the surface flow from the Valley of Hinom 76 Solomon’s Pools 77 Entrance to a tunnel along the aqueduct from King Solomon’s Pool to Jerusalem 79 A corner of one of the reception rooms in the ‘mansion house’ 80 Entrance to vaulted ritual bath 80 Room with bath, ritual bath and water storage pool 81 The Well of the Virgin 82 The Chain Gate Fountain 83 Water for Sale 85 A Spring in the Bed of Wadi Kelt 87 Water trucks in besieged Jerusalem 88 Romulus and Remus Suckled by a Wolf: Peter Paul Rubens 91 Marcus Agrippa 95 A 21st century view of the ruins of the Aqua Claudia 97 Abbey of Monte Cassino 103 The Waters of the Aqua Vergine entering Rome 104 Medallion in Honor of Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590) 104 Water flowing from a tap that was always open 106 The Julia Fountain in the 18th Century Giuseppe Vasi (1710–1782) 109 The façade of the Fountain of Moses 110 Two views of the Fountain of the Naiads in the Piazza della Republica 111 Silenus 112 The Canon Ball Fountain of the Viale della Trinitá dei Monti 113 xxxix

Fig. 36: A Passerby taking a drink of water from the Fountain of the Bees Fig. 37: The Tiber: detail from the Quattro Fontane Fig. 38: Strength—Detail from the Quattro Fontane Fig. 39: A Modern Mostra—the EUR District Water Tower Fig. 40: Stone Age Style Living in the Cape of Good Hope Khoikhoi Family at the Water’s Edge Fig. 41: A View of the Interior of the Palace at Knossos Fig. 42: Pharaoh’s daughter rescuing the baby Moses from the river Fig. 43: Mikveh in Jerusalem—Period of 2nd Temple Fig. 44: Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights (circa 1500): Hieronymus Bosch Fig. 45: Jean Paul Marat Dead in his Bath: Jaques Louis David 1793 Fig. 46: Hippocrates Fig. 47: The Silent Highwayman Fig. 48: A microscopical view of the water supplied by the Grand Junction Water Company Fig. 49: Jean Valjean in the sewers Fig. 50: The Restored Hohokam Canal Fig. 51: A Figurative Jar from the Hohokam Period Fig. 52: Brigham Young in Middle Age Fig. 53: John Wesley Powell talks with the Paiute Chief Fig. 54: Lake Powell Reservoir and Glen Canyon Dam Fig. 55: A Map of the Ogallala Aquifer, showing Changes in Water Level from 1950 to 1995 Fig. 56: Pattern of Crop Fields in Kansas Created by Circular Pivot Irrigation Fig. 57: A Great Buttress in the Amazon Rain Forest Fig. 58: Meeting of the Waters East of Manaus Fig. 59: View of Manaus from the River Fig. 60: A Peaceful Inlet on the Amazon Fig. 61: Young Amazon Dweller Fig. 62: House Built on Stilts for Protection against High Tides Fig. 63: Floating home on Amazon Inlet Fig. 64: 1st Century CE Mosaic of Upper Nile Fig. 65: Sir Richard Francis Burton Fig. 66: John Hannings Speke and James Grant Fig. 67: Samuel and Florence Baker Fig. 68: David Livingstone Fig. 69: H.M. Stanley Fig. 70: 19th Century Illustration of the River Fig. 71: Fishermen on the River Fig. 72: A Section of a Contemporary Map of the Grand Canal Fig. 73: Boating on the Canal Fig. 74: Kublai Khan Fig. 75: A View of the Grand Canal at Chongfu xl

114 115 115 116 119 120 122 127 135 143 145 151 153 163 173 174 176 181 182 186 189 200 202 202 203 204 204 205 208 210 210 211 212 212 221 222 228 229 231 232

Fig. 76: Canal du Midi Crossing the River Orb 234 Fig. 77: Francis Egerton, 3rd Earl of Bridgewater 237 Fig. 78: James Brindley 238 Fig. 79: A View of the Potomac River 242 Fig. 80: View east of eastbound Lockport on the Erie Canal by W. H. Bartlett 1839 244 Fig. 81: The Symbolic Marriage of the Erie Canal to the Hudson River 247 Fig. 82: Sleeping Acommodation on a Canal Boat —Berths Suspended from the Ceiling 249 Fig. 83: Painted barges on Lancashire Canal 251 Fig. 84: Kennicot-Avon Canal 2004 253 Fig. 85: A pound lock on the Kennicot Avon Canal 255 Fig. 86: Inclined Plane—Morris Canal, New Jersey 257 Fig. 87: Tunneler at Work 257 Fig. 88: Pont Canal de la Cesse 258 Fig. 89: Canal Bridges 259 Fig. 90: The Wheel of an Historic Water Mill 266 Fig. 91: The Itaipu Dam 269 Fig. 92: Examples of Symbols related to Water in Australian Aboriginal Art 301 Fig. 93: A Flooded Road 302 Fig. 94: Fording a River 302 Fig. 95: The Baby Moses Rescued from the Nile: Dura Europos Synagogue Fresco 304 Fig. 96: The First Plague—turning the Nile Waters into Blood 305 Fig. 97: Israelites crossing the Red Sea 306 Fig. 98: The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes: Roman Catacomb Fresco 307 Fig. 99: Roman Catacomb Drawing of Noah and the Dove 307 Fig. 100: Jesus at Source of Rivers of Eden: Church of St. Costanza in Rome 308 Fig. 101: Baptism of Christ, Baptistry of Neon, Ravenna 309 Fig. 102: The Adoration of the Lamb (section): van Eyck brothers 310 Fig. 103: Jesus Walking on the Waters: Konrad Witz 310 Fig. 104: Detail from the Miracle of the True Cross 311 Fig. 105: Madonna with Chancellor: Rolin Jan van Eyck 312 Fig. 106: Virgin and Child (central panel of tryptich): Hans Memlinck 313 Fig. 107: Virgin and Child: Pietro Perugino 314 Fig. 108: The Flood: Gustave Dore 315 Fig. 109: Eliezer and Rebekah at the Well: Gustave Doré 316 Fig. 110: Jacob Tends Laban’s Flocks and Meets Rachel: Gostave Doré 316 Fig. 111: Mount Tabor across the Waters of Megiddo 317 Fig. 112: Khan El Lejjûn, the supposed Site of Megiddo 318 Fig. 113: Tabighah on the Shores of the Sea of Galilee 319 Fig. 114: The Sea of Galilee seen from the Fountain of the Figs 319 Fig. 115: The Ferry Boat: Esajas van de Velde 321 xli

Fig. 116: The Windmill: Jacob von Ruisdael Fig. 117: The Watermill: Meindert Hobbema Fig. 118: Stone Bridge: Rembrandt Fig. 119: Extended Landscape with Huts by a Road: Philips Koninck (1633) Fig. 120: Landscape with Hagar and the Angel: Claude Lorrain Fig. 121: The Hay Wain: John Constable (1821) Fig. 122: Barges: John Constable Fig. 123: Landscape near Arleux-de-Norde: Camille Corot Fig. 124: Boatman of Mortefontaine: Camille Corot (1865–1870) Fig. 125: Barge on the River: Charles Francois Daubigny (c 1865) Fig. 126: Gold disc from sacred cenote at Chichen Itza Fig. 127: Chac, the Rain God of the Mayan People Fig. 128: The water molecule

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321 322 322 323 324 326 326 327 328 328 336 344 354

Contents Part 1: IN THE BEGINNING

1

A Word of Introduction

3

Chapter 1.1: Mediterranean Creation Myths The Mediterranean Basin Babylon: the Oldest Stories of All Egyptian Cosmogony Creation through the Eyes of the Israelites Greek Cosmogony Mediterranean Myths in Perspective

5 5 5 7 10 14 17

Chapter 1.2: Creation Myths of Asia The Sources of Asian Cosmogony and Cosmology

18 21

Chapter 1.3: Creation Myths of Tribal Societies 22 On the Road to Civilization 22 Africa22 North America 25 Part 2: ROADS TO CIVILIZATION

31

Chapter 2.1: On the Road to Civilization: Water as a Catalyst

33

Chapter 2.2: A Glance at Early Civilizations 37 Mesopotamia37 Some Cities of Mesopotamia 38 The Indus Valley 41 China43 In Conclusion 45 Chapter 2.3: Weather and Weltanschauung—The People of the Bible 46 The Bible as Source 46 The Flood 46 The Patriarchs 47 Wells49 Exodus from Egypt 50 Sojourn in the Wilderness 51 The Promised Land 52 Climate, Character and Weltanschauung 54 Water as Metaphor 54 Water and Wellbeing 54 Threat, Admonition, Awe, Fear and Despair 55

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Chapter 2.4: Water in Law 58 Introduction58 The Code of Hammurabi 58 The Code of Manu 60 Part 3: CITIES AND THEIR WATER

63

A Word of Introduction

65

Chapter 3.1: Jerusalem and its Waters 67 Unique among the Cities 67 Beginnings68 The City of David 68 Water for Survival 69 The Gihon Spring 72 Cisterns—Public and Private 73 Conserving the Flood Waters 75 Water from Afar—Aqueducts 76 Water and Lifestyle 79 After the Destruction of the Second Temple 81 The Nineteenth Century 84 The End of Ottoman Rule: World War I and After 86 A Modern-Day Siege 87 Statehood and After 89 Conclusion89 Chapter 3.2: The Waters of Rome 90 Rome and its Waters 90 Beginnings90 The Republic 92 The First Aqueducts 93 The Empire 94 Decline and Recovery 101 The Gifts of the Popes 102 The Secular City 106 The New Aqueducts 107 The System 108 Management108 Castella, Mostre and Just Plain Fountains 108 Fountains112 From Past to Future 116 Chapter 3.3: Body and Soul 118 Early Days 118 Crete119 Egypt122 The Greeks 123 The Israelites 125 xliv

Far Eastern Ablutions 128 Early Christians 129 The Romans and After 130 Urban Revival and New Patterns of Sanitation 132 The Bath—Precepts and Practice in Medieval Days 133 The Decline of the Bath 134 The Return to Respectability 137 Near Eastern Ablutions 139 Into the Twentieth Century 140 And Into the Twenty-First Century 141 Endword144 Chapter 3.4: Water Quality 145 Introduction145 What Hippocrates Preached 145 And What Frontinus Practiced 147 After the Romans 148 The English Experience 148 Perception Precedes Practice 151 The Analysis of Water 151 Social Philosophy 153 At the Turn of the Millennium 154 Chapter 3.5: Circles, Cycles and Cascades A Word of Introduction From Water to Wastewater Ancient Greeks Rome: the Cloaca Maxima and Some Lesser Sewers Sewers and Society—the Underground Life of Paris Note on Victor Hugo and the Sewers of Paris Sewers from Scratch—Subterranean Manhattan A Note on Water Purification Processes—in Nature and with Man’s Helping Hand In Conclusion

156 156 156 157 158 159 161 163

Part 4: SETTLING THE ARID LANDS: MODERN TIMES

167

Introduction

169

Chapter 4.1: Oh, East is East and West is West: The American Experience Beyond the Hundredth Meridian Before the Europeans—Indigenous Irrigated Agriculture The Mormons: the First European-American Irrigators White Settlement of the West—the Next Wave Myth and Reality The Debut of Public Enterprise—the Dam Building Era The First Ninety Years

171 171 172 175 178 179 182 183

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165 166

Groundwater to the Rescue? Triumph or Tragedy A Note on Irrigation

185 187 188

Part 5: SOME RIVERS AND THEIR EXPLORERS

191

Introduction

193

Chapter 5.1: Profile of a River—The Amazon What’s in a Name? River and People The First Wave of Exploration: Conquistadores and Treasure Hunters The Second Wave of Exploration: the Search for Knowledge The Third Wave of Exploration: the Search for Understanding Ecology of the River Basin Human Impact on the Amazon Environment

195 195 195

Chapter 5.2: Profile of a River—The Nile What’s in a Name? The Physiography Of The River In Search of the Source

206 206 206 207

Chapter 5.3: The Strong Brown God—The Niger

216

Part 6: TRANSPORT, COMMUNICATION AND POWER

225

196 197 199 200 203

Chapter 6.1: Canals 227 Overview227 The First Grand Canal 228 Europe Awakens 233 Canals and Industry Transform England 235 The Middle Ages and After 235 Dawn of the Canal Age 237 The Transformation 240 America Follows Suit 241 Life on the Shallow Waterways 245 Grand Openings 245 Life on the Water Through the Eyes of Some Intrepid Travelers 247 Everyday Life on the Canals 250 Canal Songs 251 Overtaken253 A Glance at the Engineering 254 The Flash Lock 254 The Pound Lock 255 The Inclined Plane 256 The Tunnel 257 xlvi

Embankments and Aqueducts Bridges Water Supply

258 259 260

Chapter 6.2: Stronger Than a Hundred Men —Ancient and Medieval Use of Water Power 261 Introduction261 Early Days 262 Into the Middle Ages 263 Powering Medieval Industry 265 A Note on the Mechanics of Water Power 267 Beyond the Water Wheel—a Very Brief Note on Hydro-Electric Power 268 Part 7: WATER, SOUL AND PSYCHE 271 Chapter 7.1: Water and the Poets 273 The Imagery of Poetry 273 Creation273 Nature275 Rivers and Streams 275 Of Rivers in General 275 Of Particular Rivers 277 Rain and Drought 283 Clouds and Mist 287 Water as Metaphor 289 Tao 289 Love and Beauty 289 The Mutability of Life 291 Moods 292 Miscellaneous Metaphors 294 Tributes295 Comic and Curious 295 The Comic 295 And the Curious 296 The Twentieth Century 297 Chapter 7.2: Water and the Visual Arts 299 The Roles of Water 299 Dreamtime300 Illustrating the Bible 303 In the Jewish Tradition 303 In the Christian Tradition 306 A Modicum of Geographical Realism 314 Water in the Foreground —Dutch Landscapes of the 16th and 17th Centuries 320 Nostalgia—Landscapes of 17th Century Italy 323 Nature through English and French Eyes —the Industrial Revolution and After 325 xlvii

Chapter 7.3: Cults and Customs; Ceremonies and Superstitions 329 Full of Great Vertues 329 Immortality329 Magical and Miraculous Powers 330 The Ancient Greeks 331 The British Isles 332 India333 Cults and Christianity 334 Water Spirits 334 The Generation of Springs, Lakes and Rivers 337 Oaths339 Water Lore 340 Three Greek Myths 340 Chapter 7.4: Controlling Climate—Magic, Religion, Charlatanism and a Soupçon of Science About the Weather Rain-Making by Magic Bringing the Rain Halting the Rain Rainmaking and Religion Scolding the Gods Superstition, Charlatanism and Pseudo-Science What Science has to Offer

342 342 342 343 344 344 347 347 348

Part 8: SOME ODDS AND ENDS

351

Water Mundane and Unique 353 Water Mundane 353 Water Unique 354 Solid, Liquid and Gas 355 The Almost Universal Solvent 355 The Anomaly of Expansion on Freezing 355 The Absorption and Transmission of Heat 355 Surface Tension 356 Transparency356 Reference to Watery Features in Place Names

357

In Conclusion

361

References

363

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Part 1 IN THE BEGINNING

A Word of Introduction Pondering existential questions is the most human of pursuits. Prehistoric cave dwellers of a philosophical bent must have asked themselves how the world came into being and how humanity came to its place in it. The earliest written records to survive provide abundant evidence that people have always turned their minds to such concerns, giving them powerful and dramatic expression in their creation myths. And even the most cursory glance at the folk tales of tribal societies, passed down from generation to generation, reinforces the sense of the universality of these preoccupations. The role played by water in creation myths is truly remarkable. It appears in the accounts of early civilizations as an abstract, nebulous substance. In the stories of simpler, tribal societies it tends to the concrete and specific. Whatever the stage of cultural development and regardless of whether the human habitat is arid or humid, water is always perceived as being present at the beginning of things. Is it too fanciful to attribute this to the impact on the human psyche of the one experience shared by all? Is it mere coincidence that once in a lifetime each and every individual does experience, in microcosm, the phenomenon of the primeval waters, traveling the birth channel from the womb filled with amniotic fluid to the outside world, making the journey from chaos to dry land? What better place to start this journey of exploration of the multiple links between water and humanity than at the very beginning? The following three chapters recount creation myths drawn from many cultural milieus and analyze how they mirror conditions of life, and particularly of water supply, in the societies that gave them birth.

3

Chapter 1.1 Mediterranean Creation Myths The Mediterranean Basin Before the world began there was only water. The Primeval Waters filled the infinite void to the exclusion of all else. Only when the Waters were condensed and gathered together, making room for other things, could Creation proceed. So it seemed to Babylonians, Egyptians, Israelites and Greeks alike, as they struggled to structure a confusing and frightening universe, make sense of the human condition and probe the significance of life itself. From the watery chaos that was their common point of departure, the accounts of genesis given by these different peoples diverged as each culture drew on its own particular experience to interpret the vast world beyond its ken. In the final analysis, human existence is dependent on the bounty of nature. Today, technological buffers insulate people from this inescapable truth. In earlier times they had no such protection. They were exposed to the direct and immediate impact of a capricious natural world. Their physical environment dictated, in large measure, how they could wrest their living from the earth. They were left little choice whether to be shepherds or farmers; and if farmers, whether to rely on the rain or on the floodwaters of some great river to irrigate their crops. Their experience of life was shaped by their sources of livelihood. Their myths, drawing on this life experience leavened with the yeast of imagination, were permeated by the influence of geography, of climate and particularly, of water supply.

Babylon: the Oldest Stories of All The Enuma Elish is the oldest known account of Creation. It comes from Babylonia, where it was recited at New Year celebrations four thousand years ago. It passed from generation to generation as part of an oral tradition and was eventually inscribed on tablets and columns in cuneiform script. Some of these written records have survived the centuries and were discovered by archeologists at the latter end of the 19th century. The epic begins at the very beginning of time: When in the height heaven was not named, And the earth beneath did not bear a name1

The primeval universe was all water, ruled over by Apsu and his wife Tiamat. Fresh water was the domain of Apsu and salt water that of Tiamat. This was a purely formal distinction, as all the waters commingled and there were neither rivers nor lakes nor seas. The godly pair parented and grand-parented a large, noisy and quarrelsome brood. They drove Apsu 5

Writ in Water

to distraction and he complained bitterly that he could neither rest in the daytime nor sleep at night. He was so desperate for some peace and quiet that he decided to: abolish their ways and disperse them … so that we can sleep.

His son Ea discovered this unnatural intention and foiled the plot by murdering Apsu. This set off a very bloody family conflict from which the most remarkable of the grandsons, Marduk,2 Son of the Storm, emerged supreme. His father, Ea, had already committed patricide and he now killed his grandmother, Tiamat, without a qualm. He cleaved her dead body in two, using one half to form the heavens and the other to cover the water below and form dry land. He used her spittle to make the clouds and rain and had the rivers Tigris and Euphrates flow from her eyes. He then created the sun, the moon and the stars, ordered the months and the seasons and assigned administrative responsibilities among various relatives.

Fig. 2:

Source: Babylonian cylinder seal | Public Domain

Marduk with the symbols of kingship—the crown, the ring and the rod3

The gods accepted his authority, but when order had been established they were chagrined to find that they had been left without servants. They complained to Marduk that there was no one to clean their homes or cook their 6

In the Beginning

food. He appreciated their problem and promptly solved it. He cut off the head of one of his enemies and used his blood and bone to form man, to whom he allocated a single function—to serve the gods. Babylonia is an extensive flood plain cut by two great rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. To the east and north it is bound by high mountains, to the west and south by desert. The rhythm of the seasons has not changed for thousands of years. Winters are cold and wet, summers hot and dry. In the spring the rivers, already swollen by torrential winter rains, are fed by the melting snows from the mountains. They overflow their banks and inundate great stretches of the plain. As the water recedes dry land reappears and the fertile alluvial soil lies ready for cultivation. Not too great an effort of imagination was needed to transform the floodwaters, stretching as far as the eye could see, into the mythical Primeval Waters; nor to attribute control of the chaos to the divine intervention of Marduk. The success of large-scale agriculture in the flood plain depended on the meticulous maintenance of a system of levees to contain the water, and irrigation canals to bring it to the fields during the hot, dry summers. With the technology of the ancient world such maintenance required a great deal of human muscle power organized in disciplined labor battalions. That Marduk not only brought the forces of nature under control, but also set up a heavenly bureaucracy for their proper management, must have been reassuring to the inhabitants of the capricious flood plain. He must certainly have enjoyed the whole-hearted approval of the human bureaucrats below. They could attribute those dictates of officialdom that imposed a heavy burden of conscript labor on the populace to a godly source, giving them the gloss of legitimacy and assuring their docile acceptance. The parallels between the Babylonian Creation Myth and the environment which nurtured it are striking. So too is the way in which the inferior, servile status allotted to humanity by the gods dovetails so neatly with the interests of the ruling classes in this civilization, built on the flood plain and irrigated agriculture.

Egyptian Cosmogony The civilization of Ancient Egypt lasted for three thousand years, from about 3100 BCE, when dynastic history began, until the country was conquered by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE. During these three millennia gods came and went, fused with one another, and changed their names and attributes. The story of Creation underwent many transformations, and only fragments of most versions remain. The two most coherent and consistent versions of the story available to us are associated with two great religious centers, Heliopolis and Hermopolis. Both start in endless space filled with Primeval Waters,4 where there was neither sky nor earth nor air, no Nile river, no distinction between above and below. There were neither gods nor men, nor even the name of a thing. The Primeval Waters were

7

Writ in Water

designated as Nun and it was told that they were to be found in the infinity, the nothingness, the nowhere and the dark. The theological doctrine of Heliopolis held that this shadowy, nebulous state ended when Ra, the Sun God, in a manner inexplicable to human beings, raised himself out of the waters and willed his own physical existence. He emerged, either onto a hill or in the form of a hill, just as small hills or islands emerge from beneath the Nile waters as the annual floods begin to subside. He5 conceived two children, Shu and Tefnut, spat them out and from one god became three. He gave Shu dominion over the air and Tefnut dominion over mist, dew and rain. Shu and Tefnut then mated with each other and from this union the twins, Geb and Nut, were born, clinging tightly to each other. Their father pulled them apart, raising Nut up to form the arch of heaven and leaving Geb to form the earth below. After the act of Creation was completed, Ra wept and his falling tears peopled the earth with men and women.6 Fulsome praise of Ra as the Creator is found in one of the hymns in the Book of the Dead. Hermopolian theology gave a very different account of the emergence from the amorphous state of the Primeval Waters. The characteristics of the waters—depth, darkness, endlessness and invisibility—were anthropomorphized. Each had male and female forms and they all joined together to form an egg, from which the world originated as it burst open and released the bird of light. The site of this happening was pinpointed, the Lake of the Two Knives, a pool of water in Hermopolis surrounded by a high wall, with a small, hilly island at its centre. Here light first made its appearance. Conditions of life in Egypt remained remarkably stable over thousands of years. Natural barriers in all directions—the desert to the east and west, the sea to the north and the cataracts to the south—protected the Egyptians from foreign intrusion. The Nile floods arrived each year with commendable regularity and, very early in their history, the peasants developed farming practices well adapted to the rhythm of the river. There was little motive for innovation and little room for expansion once the narrow strip of land on each bank between the river and the desert had been brought under cultivation. Most Egyptians were peasants. They labored in the fields during the day with the sun beating down on their heads. When it set in the evening, the world was enveloped in darkness and the cold desert wind brought a sharp fall in temperature. It was natural to see the sun as the source of all life together with the river, which each year brought water for irrigation and silt to renew the fertility of the land, making it possible to grow the surplus produce needed to maintain the monarchy, the nobility, an extensive bureaucracy and a large religious establishment. The combination of water, fertile land and sun meant that, notwithstanding a non-productive superstructure and the burden of ensuring conscript labor to maintain levees and irrigation canals, a peasant could look forward, after a life of working in the fields, to a carefree old age. 8

In the Beginning

Fig. 3:

Ra, the Sun God

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Perhelion/CC BY-SA 3.0

The story of the immortal Ra’s progress from birth to old age draws heavily on the life experience of his human progeny. His life was one of work. After creating the world, he settled into a regular routine. Every morning he rose from the waters of Nun and traversed the heavens, providing the light and heat that made life possible for the earth’s inhabitants. At sunset he entered the waters of the underworld and journeyed eastward to be ready to rise once again the next day. He traveled by boat so that the water would not extinguish his fire. As he aged, Ra tired of the repetitive daily round and the exhausting task of dealing with the threats to his hegemony that beset him on every voyage. When he complained of fatigue, Nun, the Primeval Waters, recruited some help to ease his burden. His granddaughter, the sky goddess Nut, was instructed to take the form of a cow and carry him across the sky each day. When her legs began to tremble under this heavy burden, her father, Shu, was summoned to support her belly. Eventually Ra grew so feeble that his progeny managed, by subterfuge, to strip him of his power as Sun God and appoint his great-grandson, Horus, in his stead. In his forced retirement he was treated with respect and continued to be revered as the Creator of All Things. Could even a god ask for more? 9

Writ in Water

The flow regime of the Nile was remarkably stable from year to year, incomparably more benevolent than the sudden ruinous inundations amid which the people of Sumer struggled to make land out of a watery waste.7 Moreover, the Egyptians did not have to face the devastation of salt accumulation that brought misery and collapse to so many irrigation-based societies. The Nile floods sufficed to leach the salts from the limited amount of land that could be cultivated. Not surprisingly, the self-image of the Egyptians was far more positive than that of the Mesopotamians. They were formed from the tears of the creator god, not fashioned from the chopped-up remains of an enemy of their chief god.

Creation through the Eyes of the Israelites The ambience of the Biblical Genesis is quite different from that of earlier stories of Creation. Its starting point is a single, omnipotent Creator. The natural world is inanimate. The water, the earth, the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars are not primal, generative forces but components of God’s manifold works. No place exists for feuding families of gods, indeed there is no room for any other deities at all, whether whole or in their dismembered parts. Yet the Israelite account of Creation did not spring whole from the soil of Canaan. Traces of its antecedents can be detected everywhere. Many descriptive details follow the Enuma Elish too closely for coincidence. The concept of the Primeval Waters almost certainly derived from Mesopotamia. Nothing in the experience of those who dwelt along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean could have suggested it. In all the Land of the Bible there was only one perennial river, the Jordan. It flowed from north to south, deep in the Great Rift Valley. Its catchment area was relatively small, and it did not burst its banks to flood the surrounding countryside. The other rivers were ephemeral. They carried torrents of water from the hills in the east to the Mediterranean in the rainy season, but their journey was rapid and any inundation was short-lived and limited in extent. In the summer months their flow dwindled to a trickle or disappeared. The first two chapters of Genesis reveal not one but two accounts of Creation. The first is rich in detail spelling out what happened each day. The second is brief, even truncated. But the important distinction between them, strongly suggesting that they do not come from the same source, is the different ordering of Creation. A Mesopotamian ambience emanates from the first version, while the second appears home-grown, firmly anchored in the local, Canaanite environment. The first mention of water in the Bible appears as early as the second verse of the first chapter of Genesis, immediately after the opening declaration that God created heaven and earth: And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved on the face of the waters. Genesis 1.2

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In the Beginning

Fig. 4:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Arhitectdanielheller/CC BY-SA 4.0

The First Day of Creation

Daniel Heller8

On that first day, He went on to separate night from day. And on three of the remaining days of Creation He was again busy with water. On the second day He made a firmament in the midst of the waters to divide the waters from the waters. He divided the water in the heavens, the mists and clouds that came down to the earth as rain, from the water covering the face of the earth.

Fig. 5:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Arhitectdanielheller/CC BY-SA 4.0

The Second Day of Creation 11

Daniel Heller

Writ in Water

This day’s work remained to be completed on the third day, when He created dry land by gathering the waters under heaven in one place and: God called the dry land earth and the gathering together of the waters he called the seas. Genesis 1.9

Then, on the fifth day, he populated the seas: And God created great whales (sea monsters) and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind … And God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the water in the seas.

Genesis 1.21

Thus the first version. The second, beginning in the fifth verse of the second chapter of Genesis, draws a different picture: And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, And every herb in the field, before it grew, for the Lord had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground But there went up a mist from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. And the Lord planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there put man whom he had formed. Genesis 2. 5–8

In Genesis I, spring seems to have been the season of Creation. The world turned a vernal green on the third day, after the waters had been gathered together so that the dry land could emerge: the earth brought forth grass, the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the fruit tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: Genesis 1.12

Like the Primeval Waters, this description is very compatible with Mesopotamian conditions. It may have been based on the experience of the Israelites in Babylonian captivity. By contrast, in Genesis II, creation seems to have taken place in the autumn.9 The pre-Creation universe is sun-scorched, parched and barren as if after a long summer, while Creation takes place on a day when the first signs of rain are heralded by dense morning mist in the valleys. This version is appropriate to conditions in the Holy Land, where the earth turns green as grain crops germinate after the first rain. 12

In the Beginning

God placed his most important creation—man, whom he had made in his own image—in the Garden of Eden, and assured the pleasantness of his surroundings and a sufficiency of food by providing a generous water supply: a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. Genesis 2.10

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God’s command and ate of the Tree of Knowledge, He punished them by depriving them of this great gift of water. Henceforth they and their offspring would have to wrest a living from cursed ground, which would bring forth thorns and thistles, typical arid land vegetation. Their nomadic descendants would have to wander over great distances in search of water and pasture land for their thirsty flocks. The Garden of Eden from which they were banished is identifiably Mesopotamia, though idealized in its remoteness. The land in which they found themselves is clearly Canaan, with its grimness only a little exaggerated. Further traces of the pagan antecedents of the Biblical story of Creation are to be found wherever the censor’s blue pencil faltered in its task of expurgation, leaving references to gods and strange mythological beasts whose proper home is in earlier Mesopotamian mythology. Many descriptions are found of God not simply dealing with inanimate, watery chaos but subduing or destroying some great sea monster, variously called Yam, Nahar, Leviathan, Rahab or Tanin. The Babylonian precursor of these accounts is the conflict between Marduk and Tiamat, while an Ugaritic version of the same tale tells of the clash between Baal and Yam. Here are two of many examples: In that day the Lord with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish Leviathan, the piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea. Isiah 27.1 Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou breakest the heads of the dragons in the waters. Psalm 74.13

Traces of foreign mythological elements in the story of Creation are preserved in Jewish tradition to this day. Here, for instance, is the Midrash Konen. It was first published in 1601, but apparently dates back to the 11th century. God found the male Upper Waters and the female Lower Waters locked in a passionate embrace. ‘Let one of you rise’, he ordered, ‘and the other fall!’ But they rose up together, whereupon God asked: ‘Why did you both rise?’ ‘We are inseparable’, they answered with one voice. ‘Leave us our love!’ God tore them apart with his little finger. The upper he lifted high, the lower he cast down …10

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Greek Cosmogony Greece was a land of immigrants for many centuries before recorded history. Wave after human wave, each with its own gods, its own values and traditions, penetrated the peninsula. From the clash and mix of this medley, the Greeks by the end of the 8th century BCE emerged as one people, speaking a common language, and with the most important elements of their shared heritage—the great sagas of the Odyssey and the Iliad and the Theogony of the poet Hesiod, an encyclopedic compilation of myths— committed to written form. Language and literature consolidated Greek culture but didn’t lead to political unity. The physical obstacles were too great. The areas of settlement were narrow valleys cutting down from mountain to sea. Arable land was scattered, difficult to access and in short supply. The limited food-growing capacity of the land, cultivated without irrigation, led to the development of small and rather isolated communities. These city states, as they came to be called, sometimes cooperated with one another, often fought for control of land and were always fierce in guarding their independence. They clung to their local gods, who crowded the Greek pantheon and cluttered up the corpus of mythology with confusing and often contradictory versions of essentially the same stories. Creation myths were part of this corpus. They came in many variations but were consistent on one point. They all began with water.11 The earliest Creation myth is attributed to the Pelasgians, the third millennium aboriginal inhabitants of the mainland and the surrounding islands. It tells of Eurynome, the goddess of all things, who rose from Chaos, the Primeval Waters. As she could find no place to set her feet, she separated the sea from the sky and went skimming over the waves, dancing wildly to keep herself warm. Her pirouetting aroused the lust of the North Wind, the serpent Ophion, who wrapped himself about her limbs and got her in the family way. She turned herself into a dove and laid a great egg. She ordered Ophion to curl himself around the egg seven times and to split it in two. All the contents of the world—the earth with its mountains and rivers, its vegetation and living creatures, and the heavenly bodies—spilled forth from the broken halves.12 Homer’s ordering of Creation was not too different from that of the Pelasgian myth. Like the serpent Ophion, the great river Okeanos encircled the world. And like Eurynome, Tethys, the mother of all his progeny, ruled over the sea. But Homer found the source of all things, gods and mortal creatures alike, in Okeanos, while for the Pelasgians it was in an egg. The eighth century poet Hesiod declaimed that Earth, Love, Darkness and Night emerged together from Chaos. Then Earth, alone and unaided, gave birth to Heaven, the Mountains and the Sea and afterwards mated with Heaven to beget Okeanos and others. Okeanos mated with his sister Tethys and they had a large family, which included all the rivers of the world and three thousand Okeanides. Most of these were river spirits, though some were given tasks quite unrelated to water. 14

In the Beginning

In the theology of Olympus, Gaia, the Earth Goddess, like Eurynome, came forth from the Primeval Waters alone and unaccompanied. There the resemblance ends, for whereas Eurynome danced, Gaia slept. In her sleep she gave birth to a son, Uranus, who became god of the heavens. He rose upward and looked down on her affectionately from the mountaintop. She slept on as he showered rain on her private parts, making the rivers flow and filling her hollow places with water to become seas and lakes. The rain fertilized the earth, making the trees and grass and flowers grow and bringing forth birds and beasts. Yet another version of the creation myth was borrowed by the later Greeks from the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic and preserved for posterity by the Roman poet, Ovid (43 BCE–17CE). In this tale, the God of All Things, sometimes called Nature, appeared in Chaos and divided the earth from the heavens and the water from the earth. He assigned the heavenly bodies their stations in the firmament and molded the surface of the earth, dividing it into climatic zones and covering it with vegetation. He stocked the earth with beasts and the water with fish: Before the seas, and this terrestrial hall, And heaven’s high canopy, that covers all, One was the face of nature, if a face: Rather a rude and undigested mass: A lifeless lump, unfashion’d and unfram’d, Of jarring seeds, and justly Chaos nam’d. … Thus air was void of light, and earth unstable, And water’s dark abyss unnavigable, No certain form on any were imprest; All were confused and each disturb’d the rest. … But God, or Nature, while they thus contend, To these intestines put an end: Then earth from air, and seas from earth were driv’n, … Thus when the God, whatever God was he, Had formed the whole, and made the parts agree, That no unequal portions might be found, He moulded earth into a spacious round, Then with a breath, he gave the winds to blow, And had the congregated waters flow, He adds the running springs and flowing lakes, And bounding banks for winding rivers makes. Some part in earth are swallowed up, the most In ample oceans, disembogu’d, are lost. Ovid, Metamorphoses—The Creation13

There is nothing in the Greek environment to inspire the idea of the Primeval Waters of the Creation myth. This cannot be other than an import from a neighboring flood plain civilization. There are hints that even when they used the concept the Greeks were not entirely at ease with it. In the 15

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Metamorphoses, for instance, Chaos is not treated as synonymous with the Primeval Waters as it is in other Mediterranean cosmogonies. The primal rude and lumpy matter is composed of land and air as well as the waters of the ocean. By contrast, the idea of Okeanos was an extension of immediate, everyday experience. When an inhabitant of mainland Greece or one of the islands of the archipelago looked towards the horizon he saw water. It was only a small step of generalization and abstraction to see Okeanos as a watery cordon circumscribing the earth. It was an appropriate vision for seafarers. What of man in the scheme of things? With little land and no irrigation, the Greeks could not live from agriculture. For their livelihood they turned to the sea, never more than sixty kilometers from home and easily accessible down the valleys leading to the shore. They became sailors and maritime traders and colonists of the Mediterranean basin. These seafaring occupations demanded self-reliance, enterprise and initiative. A modicum of less attractive human attributes such as competitiveness, vindictiveness, thievery and deceit were also no disadvantage. Certainly they could not afford to be passive and submissive like the dwellers of the flood plains, who had to bow to authority as they bowed their backs to build and maintain canals and dykes. Appropriately, they believed themselves to have been created in the image of the gods, even if they had lost some of their aura over time. Man, said the Greeks, was made by Prometheus. The privilege was granted him by Zeus himself as a reward for his support against the other gods. Prometheus made man out of water and clay, shaping him in the image of the great gods themselves, with upright stance and gaze directed to the stars. He then touched the figure he had formed with his torch, which had been lit by the sun and bestowed on humanity the divine spark that in the fullness of time would burn bright and lead to the growth of knowledge, art, commerce and civilization itself. In the Greek myth, man fell from a state of grace, not like Adam and Eve in a single stroke, but slithering downward in a number of stages. Through five ages, from the long-past Golden Age, through the Silver and Bronze to the Iron Age, the human temperament degenerated and conditions of life deteriorated. Hesiod described his contemporaries of the Iron Age as degenerate, cruel, unjust, malicious, libidinous, treacherous and devoid of family loyalty or filial devotion. This would certainly have been a depressing self-image with which to live, but at least one other myth offered grounds for optimism about the human condition. It describes the coming of a day when Zeus could no longer abide the wickedness of Iron Age mortals. He sent a great flood that almost reached the peak of Mount Parnassus and washed humanity from the face of the earth. Only one couple, Deucalion and Pyrrha, who had lived in righteousness, was allowed to scramble up the mountain and elude the waters. This deluge myth has a familiar ring but, while the descendants of Noah turned out as bad as their ancestors, the progeny of this righteous couple, who repopulated the world, were a race of virtuous people. 16

In the Beginning

And even for those who remained skeptical, there was still Hope. Hope had been the only good thing in Pandora’s box and it remained there to provide comfort in misfortune after all the evils and mischiefs had escaped to plague mankind. There was hope that some day the good divinities— Astrae, the goddess of Innocence and Themis, the goddess of Justice—who had been driven away by corruption, would return and a new Golden Age would dawn. All in all, the men of Greece took quite a favorable view of themselves. Their society was human-centered and their heroes were brave and daring warriors. They acknowledged the supernatural powers and immortality of the gods, but saw no reason to be cowed by them. In reality, it was they who had created the gods in their own image and, not surprisingly, did not find their behavior and morals in any way superior to those of ordinary mortals. Their feisty outlook, bordering on the hubristic, was tailored to the needs of a seafaring people for whom water was associated with challenge and opportunity rather than the repetitive grind of farming and dependence on forces beyond their control.

Mediterranean Myths in Perspective Millennia ago, the Mediterranean Sea was already a busy highway, with warriors, adventurers, migrants and traders crisscrossing its waters. Not only goods and people but also ideas traveled, and where they found fertile ground they took root. All the mythologies of the region show traces of far-flung influences. No society ingested the ideas of others whole. They adopted and adapted what they found useful, for myths were neither purely abstract exercises nor storytelling for its own sake. They had very practical, political functions. They served the needs of the ruling classes, giving legitimacy to existing customs and institutions or to social change, according to circumstance. Yet, with all the evidence of cross-fertilization and all the similarities in some of the detail, the Creation myths of the Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Israelites and Greeks reflect and reinforce their very different views of their place in the universe. It would be foolhardy to attribute these differences to one factor alone, but certainly the nature of water supply was of prime importance in shaping outlook. Riverine societies required a subservient or, at the very least, a disciplined and cooperative peasantry. Those dependent on winter rains for pasture and crops perforce placed a much higher premium on self-reliance and personal responsibility. Those for whom the sea was the major source of livelihood placed an even higher premium on courage and initiative.

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Chapter 1.2 Creation Myths of Asia In that Kappa [ancient time] the world was thoroughly immersed in water. Phattakappa [the present time] came into being and water receded. The higher parts of the world’s physiography appeared and became mountains while the lower parts remained watery with rivers and brooks in places …14 He (the self-existent, unmanifest and unimaginable Lord) thought deeply for he wished to emit various sorts of creatures from his own body. First he emitted the waters…15

Hinduism,16 and Buddhism, Taoism and Zen, the religious philosophies which sprang from it, offer explanations of the workings of the universe radically different from those of the cultures of the Mediterranean basin. Asian cosmogonies, in sharp contrast to their Mediterranean counterparts, are cyclical, not linear in structure. They describe an endlessly repetitive cycle of birth and rebirth, not an historical progression from a single act of Creation. Yet, for them as for their westerly neighbors, water is the primeval substance. The Hindu model of the universe has six concentric rings of continents separated by oceans. The Buddhist model has an additional ring of continents. At the centre of both systems is a mountain-continent, usually identified with the Himalayas. Beyond the furthest continent the Ocean of Infinity stretches away endlessly. Naga, the serpent,17 plays a central role in a perpetual cycle of destruction and resurrection. Periodically it swallows all the waters of the world, leaving the earth desiccated and lifeless. It then curls up in the form of a serpent-cloud and covers the peak of Mount Meru. Water is free to circulate once again and revive the land only when Indra, the great warrior and phallic god of rain and fertility, comes to the rescue, hurling his thunderbolt at the serpent and shattering its inert body. The Vedas, the Holy Scriptures of Hinduism, are filled with descriptions of the primacy of water in scheme of things. The 129th Hymn of the tenth book of the Veda describes That One Thing that existed before there was a universe: Then there was neither being (Sat) nor non-being (Asat) There was no air nor firmament beyond it. Was there a stirring? Where? Beneath what cover? Was there a great abyss of unplumbed water? There was no death nor anything immortal; Nor any sign dividing day from night. The One Thing, breathing no air,

18

In the Beginning was yet self-breathing; No second thing existed whatsoever Darkness was hidden in a deeper darkness. This all was a sea without dimension.18

According to another passage from the Vedas, Apah, the Waters, are either uncreated or created in a unique manner: The waters are produced from Vac, the Word. He, the divine, self-existent Svyambhu, Desiring to produce things of many kinds from his own body, First with a thought created the waters, And then placed his seed in them.

The waters are pratisha, ‘underlying principle, basis, repository, support, standing place, receptacle’. They are also Hiranyagarbha, the womb of the seed of all Creation: For from the Waters is this universe produced In the Waters, O Lord, is your seat, that is, In the Waters, O Lord, is your womb. S.B. VI.8.2:3–4 The Waters are the foundation of the Universe S.B.XII 5.2.14 The son of Waters, the Lord by the greatness of divine dominion, has created all beings … him, the pure, the shining son of Waters, from the Vedic hymn, Apan Napat In the boundless waters in the centre of the universe on the back of the firmament, greater than great, having suffused with his splendour all the lights; The Lord of beings stirs within the womb … The cosmic waters flow. I am light! Rig Ved X.9.9

The Waters are also the womb of the cosmic egg, from which Brahma, the Creator, emerged: Long ago, when all things animate an inanimate were lost in one dreadful ocean there appeared a large egg, source of the seed of all creatures. Lying in the egg, Brahma went to sleep. At the end of a thousand years he awoke.19

A great body of epic poetry, myths and folk tales grew up. around the core of the Vedas to convey the message of Hinduism to the masses in a comprehensible form. The myth of Agastya, the patron saint of southern India, belongs to this body of folklore. Its roots in the cosmological model of the universe described above, are easy to discern. Agastya swallowed the entire ocean and so caused a terrible drought. It had not been his intention to deprive the earth and all its beings of the wa19

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ter vital for life. He only wished to get rid of a company of demons who had been disturbing the sacred rites of a group of Brahmin hermits. Chasing the demons into the ocean had not helped. They reappeared, refreshed, every evening. So Agastya took the drastic step of flushing them out through his amazing digestive system. It was left to another saint, the pious king, Bhagiratha, to remedy the damage that Agastya had so unwittingly caused. This was no easy task. It took him a thousand years of fierce penances before he succeeded in persuading Brahma to allow Ganga, the celestial river, to descend from the sky and end the drought. Even then a problem remained. The great river could not be allowed to make the descent in a single cascade, for this might shatter the earth. The force of the water had to be broken by pouring it through the matted hair that Shiva wore piled high on his head and Shiva was reluctant to cooperate. He relented only after Bhagiratha had lived on a diet of dry leaves for a whole year.

Fig. 6:

The Curled up Serpent

Source: © Itsaya Phutphong | 123RF | 9304827

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In the Beginning

The Sources of Asian Cosmogony and Cosmology The origins of the Asian peoples and their cultures are of a complexity to bedevil even the experts. What follows is not an attempt to explain these origins but only to suggest some of the possible roots of the primacy of water in their cosmogony and cosmology. Some scholars hold that the earliest development of civilization took place, not in the great river valleys of Africa and the Near East, but along the coasts of South East Asia. In Buckminster Fuller’s view, the more northerly and westerly civilizations of Asia, Europe and America are the relatively recent results of migration from this Asian waterfront. These migrations were by river into the heartland of Asia as the climate warmed with the ending of the Ice Age, and across the oceans. The Hindu-Buddhist cosmological model seems to derive from the accumulated experience of these coastal peoples, with the sea alternating with the land and atoll islands appearing and disappearing through volcanic activity. During the second millennium, Aryan peoples came down to the Indian plain through the mountain passes of Afghanistan. The source of this wave of immigration is shrouded in mystery. It may have been in Iran or in southwestern Siberia but, from wherever they started out, these migrants would have journeyed through arid lands and desert before reaching their destination. The waters of the great rivers of the new region in which they made their home must have captured their imagination and loomed massive and omnipresent in shaping their view of the world. Whatever the specifics, there can be no question that the cosmogony and cosmology of the peoples of the region bear the marks of the watery ambience, riverine, coastal and oceanic, in which they developed.

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Chapter 1.3 Creation Myths of Tribal Societies On the Road to Civilization The advance from tribalism to civilization is not a quantum leap, but a continuum. The mythologies of ancient civilizations drew heavily on their tribal pasts and their myths were stories of the derring-do of a large cast of human, superhuman and beastly characters. Yet there was a process at work of generalization, of metaphysical conceptualization, of distillation of the universal from the particular, which became more marked over time. The tribal societies of Africa, the Americas and Australia, some still living their lives according to traditional beliefs, most with social structures disrupted by foreign influences, belong on the continuum. Their creation myths are wondrous, with complex plots and rich and varied casts of characters. They are not devoid of abstraction, but most often emphasize the concrete and the specific. Water is a case in point. It plays a part in all Creation Myths, frequently as a particular river or lake, less often as the primal stuff.

Africa The geography and climate of Africa south of the Sahara placed great barriers in the way of communication and transport. A large number of discrete tribal societies developed in this setting, each with its own customs and traditions, its own folk-tales and mythology; its own name for the Creator God and its own ordering of the stages of Creation. The following is a selection from those Creation Myths in which water plays a major role. The Bakuba People of Zaire say that in the Beginning darkness covered the earth and there was nothing but water. Mbombo, the White Giant, ruled over this murky kingdom. One day, after being assailed by agonizing stomach cramps, he gave birth to the sun, moon and stars. The heat of the sun caused the water to evaporate. The vapour rose to the sky, forming clouds, and dry land emerged below. Mbombo covered the earth with forests and trees, and stocked it with people and animals that he too brought forth from his stomach. The Kono of East Guinea believe that in the Beginning, Alatanga lived on high and Sa, with his wife and daughter, lived in the muddy waters below. Alatanga began the process of creation by making dry land in the muddy sea and covering it with vegetation.20 The Dogon people of Mali placed the creation of human beings before that of the earth. Amma, the Creator, first made the sun and the moon, then shaped black people out of sunlight and white people out of moonlight. Only then did He make the earth in the shape of a female body, its 22

In the Beginning

head to the north and its feet to the south. The first animal, the golden jackal, was born of Amma’s intercourse with the earth. Water gets its first mention only when He fertilized the earth a second time—on this occasion not in person, but by sending the rain. The earth gave birth to twins, half human but with tails like green snakes and with forked tongues. They shared the name Nummo, meaning water. When they joined their father in the sky and looked down to see their mother naked, they clothed her in vegetation. The Bambara people of Mali, from the upper reaches of the Niger river, have a complex account of Creation involving a number of stages. The starting point was Fu, emptiness. Then came Yo, the Word, who created air, wind, water and earth. Yo was followed by Pemba, the principle of Creation. Pemba created human souls and an almost human female being, with a snout, a tail and long ears. He coupled with her and she gave birth to all the living things on earth. All worshipped Pemba, to whom they gave the name Ngala, meaning God. The second stage of Creation came after a long period of drought, which decimated the vegetation of the earth and caused heavy loss of life. Faro, the God of the waters, came down to earth to set things right. He bade the people remember that water was sacred and counseled them to treat it with reverence. He promised rain to replenish the lakes and streams and especially the great Niger River. Faro consolidated his hegemony over the world by destroying Teliko, the spirit of the hot, desiccating desert wind. When, in a moment of inattention or arrogance, this spirit dared to cross a river, Faro grabbed hold of him and hurled him against a mountain, where he was smashed to pieces. Faro then set about organizing his kingdom. He introduced the seasons of the year, day and night, north and south, and left and right. He created seven heavens, each with its own particular function. The first heaven, formed by rain clouds, was his abode as god of the waters. His other residence was the seventh heaven, where he stored the rain clouds. For the Swahili of Kenya, in the Beginning God alone existed. He created the light, and from the light he created the souls of all the human beings who would ever live, working his way from prophets, saints and holy men to the myriad souls of ordinary people. When that task was completed He proceeded to create the physical world, beginning with the sun above and a vast ocean below. The sun’s rays caused water to evaporate and rise upwards as mist to form clouds in the sky. He summoned the continents to rise out of the ocean. The result was a great saucer containing the flat earth surrounded by water. This saucer was supported on the horns of a bull. The bull itself rested on the back of a huge fish swimming in another ocean of a depth inconceivable to man. God clothed the continents with vegetation. He stocked the world with four categories of living creatures—those that swim, those that creep, those that walk on four legs and those that fly. Finally, He created the creatures gifted with intelligence—angels, jinns, evil spirits and human beings. All his creatures, unlike Himself, were born to die. 23

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The Yoruba of Nigeria: In the Beginning, Olodumare, the Almighty, the God of the Yoruba of Nigeria, (also known by many other admiring appellations such as Lord of Heaven, Creator and Source of All Being), lived in Heaven, where he surrounded himself by lesser gods, all of them relatives. There was nothing below Heaven except water, and this he placed in the charge of his brother, Olukun. Then one day He decided to create dry land. Various versions are given of how He accomplished this. In one version he sent a messenger with some loose soil in a snail’s shell to scatter over the water. In another He sent his son, Obatala, below with an immense globe, the earth. This shattered into fragments when it was placed in the water, forming mountains and islands. In both versions, a bird, either a hen or a pigeon, scratched around to spread the earth and create a wide and habitable plain. The water disappeared through a hole, from which people continue to draw it to this day. The whole procedure took four days and the fifth was a day of rest. When the dry land was ready, Olodumare had it planted with four trees. Their sap was to provide drink for man, for He had not yet created rain.21 He made the pigeon and hen multiply so there would be food. When all these preparations were complete, He had one of his entourage form men’s bodies out of dust, and then He himself breathed life into them and sent them down to earth. The Vugusu of Central Africa, a sub-division of the Bantu Abaluyia of Kavirondo, have quite a detailed account of Genesis. In the Beginning there was God, known as Wele Xakaba, the giver of all things. He lived alone in Heaven, which was suffused with light and held up by pillars. Wele Xakaba’s first act was to create the moon and the sun. He then put clouds in the sky and rain in the clouds to become the source of all water on earth. He created two rainbows, a narrow male one and a wide female one, which together held back the rain when it wasn’t needed. He created air and also the cold air, which turned the water in the sky into hailstones. He went on to create earth, with its mountains and valleys; then he created man on whom the sun could shine; then woman, so that man, to whom He had given the gift of speech, would have someone to talk to. He released water from the sky to form the lakes and rivers and streams. Then He created the plants and, since they were to no purpose if not needed as food, He created all the creatures that live on the earth and in the water. The whole work of Creation took Wele Xakaba six days. On the seventh day He rested. All the myths in this complex, colorful patchwork have in common the idea of God as the Supreme Being and the Creator of the world and of mankind, though in each tale He is called by a different name and accomplishes his task by a different method. He appears, for the most part, as a benevolent deity who views his creation with love, though quite often also with exasperation. It is difficult to generalize about the place of water in these cosmogonies, beyond saying that it is always present. The Bakuba start from a point indistinguishable from the primeval waters; the Bambara from the void, 24

In the Beginning

which is followed by the appearance of air, wind and earth as well as water. The Yoruba and the Kono begin their stories when the waters are already collected below; the Swahili god deals with the physical world, making sun above and ocean below only after creating human souls. It is also difficult to link the treatment of water in these various cosmogonies to geography, climate, or social and economic structure. It is possible that no such link exists, though it is more likely that the difficulty arises from lack of information. African traditional religions were part of an oral culture. The written record was very selective. It was the work of Christian missionaries who were not interested in understanding ‘pagan’ beliefs and customs for their intrinsic value, but only as an aid to undermining them and so clearing the way to convert the natives to the true faith.

North America Many peoples occupied the North American continent before the coming of the first Europeans. They lived in temperate forest regions, on arid plains, in the deserts and the mountains and along the steamy gulf. Each of these different environments imposed its own limits on lifestyle. Some were most suitable for hunters and gatherers, some for herdsmen, some for tillers of the soil. Each tribe’s vision of the world was formed by its own history and geography, but over centuries of migration, covering great distances, the tribes met, clashing and mixing not only their gene pools, but also their mythologies. Traces of this cross-fertilization can be detected in the myths of many tribes which echo pasts not their own. Yet, even with this caveat in mind it is hard to find a more useful tool for classification than ecological zone. In the following selection of myths, all the major zones are represented. The Forest Tribes—The Iroquois: The genesis myth of the Iroquois is an action-packed drama in three acts. The cast is very large, but the main actors are the personifications of Sky and Earth and their first-born daughter, known as Breath-of-Life or Gusts-of-Wind, and her twin sons, Sapling and Flint. The first act is set in an invisible heaven above the skies, a land of contentment and plenty whose existence dates from the beginning of time. Here a baby girl, Ataentsic, destined to become the great Earth Mother, is born. Various adventures and misadventures mark her growing-up. Wedded to Chief-He-Holds-the-Earth, she gives birth to a daughter, Gusts-ofthe-Wind. Without justification, the Chief suspects that Fire-Dragon, not he, is the father of the child. Consumed by jealousy, he drives his wife and baby out of heaven. The infant, in some inexplicable way, has by then returned to her mother’s womb. The second act begins as Ataentsic, again with child, is pushed through a great hole in the floor of heaven and falls downward. Below her is a lake, crowded with every conceivable variety of waterfowl, but no sign of dry land. The Loon is the first to catch sight of the falling form, reflected in the 25

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water. The bird misinterprets what he sees and calls to his companions that a woman-being is floating up from the depths. The Bittern summons them to look aloft and they realize she is falling from the sky. The animals all volunteer to bring up earth from the bottom of the lake so that Ataentsic should have land to light upon. After abortive attempts by the Otter and the Turtle, the Muskrat finally succeeds in retrieving some soil. He places it on the Turtle’s back. Its carapace begins to grow and the earth becomes dry land on which Ataensic comes safely to rest, her fall broken by the outstretched wings of the birds who fly up to meet her. Gusts-of-the-Wind is reborn on earth, but later meets her death as her twin sons, Sapling and Flint, fight in her womb. They make it safely into the world and the third act is dominated by their activities and rivalries. Sapling is the earth-shaper and the spirit of life and summer, while Flint is the spirit of wintry forces, a deceiver and trickster and maker of malevolent things. Together their activities form the world below, with all its good and evil. Deluge myths are not, strictly speaking, stories of creation, for they tell of a world populated by humans and animals before the flood. They are stories of recreation after total destruction. The forest tribes have many versions of the deluge myth, in some ways reminiscent of Noah and the Ark. The following story was recorded by the Jesuit father, Le Jeune, in Relations, written in 1633. The act of recreation of the earth is almost identical to that of its original creation: They say there is one named Messou, who restored the world when it was lost in the waters. One day Messou was out hunting with his lynxes, who were brothers to him. The animals followed an elk into a lake and disappeared beneath the surface. When Messou came in search of them, he was told by a bird that they were being held at the lake bottom by certain monsters. Before he could continue his search, the lake overflowed its banks and drowned the whole earth. Putting aside all thought of his beloved lynxes, he turned his mind to recreating the world. He sent a raven in search of a piece of earth. It came back empty-handed, for everything was covered with water. He then sent an otter to bring some soil from the bottom of the lake, but the water was too deep for it. Finally it was the muskrat who succeeded in retrieving a little piece of earth. With this Messou recreated the whole world. He married the muskrat and their children repopulated the earth.

The Tribes of the Great Plains: This is the creation myth of the Pawnee of Nebraska. In the beginning the world was ruled over by Tirawa, Chief of the great circle of the heavens, and his wife Atira, the Sky-Vault. They were assisted by a council of gods, and when Tirawa decided to create people he instructed the gods to care for them and allotted each a specific function. He set four stars at the four quartered regions—north-east, north-west, south-east and south-west—to hold up the heavens, and gave them the power to create people. He sent Clouds, Winds, Lightning and Thunders to the Bright Star, the evening star: Then the Clouds gathered; the Winds blew; the Lightning and Thunders entered the Clouds. When space was canopied, Tirawa dropped a pebble into their midst, which was rolled 26

In the Beginning

about in the thick Clouds. The storm passed and a waste of water was revealed. Then to the Star-Gods of the World-Quarters Tirawa gave warclubs, bidding them to strike the waters with them; and as they obeyed the waters separated, and the earth was made. Tirwana then commanded the Star-Gods of the Quarters to sing four times of the formation of the earth. With the first song came a storm that divided the earth into hill and valley. With the second song, which was of trees and vegetation, came another storm that dressed the earth in green. With the third: the waters of the earth were cleansed and sweetened and coursed in flowing streams

With the fourth all manner of seeds that had been dropped to earth sprouted into life. The first male child was born of the union of the Sun and the Moon; the first female child of the union of the morning and evening stars. Not all humanity sprang from these children, for the gods also created other people. On all they bestowed gifts, including several varieties of corn, each suited to a different region. They instructed human beings in all the essential practical skills and taught them the songs and ritual ceremonies they needed to know. Their priests learned to perform a drama symbolizing the creation, making movements over a bowl of water: to show the people how the gods had struck the water when the land was divided from the waters.

Tribes of the Mountain and Desert: The Navaho world is a seven-storeyed structure. The creation myth chronicles the ascent of mankind from the lowest storey to the fifth, its present abode. The bottom storey was surrounded by water on all sides, with a spring at its centre from which four streams flowed. The inhabitants were driven out and up to the second storey by a flood, sent by the underworld gods as punishment for the sin of adultery. Their stay there was brief. Twenty-four days after their arrival, they were forced upward to the third storey after one of them had made free with the wife of their host. Sadly, men showed no ability to learn from experience or improve their behavior and soon found themselves in flight once again. They were driven to the fourth storey by a flood sent by the Water Monster, enraged when one of their number, Coyote, stole two of his children. They were nearly drowned by the rising waters, but finally made their escape through a hollow reed that grew upwards to the sky and reached the fifth storey. They emerged on an island in the middle of a lake, but the gods opened a passage for them and they made their way to the shore. The waters continued to rise through the open hole until the children stolen by Coyote were returned to their father. Then the water subsided with a great roar. They were finally safe. The tales of the many adventures which followed as they set about putting their world to order are fascinating, but beyond the range of the creation story. The Pueblo Dwellers: the cosmogonies of the tribes, like the Sia and the Hopi, who built their homes clinging to the sides of cliffs and canyons in the South-West, share many features with the Navaho Genesis. 27

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For the Sia, the first being was Sussistinnnako, the Spider, who dwelt in the lower world. He created rain, thunder and lightning, and the rainbow. He sang until two women appeared. They were Utset, mother of the native tribes, and Nowutset, mother of the rest of humanity. For a number of years the people dwelt happily in the lower world, but then their lives were threatened and they barely managed to escape to the earth above by ascending through a reed. Then the floods came again and forced them to flee to the top of a mesa. They placated the rising waters by the sacrifice of a youth and a maiden. The earth hardened after the waters receded, and after four days of searching they found a place to build their permanent home. For the Hopi the nether world was all water. Two women, Huruing Wuhti of the East and Huruing Wuhti of the West, lived at the extremities of this watery waste. The Sun descended to them from the west every evening and emerged in the east at dawn. Together they created land by dividing the waters. They used the earth to create all living things. The first people lived blissfully in the lower world until the sin of licentiousness spread among them. Then they were driven from their homes by a great flood. They escaped to the world above with the help not only of a great reed, but also of a sunflower and two kinds of pine tree. In the world above, they separated into groups and each set up its permanent home in a different place. The Tribes of the Gulf Region: The tribes of the Gulf region had been driven there from both the north and the west, and their cosmogony is full of conflicting ideas derived from these regions. For the forest tribes of the north, the earth on which they lived lay below the heavens from which creation originated. For the tribes of the south-west the familiar, inhabited earth was an upper storey to which ancestral man had ascended from below. The Cherokee are typical of the gulf tribes in their combination of elements from both the north and the south-west in their cosmogony. In their view all the animals were originally crowded into the sky world, and everything below was water. The Water Beetle was sent to explore the nether world and, finding no rest on the waters, dived down to the depths and brought up some mud. From this the earth developed and when it was dry the animals came down to make their homes on it. This earth is an island floating in the sea. It is suspended from the sky vault by cords at its four corners. As it had a beginning, so too it will have an end. As the world grows old the people will die, the cords will weaken and break and the island will sink to the bottom. All will be water again. The Cherokee also believed in the existence of another world beneath the known world and identical to it, except that the seasons ran in reverse. Of this they had positive evidence, for the waters of the springs which rose from below were always warmer than the surrounding air in winter and cooler in summer. To the Cherokee, the streams coming down from the mountains were paths leading to this nether world and the springs were doors opening on it. With one of the underground people for a guide, it was even possible to reach it. Neighbors of the Cherokees, such as the 28

In the Beginning

Cussitaws, not only believed in the existence of this underworld, but also thought that man had ascended from it to the known world. After clearing away all the variety and complexity of the myths of the native tribes of North America, two essentially different approaches to Creation come to light. The peoples of the forests and the plains turned their eyes upward to the heavens in their search for the beginning of things. The peoples of the mountains and the desert looked deep below the surface of the earth for their beginnings. Whatever the approach—whether water comes from above as rain or from below as floods—it is never missing from the story of Creation.

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Part 2 ROADS TO CIVILIZATION

Chapter 2.1 On the Road to Civilization Water as a Catalyst The ancient sweet-water city of Jericho was an oasis on the edge of the desert whose spring has been running from prehistoric times right into the modern city today. Here wheat and water came together and, in that sense, here man began civilization. J. Bronowski22

Twelve thousand years ago our planet was structurally little different from the one we know today. After movements of cataclysmic proportions the continents, with their great mountain ranges and river systems, had settled into place. The fourth Ice Age, that had lasted for a hundred thousand years, was over. The ice sheets that had covered much of the northern hemisphere had receded towards the north pole. A new spring was dawning and major climatic upheavals were, at least for the time being, a thing of the past. The human species was poised to embark on an intensification and diversification of activity, on the road to civilization. Millions of years of evolution and some fairly recent developments had prepared the ground for a process of change a hundred times more rapid than what resulted from biological adaptation alone. The human scene, like the landscape, would have been recognizable to a time-traveler from the 21st century. During the preceding half million years the major ethnic groups—Negroid, Caucasoid and Mongoloid—that inhabit the planet today, had emerged and spread, though sparsely, across the world. People had come to live in small organized groups, sheltering from the elements in caves or under tents of animal skin. They had invented a range of tools and weapons and a variety of techniques for manufacturing them. They traded with one another over impressively long distances for useful materials like the glass-like vitreous lava, obsidian, not widely distributed in nature. Whether these early ancestors were hunters or fowlers, fishers or gatherers of wild plants, they lived at the margin of subsistence with little time or energy left for any activity not directly linked to survival. They moved restlessly, criss-crossing the land to take advantage of every seasonal variation in weather and potential food supply, navigating the rivers in dugout canoes and skin-covered boats and perhaps already using solid-wheeled vehicles to make their way along forest paths. To make the quantum leap to civilization, they had to find surcease from this endless wandering, to 33

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settle and to free some of their number from the need to provide the basic necessities for themselves, allowing them to develop new and diverse skills. What we know of what actually happened on the road to civilization is necessarily incomplete, reconstructed from clues surviving from thousands of years ago—fossil remains of animals, plants and humans; ruins dug up by archeologists; fragmentary records in long-dead languages— interpreted by the devoted detective work of many scholars, sifting and analyzing elusive and ambiguous data and enjoying occasional flashes of insight. What seems beyond question however is that the most important early civilizations—in Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Indus valley—emerged under surprising similar conditions, born of the marriage of new hybrid species of wild wheat and grass with water flowing in exotic rivers through the floodplains of arid lands.23 A number of the characteristics of dryland environments that helped set the stage for the great human leap forward are directly linked to water. Arid conditions increased the chances of success for hunters with only the simplest of weapons. They could expect to find their quarry congregating to drink at the waterholes. Even away from these sites, the sparseness of the vegetation supported by the limited supply of water offered little cover and left game highly visible and vulnerable. Scarcity of water during the dry season, and particularly in drought years, mitigated the isolation of the small, wide-ranging hunting clans. It forced them into contact with one another at the few available watering points. These meeting places provided the venue for a fruitful exchange of ideas, of inventions, of technical information about advances in tool manufacture and use, and of goods. Each such exchange stimulated another infinitesimal step forward in control of the environment. The contiguity of the clans for fairly long periods enlarged the gene pool and reduced the effects of inbreeding. It made necessary formal arrangements for social cooperation in general, and for the regulation of access to scarce water in particular. Such arrangements, which had not been called for in the smaller primary groups, were the first seeds of law and government. The response of vegetation to the arid zone water regime also had important spinoff effects for human settlers. In their adaptation for survival in the desert, xerophytic plants became very prolific in their production of seeds so as to make the fullest use of whatever water was available. When their domestic cultivation began this translated into the boon for farmers of high yields from irrigated agriculture. The harsh ecological conditions also led to the development of many different plant varieties so that even the smallest ecological niches could be used to advantage and this too was a bonus for farmers searching for appropriate plants for cultivation.

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Roads to Civilization

Fig. 7:

Source: Author

Arid region after rains

The river valleys of arid lands were the repositories of particularly fertile soil. This was produced by the flow regime of the rivers, which laid down thick deposits of alluvial sand, silt and clay, free of rocks and stones and which replenished the stock of soluble minerals in the soil from year to year. The great fertility of the soil made it relatively easy to produce the surpluses of food needed to support a significant part of the population in non-food-producing occupations.

Other environments proved to be less favorable to the early development of civilization. Sub-Saharan Africa, where the story of the human species began, did not produce anything to compare with the great civilizations further to the north and east. Interesting rock paintings provide evidence of promising beginnings in the fertile savannah drained by two great river systems of the Niger and of Lake Chad but climatic changes after 3000 BCE nipped further development in the bud and turned the Sahara from savannah into desert. Further south the rain forest, in spite of its apparent fertility did not provide the preconditions for development. The forest environment tended to isolate people in small groups, with no foci for stimulating social interchange. The very fragile ecology of the rain forest did not lend itself to sustained, settled agricultural exploitation, for there was no source for the renewal of fertility as in the drylands. Moreover, no suitable crop was available for large-scale cultivation before the import of maize, potatoes, yams and manioc from the New World. 35

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The temperate lands of Europe had a plentiful supply of arable land. Moderate temperatures and well-distributed rainfall made irrigation unnecessary for agriculture. Farming settlements existed in France and the British Isles as far back as 4000 BCE. Yet no independent civilizations developed in these well-endowed regions. Perhaps it was the ease of subsistence which kept the Europeans from advancing to more sophisticated levels. By contrast with their contemporaries in arid regions, cooperation and organization for irrigation and flood control or any other activity, was not a necessary condition for survival.

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Roads to Civilization

Chapter 2.2 A Glance at Early Civilizations The early riverine civilizations covered enormous chunks of territory and extended over time spans measured in millennia. What follows does nothing more than shine a tiny spotlight here and there on the early meeting of water an humanity in this expanse of time and space.

Mesopotamia The civilization of ancient Mesopotamia began to take shape in the middle of the fourth millennium, cradled in the fertile valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates. It was the product of peoples of many different stocks. It lasted for about three thousand years and at its height reached far into northern Mesopotamia, west to the Mediterranean coast and south to the Red Sea. It came to an end when Babylon fell to the Persians in 539 BCE. The world of six thousand years ago was a maelstrom of people on the move. The margin of exploitable resources over basic needs was very narrow. Any slight change—drought or flood or even a few consecutive years of particularly high or low temperatures—was enough to set whole populations in motion in search of better conditions or even of survival. Different groups struggled with one another for control of land and water. As their swords clashed so did their ideas, with fruitful results in many fields of human endeavor. By 12,000 BCE farmers were tilling the lands above the river valleys, where the rainfall was sufficient to allow cereals to thrive. In the lower river basin, in spite of the rich alluvial soils, the land remained fallow for many more millennia. Precipitation was sparse and unreliable and the floods came too early to be of use to crops during the growing season. Men had to discover how to dig irrigation ditches before they could take advantage of the fertile soil. When they did so, the technical problems they faced were not too formidable. In many reaches, the river beds had been raised well above the surrounding countryside by recurrent deposits of silt so that water flowed to the fields by gravity alone. However this constellation made flooding an ever-present threat. To compound the problem, both the Tigris and Euphrates were in the habit of changing course violently and unpredictably, an erratic pattern of behavior due to the ratio of ten to one, and often more, between peak and base flows. The transformation of the delta from swamp to grainland began in about 4,000 BCE. It was accompanied by massive social change, for it could not be brought about without sustained, communal effort on a large scale. Irrigation required the construction, maintenance and renewal of an extensive system of irrigation and drainage canals and of levees for flood protection. The labor force for such an enterprise was enormous and the logistics were complex. Workers had to be made available in the right numbers, 37

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at the right times and in the right places. They had to be fed and housed when working away from home. They had to be supplied with raw materials, supervised and disciplined. Only a superstructure of functionaries, not participating in the actual physical labor, could perform these functions efficiently. Whoever came to control the necessary bureaucracy wielded great political power. One can speculate on the road traveled over many centuries. Starting with the voluntary cooperation of neighbors living in small villages, digging simple ditches and banking streams to protect their fields, the process must have led gradually, step by step, to more and more centralization as the scope of activities expanded. Inevitably the concentration of power would have spread from the management of water for irrigation and the control of floods to every sphere of civil, military and religious activity. Rulers would come to strengthen their authority by making claims to be the earthly representatives of the gods and eventually by declaring themselves to be gods.

Some Cities of Mesopotamia The growth of cities followed naturally on the heels of irrigation. A highly productive agriculture society could allow a significant number of its members to devote themselves to non-food-producing occupations; and the fruits of the division of labor could be enjoyed to the full only when people of different vocations gathered in close proximity to one another. Soon after 3500 BCE cities with populations in the tens of thousands began to develop along the banks of the twin rivers. The ruins of many of them now lie in the desert, long abandoned by the rivers which gave them life. The city of Eridu on a branch of the Euphrates began its life probably as early as 5000 BCE as a cult center dedicated to the water god Enki, otherwise known as Ea. It was described in the Babylonian Epic as the first city ever created: A reed had not come forth, A tree had not been created, A house had not been built, A city had not been made, All the lands were sea, Then Eridu was made!

Eridu is widely believed to be the model that inspired the later description of the Garden of Eden in the Old Testament. To the Israelites the conditions of life offered by this well-watered oasis, tales of which were no doubt enhanced and embroidered as they were told and retold, must have appeared idyllic, quite beyond the reach of ordinary, sinful mortals. This is the Eden of the second chapter of Genesis: And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to sight and good for food …

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Roads to Civilization And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted and became four heads The name of the first is Pishon … And the name of the second river is Gichon And the name of the third river is Tigris, that is which goeth towards the East of Ashur, And the fourth river is the Euphrates. Genesis, 2.8–13

The Tigris and the Euphrates can be identified with confidence. The Pishon and Gichon may have been the Hebrew names for major canals joining the two rivers, though no remnants of the canal system remain to confirm this theory. Other cities—Bad-tibira, Larak, Sippar and Shuruppak—situated higher up the valley, comparable in size and antiquity to Eridu, had their development cut short by the great deluge, possibly deluges, which devastated the region in about 2900 BCE. According to the Epic of Gilgamesh, Shuruppak was the home of the legendary Utnapishtim who managed to frustrate the plan of the god Enlil, to drown all humanity. Preceding another famed ark builder by many centuries, Utnapishtim built a craft of the strangest dimensions—a perfect cube of 120 cubits—in which, accompanied by family, a variety of animals and a treasure trove of gold and silver, he successfully weathered the flood. Over the centuries empires and their cities flourished and then declined, only to be replaced by others. Mari was an important urban center all through the third and second millennia. It reached its peak during the closing years of the 19th century and the first half of the 18th century under the Amorite dynasty, founded by Yahdum-Lim. Mari’s importance can be judged by the magnificence of its royal palace. Yahdum-Lim began its construction and his son, Zimri-Lin, completed the job. With more than three hundred rooms, it covered an area of nearly ten acres. Its elegant reception halls were decorated with multi-colored frescoes. One of them depicts the investiture of a king, in a beautiful garden, watered by four streams flowing from a common source. Perhaps another inspiration for the Garden of Eden? The inscription on his tomb casts light on Yahdum-Lim’s priorities as a ruler. They detail his choice of the achievements for which he wished to be remembered. I brought peace to the land; I cut (irrigation) canals; I did away with the water bucket in my land.

Water is a heavy substance. A cubic meter, about enough to fill a mattress for a queen size waterbed, weighs a ton. Lifting and carrying a bucket-full even a short distance is hard work. Moving enough water from a river to a field in need of irrigation is a back-breaking task. Doing away with the water bucket was no simple enterprise. It required the replacement of muscle power—human or animal—by the force of gravity. At least three conditions had to be met: 39

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The first condition was physical. A source of water had to be located from which it could flow to the point of consumption, moved by the force of gravity alone. Such a source could not be found in the valleys themselves but only in the foothills on their margins or in the mountains, inevitably quite far from the point of use.

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The second condition is technological—the ability to build conduits which maintain suitable gradients over long distances and changing topography. Sophisticated techniques of measurement and surveying are required to achieve this end.

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The third condition is a corollary of the first two. An appropriate institutional structure must be in place to deal with all the administrative and legal complexities of this form of water supply.

A ruler who could transform the quality of life of his subjects by doing away with the water bucket in his land was entitled to boast. The site of the city of Nineveh just east of the Tigris, shows some signs of occupation going back to the fifth millennium. It was important enough in the 18th century to merit mention by Hammurabi, in the introduction to his code of laws, as the site of a temple of the Akkadian goddess, Ishtar, but another millennium passed before it reached its pinnacle as the capital city of Sennacherib, ruler of the Assyrian Empire from 705 BCE to 681 BCE. Sennacherib was a great builder and his water supply systems already incorporated all the major elements of construction later used by the Romans. Nineveh’s location at the edge of the valley made it possible to import water by gravity flow from one of the western tributaries of the Euphrates. A dam was built in the river bed, diverting part of the river flow into a fifty-five kilometer aqueduct that carried water to the city. In one section a bridge of three hundred meters, supported on arches, carried the aqueduct over a flowing river. The Emperor used the water he brought to his capital city for the great botanical gardens he planted, filled with fruit trees, vines and a great variety of plants drawn from every corner of his domain. An Assyrian relief of the period gives an indication of how they were irrigated. It shows a palatial garden watered by a canal, carried on arches. In another hydraulic project, the aqueduct of Erbil, Sennacherib introduced a technology new to the region, combining the use of vertical shafts (piers) and underground tunnels (qanats). The technique was developed in the kingdom of Urartu, to the north. Originally it was used to rid copper mines of excess water and only later applied to water supply. Sargon, the father of Sennacherib, learned of it on one of his expeditions to the north. The tunnel of the Erbil aqueduct runs horizontally for fifteen kilometers. It is connected to the surface by piers, sunk along its length at fixed intervals of forty meters. These were used in the construction of the tunnel and then 40

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in their maintenance. Through the Assyrians, and the Persians after them, the technology of piers and qanats spread through the ancient world. Remarkably enough, it still plays a role in water supply in such countries as Iran and Afghanistan. The greatness of Nineveh was over when, after the reign of Sennacherib’s grandson, Assurbanipal, it lost its standing as capital city of the Empire Its end came at the hands of the Babylonians in 612 BCE. Over many centuries Mesopotamian civilization blossomed and declined and blossomed once again. It stirred to life with the beginnings of irrigated agriculture and over time developed a complex and rich urban superstructure which included the extension of irrigation to great parks and gardens whose purpose was pleasure and the good life, not just survival.

The Indus Valley The Indian sub-continent is a large triangle, with its base in the Himalayas and its apex three thousand kilometers to the south in the Indian Ocean. It is cut off from the rest of the world by formidable geographical barriers, the highest mountains in the world to the north and north-west, ocean and jungle to the east and ocean to the west. Within this huge land mass with great variations in geography and climate it was the Indus valley, the great river valley system in the north-west that enjoyed conditions most favorable to human advancement. When they embarked on the road to civilization many centuries after Egypt and Mesopotamia, the medley of peoples who had come to occupy this valley followed their own independent path, hardly touched by foreign influences. Archeologists began to explore the region in 1920. They unearthed a culture with a written language but only a multitude of brief inscriptions, incised on seals, potsherds and pieces of copper have been discovered, no major texts. Scholars have not yet succeeded in deciphering the Indus script from these fragments, so the physical findings have to speak for themselves. The first traces of agriculture in the alluvial plain of the Indus valley go back about five thousand years. Gradual development was followed by abrupt change, and the emergence of a rich, urban culture, spread over an area of more than a million square kilometers, which flourished for the seven centuries from 2,400 to 1,700 BCE. The catalyst for this quantum leap forward may have the invention of a process for firing mud bricks, providing the means for effective flood control in a valley devoid of stone. With flood waters available for irrigation farmers could exploit the rich alluvial soils. They grew wheat and barley, fruit and vegetables, cotton, sesame and mustard seed for oil. They even managed to grow rice, so important in the later history of India, though on a small scale. There are a few hints as to the social and economic organization of the farming community. The existence of large, centralized granaries in the 41

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cities suggests that the farmers lived under tight central control, obliged to hand over most of their grain to the authorities. They may not even have farmed their own land, but rather have been directly employed by the city authorities. Whatever the case, they would almost certainly have had to bear the heavy burden of conscript labor for flood prevention and other public works. The highly productive agricultural hinterland supported a number of settlements, large and complex enough to be regarded as cities. The extensive excavations of Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro, both with populations of thirty thousand or more, provide some insights into the life-style of the city dwellers of this Harappan civilization, how they coped with municipal water supply and dealt with problems stemming from the capriciousness and unpredictability of the river system. Mohenjo-Daro was a city in which a modern city-dweller might well have felt at home. The residential area was quite separate from the city centre. It was laid out on a carefully planned grid system, with a broad main boulevard, about ten meters wide, running from north to south, with somewhat smaller streets crossing it at right angles every two hundred meters or so. There is abundant evidence of concern for creature comforts. Typically, the houses were built around central courtyards, providing light and ventilation, with privacy assured by windows screened with grilles of alabaster or terra cotta. They were usually entered from side lanes, and blank walls giving onto the main streets, ensured a large measure of security and protection from the sun and from the prying eyes of passers-by. Most striking of all was the concern shown for personal hygiene and sanitation. The largest villas drew their domestic water supply from private wells. Less affluent householders had to rely on public wells or the river itself. However there were private bathrooms in many of the houses, with floors made of waterproof brick. Drains, made of clay piping, carried the excess water to a central drainage system. Comfortable sit-down toilets were found in two of the houses excavated, not mere commodes, but brick structures linked to the main drainage system. Drainage water from the houses was collected in brick-lined open ditches, running along the sides of the streets. Catch-basins at regular intervals along their length trapped the debris and prevented blockages. Thousands of years later these basins, full of small everyday artifacts from body scrapers to children’s toys, have become treasure chests for the archeologists. The city centre of Mohenjo-Daro was impressive. All the major public buildings were situated on a raised platform, nearly ten meters high and about thirty two and a half dunams (3.25 hectares) in area, with bastions and towers around its perimeter. The large, two-storeyed public bathhouse was one of the most imposing structures. A sunken pool, twelve meters long, almost seven meters wide and two and a half meters deep, was set in its main courtyard. It was made of brick, lined with asphalt and then faced with staggered bricks, held in place by a gypsum mortar. Staircases led into 42

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the water from either end. There were also eight small, private bathrooms, just under three meters by two, each with its own staircase leading to the second floor. These may have provided living quarters for priests or perhaps catered for the more affluent citizens. Extrapolating backwards from the present-day concern of Indian religions with ritual ablutions, it is a fair guess that the baths served some ceremonial function, and not only the pursuit of cleanliness. Yet it is possible that the citizens of Mohenjo Daro indulged in bathing, at home and in company, like the Romans after them, simply because they enjoyed it. There is archeological evidence of slipping civic standards from about 1900 BCE on, centuries before the final demise of the Indus civilization. Houses came to be planned with less attention to detail. Their construction was flimsy, using old, rather than newly-fired, bricks. The community did not seem robust enough to cope with the damage from a series of abnormally high floods. Repairs after flooding became less meticulous than previously. Population fell. The agricultural hinterland also showed signs of decline. The cutting down of forests for building materials and fuel, and the overgrazing of the grass cover, took their toll on the fertility of the land. The fall in the standards of canal maintenance and flood protection works compounded the problem. The time was ripe for conquest. The fierce and vigorous Aryans who penetrated the region were herdsmen, not farmers. They needed grazing lands, not inundated fields. They shattered dams and their god, Indra, freed the waters by: rolling away stones like waggonwheels. Seven centuries after its first abrupt flowering, the Indus valley civilization was at an end.

China China is a massive country, with an area almost as large as the continent of Europe. The western part of the country is a plateau, with great mountain ranges running from east to west, and some vast deserts. The more hospitable part of the country lies to the east in the valleys of the three great rivers, from north to south, the Hwang-ho (Yellow River), the Yangtse and the Hsi. Evidence of human settlement goes back about 600,000 years—to Peking man. Closer to the present, traces of the Neanderthals and their successors are to be found in all the river valleys. Cultivation of the semi-tropical, coastal areas of the south began ten thousand years ago, and of the margins of the flood plains in the north, about seven thousand years ago. Fields were cleared and farmed and then abandoned as their fertility was exhausted. Many features of Chinese culture began to take shape during this period, including the traditional crafts of jade and wood carving, the raising of silk-worms, and perhaps even the use of chopsticks. And by two and a half thousand years ago, the only ancient civilization, with a continuous history which stretches to the present day, was taking shape. The Chinese people were emerging as a distinct nation, with a language 43

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and culture of its own. The canvas is so large and the period so long, that no attempt is made here to draw a picture of this civilization even in the most sketchy outline. Hence the disjointed nature of the following comments. The story begins in the north, a region covered with fine, light yellow loess soil, the gift of Siberia and central Asia. For millions of years, extremes of heat and cold ground the rock of their high plains fine, and the prevailing winds carried the gritty dust eastward. The loess lies deep, typically a hundred meters and sometimes as much as six hundred, reducing a landscape of mountains, plains and valleys, to uniformity. The plateau it has formed stretches for a thousand kilometers from west to east and, at its widest, four hundred kilometers from north to south. Agriculture developed in the flood plain of the Yellow River, on this thick, easily cultivated soil, with its rich admixture of fertilizing phosphorus, lime and potash. Irrigation began early, four thousand years ago. The long, arid summers called for it and, as in Mesopotamia, it was easy to draw water from a river whose bed had been lifted high above the surrounding countryside by the recurring deposit of silt. But, when the river periodically burst its banks, it took a terrifying toll. Not surprisingly, deluge stories were common in Chinese mythology and folklore, reflecting a preoccupation with floods and flood control, which has remained to this day. These Chinese stories were different from those of the more westerly cultures, their emphasis on the creation of society, not on the threat of destruction of humanity. This is the story of the great Yu, the Tamer of the Flood. Kun was struck down by the gods after stealing a piece of magic soil from the heavens, to build a dam and stay the floods. Three years after his death, his incorrupted corpse split open and his son, Yu, was born. In manhood, Yu set himself the tremendous task of dredging channels to carry the floodwaters to the sea. He was helped by a host of kindly sprites and spirits. Dragons and tortoises eased his labor by dragging their tails across the land to mark out the most promising watercourses. It took many years of labor, but Yu succeeded in making the world habitable and the land cultivable. While this story is recounted as myth, it was rooted in history. Yu was the founder of the first Chinese dynasty, the Hsia, which lasted from the 22nd to the 18th century. When, collapsing under its own corruption, it was overthrown, the virtuous nobleman, T’ang, who founded the new Shang dynasty, undertook to continue the old ways of Yu. He and his successors kept a firm hand on water management, raising conscript labor to build larger and larger irrigation and flood control works along the Yellow River. These works benefited the peasants, but mostly enabled them to grow the surplus grain, particularly millet, needed to maintain the monarch and his army and bureaucracy, the nobility and their retainers, and a large body of craftsmen, who produced fine bronzes and jade carvings, admired to this day. One ruler followed another. New dynasties overthrew old ones, grown slack and uncaring by having been in power too long. States clashed with 44

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one another for territory and resources. By the time of the Ch’in dynasty in the 2nd century BCE, a unified and centralized Empire emerged, which set the pattern of the ensuing centuries.

In Conclusion These, and other, civilizations have stirred into being, grown and flourished, decayed and then like the phoenix, risen from the ashes to repeat variations on the cycle many times over. Their histories are the product of a complex interplay of natural and human factors, rich tapestries woven from many threads. All this chapter does is to highlight the fact that water is an inseparable part of the story of the rise and decay of each and every civilization.

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Chapter 2.3 Weather and Weltanschauung— The People of the Bible The Bible as Source The first appearance of the ancient Israelites on the stage of history comes fairly late in the human story when God made a covenant with Abraham, promising that his tiny, semi-nomadic family living on the outskirts of the civilized world would grow into a great nation. Their story is told in the Old Testament of the Bible. Although it was written down by scribes long after the events occurred, and although scholars hold widely differing views as to its historical accuracy, it is undoubtedly a treasure trove of insights into how the Israelites perceived themselves, their world and their God, and it is probable that no comparable source exists for any other people. The focus of this chapter is on the many roles of water in this complex saga, and how intimately it is bound up in the Israelite perception of themselves and their relationship with their God from their modest beginnings, through their sojourn in Egypt and wanderings in the desert, to their transformation into a settled people in their own land. This chapter focuses solely on this aspect of the Biblical record, which actually does not begin with the patriarch Abraham,24 but with God’s creation of the world in seven days.

The Flood The first great water-linked event in the Biblical chronicle is of course Creation itself, which has already been discussed. The next was the Flood. This was not a home-grown tale. Life-threatening floods are not a feature of the climate of the Holy Land. The story was an import from the floodplains of Mesopotamia. However, the Israelites interpreted its significance in their own way as it struck a chord deep in their psyche, touching on their ever present fear of the consequences of provoking God’s anger. In the Israelite interpretation the flood was visited on the world by a deity who was so furious at the depravity of men that he was willing to destroy everything that he had so lovingly created:25 And behold I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life under heaven, and everything that is in the earth shall die. Genesis 6.17

The idea that God might ever wipe his creation from the face of the earth was too grim for men to contemplate, so they provided an avenue of escape. The punishment for human wickedness was awesome and terrifying, but the discovery of one righteous man on earth was sufficient for Him to preserve the means for life to renew itself. God instructed this man, Noah, to build an Ark 46

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and take his family and pairs of every other kind of living creature aboard. When this task was completed he opened up the fountains of the great deep and the windows of heaven. He poured rain down on the earth for forty days and forty nights until even the highest mountain peaks were submerged. The floodwaters covered the earth for a hundred and fifty days. There is no evidence to suggest that the descendants of Noah were any less wicked than his contemporaries. The story of Sodom and Gomorrah suggests quite the contrary. Knowing their own shortcomings and not believing in the possibility of reform, men persuaded themselves that God had come to accept his creatures for what they were: The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth Genesis 8.21

Despite this he undertook never again to inflict on them such brutal, collective punishment as the Flood. Thus God spoke to Noah, saying: And I will establish my covenant with you: Neither shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood; Neither shall there anymore be a flood to destroy the earth. Genesis 9.11 And God gave the rainbow as the sign of his promise to Noah and all living creatures in perpetuity; I have set my Bow on the cloud and it shall be a token of a Covenant between me and the earth. Genesis 9.13

The Israelites of those days envisioned their God as just, not merciful. They could live with his stern justice only if they could believe it would be tempered with some measure of compassion. Thus they formulated His covenant as an unconditional promise, not as a contractual obligation requiring some specific performance from them. This guaranteed that wickedness would never lead to the annihilation of life on earth.

The Patriarchs The chapters of Genesis that follow the description of the Flood are devoted to the genealogy of the peoples of the earth descended from the sons of Noah. This is followed by the central story of the Bible, the history of only one branch of this family tree. It is the saga of the emergence of a new religion, the creation of a new society and its quest for identity. The story stretches over the remainder of the Pentateuch and through the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings. The founding fathers—the first three generations of patriarchs—wrestled with the capriciousness of the climate. Each, so it is told, faced the threat of famine when the winter rains failed to renew the pastureland and 47

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provide some yield of grain from dryland farming. Each patriarch dealt with the threat in his own way. Abraham is said to have sought relief far from home: And there was a famine in the land and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; for the famine was sore in the land. Genesis 12.10

His son Isaac responded differently. In the days of Isaac: There was a famine in the land, beside the first famine that was in the days of Abraham Genesis 26.1

This famine must have been of fairly brief duration for God instructed Isaac not to go down to Egypt but to sojourn in the land of the Philistine kingdom of Gerar.26 Isaac did as he was told and the decision proved to be a good one, for he: waxed great, grew and went forward until he became very great; for he had possession of flocks, and possession of herds, and great store of servants; Genesis 41.57

In the days of Jacob the drought was an extended one. It persisted for seven years and was not limited to a single region, but was sore in all the earth. Egypt was as hard hit as Canaan. Fortunately, the seven lean years had been preceded by seven years of plenty with high yields of corn, and thanks to the foresight of Joseph the granaries were well-stocked. Jacob did not move his whole household to Egypt, but sent his sons to buy corn from the Egyptian granaries. The food situation at home must have been critical, for Jacob instructed them to: Get you down thither and buy us from thence, that we may live and not die. Genesis 42.2

These stories of the tribulations of three generations of Israelites reflect the deep anxieties of people dependent on rainfall for their existence, living in a region where precipitation fluctuated sharply from year to year. Even contemporary Israelites are not free of such anxieties, in spite of impressive advances in the technology of water management. There was another side to this grim picture. Abundant rainfall was always cause for heart-felt rejoicing, never something to be taken for granted. A good year brought forth paeans of praise for the bountifulness of the Lord, as in the following psalm: Thou visiteth the earth, and watereth it,thou greatly enricheth it with the river of God, which is full of water: thou preparest them corn when thou hast so provided for it. Thou waterest the ridges thereof abundantly; thou settlest the furrows thereof; thou makest it soft with showers; thou blessest the springing thereof. Thou crownest the year with thy goodness and thy paths drop fatness.

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Roads to Civilization They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness; and the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks; the valleys are covered over with corn; they shout for joy, they also sing. Psalms 65.9–13

Wells The digging of wells was one of the earliest techniques developed to augment water supply. Where the water table was near the surface—along the coast or in or near the beds of ephemeral rivers—shallow wells were easily dug with simple tools. Such wells, providing drinking water for people and animals alike, were important in the lives of the Patriarchs. Wells provided succor in times of distress. As Hagar and Ishmael wandered in the wilderness of Beersheba after being cast out by Abraham: God opened her eyes and she saw a well; and she went and filled the bottle with water, and gave the lad drink. Genesis 21.9

Wells with their precious water were often a cause of friction among neighbors. Abraham, for instance, could not conclude an alliance with Abimelech, the Philistine king of Gerar, until they’d sorted out a quarrel between their servants over a well that Abraham had dug: And Abraham reproved Abimelech because of a well of water, which Abimelech’s servants had violently taken away. Genesis 21.25

Wells were natural gathering places. Young women and girls could escape from the confines of home to meet and gossip as they went about the traditionally female task of drawing water. Travelers from foreign parts would gravitate to them in search of information and guidance about the local scene. This is exactly what Abraham’s servant did when he was sent by his master to find a suitable wife for his son, Isaac, among the family’s relatives in the city of Nahor in Aram-Naharaim: And he made the camels to kneel down without the city at the time of evening when the women go to draw water. Genesis 24.11

The servant decided to set a test of character for the bride he was to select. He would ask her for water. If she not only responded to his request but also watered his camels of her own volition, he would know that he had found the right girl: And the servant ran to meet her (Rebecca) at the well, and said: Give me drink, I pray thee, a little water of thy pitcher. And she said: Drink, my lord. Genesis 24. 17–18

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When she had given him to drink she said: I will draw for thy camels also, until they have done drinking. Genesis 24.19

So, lo and behold, there at the well-side Rebecca was chosen to be the wife of Isaac. The romance of Isaac’s son Jacob and Rachel, the daughter of Laban, eventually to be his wife, also began at the well-side. Jacob had been sent by his father to find a bride among their kinsfolk to the east. On his journey he came to a well in a field and stopped to gain what information he could from shepherds who had gathered to water their flocks. As he chatted to them a young girl appeared with her father’s sheep. One glance at her and he was smitten. He rolled the stone off the mouth of the well and drew water for her flock.27 And then: Jacob kissed Rachel and lifted up his voice and wept Genesis 29.11

He then wasted no time in seeking out his prospective father-in-law: And Jacob loved Rachel and he said (to Laban): I will serve thee seven years for Rachel, thy younger daughter. Genesis 29.18

For Moses, as for Isaac and Jacob, the path to wedlock began at the wellside. Moses fled from Egypt after killing an Egyptian overseer who had abused a Hebrew slave. He reached Midian and paused by the side of a well. While he was resting the seven daughters of Jethro, the local priest, appeared at the well-side with their father’s flock. Some ill-mannered shepherds tried to drive them away but Moses came to their aid and watered their thirsty herd. Jethro was generous in rewarding him for this chivalrous act. He gave him the hand of his daughter Zipporah in marriage.

Exodus from Egypt After coming to buy corn in time of trouble, Jacob’s family settled in Egypt. His descendants prospered, increased abundantly and waxed exceedingly mighty until a king came to the throne which knew not Joseph. Fearing the strength of the Israelites, he enslaved them and put them to hard labor under cruel taskmasters, to build the treasure cities of Pithom and Rameses. God heard the cries of despair of the Children of Israel suffering under the Egyptian yoke. He instructed Moses to win their release and lead them out of bondage. It was no simple task to persuade Pharaoh to forego the services of such a valuable workforce. Ten plagues had to be inflicted on Egypt before he finally gave his reluctant consent to the Israelite departure. Two of the plagues were clearly water-borne. Others may have had something to do with a general increase in the humidity of the region resulting from a chain of climatic changes set off by the eruption of Mount Hera.28

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The first plague turned water into blood as Moses smote the waters with his rod at God’s command: And all the waters in the river turned to blood. And the fish that were in the river died and the river became foul and the Egyptians could not drink from the river and the blood was throughout all the land of Egypt. Exodus 7.20,21

The seventh plague brought: A very grievous hail as had not been in Egypt whence the day it was founded. And the hail smote throughout all the land of Egypt, all that was in the field, both man and beast; and this hail smote every herb of the field and broke every tree of the field. Exodus 11.25

After the departure of his workforce, Pharaoh regretted his decision and sent his army in pursuit. The Israelites were saved from their pursuers by God, using water as His instrument. The waters of the sea of reeds drew back to let them pass and then closed over their Egyptian pursuers and drowned them.

Sojourn in the Wilderness With their miraculous crossing of the sea behind them, the Israelites began their sojourn in the wilderness. It lasted for forty years under the most trying of conditions and forged a rag-tag collection of people into a nation like no other. During those years the relationship between God and his people was clarified and defined. Water played a seminal role in this process. The Pentateuch has descriptions of four separate incidents where God miraculously provides water for the thirsty Israelites in the wilderness. Three of them are in Exodus and one in Deuteronomy. All are variations on the theme of divine beneficence and human ingratitude—a theme to which the later books of the Bible return. The incidents follow a uniform pattern. Thirst brings complaint, followed by the cleaving of a rock to bring forth water to quench the thirst and then the naming of the site of the miracle. The following is one of the accounts in Exodus: And all the congregation of the people of Israel … pitched in Rephidim; and there was no water for the people to drink. And the people thirsted there for water and the people murmured against Moses and said, Wherefore is this that thou hast brought us out of Egypt; to kill us with our children and our cattle with thirst? And Moses cried unto the Lord, saying, What shall I do unto this people? They almost be ready to stone me. And the Lord said unto Moses, Go on before the people, and take with thee of the elders of Israel and thy rod, wherewith thou smotest the river, take it in thy hand and go. Behold I will stand before thee, there in the rock in Horeb and thou shall smite the rock, and there shall come water out of it, that the people may drink. And Moses did so in the sight of the elders of Israel.

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Writ in Water And he called the name of the place Massah and Meribah, because of the chiding of the Children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord, saying, is the Lord among us or not. Exodus 17.1–7

Writing long after the period of the Exodus, the prophets harked back time and again to the theme of God’s provision of water in the wilderness. Nehemiah used it in his review of the uneasy relationship between God and the Israelites from the time of Abraham on: Thou gavest them bread from heaven for their hunger, and broughtest forth water for them out of a rock for their thirst, But they and our fathers dealt proudly and hardened their necks, and hearkened not to thy commandments. Nehemiah 9.15

Jeremiah was the first of the prophets to draw a parallel between the journey through the wilderness and the return home from the exile of Babylon: Behold I will bring them from the north country and gather them from the coasts of the earth … I will guide them to brooks of water In a straight road which will not falter. Jeremiah 31.8,9

The second Isaiah followed in Jeremiah’s footsteps. He apparently prophesied during the period after the death of Nebuchadnezzar when Babylon was falling into decay and there was a real prospect of a return from exile. He too returned to the distant past to strengthen the spirit of the people for the ordeals that lay ahead of them. He reminded them how God had cared for them in their time of need in the wilderness: 29

I gave waters in the wilderness and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen. Isaiah 43.20

and: And they thirsted not when He led them through deserts; He caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them: He clave the rock also and the waters rushed out. Isaiah 48.20–21

The Promised Land The Promised Land to which the Israelites so slowly made their way from Egypt was the same harsh land that their ancestors had left behind generations before, seeking escape from drought and famine. In a classic work on the geography of the Holy Land,30 George Adam Smith described the country that awaited the Israelites at the end of their journey. He contrast52

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ed it with the land that they had left behind and propounded the view that the climate of the land predisposed people to a preoccupation with moral and religious concerns. In the first place it is not mechanically regular. Unlike that of Egypt, the climate (of Syria) does not depend on a few simple and unfailing phenomena—upon one great instrument like the Nile to whose operations man has but to link his own and the fruits of the year are inevitable. In the Palestine year there is no inevitableness. Fertility does not spring from a source which is in control of man’s spade, and by which he can defy a brazen and illiberal heaven. It comes down from heaven and if heaven sometimes withholds it, nothing else in man’s reach is a substitute for it… Thus a purely mechanical concept of nature as something inevitable, whose processes are more or less under man’s control, is impossible, and the imagination is roused to feel the presence of a will behind nature, in face of whose interruptions of the fruitfulness or stability of the land man is helpless.

According to the Biblical account the Israelites were told what to expect when they arrived at their destination. If they obeyed God’s will they would be assured of a bountiful life in their new home: But the land whither you go to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven. A land which the Lord careth for, the eyes of the Lord thy God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year even unto the end of the year. Deuteronomy 11.11,12 … if you shall heark diligently unto my commandments … That I will give you this rain of your land in due season, the first rain and the latter rain, that thou mayest gather in thy corn, and thy wine and thy oil … that thou may eatest and be full Deuteronomy 11.16,17

Inevitably, the people did not always meet the standards of conduct demanded of them by God. Many years after they had settled in their own land, the prophets were still chiding the Israelites for their failings and threatening them that God would withhold the rains in punishment for their transgressions. Isaiah compared the people of Judah to a vineyard that, after God had tended it with loving care, had only yielded sour grapes. He laid the vineyard waste and commanded the clouds that they rain no rain upon it. To eliminate any possibility of misunderstanding, he clarified the metaphor: For the vineyard of the Lord of Hosts is the house of Israel, and the men of Judah his pleasant plant: and he looked for judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, but behold a cry. Isaiah 5.7

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Climate, Character and Weltanschauung While Israel’s view of the nature of the relationship between God and men was influenced by climate, it was not determined by it. Other peoples living in the same region and contending with the same vagaries of climate drew different and far more fatalistic conclusions from the same experience.31 Only the Israelite cosmogony placed man at the pinnacle of creation. The price of this exalted position was responsibility, and with responsibility came guilt. The frequent failure of the rains in the region was indisputable evidence of backsliding and sinfulness. The remedy lay in human hands. It is hardly surprising that, time and again, many Israelites sought to escape from this oppressive sense of guilt, not by examining and reforming their behavior but by seeking solace in the worship of less demanding gods.

Water as Metaphor In their search for metaphors to illuminate their meaning and to instruct, inspire or reprimand their flock, the scribes, psalmists and prophets of the Bible frequently turned to water. Sometimes they drew on a watery idiom to convey appreciation of God’s bounty, a sense of being at peace with Him and in His good favor, a feeling that all was well with the world. More often the intention was to inspire a sense of the power of the Almighty and to admonish backsliders. The following is a small selection from many examples.

Water and Wellbeing From the Psalms: Blessed be the man that walk not in the counsel of the ungodly … And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, That bringeth forth his fruit in his season. Psalm 1.1,3 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want He maketh me lie down in green pastures He leadeth me beside still waters He restoreth my soul

Psalm 23

Thou preparest the corn, when thou has provided for it Thou water the ridges thereof abundantly, thou settlest the furrows thereof, thou make it soft with showers, thou blessest the springing thereof. They drop upon the pastures of the wilderness, and the little hills rejoice on every side. Psalm 65. 9,10,12

From Proverbs: The words of a man’s mouth are as deep waters And the wellspring of wisdom as a flowing brook 18.4

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Roads to Civilization Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water, But a man of understanding will draw it out 20.5 As cold water to a thirsty soul, So is good news from a far country 25.25

In the Words of the Prophets: Behold a king shall reign in righteousness and princes shall rule in justice…as rivulets of water in a dry place Isaiah 32.2 And the Lord will guide thee continually, and will satisfy thy soul in time of famine … and thou shall be like a well-watered garden and like a spring of water, the waters of which will never deceive. Isaiah 58.11

Threat, Admonition, Awe, Fear and Despair From the Pentateuch: If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments and do them, then shall I give you rain in their season and the land shall yield her produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit Leviticus 3.26.3,4

but: They that depart from me shall be written in the earth Because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters. Leviticus 26.13 …and the angel of he Lord shall be kindled against you. He shall shut up the heavens so that there shall be no rain, and the ground shall not yield her fruit. Deuteronomy 11.11

From the Psalms: I am poured out like water and all my bones are out of joint Psalms 22.14 Save me O God, for the waters are come into my soul. I sink in deep mire where there is no standing. I come into deep waters where the floods overflow me. Psalms 19.2

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Psalm 19.15

In the Words of Job: But man dieth and wasteth away, Yes man giveth up the ghost and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, And the flood decayeth and dryeth up, So man lieth down and rises not. How much more abominable is man, which drinketh iniquity like water?

Job 11.16

Job 15.16

Drought and heat consume the snow waters, So does the grave those which have sinned.

Job 24.19

And these are the heinous sins of which Elipaz accuses Job: Thou hast not given water to the weary to drink, And thou hast withholden bread from the hungry. Job 22.7

And in the Words of the Prophets: Hope of Israel, O Lord, all that forsake thee shall be made ashamed and the backsliders among me shall be written down on earth because they have forsaken the fountain of living waters. Jeremiah 31.9 Egypt rises up like a flood, And his waters are moved as rivers, and he saith I will go up and cover the earth, I will destroy the city and the inhabitants thereof. Jeremiah 46.8 The princes of Judah were like them that remove the bound, Therefore I will pour out my wrath on them like water. Hosea 5.10

The Might of God Reflected in His Domination of the Waters Thou did cleave the fountain and the flood; thou driest up mighty rivers.

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Psalm 74.15

Roads to Civilization The waters saw thee, O God, the waters saw thee; They were afraid, the depths also were troubled. Psalm 77.16 He cleave the rock and gave them drink as out of great depths. He brought streams also out of the rock, and caused water to run like rivers. Psalm 78.15,16 The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, Yea, than the mighty waves of the sea. Psalm 93.4 He turns the river into a wilderness And the water springs into dry ground. He turns the wilderness into a standing water And dry ground into water springs.

Psalm 105.33

Psalm 105.35

Tremble the earth at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of the God of Jacob, which turneth the earth into a standing water, the flint into a fountain of waters. Psalms 114.7,8

and a taste of the Wisdom of the Proverbs: As snow in summer and rain in harvest, So honour is not seemly to a fool. A continual dripping on a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike Drink waters out of thy own cistern, and running waters out of thy own well. Let thy fountain be blessed And rejoice with the wife of thy youth.

26.1

27.15

5.15

5.18

(She shall say to him): Stolen waters are sweet And bread eaten in secret is pleasant. 9.17

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Chapter 2.4 Water in Law Introduction The life of the law has not been logic: it has been experience. The felt necessities of the time, the prevalent moral and political theories, intuitions of public policy, avowed or unconscious, even the prejudices which judges share with their fellow-men, have had a good deal more to do than the syllogism in determining the rules by which men should be governed. Oliver Wendell Holmes The Common Law, 1881 In law as elsewhere, we can know and yet not understand. H.L.A. Hart Definition and Theory in Jurisprudence, 1953

The words of the two distinguished jurists quoted above suggest that the task of trying to understand the spirit of the law from the written word alone is fraught with pitfalls even when dealing with contemporary society. For cultures that are remote from us in time and outlook and where the written sources are fragmentary, the difficulty is compounded. Bearing in mind this caveat, the present chapter is devoted more to reporting what is known than philosophizing on its meaning. The two most complete codes of law that have come down to us from early societies are the Codes of Hammurabi and of Manu. Although both are products of hydraulic societies, whose economic base was irrigated agriculture, they are very different in spirit. Hammurabi is concerned with water as a productive input and as property. Manu is preoccupied with a total way of life in which water plays a role.

The Code of Hammurabi The Code of Hammurabi is the most famous of the ancient codes of law. It is named for a great warrior who, in 1792 BCE, came to the throne of Babi-Ilu, the Gate of the Gods, later known as Babel to the Israelites and Babylon to the Greeks. Hammurabi devoted most of his reign to building a powerful army which he used to consolidate his hold on his kingdom and then, in a military campaign which lasted for seven years, to gain control of the whole of Mesopotamia.

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Even during nearly four decades in which his prime activity seems to have been making war or preparing for it, Hammurabi found time to build and maintain the irrigation canals so essential to the wellbeing of his subjects. When, late in life, he put aside his martial activities he turned his full attention to repairing the ravages of war and caring for the welfare of his subjects.32 His code of law was a product of this period of his reign. He obviously took pride in the achievement for he had the text of the Code engraved in stone and set up in the courtyards of temples all over his empire so that it should be easily accessible to the whole populace. His intentions were made clear in the preamble: Let the oppressed man who has a cause Come into the presence of my statute And read carefully my inscribed stele.

The great empire that Hammurabi had created united many peoples within its borders, each with their own laws and customs. The code itself drew on a diversity of Sumerian and Semitic sources which it blended into a legal unity. In some cases it absorbed parts of earlier compilations without change, in others it reconciled differences among the sources. Four articles of the code deal with punishment for negligence in maintaining irrigation ditches and flood control dykes. The following translation by L.W. King dates back to 1915. 53. If anyone has been too lazy to keep his dam in proper condition, and does not so keep it, if then the dam break and all the fields be flooded, then shall he in whom the break appeared be sold for money, and the money shall replace the corn which has caused to be ruined. 54. If he has not corn to reimburse, he and his goods shall be sold for silver and it shall be divided among those whose corn has been destroyed. 55. If anyone open his ditches to water his crop, but is careless, and the water flood the field of his neighbor, then he shall pay his neighbor corn for his loss. 56. If a man let in the water, and the water overflow the plantation of his neighbor, he shall pay to the owner, he shall pay to the owner twenty gur of corn for every ten gur.

These paragraphs in the Code that deal specifically with water control— four out of a total of two hundred and fifty eight paragraphs—relate only to the obligations of independent farmers to their neighbors and to the penalties for not meeting these obligations. They do not reflect the central role of water in Mesopotamian society. Nothing in the Code refers to the regulation and enforcement of communal obligations to provide labor for the construction or maintenance of public works for flood control or irrigation. These must have been dealt with elsewhere. Yet the importance of water is emphasized both in the preamble and in the closing paragraphs of the code. In the preamble Hammurabi describes himself as: The gracious arbiter who has allotted watering places to Lagash and Girshu

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and as: the giver of the waters of abundance to drink

In conclusion he calls on the god Adad, the controller of heaven and earth, to punish anyone who disobeys the regulations of the Code by depriving him of the rains from heaven and the floodwaters from the source, thus bringing his land to ruin and visiting him with famine and hunger.

The Code of Manu The Code of Manu is the oldest known treatise on Hindu law. Tradition places it at the dawn of civilization. According to myth, Manu, whose name means Wise Man, was the father of the human race and he, like Noah, survived a great flood. He went on to promulgate the laws of justice. The surviving written version probably dates from no earlier than the 6th century BCE and possibly even from after the beginning of the Common Era, though earlier versions may well have been lost. Manu is not a simple code of law but rather the expression of an all-embracing philosophy. It provided the foundation for the ancient, hierarchical, male-dominated and caste-dominated Hindu state. It is a text that was written by priests for priests. Within these limitations it is: an encompassing representation of life in the world—how it is and how it should be lived. It is about dharma, which subsumes the English concepts of religion, duty, law, right, justice, practice and principle.33

Among the topics covered by the code are the creation of the world; the sources of law; the obligations and duties of castes and individuals; also many prosaic details of everyday life, such as settling disputes arising from traffic accidents or sexual improprieties. The rights of individuals get no mention in the treatise, but considerable attention is devoted to the proper way for kings to discharge their duties, with details of the appropriate punishments and penances for a mind-boggling array of offences. This emphasis stemmed from the belief that if the king was not untiring in inflicting punishment on those who deserved it, the stronger would roast the weaker, like fish on a spit. References to water are scattered throughout the Code. The preamble in the first chapter refers to the place of the cosmic waters in the creation of the world: ‘The waters are born of man’, so it is said, ‘indeed the waters are the children of the primordial man’.

A number of paragraphs in the second chapter deal with the rituals of washing: 2.53 Let a twice-born man34 always eat his food with concentrated mind, after performing an ablution, and after he has eaten, let him cleanse himself with water and sprinkle the cavities (of his body).

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Roads to Civilization 2.58 A priest should always sip water out of the part of the hand sacred to Brahma, or of that sacred to Ka, or out of that sacred to the gods, never out of that sacred to the ancestors. 2.60 Let him sip water thrice; next twice wipe his mouth; and lastly, touch with water the cavities (of the head),(the seat of) the soul and the head. 2.61 He who knows the sacred law and seeks purity shall always perform the rite of sipping the water neither hot nor frothy, with the prescribed part of the hand, in a lonely place, and turning to the east or to the north.

Chapter 3 contains instructions for the performance of the daily ceremony for the dead. In addition to sacrificing to the gods this includes instructions for offering hospitality to approved guests and a long list of undesirables who should not be included in the guest list. Paragraphs 99 and 101 deal with the treatment of approved guests: 3.99 Let him offer, in accordance with the rule, to who has come (of his own accord) a seat and water, as well as food, garnished (with seasoning) and prepared to the best of his ability. 3.101 Grass, room to rest, water and fourthly, a kind word n—these four things never fail in the houses of good men.

Paragraphs 151–164 provide a long and varied list of those who should not be offered food because they are unworthy of the offerings to the gods and ancestors. Among them are sufferers from consumption, men with mangled fingernails or black teeth, one-eyed men, those who contradict their gurus, epileptics, trainers of elephants, breeders of sporting dogs, those who defile maidens, those who live by agriculture, the club-footed and anyone who is censured by virtuous men. In this list of disgusting and despicable outcasts of society there is one more entry: anyone who diverts streams or water-courses and delights in obstructing them.

Chapter 4 has rules dealing with the performance of bodily functions, personal hygiene and sanitation. Some of these, as in paragraphs 45–47, seem at least intelligible, even today: 4.45 Let him not … bathe naked, not void urine on a road, on ashes, or in a cow pen, 4.46 Nor on ploughed land, in water, on an altar of bricks, on a mountain, on the ruins of a temple, nor ever on an anthill. 4.47 Nor in holes inhabited by living creatures, nor while he walks or stands, nor from the bank of a river …

Paragraph 56 would not look too out of place in a modern pollution control act: 4.56 Let him not throw urine or feces into the water, nor saliva, nor clothes defiled by impure substances, nor any other impurity, nor blood, nor poisonous things.

Yet other paragraphs, like 63 and 76 seem quite incomprehensible from a modern western standpoint:

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The chapter goes on to deal with the performance of charitable works. Paragraph 226 reads: Let him, without tiring, always offer sacrifices and perform works of charity, such as constructing a reservoir or well or building a public fountain.

Paragraph 229 goes on to emphasize that there are rewards for such good works: A giver of water obtains the satisfaction of his hunger and thirst.

The concept of water as a public good is recognized in the Code. A number of paragraphs in chapters 7, 8, and 9 deal with penalties for damaging public water resources or not helping to prevent such damage. Anyone who destroyed a public fountain would be obliged to restore it to its original state and to pay a fine. Anyone who sold a consecrated reservoir would be excluded from the society of good people. If people looked on without hastening to do what they could when a dam broke they were to be banished from their village with all their possessions. Worst of all, if a man destroyed a pond he was to be drowned even if he repaired the damage. Chapter 9 deals with punishment of minor offences. The lunar penance, for instance, was to be performed in expiation for stealing men and women slaves and for wrongfully appropriating a field, a house or the water of wells and cisterns. This penance involved diminishing one’s intake of food by one mouthful a day during the dark half of the month and increasing it in the same manner during the bright half of the month. It also required the penitent to bathe three times a day, at the time of the morning, noon and evening libations. A more severe punishment was reserved for a man who had committed a bestial crime or had intercourse in water. He would have to subsist on the urine of cows, cow dung, milk and a concoction of grasses.

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Part 3 CITIES AND THEIR WATER

A Word of Introduction Conveyance, use and disposal—these are the components of municipal and domestic water supply and the subject matter of this section. The first two chapters follow the waters of Jerusalem and Rome, from the beginnings of these cities, through their long and checkered histories of unbroken settlement. The juxtaposition of the two offers some fascinating insights into how two societies, with very different conditions of water supply and with sharply contrasted perceptions of the world and of themselves, have related to water. By contrast with the narrow geographical focus of the first two chapters, the next three chapters cover various topics, not exhaustively, but over a wide range of time and place. The third chapter deals with the more personal and intimate uses of water, for cleansing of the body and soul. The fourth touches on various aspects of water quality and the fifth discusses the disposal of residual waters with whatever noxious accretions they may have collected along the way. Taken together, the five chapters give a view of the engineering of water supply and waste disposal, of the personal and intimate uses of water, and of the ways in which they were dealt with in different social and economic milieus.

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Chapter 3.1 Jerusalem and its Waters Thus saith the Lord God; This is Jerusalem: I have set it in The Midst of the Nations and Countries That are round about her. Ezekiel 5:5

Fig. 8:

Source: Heinrich Bünting | Public Domain

The World with Jerusalem at its Center Henricus Bunting (1545–1606)

Unique among the Cities Jerusalem is unique among the urban settlements of the modern world. It has been continuously inhabited far longer than any other major city. It is sacred to the three great monotheistic religions. The holiest places of Judaism and Christianity lie within its limits, and only Mecca and Medina are more revered by Islam. Yet this distinction was achieved in the most inauspicious of locations. At first glance there seems to be no reason why any city at all should have risen on this site, perched on the watershed, looking eastward across desolation to the Dead Sea, the lowest and most forsaken body of water in the world; devoid of any special feature of civic promise, devoid of any 67

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river, harbor or major highway that might have sparked urban growth. Its hinterland is unprepossessing, even forbidding. When described by George Adam Smith36 at the end of the 19th century, it had changed little over the millennia: stony moorland, on which rough scrub and thorns, reinforced by a few dwarf oaks, contend with multitudes of boulders, and the limestone, as if impatient of the pretence of soil, breaks out in bare scalps and prominences … No water to sooth the eye, there are no great hills to lift it. The horizon has no character or edge.

Smith had to turn to his deeply held religious beliefs to explain how the city came to be and flourish in such a setting: her builder was not nature nor the wisdom of men, but on that secluded and barren site The Word of God, by her prophets, laid her eternal foundations in righteousness and reared her walls in her people’s faith in God.

Scholars of a more skeptical and secular bent have explored different lines of approach and have found less other-worldly factors at work, crucial among them the availability of water.

Beginnings People have inhabited the Judean plateau since Pleistocene times, and by the early Bronze Age there was a line of hill settlements on the watershed road running from north to south. The first written reference to Jerusalem is found among the Egyptian Execration Texts of the Middle Bronze Age, about the 19th century BCE. These texts were curses on the enemies of Egypt, inscribed on pottery bowls or crude human figurines made of clay and then ceremonially smashed to pieces. The city is also mentioned in Genesis, with a description of the warm welcome extended by its king, Melchizedek, to his guest Abram, who had come to return stolen goods he had recovered from neighboring tribes. And Melchizedek, king of SALEM, brought out bread and wine and he was the priest of the Most High God37

However, Jerusalem made its first significant appearance on the stage of history when David selected it as his capital.

The City of David The Biblical narrative tells of the Israelites coming to the land of Canaan in the 13th century BCE, after a forty year sojourn in the Wilderness, approaching the country from the south and penetrating into the Judean hills. No firm historical or archeological evidence exists to confirm the story of the Exodus, and the first steps towards nationhood may have involved the coalescence of small, local tribal groups into a larger entity rather than an encroachment from the outside. What is clear is that when the Israelites began their struggle to gain a foothold in the Promised Land, they were surrounded on all sides by powerful, well-entrenched and hostile peo68

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ples—Philistines and Canaanites on the coastal plain to the west, Moabites to the east and Edomites and Amalakites to the south. They had no alternative but to turn to the Judean hills which others, for good reason, had been content to leave in the hands of the Amorites and Jebusites, semi-nomadic tribes of herdsmen. From the viewpoint of the Israelites the inaccessibility of Judea and the inhospitality of the terrain were assets rather than liabilities. The rough conditions had kept the plateau sparsely populated and thus relatively easy to subdue and then defend. It was also fortunate for them that the two main traffic arteries of the time, the coastal highway to the west and the King’s highway to the east, were far removed, for these were not only trade routes but also conduits for moving armies back and forth in the recurring clashes between the powers to the north and those to the south. Once David decided to build the capital of his kingdom in the Judean hills, he had no alternative but Jerusalem, even though it had already been settled by the Jebusites. No other site in the entire region gave access to sufficient water to maintain even a token urban settlement. It was the Gihon spring that had led the Jebusites to settle the site and that now led David to fight to possess it. The Jebusites did not relinquish their city without a struggle. They even resorted to the magic rite of parading their crippled and deformed on the city walls in an attempt to strike terror into the Israelite army, but to no avail. The confrontation is described in the second book of Samuel: And David said on that day: Whosoever go up to the gutter and smiteth the Jebusites, and the lame and the blind that are hated of David’s soul, he shall be chief and captain. So David dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David. II Samuel 5:8,9

Evidence from archeological sources fleshes out the picture. The Jebusites had surrounded the Gihon spring with protective walls, but they had also tried to assure their water supply in times of trouble by constructing a system of shafts and tunnels, and a twisting stairway that gave access to the spring from inside the city walls. One interpretation of the above verse is that David’s men managed to crawl up a perpendicular shaft and surprise the defenders of the city from within the walls. Another, which seems more feasible, is that they damaged the conduit, thus disrupting the city’s water supply and making it vulnerable to attack.38 Whatever the tactic it was successful and the city fell easily into the hands of the Israelites.

Water for Survival David’s choice of location was a successful one and the city prospered in the decades that followed. His son, Solomon, extended the walls and doubled the area within. He beautified the city and built two magnificent public buildings—the Temple and the Royal Palace. Even after the kingdom was split in two by internal dissension, reducing the capital’s jurisdiction to the southern kingdom of Judah, it continued to grow and flourish. 69

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Nearly three hundred years passed from David’s conquest before Jerusalem, now ruled by King Hezekiah, was again threatened by siege. This time the aggressor was the Assyrian king, Sennacherib. In preparing to defend the city, Hezekiah used a tactic not unlike that of his Jebusite predecessor. He sealed the springs outside the city walls to deprive his enemy of water and had a tunnel dug to divert the waters of the Gihon into a pool inside the city walls: And when Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib was come, and that he was purposed to fight against Jerusalem, He took counsel with his princes and his mighty men to stop the waters of the fountains which were without the city: and they did help him, So there was gathered much people together, who stopped all the fountains and the brook that ran through the midst of the land, saying, Why should the kings of Assyria come and find much water? II Chronicles 32:2–4

The tunnel dug by Hezekiah’s men seven hundred years before the Common Era, using the primitive tools and limited technology of the time, was a wonder of engineering. As the crow flies it was three hundred and twenty meters long, but it twisted and turned through five hundred and thirty-three meters. Along the way its height varied from just over a meter, with barely enough room for a grown man to crouch, to a lofty three and a half meters. Its width was roughly sixty centimeters. The gradient from start to finish was a mere four parts in a thousand. Two crews working from opposite ends of the tunnel managed to meet with hardly any error of alignment. Their achievement was celebrated in an inscription on the wall of the tunnel. This inscription was removed to the Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient in the 19th century. It can still be seen there today.

Fig. 9:

Source: Wikikati | Public Domain

The Inscription

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Cities and Their Water This is the story of the excavation. While the stone-cutters lifted their picks and three cubits remained to be excavated, the voice of a man calling to his companion was heard, for the rock was split to the left and the right. On that day, the stone-cutters, each coming from their own side, struck pick against pick and the water started flowing from source to pool twelve hundred cubits.39 A hundred cubits was the height of the rock above the heads of the miners.

Various explanations have been offered for this remarkable feat of construction. Perhaps the most convincing one is that the excavators followed a natural tunnel in the porous limestone rock. This makes sense of the winding route, the variations in the height of the ceiling and the successful meeting of the work gangs. It also accounts for the supply of fresh air that kept those toiling underground alive.

Fig. 10:

Source: W.D. Bartlett, The Christian in Palestine (1847)

The Siloam (Shiloah) Pool to which the waters of the Gihon were diverted

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Fig. 11:

A 21st Century View of Hezekiyahu’s Tunnel

Source: Author

The Gihon Spring The Gihon was the wellspring of Jerusalem, literally and figuratively. Its name comes from the Hebrew word, Giha [‫]גיחה‬, a bursting forth, that describes the way in which it yields its water—spewing it out in pulses lasting for thirty to forty minutes, once every four to ten hours. This phenomenon has a simple geological explanation. Water collects in underground caverns in the karstic dolomite rock formations to the west of the city. The pressure builds up to the point where it drives the water along the path of least resistance and releases it in the spring. Pressure is reduced and the cycle repeats itself. This must have seemed quite uncanny to the ancients, and many attributed holy and even miraculous properties to the water. It was used to anoint the kings of Israel: And Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet have anointed him (Solomon) king in GIHON, and they are come up from thence rejoicing. I Kings 1:45

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According to the Gospel of St John, it was used by Jesus to give sight to a man who had been blind from birth: And as Jesus passed by he saw a man who was blind from his birth. … he (Jesus)spat on the ground and made clay with the spittle, and he anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay. And he said unto him, ‘Go wash in the pool of Siloam’.40 He went his way therefore and came seeing. St. John 9:1,6–7

The yield of the spring fluctuated between two hundred and eleven hundred cubic meters a day, averaging about a quarter of a million cubic meters a year. Without reliable estimates of the city’s population during the First Temple period only a rough guess is possible of how much water was available to individual households from this source. Greek historians who visited the city much later, in the Hasmonean period, talked of a population of over 120,000.41 This would have given little more than two cubic meters a head per year. Even if the population estimate was much exaggerated, the supply was certainly meager. Moreover, it required a lot of hard work on the part of the women, who were the water carriers, to get it home. It meant going down to the spring with empty leather buckets and clay jugs, drawing water without any mechanical aids and then struggling back up the hill with full, heavy buckets in their hands and jugs on their heads. It is therefore not surprising that from earliest times the inhabitants of Jerusalem used all their ingenuity to supplement their spring water by conserving every drop of rainwater possible—and what a blessing if it were available right on the spot, at home. To this end they built cisterns and reservoirs.

Cisterns—Public and Private The Israelites made very extensive use of cisterns to collect and store water. Some scholars, such as the famed Biblical archeologist William Foxwell, have even credited them with their invention. Once a solution was found to the problem of water loss from seepage by the application of a lime-based mortar to seal the walls, they spread throughout the ancient city and every household aspired to have a cistern of its own. Sennachrib understood their importance to the Israelites and during his siege of Jerusalem offered them as an inducement to rebellion against their own king, Hezekiah: make an agreement with me by a present and come out to me and then eat ye every man of his own vine, and every one of his fig tree and drink ye every one of the waters of his cistern. 2 Kings 18:31

The Misi Melachi, the soft limestone on which Jerusalem was built, facilitated the construction or excavation of cisterns even with the primitive tools of the Bronze Age. Houses were designed to collect rainfall from the 73

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roofs for use as drinking water. Courtyards were paved and sloped to catch the runoff for laundry and watering the gardens. Cisterns also freed the city from its absolute dependence on topography, allowing it to expand from the low-lying area of the City of David and climb the hills to the north and west. Cisterns were used to store water for public as well as for domestic use. Pilgrims flocked to the city three times a year to celebrate the festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Succoth. Estimates of their numbers fluctuate wildly, but in the period after the building of the Second Temple there may have been millions on each of the great holidays. Josephus estimated that over three million people participated in the Passover sacrifice in 65 CE. Some years earlier Agrippa had used an innovative statistical technique to reach his estimate of six million. He had the High Priest count the kidneys of the sacrificial lambs and then multiplied this number by ten, on the assumption that each animal had been shared by ten people. There is abundant archeological evidence of cisterns on the Temple Mount and in its environs. Some were very large indeed. The largest cistern found had a storage capacity of twelve thousand cubic meters, and there were another two of eight thousand and five thousand cubic meter capacity respectively. Probably the most famous of the cisterns was the double one known as Struthion (from the Greek for Ostrich). It was built by Herod under the Antonio fortress, at the north-west corner of the Temple Mount. It can still be seen today, beneath the Convent of the Daughters of Zion, famed as the site where Pontius Pilate reputedly pointed at Jesus and declared: Ecce Homo! Its dimensions are quite impressive—forty-nine meters long, seven meters wide and seventeen meters deep. The lower part is carved out of the living rock. Two wings are separated by stone arches, and the whole structure is covered by a vaulted stone roof. It was fed by floodwaters that were impounded at the head of the valley in the Leger pool and carried to the cistern in a conduit constructed solely for this purpose. Whatever the number of pilgrims, the two main religious observances associated with pilgrimage—ritual bathing and animal sacrifice—clearly placed a heavy burden on water supply.

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Fig. 12:

Source: Berthold Werner | Public Domain

The Struthion Cistern

A vivid, if not necessarily accurate, picture of what was involved in cleaning up around the altar after the wholesale ritual slaughter of animals is given in the letter purportedly written by Aristeas42 to his brother at the court of Ptolemy II in the middle of the 3rd century BCE: There was a gradual slope up to the altar…The whole of the floor is paved with stones and slopes down to the appointed places, that water may be conveyed to wash away the blood from the sacrifices, for many thousand beasts are sacrificed there on feast days. There are wonderful and indescribable cisterns underground…all around the site of the temple and each of them has countless pipes so that the different streams converge together. There are many openings for water at the base of the altar…so that all the blood of the sacrifices, which is collected in great quantities, is washed away in the twinkling of an eye.

Conserving the Flood Waters As the population grew, water from the springs, wells and cisterns became inadequate to meet the needs of the city that went far beyond domestic use and the periodical supply to pilgrims. There were flocks to be watered and trees, particularly fruit trees, to be irrigated. The manufacture of a whole range of products, from cloth and leather goods to pottery, soap and cheese, added to the demands on the water supply. Fortunately, Jerusalem was ideally situated for the catchment and storage of floodwaters. There were a number of narrow valleys that could easily be dammed. The soft limestone could be quarried without difficulty and the clay soil kept water losses through percolation to a minimum. Water storage in open reservoirs 75

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did give rise to problems. Evaporation losses were considerable, particularly during the hot, dry summers. There was no protection against surface pollution, so the water quickly became unsuitable for drinking. Stagnant water provided an ideal breeding ground for disease-spreading pests. Reservoirs became clogged with silt from soil erosion, as indeed they do to this day. There was always the danger of dam walls being breached if the mass of water was too great, so that limits had to be set on size and care taken to select low-lying sites that didn’t threaten settled areas with dangerous floods. However, the final balance was obviously positive. By the time of the Second Temple there were eleven reservoirs within the city walls and another four in its immediate environs. Twelve of these reservoirs were fed entirely by rainwater. The others stored imported water.

Fig. 13:

© Heidelberger historische Bestände – digital/Picturesque Palestine/CC BY-SA 4.0

The Mamila (upper Siloam) Pool that collected the surface flow from the Valley of Hinom

Water from Afar—Aqueducts Jerusalem enjoyed relative political stability from the second century BCE until towards the end of the first century CE. The city prospered and the capacity of the local water sources—the Gihon, the cisterns and the reservoirs fed by storm waters—was stretched to the limit. There was no choice but to bring new supplies from springs to the south of Jerusalem, along the water divide and to the east of it. Aqueducts were built to convey the water to the city.43 After construction was completed, they were probably able to supply an additional half a million cubic meters in a year of average rainfall. When exactly the aqueducts were constructed is a matter of some controversy among scholars. Josephus believed that the oldest part of the system dated from the time of Solomon. Though he was a scrupulously careful 76

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historian this seems doubtful, for the Romans, from whom the engineering techniques were almost certainly learned, built their first aqueducts hundreds of years later. Other scholars place the earliest construction at the turn of the millennium. All that can be said with assurance is that the bulk of the work was done during the period of the Second Temple.

Fig. 14:

© Heidelberger historische Bestände – digital/Picturesque Palestine/CC BY-SA 4.0

Solomon’s Pools

The completed system consisted of four aqueducts, ninety kilometers in all. Two of these fed water to the three reservoirs known as Solomon’s Pools. The other two carried the water from the pools to Jerusalem. The storage area was chosen for its impermeable rock and its topography, with wadis that could easily be dammed. The pools themselves were staggered, with the floor of one pool at the height of the upper edge of the next, so that overflow water did not go to waste. Though they still exist and function today, many repairs and alterations have been made over the centuries. Woodward’s engraving gives an idea of their original appearance, bearing in mind that the fort in the background is Turkish, not Israelite. Two construction techniques were used in building the aqueducts. On long, rocky stretches of terrain canals were cut into the living rock. Where the ground was level or the incline slight, great walls of stone were built, a meter and a half wide and in some places as much as three meters high. Canals of about sixty centimeters in depth were then let into the top of the walls. Over some stretches the two techniques were combined, with shallow channels cut into the rock, given depth by the construction of walls on one or both sides. 77

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As in all the aqueducts of the ancient world, water flowed by gravity alone. High ridges and deep valleys taxed the limited engineering knowledge of the time, but ingenious and successful solutions were devised. Valleys were occasionally crossed by using dams to raise the water level, or by carrying aqueducts on bridges. Ridges were usually negotiated by taking the long way round, following the contours of the land, but occasionally tunnels were cut through the hills. Where the topography was particularly difficult, the path followed could be very convoluted. For example, the Arob aqueduct, which brought water to Solomon’s pools from neighboring springs, traveled thirty-nine kilometers, to cover a distance of only ten kilometers as the crow flies. Remarkably, the overall gradient was less than one in a thousand, a drop of thirty-five meters from start to finish. The two aqueducts from Solomon’s pools to Jerusalem are commonly known as the upper and lower aqueducts. The upper aqueduct drew its water from the highest of Solomon’s pools, the lower one from the other two pools. The lower aqueduct traveled nearly twenty-one kilometers to cover a direct distance of ten kilometers. Here too, the drop in elevation was minimal, only seventeen meters. The water went to the Temple Mount, seven hundred and thirty-five meters above sea level. Any surplus flowed down to the lower city. Some scholars believe that this was the aqueduct whose construction by Pontius Pilate so infuriated the Jews, because he financed it with funds earmarked for religious observance. They rely on Josephus (Wars of the Jews II 9.2) who wrote that Pilate raised a furor when he spent the money of holiness, called sacrifice, to excavate a water ditch. It is more likely that it was built earlier. Its style and boldness of concept seem to belong more to Herod, with his passion for monumental building, than to a Roman civil servant. The upper aqueduct followed a much shorter course than the lower one from Solomon’s pools to Jerusalem, extending for a mere thirteen kilometers along the path of the main road to the city. Its most impressive engineering feature was a twelve hundred meter siphon cutting across the Bethlehem valley. It was built of units of stone piping, each ninety centimeters high and ninety centimeters long. This aqueduct supplied the prosperous upper city, the environs of Herod’s Palace and a busy commercial precinct, about sixty meters higher than the Temple Mount.

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Fig. 15:

Source: Matson Photo Service | Public Domain

Entrance to a tunnel along the aqueduct from King Solomon’s Pool to Jerusalem

Water and Lifestyle Even the fullest use of all available resources did not provide a particularly abundant supply of water to the citizens of the ancient capital. In a year of bountiful rainfall there might have been fifteen or twenty cubic meters per person—for domestic use, agriculture and industry—and to be shared with the tourists on the three annual pilgrimages to the Holy City. In a drought year this could easily be cut by half or more. With such a meager supply, it is easy enough to understand why fountains didn’t play in the city and why immersion bathing was limited to the ritual of the Mikveh. For the masses, water was for survival, for cleanliness before God, but not for fun. Yet that was not quite the whole picture. When the Jewish Quarter of the Old City was being rebuilt after the Six-Day War, archeological excavations uncovered a number of spacious homes, built in the Greco-Roman style of the Herodian period. They formed part of the prosperous neighborhood of upper Jerusalem, with a magnificent view across to the Temple Mount. The residents were senior members of the religious and administrative establishment. They lived in luxury. The largest of the homes excavated was about six hundred square meters, probably on three floors.

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Fig. 16:

Source: Author

A corner of one of the reception rooms in the ‘mansion house’

Water cisterns and baths were found on the lowest floor of the houses. Apart from the ritual baths, there were also rooms equipped with bathtubs that served no ritual purpose. Apparently aristocratic Israelites, like the Romans, took pleasure in bathing for its own sake.

Fig. 17:

Entrance to vaulted ritual bath 80

Source: Author

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Fig. 18:

Source: Author

Room with bath, ritual bath and water storage pool

In 66 CE the Jews rose in revolt against the misrule of their Roman procurators. The revolt soon developed into a full-scale war and it took the Romans four years to regain control of the province. In the spring of 70 CE they besieged Jerusalem. The suffering in the city was terrible. The death toll from starvation during the months of siege was very heavy. Surprisingly, during this siege water was not the problem. The stock in the cisterns sufficed to keep thirst at bay throughout the long, hot summer. In the late summer, resistance collapsed. The Romans breached the walls, set the Temple on fire and razed the city to the ground. All that was left standing were three towers built by Herod, kept intact for the convenience of the Roman legions.44

After the Destruction of the Second Temple Jerusalem, during the later years of the Second Temple, was not merely a minor administrative outpost of the Roman Empire. For the Jews, dispersed in many lands, it was the centre of their spiritual, judicial and academic world—the seat of the Temple, the Sanhedrin and the great houses of study. It was a bustling and polyglot metropolis. Even non-Jews were conscious of its special ambience. Pliny the Elder called it the most famous of the great cities of the East. All this came to an end with the destruction of the Temple. For sixty years Jerusalem lay in ruins. What was then built on the site was a Roman colony, the Aelia Capitolina, made to resemble, as closely as the topography would allow, the square shape of a Roman camp. During the eighteen centuries that followed the city led a chequered existence, ruled in turn by Rome, Byzantium, Arabs, Crusaders, Mamelukes and Ottoman Turks. The shining vision of Jerusalem shared by Jews and 81

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Christians, and later also by Moslems, came to exist only in the mind, entirely divorced from geography.45 For the most part the reality on the ground was miserable and sordid. Little of significance was added to the city’s water system over this long period. On the whole the needs of the diminished city were sufficiently provided for by what had been built in more prosperous days. Benjamin of Tudela, who reached the city in the eleven fifties or sixties when it was under Crusader rule, noted that very little water was to be found in Jerusalem and that the inhabitants relied on rainwater collected in their houses and courtyards for drinking water. In fact rainwater caught in cisterns and reservoirs still provided the bulk of the water supply under Ottoman rule as it had during Roman times. Parts of the system fell into disrepair for decades or centuries. They were restored piecemeal and brought back into use as need arose, often with different names. The reservoirs in the lower part of the central valley were neglected when the population moved to the higher ground to the west. The ancient Serpent’s Pool in the Hinnom valley, which had fallen out of use, was rebuilt by Germanus in 1176 and became Lacus Germani. In 1537 it was repaired once again and extended by Suleiman the Magnificent, acquiring its present name, Birkat-al-Sultan, the Sultan’s Pool. The Gihon spring became blocked and its exact location was unknown for centuries. Its waters found their way through Hezekiah’s tunnel to the Silwan (Siloam) pool until this route, too, silted up. Eventually, some time in the 14th century, the trapped waters broke through the bed of the Kidron river and renewed the flow of the spring. Christians named it the Well of the Virgin, identifying it as the site where Mary had washed the swaddling clothes of the infant Jesus.

Fig. 19:

W.H. Bartlett The Christian in Palestine 1840

The Well of the Virgin 82

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The import of water from Solomon’s Pools continued throughout most of the period. There is some evidence that the lower aqueduct was in use during the Moslem and Crusader periods, and it is known that it was repaired by the Mamelukes. Felix Fabbri, a Dominican preacher and tireless traveler, visited the site in the 1480s and wrote of seeing more than six hundred heathens digging and working in order to bring fresh water to the residents of Jerusalem. He noted that this was a very expensive and labor-intensive project and that it involved the use of many sophisticated and cunning devices. Decades later Suleiman the Great used water from the aqueduct for the five fountains he built. These were simple structures providing drinking water to passers-by, but they were remarkable as the only public fountains of which there is record in the long history of the city. The most elaborate was opposite the Chain Gate, set into the wall he built to surround the city.46

Fig. 20:

© Heidelberger historische Bestände – digital/Picturesque Palestine/CC BY-SA 4.0

The Chain Gate Fountain

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In the first years of the 18th century a clay pipe was built into the aqueduct. This was an unfortunate decision, for from then until the beginning of the 20th century it was dogged by endless engineering problems and recurring supply failures.

The Nineteenth Century Mid-19th century Jerusalem was a dilapidated, small town. Its mixed population of Jews, Moslems and Christians numbered well below twenty thousand souls. To judge by the descriptions of some travelers of the time, living conditions were horrendous for many of them, but particularly for the Jews, although they were in the majority. For instance: In Jerusalem his (the Jew’s) case is a very hard one, for if he should have a little of this world’s goods in his possession, he is oppressed and robbed by the Turk in a most unmerciful manner; in short for him there is neither law nor justice. John Lowthian A Narrative of a Recent Visit to Jerusalem, 1843

and: A large number of houses in Jerusalem are in a dilapidated and ruinous state. Nobody seems to make repairs so long as his dwelling does not absolutely refuse him shelter and safety. If one room tumbles about his ears, he removes into another, and permits rubbish and vermin to accumulate as they will in the deserted halls. Dr John Kitto Modern Jerusalem, 1847

and: Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, … Lepers, cripples, the blind, and the idiotic assail you on every hand … Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live there. Mark Twain The Innocents Abroad, 1869

Water works were as neglected as all else. Desultory attempts in the 1850s and 60s to get the lower aqueduct in working order met with little success. Almost a thousand cisterns still functioned, but more often than not the water was unfit for drinking, polluted by untreated sewage. When drought left the cisterns dry, spring water was hauled into the town in filthy goatskin bags and sold in the streets at exorbitant prices. Not surprisingly, a severe outbreak of plague in 1864 was attributed to polluted drinking water. The epidemic took hundreds of lives and kept the city in quarantine for four months.

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Fig. 21:

Source: Stav Feldmann

Water for Sale

During the Ottoman period, water from the Well of the Virgin was sold by hawkers in the streets of the city, but by the 19th century it had become so polluted by sewage that it was no longer potable and was good only for irrigation. In spite of all, the city began to throw off its lethargy in the last three decades of the century. Its development was given a boost in 1868, when it was linked to the port of Jaffa on the coast by a properly metalled road. In 1892, communications with the outside were further improved by the opening of a railway link. There was a spurt of construction of Christian institutions by foreign powers, particularly the French. Commerce expanded and new, modern shops and banking agencies began to make their appearance. The biggest change of all was in the Jewish community, which began to grow apace and to build new suburbs outside the walls of the Old City. By 1890, the Jews numbered twenty five thousand out of a total of thirty nine thousand, and by 1914 they accounted for forty five thousand of the city’s seventy thousand inhabitants. With all this renewed activity and a population which quadrupled in a few decades, only a trickle was added to the water supply. This came from the lower aqueduct, which was finally successfully repaired at the beginning of the new century. The clay pipe was rebuilt as far as Bethlehem and an iron pipe installed to carry the water from there to Jerusalem. This 85

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yielded about 180 cubic meters a day, somewhat less than a cubic meter a year for each resident of the city. Sanitation received no more attention than water supply. The Old City, within the walls, had no sewage system at all. The newer suburbs, outside the walls, had only minimal facilities. The saturation of the ground with raw sewage exacerbated the routine problems of archeological excavations. In 1869, Charles Warren was digging near the Gihon spring. Andrew Thomson, a member of his expedition, recounted that the earth was so poisoned by sewage that the hands of the workmen broke out in festering sores. Thomson also mentioned other water-borne hazards threatening the excavators: In another instance, the water from a periodic spring so increased upon them, that they were obliged to flee before it; and when it swelled up to Captain Warren’s neck, he could only preserve the candle by carrying it in his mouth.

In October 1898, Theodor Herzl, founder of the modern Zionist movement, was in the city seeking an audience with Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was paying a brief visit to Jerusalem, in the hope of advancing his plans to establish a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Although distraught at his apparent failure to be received by the Kaiser, he was so concerned at the conditions he saw around him that he still found time to write in his diary: When I remember thee in days to come, O Jerusalem, it will not be with delight. The musty deposits of two thousand years of inhumanity, intolerance, and foulness lie in your reeking alleys … If Jerusalem is ever ours, and if I were still able to do anything about it, I would begin by cleaning it up … I would build an airy, comfortable, properly sewered, brand new city around the Holy Places.

The End of Ottoman Rule: World War I and After During the years of World War I the population of the city was again decimated. It was cut to less than half—by the deportation of thousands, by famine, and by the ravages of diseases such as malaria and typhus associated with stagnant water and lack of elementary hygiene. The British took Jerusalem from the Turks in November, 1917. The situation was critical and they gave top priority to supplying adequate, clean water to the weak and debilitated survivors of the war. They cleaned the cisterns, which continued to provide essential storage capacity, and eventually passed a regulation requiring every new building to install a cistern. By June 1918 they had laid a pipeline from Solomon’s Pools. This carried about twelve hundred and fifty cubic meters a day, close to half a million cubic meters of water a year, to a reservoir in the Romema quarter in the north-west of the city. In 1921 they renovated Solomon’s Pools. In 1924 they tapped the Ayn Fara springs in the bed of Wadi Kelt, leading down to the desert.

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Fig. 22:

ID 134602929 © Mindauga Dulinska | Dreamstime.com

A Spring in the Bed of Wadi Kelt

While the British introduced modern methods of water management when they took control of the city, the system continued to teeter on the brink of crisis. The sources of supply remained those that had served Jerusalem in the days of Jesus Christ. As late as 1928, when the rains failed, water had to be shuttled in by train. Meanwhile, under the relatively benevolent rule of the British, and in spite of tension and conflict among the different communities, Jerusalem, after so many centuries, began to regain the atmosphere of a capital city. There was a spurt of construction of educational, communal and religious institutions and the population grew apace as the city shared in the general development of the country. Additional water was again a pressing need. Fortunately, exclusive reliance on the force of gravity for energy was long past. There were no technological problems in tapping the abundant sources of the coastal plain, eight hundred meters below, though of course pumping water had its price. Thus, in 1934 a pipeline was laid from the springs of Rosh Ha’ayin, thirty kilometers to the west. This provided adequate water until 1948, when the city was torn in two by war, creating a whole new set of problems.

A Modern-Day Siege In November, 1947 the United Nations adopted a resolution partitioning Palestine into two states, one Arab and one Jewish. Jerusalem was to be a corpus separatum, administered under a special international regime. This was accepted with great reluctance by the Jews. Along with the rest of the Partition resolution, it was rejected outright by the Arabs. The outcome 87

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was that the status of the city was decided by force of arms, not by international diplomacy. The struggle for Jerusalem, loaded as it was with symbolic importance for Jews and Arabs alike, was fierce. The western, Jewish part of the city was cut off from its coastal hinterland by Arab forces, who gained control of the main highway. The Arabs damaged a number of the pumping stations on this route and prevented the water of the Rosh Ha’ayin springs from reaching the city. The Jewish precincts were also deprived of access to the water from Solomon’s Pools and the springs in Wadi Kelt. As in the days of the siege of Sennachrib, survival for the Jewish residents of Jerusalem depended on water. This time it came from the cisterns, which, by the foresight of the authorities, had been filled and sealed as the crisis approached.47 It no longer flowed from the taps, but was distributed in the streets from horse or donkey-drawn tanks. To minimize the danger from shelling and reduce evaporation losses, this was often done in the middle of the night. Eyewitness accounts give an idea of how this affected everyday life: 21st May,1948: Hamseen still on and people’s bodies are beginning to smell. The other night we thought back to when we had our last real baths … about two months ago … Harry Levin, Jerusalem Embattled, 1950 11th May, 1948: I must find a ration of water for the day, which must be as little as possible, until the water pipes are repaired and Jerusalem can be supplied again. 10th June: The water-cart comes round nearly every day and we get our ration—a bucketful of water! It is interesting to see how much can be done with it! It is more wonderful to see how these brave men come through the shells to deliver the water; some days it is so bad that people prefer to be without water rather than go out into the streets to get it. Pauline Rose, The Siege of Jerusalem, 1949

Fig. 23:

Source: Chaim Herzog, The Arab Israeli Wars, image taken 1948/CC BY-SA 3.0

Water trucks in besieged Jerusalem 88

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On 11th June, 1948 a truce was arranged between the warring sides. It lasted for nineteen days and was used by Israel to lay a twenty-five kilometer pipeline on the ground, over the hills to Jerusalem. This removed the immediate threat of thirst to the city. There were still many months of armed conflict ahead and when an armistice agreement was finally signed Jerusalem lay divided in two. And so it remained until another war, in 1967, reunited the two parts once again in an uneasy union.

Statehood and After Since the completion of the pipeline from the Lake of Galilee to Rosh Ha’ayin in the 1960s, Israel’s water supply has become a single, integrated system. Except for the far south, any drop of water, whether its source is in the catchment area of the lake or in the great aquifers running under the coastal strip and inland, can be supplied anywhere in the country. The cost of doing so changes according to the distance it has to be transported— vertically and horizontally—but the means of transport are available. Yet the intensity of the age-long experience of water shortage has left its mark on Jerusalem, and to this day its per capita consumption is lower than any of the other major cities of the country.

Conclusion This, in brief, is the story of Jerusalem and its waters. It is strange to think that but for one particular hydro-geological constellation, which caused pulses of water to burst forth from the desiccated Judean rock at this site, there would have been no story to tell. True, other sources of water supplemented it and in the course of time superseded it, but the Gihon spring was the prime mover, the raison d’etre for the birth of the city.

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Chapter 3.2 The Waters of Rome Rome and its Waters48 The story of Rome’s water supply runs parallel to the story of the city itself over more than two millennia. It mirrors the rise of the city from austere beginnings, through remarkable achievements, to power and luxury, followed by decadence and decay into the Dark Ages; and then reemergence to new heights of achievement, with the Renaissance and the return of the popes to their historic home at the beginning of the 15th century. It continues after the establishment of a secular monarchy in 1870, that made the city the capital, if not of a Roman Empire, at least of Italy. It goes on through the collapse of monarchy, the rise and fall of Fascism, the devastation of war and seven decades of stormy democracy. The process of combining old and new to keep the fountains playing and the taps running with potable water of a quality not to be found in any other European city, continues to this day. Rome claims to supply its citizens with the best and purest drinking water in Europe and treats water supply not only as a service but as a celebration.

Beginnings The birth of Rome is shrouded in the mists of antiquity. Legend tells that it was established in 753 BCE, by Romulus, the elder of the twin sons of Mars, the god of war, and the vestal virgin, Rhea Silva. Rhea was the daughter of Numitor, the rightful ruler of the kingdom of Alba Longa, who had been driven from the throne by his younger brother, Amulus. Rhea became the innocent victim of the dispute between the brothers when her uncle had her drowned in the river Tiber. He had a similar fate in mind for her orphaned offspring. He had them thrown into the raging torrent of the Tiber in full flood, protected only by their fragile, wicker cradle. The children survived and came to rest under a fig tree on the marshy bank of the river. They were saved from death by a she-wolf who suckled them and a woodpecker, who brought them food in its beak. A shepherd found them and took them to his home on the hill later known as the Palatine. He cared for them well and they grew to young manhood, tall and strong. With the aid of a band of young shepherds, they drove Amulus from the throne of Alba Longa and reinstated their aged grandfather.

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Fig. 24:

Source: Peter Paul Rubens | Public Domain

Romulus and Remus Suckled by a Wolf: Peter Paul Rubens

Romulus went on to found the city he named after himself on the site of the miraculous events of his childhood. Unfortunately though, he was a man of violent temperament. When Remus made fun of the wall he was building round his new city and demonstrated its uselessness by effortlessly jumping over it, Romulus was beside himself. He struck down his young brother, with whom he had shared so much, and killed him. He then turned the city into a refuge for outcasts and fugitives from justice His violence continued throughout his reign. In the end during a raging thunderstorm he disappeared from the eyes of men and is reputed to have gone to join the gods. To the great good fortune of Rome, the aggressive and fratricidal Romulus was followed to the throne by a gentle and noble king, Numa Pompilius the Sabine. Numa fell deeply in love with Egera. She was a Camena, one the goddesses who tended the waters of springs and wells. He married her and, every night of the thirty nine years of his peaceful and prosperous reign, 91

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he visited her at her dwelling place in the sacred grove of the Fountain of the Camenae. Each evening he sought her counsel on affairs of state. Each morning after he handed down her wise and divine advice to his people, as law. This is the charming legend of the watery beginnings of the great edifice of Roman Law. In the mixture of myth and pseudo-history, which has come down to us as the story of Rome from its foundation until the birth of the Republic, it is told that the city grew from a cluster of seven villages on the east bank of the Tiber river. Five more kings followed Romulus and Numa, and ruled until the last of them, Tarqinius Superbus, was deposed and expelled from the city in 510 BCE. No explanation more satisfactory than the myth offers itself for the choice of the site for the city. Its only discernible virtue was that the Tiber was easily fordable at this point. The land was infertile and the surroundings unhealthy. Figs and vines struggled to grow in the poor soil. Floods were frequent and the low-lying valleys were chronically marshy. The river, with its gentle gradient, could not contain the torrents of water which poured down from the surrounding hills during the rainy season. Yet in spite of this inauspicious natural endowment, Rome has a history of uninterrupted settlement, stretching from its establishment to the present, nearly three millennia.49

The Republic Rome became a republic in 509 BCE, following the deposition of Tarqinius. The upstart republic was not kindly accepted by its neighbors who tried time and time again to shake off its efforts to gain control of the whole Italian peninsula. Most persistent in this struggle was the Sammite League, which united the inhabitants of the center and south of the country. It kept up the fight for more than thirty years before succumbing to the superior power of Rome. Rome’s power grew as its hinterland expanded. Growing prosperity eroded the austere puritan outlook of the early Republic and a new and far less modest life style began to emerge. Large-scale construction boomed— not only of the fortifications and roads essential to the military, but also of lavish public buildings. Population growth and rising living standards created a new problem of water shortage. For all the four and a half centuries from its founding, the city had drawn its water from local springs and wells but by the end of the fourth century BCE these sources were no longer adequate and the Romans were forced to turn to sources far beyond the city limits for additional water. With the construction of the first of the eleven aqueducts, which were eventually to slake the thirst of the Imperial City, the history of Rome’s water supply really began. It is a remarkable tale stretching down the centuries, a story in which inspired engineering and devoted public service share the stage with incompetence, corruption and crass venality. 92

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The First Aqueducts Under the constitution of the Republic the responsibility for supervising the construction of public works approved by the Senate was placed on two Censors who were elected to office for a period of eighteen months. In the year 312 BCE these censors were Appius Claudius Crassus and Gaius Plautis. They were charged with building Rome’s first aqueduct to bring. water from springs situated about ten miles to the east of the city. The aqueduct was built of cut stone. It ran underground for most of its length but on the final stretch it emerged into the open and was carried to its destination supported on arches. One of the perquisites of the office of Censor was that any public work completed during the term of a particular incumbent was named after him. Appius Claudius Crassus succeeded, by a variety of political subterfuges, in having his term of office extended until construction of the aqueduct was completed. Thus he enjoyed the honor of having it named the Aqua Appia. Experience of the mixed motives which go into present day decision-making about water makes one pause and wonder whether the urge to self-aggrandisement did not have as much to do with the project as did the urgent need for more water. The other Censor, Gaius Plautius, was a devoted public servant. He resigned, as he was supposed to, after a year and a half in office. Though it is he who is credited with discovering the springs which fed the aqueduct, no monument bears his name. The second Roman aqueduct was the Aqua Anio, named for the river Anie—today known as the Aniene—from which it drew its water. In later years it was known as Vetus, or “old” to distinguish it from the new Anio. Its construction spread over the years from 272 to 269 BCE. It was constructed in the same way as the Appia, but was far more ambitious—sixty four kilometers long. This great length was the combined consequence of topography and the limitations of available technology. The hydraulic engineers of the ancient world did not have pressure pipes available to them. They had to construct their aqueducts for gravity flow, always taking care that the rate of fall in elevation was kept within strict limits. Because the source of the water of the Anio was so much higher up than its destination, a long, winding route was needed to avoid too sharp a gradient. The construction of this aqueduct was paid for from the proceeds of booty captured from Pyrrhus., on his defeat in 275 BCE. The spoils of war were transformed into the cut stone of water channels. Work on the third and longest aqueduct, the Aqua Marcia, started in 144 BCE, about a hundred and twenty years after the Anio Vetus was completed. It took five years to build. This was just after the successful conclusion of the third Punic War, in which Rome finally succeeded in razing the city of Carthage to the ground and running ploughs over its site. Africa became a province of Rome and the empire began to take shape, though for the time being under Republican auspices. This brought its rewards in 93

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gold and slaves from the captured provinces but also havoc to the Roman countryside, both because of the physical ravages of war and of the long periods of conscript service imposed on the peasants. Age and neglect had taken their toll of the two existing aqueducts and much of their water was lost on the way to Rome through leaks and illegal diversions. The Praetor Marcius,50 was charged by the Senate with the task of rehabilitating these old works and also with bringing new water to the city to meet the needs of growth. He was granted sufficient funds to do the job—180,000 sesterces—and his term of office was extended for a second year to enable him to finish what he had started. In the customary way, the new aqueduct was named after him. The Aqua Marcia drew its water from a group of springs near Subiaco east of Rome. Except for short stretches where it emerged to cross deep gorges, it traveled underground for eighty kilometers. It completed the last stretch of its journey to the Capitoline hill, nearly ten kilometers, carried high in the air, on arches. The Aqua Tepula followed the Marcia after a pause of only fifteen years. It drew its waters from the river Tepula in the nearby Alban hills, conveying them underground for eight kilometers and then finishing the journey atop the arches of the Aqua Marcia After the Tepula it was ninety years before the next aqueduct was built. These nine decades were a stormy period, as success abroad went together with civil strife at home. The city was torn by bitter internal struggles which dragged it down into corruption and gangsterism, as the aristocratic ruling class defended its privileges against the masses of citizens, who were impoverished but not disenfranchised. It was Julius Caesar who had kept far away from the city, in Gaul, who restored order. In 49 BCE, in what was an act of high treason, he took his loyal and battle-tempered army across the Rubicon, gained the upper hand in the internecine strife and had himself appointed dictator for life. In the five years before he was assassinated in 44 BCE, Caesar gave his attention to bringing order and prosperity to the city. He dealt with the moneylenders on the streets, brought rents under control and began to resettle soldiers, whose martial talents were no longer needed, on the land, but his time in office was too short for him to achieve any dramatic transformation in the quality of life in the city.

The Empire Caesar’s murder was followed by more civil strife but within a few years his great nephew and adopted son, Octavian was firmly in control of the city. With the help of his most talented minister and friend, Marcus Agrippa, he reorganized grain supplies, continued the resettlement of soldiers and embarked on a program of public works, which included the construction of three aqueducts. The first was the Aqua Julia, built by Marcus Agrippa in 33 BCE and named for Octavian, whose full name was Gaius Julius Octavianus.51 The Aqua Julia was followed in 19 BCE by the Aqua Virgo, also built by Agrippa. It took its name from the story that the springs which 94

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fed it were discovered when a young girl pointed the way to some thirsty soldiers. Marcus Agrippa deserves a special niche in the annals of Roman water. When he returned home with Octavian, after the murder of Caesar had been avenged and civil war put down, it was to a city in a state of chaos, its citizens for the most part miserable and hungry slum dwellers. Though he had previously occupied the high office of Consul, this most well connected aristocrat did not hesitate to take upon himself the modest office of Aedile, so that he could devote his time to restoring and rehabilitating the city’s water supply and sewage system. This had fallen into a such a sad state of disrepair that a contemporary observer, Dio Cassius, remarked that noone would believe that the city had a water supply system at all.

Fig. 25:

Source: Ingsoc | Public Domain

Marcus Agrippa

One of the first things that Agrippa did was to take responsibility for municipal water out of the hands of contractors who had had a monopoly on the job for centuries. He replaced them with a single government department, the Statio Aquarium, under his direct control. In one year, 33 BCE, he not only had the conduits of the three existing aqueducts—which were between one and three hundred years old—cleaned up and repaired, but also built the Aqua Julia. As if this were not enough, in this very same year he transformed the face of Rome by the construction of five hundred fountains and seven hundred basins and pools all for the use and delight of the

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general public. Then, with boundless energy, he went off to command the fleet that defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. Twelve years later, in his third consulship, he again turned his attention to water and in 19 BCE completed the Aqua Virgo. This aqueduct was twenty two kilometers long, half underground and half on arches. Its waters, drawn from springs near the Via Collatina, were long reputed to be the most wholesome in Rome. It had the special function of supplying the Thermae in the Campus Martius behind the Pantheon, which had been completed in 23 BCE. These were magnificent and luxuriously equipped baths, set in a large garden with its own artificial lake. They were built to be enjoyed by the general public and offered a choice of steam and shower and plunge baths with an unlimited supply of running hot and cold water. Agrippa must have been an acute observer of the local scene and no doubt got the idea for his own baths from the enormous popularity of the bath houses which had been opened all over Rome during the bitter years of the Civil War. He counted a hundred and seventy of them, many very simple establishments, often run by a freedman with the help of a few slaves. People flocked to them since, for the smallest coin of the realm, even the poorest citizen could relax in a hot bath and slough off his troubles for a brief moment. This was a new fashion for the Romans. Up to this time bathing had not been a pastime but a necessary exercise in personal hygiene. Seneca the Elder, for instance, noted that while arms and legs might be washed daily, complete immersion should take place only once a week and that modestly and in private. Marcus Agrippa died in 12 BCE so that he had no part in the third aqueduct built in the reign of Augustus. The Aqua Alsiente, built in 2 BCE, was thirty two kilometers long and supplied very poor quality water from Lake Alsiente (now known as Lake Martignano). Frontinus, of whom more below, was scathing in his criticism of this project. He wrote: I fail to see what motive induced Augustus, a most sagacious sovereign, to bring in the Alsietinian water … For this has nothing to commend it–is in fact positively unwholesome and for that reason is nowhere delivered for consumption by the people.

Augustus of course did have his own good reasons for building the aqueduct but they had nothing to do with the everyday needs of water supply. The water was used to flood the Naumachia, the artificial lake that he used to stage great mock naval battles. Any surplus went to affluent users on the west bank of the Tiber for watering their private gardens. Two more aqueducts were built during the Augustan succession, both in the year 52 CE, in the reign of Claudius. The Aqua Claudia was named for Claudius. It extended for nearly seventy kilometers from springs near Subiaco to the East, the last fifteen kilometers carried on arches. The quality of the water almost matched that of the Marcia. The Aqua Anio Novis stretched for seventy three kilometers from the Anio river and entered Rome on top of the Claudia.

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Fig. 26:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Chris 73/CC BY-SA 3.0

A 21st century view of the ruins of the Aqua Claudia

The Augustan succession came to an end in 68CE, with the suicide of Nero, after a bloody twelve year reign. Rome then enjoyed a brief eleven years of good rule under Vespacian. He restored order to the public finances. He cleaned up the facade of the city, repaired run-down public buildings and constructed one great new monument, the Coliseum. Unfortunately his sons, who succeeded him, and particularly Domitian, managed to undo his achievements and turn Rome once again into a city of conflict where Emperor and Senate hated and feared one another and men lived in danger of losing their lives at the caprice of their ruler. This nightmare was brought to an end in 96 CE when Domitian was assassinated by members his own Praetorian Guard. The next Emperor was Nerva. He came to the throne as an old man and ruled for only two years. He was succeeded by Trajan, who ruled for nearly twenty years after him. Rome was ripe for a government of reconciliation and municipal reform. Both Nerva and Trajan were ideally suited to bring about the needed change. Their own behavior set the tone of the new regime and they managed to gather around them honest, able and enthusiastic assistants. Among them was Sextus Julius Frontinus(35–103CE), a perfect example of civic virtue and conscientious performance of simple duty, difficult to match in the annals of Roman history. Frontinus served as Curator Aquarum, Water Commissioner, under both emperors. He took office in 97CE, when already in his early sixties 97

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and with a distinguished career behind him. He had been elected consul three times and in the reign of Vespacian, when he was not yet forty, he had been sent to Britain to serve as provincial governor. When he took office he knew nothing of water management so the first thing he did was to make a careful and detailed study of Rome’s water supply system, in both its physical and administrative aspects. He wrote it all down in his treatise: De Aquis Urbis Romae, both to get it straight in his own mind and for the edification of anyone who might follow him in the job. De Aquis is a remarkable book, though not for its style which might fairly be described as that of a literate civil servant, and not only for its invaluable information. Primarily it fascinates because of its obiter dicta, the incidental picture it gives of the mores and well springs of conduct of Roman society as seen through the eyes of a shrewdly observant public servant. Frontinius devoted the first sixteen sections of De Aquis to a description of all the existing aqueducts, their sources of supply, their points of discharge in the city and their length above and below ground. He also named those responsible for the construction of each of the aqueducts. Only here and there, as in his comparison of Roman achievements with those of other civilizations such as Greece and Egypt, does his pride in Rome shine through his matter-of-fact detailing of the facts: With such an array of indispensable structures carrying so many waters, compare if you will, the idle pyramids or the useless, though famous works of the Greeks!

He went on to discuss some of the technical problems of supplying water to a city built on hills, which had grown higher over the years, raised by the accumulated debris of frequent conflagrations. The system he described was based entirely on gravity flow, for while the Romans probably had a sufficient understanding of the principles of hydrostatics to build a pressure system, they did not know how to manufacture the cast iron pipes they would have needed for this. Their system was one of continuous flow, with settling tanks where necessary, but without any reservoirs. The surplus water which overflowed from the fountains and taps of the city, which were never turned off, continued on to flush out the sewers and flow into the Tiber. Frontinus noted that the different aqueducts reached the city at different elevations. The five most recently constructed had enough pressure to raise water to every point in the city. The older aqueducts had been built to supply their water at a lower elevation either because: the ancients … had not yet nicely worked out the art of levelling, or because they purposely sunk their aqueducts in the ground, in order that they might not easily be cut by the enemy, since frequent wars were still waged with the Italians.

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By the time of Frontinus, whenever parts of old aqueducts were rebuilt, they were carried across valleys on arches or low structures above ground, instead of around the valleys underground as in the original construction. The next subject to which he gave his attention was measurement of the quantities supplied. He wished to show: how great is the supply of water which suffices not only for public and private uses and purposes, but also for the satisfaction of luxury.

However behind this lay his concern for the differences between the quantities of water at source and those accounted for at their destinations. According to his measurements the differences were enormous. He searched out the causes of these discrepancies and went on to reduce water losses to a minimum. Some of the aqueducts leaked like sieves because of the dishonesty of contractors who had fattened their profits by skimping on materials but large-scale corruption in the water department itself was an even bigger problem. Many of the Aquarii, the maintenance men of the system, ran their own businesses, selling water stolen from the mains through their own private and illegal connections. This wasn’t a very surprising activity for it benefited sellers and buyers alike. Most of the Aquarii were slaves, anxious to accumulate enough money to buy their freedom. Their customers were residents of the city, happy to get water for their gardens without having to tangle with the municipal bureaucracy. Frontinus had no technique available to him for metering actual quantities of water supplied. His method of measuring water supply was indirect, based on calculations of capacity and not of actual flow. It was subject to wide margins of error, but this is the best information we have available today and it certainly provides an indication of orders of magnitude. The unit of measurement which he used was the quinaria, which, converted into metric units of flow is about 7,500 cubic meters a year, give or take 3,500 cubic meters. After manipulating a mass of data, and comparing the figures in the Imperial records with the results of his own measurements and calculations he came to the conclusion that from all the various sources there were approximately 24,000 quinariae available. Of this, according to the Imperial records, 12,700 quinariae were actually delivered to consumers. According to his own measurements the amount was considerably larger, about 14,000 quinariae, but this still left about 10,000 quinariae to be accounted for. Frontinius was sure that he knew where they were going. He wrote of finding: irrigated fields, shops, garrets, even and lastly all disorderly houses, fitted with fixtures through which a constant supply of flowing water might be assured

Frontinus studied all the tricks of the trade of the dishonest water men. Water for private use was by grant of the Emperor. Connections to the main system were made by pipes of approved diameter, stamped with an official stamp. All these connections to the main supply basin had to be made at the same height, so that a lower connection could not get more 99

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water than one of the same diameter at a higher elevation. Thirty days after the death of the owner of a water right, it lapsed and a new application had to be made. Since the Aquarii as the maintenance men of the system were literally the men on the spot, if they were dishonest there was plenty of scope for “fiddling” the system. They could see that those holding water grants got less than their entitlement by manipulating the connections. They could continue to supply water to their own private customers through existing connections even though rights had lapsed. They could even quite blatantly install their own private connections and sell the water on the side. They did all these things and probably some others as well. So Frontinus had the pavements pulled up and all the illegal pipes removed. This almost doubled the amount of water available for distribution, without any investment in new sources of supply. Apparently it also gave Frontinus quite a stock of lead, though what he did with it he does not say. Frontinus claimed that the public benefited from his policy in all sorts of ways. The general health of the populace improved as the city was cleaner in appearance and with purer air. There was water for more fountains and water basins. And even those who had formerly drawn water unlawfully, could now get it by grant from the sovereign and enjoy it without anxiety. This was a public servant patting himself, or rather his Emperor, to whom he gives all credit for wisdom and patriotism, on the back. But what sort of water supply did the residents of Rome actually have available to them at the end of the first century, after Frontinus had put his house in order? Let us first try to make an informed guess about how much water was available. Using Hershel’s conversion from quinariae to gallons per day, we arrive at a figure of about seventy five million cubic metres a year (with a possible error of 35MCM in either direction). A population of a million souls gives an annual per capita consumption of about 75 cubic meters, which is more than many modern cities enjoy. So there was plenty of water, but where did it go? Rome was a city with a very hierarchical class structure, and enormous differences in living standards between rich and poor. The well-to-do had running water in their villas and the taste for luxury, which was given free rein as the puritanical standards of the republic faded into the pas t, expressed itself in lavishly decorated bathrooms and lavatories, and fountains playing in their gardens. When they patronised the public baths it was not for reasons of hygiene, but for the social life and to keep abreast with the latest gossip. Most of the populace lived crowded in multi-storey tenements, built of wood. Running water, when it reached the buildings, did not rise above the ground floor. Water for household use had to be carried upstairs in pots and buckets, filled from public basins or from taps which were never turned off. Apart from what was needed for ordinary domestic use, a sufficient reserve had to be kept handy to fight the fires which plagued the inflammable wooden structures. This must have been particularly hard on the families living on the upper floors. 100

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For washing and for relaxation and entertainment, the populace made full use of the public baths which were available for a nominal charge (the quadran, the smallest coin in the realm), or for no charge at all. The other sanitary needs of the tenement dwellers were provided for by communal lavatories on the ground floor and public lavatories in the streets. At night chamber pots were used. Their contents were supposed to be carried downstairs and deposited off at designated points, for disposal without public nuisance, but the less public-minded citizens saved themselves this effort by emptying their wastes out of the windows, putting passers-by at risk. Two more aqueducts were built during the Empire. The first, the Aqua Trajiana, was built by the Emperor Trajan in 109 CE. It was the second aqueduct that brought water from the springs north of Rome and like the Alsiente, its destination was the Janiculum. Most of its fifty six kilometer course was underground. The last of the aqueducts was built by the Emperor Alexander Severus in 226 CE. The source of its water was in the marshlands to the east of Rome and its length about twenty two kilometers. It supplied the Emperor’s Baths, the Thermae Alexandrianae. On completion of the whole complex Rome had a water supply which could fairly be described as one of the wonders of the ancient world. When it was at its peak there were eleven aqueducts feeding the city, supplying water to eleven Imperial Baths (thermae) and another nine hundred and twenty six (926) public baths, as well as twelve hundred and twelve (1212) public fountains, all this in addition to water for ordinary everyday uses. Over the years many contemporary writers were moved to describe the water supply of Rome with a generous use of superlatives. Pliny the Elder was perhaps the most distinguished among them. In the chapter on The Grandeur of Rome in his monumental Natural History, (75CE), he wrote of the abundant supply of water brought to the city for public and household use, for public baths and basins, for the gardens of suburban homes and villas and more. He reflected on the distance that the water had to be brought by aqueduct from surrounding hills, requiring the piercing of mountains and the levelling of valleys and how it flowed through the city in veritable rivers. He summed up the whole amazing enterprise by declaring that we must perforce admit that there is nothing more worthy of admiration throughout the whole universe.

Decline and Recovery Rome started down the path of decline at least as early as 330CE when the Emperor Constantine abandoned the city and made Constantinople his capital. By the end of the fourth century inflation was rampant and the economy was retreating into autarky. A thousand years of decay and stagnation lay ahead. In 537 CE Viteges, the Goth sacked Rome and cut the aqueducts, an act vividly described by the historian Procopius, who happened to be on 101

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the spot. This forced the hill-dwellers down from the high ground to the banks of the Tiber, where water was still to be had. Mosquitoes flourished in the marshes created by water leaking from the severed aqueducts Malaria sapped the health and energy of the population. It was the Christian Church that kept a semblance of civilization alive during these dark centuries. Water, in scarcity, took on a new significance. After centuries of pagan indulgence, it came to be associated with holiness. The few fountains that still played in the city were found in church courtyards. A sprinkling of baptismal water initiated each new-born infant into the community of God, and worshippers washed their hands before entering the house of prayer or receiving the sacraments. Even the Christian Church eventually despaired of a city ravaged by gangs of noblemen conducting tribal warfare from ruins on the Campus Martius. In 1309 Clement V abandoned the city and set up the papal court in Avignon. More than a hundred years passed before there was once again a pope in residence. This was the admirable Martin V. In 1420 he left the comforts and culture of Florence for the squalor and dangers of Rome, by then hardly more than a village, with barely fifteen thousand inhabitants. In the face of all obstacles he set the city on the long road to rehabilitation and Renaissance glory.

The Gifts of the Popes Although the water supply system of Imperial Rome had decayed to the point of disappearance, Martin V had more pressing problems on his immediate agenda. With the Vatican in ruins even finding a fit place to live was a problem. Water had to wait the attention of his successor, Nicholas V, who came to the papacy in 1447. Nicholas was reputed to be the most learned man of his day. Luckily for the city his enthusiasm for restoration matched his learning. He is said to have filled Rome with stonemasons and carpenters. He brought Leon Battista Albertini, one of the great architects of his day, from Florence to renovate the city’s water supply. Albertini restored the Aqua Virgo and by 1453, now with a Italian name, the Acqua Vergine, it was once again bringing water to Rome. A most remarkable stroke of luck eased the task of bringing Rome’s fabled waters back to life. After having disappeared from sight for centuries, in 1429 a single copy of De Aquis Urbis Romae came to light in the Benedictine Monastery of Monte Cassino.52

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Fig. 27:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Ilaria Spes/CC BY-SA 4.0

Abbey of Monte Cassino

Sextus Julius Frontinus, thirteen and a half centuries in his grave, acted as technical adviser to Albertini, guiding him to the source of the water and along the stone conduits built by the engineers of Agrippa to carry it to its destination. In the introduction to his book Frontinus promised much and he did not fail to deliver on any detail: I will first set down the names of the waters which enter the city of Rome; then I will tell you by whom, under what consuls, and in what year after the founding of the City each one was brought in; then at what point and at what milestone each water was taken; how far each is carried in a subterranean channel, how far on substructures, how far on arches. Then I will give the elevation of each, [the plan] of the taps, and the distributions that are made from them; how much each aqueduct brings to points outside the City; what proportions to each quarter within the City; how many public reservoirs there are, and from these how much is delivered to ornamental fountains, how much to the water-basins …53

For a hundred and thirty years the Vergine was Rome’s only aqueduct. To this day it continues to supply the city. For many years its water was reputed to be the purest in all Rome. Sadly, in recent years pollutants, percolating down from the surface, have led to its demotion to the status of non-potabile. The task now left to it is to cascade and spout in the historic fountains of the city.

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Fig. 28:

The Waters of the Aqua Vergine entering Rome

Source: Author

Three more aqueducts, built under papal auspices, were reconstructions of ancient aqueducts. First came the Acqua Felice, built in 1586 along the route of the Alexandrina. It was followed in 1612 by the Paolo-Traiano, along the path of the Trajana. Nothing further was added to the system until 1870. Then came the Acqua Pia Antica Marcia, originally built in 140 BCE. The restorers of all these aqueducts owed a great debt to Frontinus. The Acqua Felice was built during the pontificate of Sixtus V.

Fig. 29:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Carlomorino/CC BY-SA 2.5

Medallion in Honor of Pope Sixtus V (1585–1590) 104

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Sixtus made a deep impression on Ferdinand Gregorovius, the 19th century expert on the history of medieval Rome. He described him as an astonishing man who, though he started out life herding swine, came in his old age to command kings and commoners alike. He said of him that he had filled Rome with so many works that his name echoed in the ears of every visitor to the city. All the preparatory work had been done by his predecessor, Gregory XIII, but Sixtus was a man in a hurry and within ten days of his election four thousand workers were on the job. Construction was completed in record time but unfortunately, in all the rush, someone had got the gradients wrong and the water showed a perverse tendency to flow away from its destination. Matteo Bartolani, the engineer in charge, who had tried so hard to please the pope, found himself summarily dismissed. He was replaced by Dominico Fontana who justified the pontiff ’s faith in him and within the year had the water flowing, as it was intended, to the Capitoline hill. Paul V, elected pope fifteen years after the death of Sixtus, determined to rival the achievements of his predecessor, turned to the right bank of the Tiber, where the residents were making do with what they could glean from local sources. In 1608 he set about restoring the flow of water from springs to the north-west of the city which, in ancient times, had been brought to the Janiculum by the Aqua Trajana. In 1612 the water began arriving at its destination, carried by the Paolo-Traiana, its double-barrelled name commemorating the reigning pope while not forgetting his Imperial forebear. The project was a bitter disappointment. Neither quantity nor quality lived up to expectations. The new fountain in the piazza of St Peter was often dry; and those who did receive the water for drinking poured forth a stream of complaints about its unpleasant taste. In 1679 Lake Bracciano was linked to the aqueduct to augment the volume, but this did no good to the quality. Eventually the water ceased to be supplied for drinking and today is used only for fountains and gardens. Eighty percent of the water comes from the lake. The Aqua Marcia first supplied Rome with cool, clear, pristine water a hundred and forty years before the birth of Jesus. When in the 1840s the city’s water supply needed augmenting, a survey showed the springs to be suitable in every way for redevelopment. The original plan to rehabilitate the ancient aqueduct was eventually abandoned as impractical and a new aqueduct was planned. Problems of finance and the hesitancy of the pontifical government delayed action for many years. It was only on 10th September 1870, that the pope officially welcomed the new Marcia to Rome, ceremoniously drinking a glass of its water. In retrospect it was a poignant moment, the last public appearance of a pontiff as sovereign of the papal states. Ten days later the city was in the hands of Victor Emanuel II and the new kingdom of Italy. Four centuries after Nicholas V restored the first of the ancient aqueducts, the responsibility for supplying Rome with water passed from the 105

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hands of the popes. Their record of achievement had been impressive, but the time for change had come. The papal engineers had preserved important elements of the ancient system. Water reached Rome and flowed through the city by gravity alone. There were no storage facilities and excess water eventually reached the Tiber, after flushing out the Cloaca Maxima and other sewers. The flow was continuous and the taps were always open. Such a system was hardly appropriate for modern water supply.

Fig. 30:

Source: Lalupa | Public Domain

Water flowing from a tap that was always open

One tradition that has survived in the face of change is the practice of seeking out and using high-quality sources of supply even when they are far from the city. Thanks to this practice, Rome can still lay claim to the purest water of any European city—water fit to drink almost without treatment.

The Secular City Rome at the beginning of the third millennium, is a far cry from the city which became capital of the newly united kingdom of Italy in 1870. Its population then was barely over two hundred thousand. Today it is more than three million. It is a bustling metropolis, struggling with the problems common to all modern cities—overcrowding, traffic jams, pollution and 106

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noise. Yet its inheritance from ancient and pontifical Rome, in all that relates to water, is still to be seen and felt at every turn. The modern city is supplied with water from eight aqueducts.54 Seven of them draw their water from sources which were used by the ancient Romans. The Paolo-Traiana still travels forty-six kilometers, sometimes on arches high in the air, sometimes underground, in the brick channel built by Trajan. Three others underwent extensive reconstruction and restoration by the popes. A further three—the Acqua Vergine Nuova, Appia Alexandrina and the Bracciano—were built in the 20th century. While it bears the imprint of the past, Rome’s water supply has been transformed since 1870. The Peschiera-Capore, the one aqueduct which uses sources of water never before fed to Rome, with its capacity of 13.5 cubic meters per second, provides about sixty percent of the city’s regular supply. The Pia Antica Marcia, the newest of the papal aqueducts, provides another 5 cubic meters per second. The five oldest aqueducts together supply less than 3 cubic meters per second and, because of surface pollution, much of this is not potable. The Bracciano has a capacity of 8 cubic meters per second, but because of its poorer quality serves mostly as a reserve.

The New Aqueducts The Peschiera-Capore was built to meet the pressure of demand from a population which had been growing since the end of the first world war at a rate of nearly three and a half percent a year. Construction was begun in 1937 and by 1940 the initial stage was ready for operation. Though his country was at war, Mussolini himself found time to throw the switch and send the water on its way to Rome. Further construction was delayed by the war and its aftermath and the project only reached completion in 1980. Today it is the lynch-pin of Rome’s water supply. It is a system in itself rather than a single aqueduct. Water from two sources join and mix and travel a stretch of the way in a single conduit, which later bifurcates and enters the city in two separate branches. The Vergina Nuova was built in 1937. It shares the springs which feed the Vergine Antica but, in the cast-iron pressure pipes in which it is pumped on its thirteen kilometer journey to Rome, the water is protected from the surface pollution which has recently made the water of the Antica fit only for fountains. The Appia-Alessandria was built in the years from 1963 to 1968. It is a completely new structure, but the springs to the east of Rome which provide it with water, first fed the Appia and the Alexandriana. The Bracciano lake lies in the crater of an extinct volcano. The inlet to the new aqueduct is in the lake itself. The lake’s water is protected from pollution by the wastes of adjacent settlements, by the collection, treatment and disposal of their sewage. However its own quality is such that treatment is necessary if it is to be supplied as drinking water. For this reason it is used as a reserve supply. 107

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The System Modern technology has led to radical changes in the way in which Rome is supplied with water. The new aqueducts are very different from their predecessors. They convey water in cast iron pressure pipes, not in open conduits. Freed from the need to follow the long circuitous routes dictated by gravity flow, they follow far shorter paths from source to destination. Where possible they exploit the fall in elevation from the foothills of the Apennines to the coastal plain to generate hydro-electric power. Arriving at its destination, the water from the various aqueducts mixes and mingles in storage and in a single pipe which circles the city and matches distribution to demand. Romans can no longer identify the water they drink as coming from this source or that. There have been other changes. The tentacles of the distribution network reach far beyond the metropolis itself to encompass fifty town councils in the Lazio region. Over seven hundred and fifty kilometers of steel and pre-stressed concrete pipes distribute water to the consumers. The whole complex is kept running smoothly with the aid of a sophisticated tele-control installation, which provides information, in real time, on quantity, quality, pressure, reservoir levels and more.

Management Institutional arrangements have also changed beyond recognition. Under the papacy, the everyday management of water supply was in the hands of a private monopoly. In 1885 its concession for supplying drinking water to the city was extended for twenty five years. Only in 1909 did the municipality of Rome begin to play a direct role. In that year it established an electricty board, which was also given responsibility for water supply. After a number of transformations, this became ACEA (Azienda Comunale Energia Ambiente)—the Agency for Energy and Environment. For some years ACEA lived in uneasy association with the private supplier, undermining its monopoly status in one sphere of activity after another. Finally, in 1964, the municipality placed exclusive control of water supply and distribution in the hands of the public agency.

Castella, Mostre and Just Plain Fountains Since the days of the first aqueducts, Romans have built great fountains, known by the ancients as castella, and in later times as mostre, at the aqueduct terminals. These terminals had no need of decoration to fulfill their utilitarian function as distribution points. The fountains, with their exuberant architecture and statuary, were an extravagant celebration of the water itself. With their highly visible, beautifully carved inscriptions giving credit to the benefactors who had brought the water to the people, they were also important exercises in public relations.

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Cities and Their Water Source: Giuseppe Vasi | Public Domain

Fig. 31: The Julia Fountain in the 18th Century Giuseppe Vasi (1710– 1782)55

During the centuries after the aqueducts were cut and the water ceased to flow the castella were neglected and vandalized. Almost all that is known of them comes from references in Latin literature. The only relic in modern Rome is the Julia fountain near the main railway station, according to H.V. Morton a tall, gaunt mass of ancient brickwork resembling a much desiccated Roman keep. That is all that remains of the castellum erected by Alexander Severus in the 3rd century. In the 16th century much of the structure was still intact and it was an important influence on the architects of the new mostre. Drawing on a print published in 1575, Morton described it as a gigantic, triumphal arc of water, a tall main archway flanked on either side by lower arches in which the Trophies56 were placed, with water cascading down into marble basins and then flowing on to subsidiary castella and other destinations. The mostre to be seen in modern-day Rome are an inheritance from the papal period, part of the magnificence of the city. The Acqua Vergine Antica emerges into view at the Trevi. This fountain, floodlit at night, has a crowd of admirers almost twenty four hours a day, standing at the balustrade or sitting on the curved steps. The scene before them is dramatic and theatrical, with Neptune, set against the backdrop of a genuine Renaissance palace, flanked by two tritons with their hippocampi. Its popularity is due as much to the publicity it was given by Hollywood in the film: Three Coins in a Fountain, as to its intrinsic merit. Nor does any tourist know, or care, that it was intended by Nicola Salvi57 as a philosophical essay on water; that the left Triton struggling with his hippocampus, symbolizes the ocean in stormy anger, while the right Triton, with his placid steed, is symbolic of its more tranquil moods; that each detail has its own special significance. 109

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The mostra of the Acqua Felice is the Fountain of Moses. It is fronted by four charming Egyptian lions spewing water from their mouths, and topped by two fine looking angels holding the papal arms; but what catches one’s attention is the centre-piece—the oddly foreshortened figure of Moses draped in a Roman toga. The scorn and ridicule it attracted from the day of its unveiling are said to have driven its unhappy sculptor, Prospero Antichi, to suicide.

Fig. 32:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Architas/CC BY-SA 4.0

The façade of the Fountain of Moses

The design of the mostra of the Acqua Paolo, on the Janiculum, is based on that of the Fountain of Moses, but it is more austere. Its statuary is limited to two angels, holding up the Borghese coat of arms. The mostra of the Acqua Pia Antica Maria is the Fountain of the Naiads in the Piazza della Republica. At the pinnacle of the fountain is the sea-god Glaucus, holding a fish which sends a jet of water high into the air. Around the large basin four nymphs recline. Holding respectively a sea-horse, a swan, a water-snake and a reptile, they represent the ocean, the lakes, the rivers and the subterranean waters. If these beautiful naiads look hauntingly alike, it is because the same model, Vittoria Placidi, sat for them all. 110

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Source: Wikimedia Commons/Sunilbhar/CC BY-SA 3.0

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Source: Wikimedia Commons/Livioandronico2013/CC BY-SA 4.0

Two views of the Fountain of the Naiads in the Piazza della Republica 111

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Fountains Rome is not only a city of monumental fountains. It also has its modest fountains, far too numerous to count. They take one by surprise round every corner, in piazzas, scattered with a generous hand in public gardens, hidden in private courtyards, struggling to hold their own at street corners. They are a balm to the eye and ear in a city suffering all the maladies of a modern metropolis. Each fountain is the repository of some little piece of the city’s history or folklore. Only a few can be mentioned here. In the Via de la Babunia, Silenus, pockmarked with age and without hands, reclines on a rocky platform which spouts water into a marble trough. He was one of the speaking statues of papal Rome. In the days before newspapers, they were the columnists who, through posters attached to them, exchanged irreverent comments on the affairs of the day. Silenus58 is still having his say.

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Source: Author

Silenus

The Fountain of the Viale della Trinita de’Monti is just opposite the Villa de Medici, now the French Academy. Nestling beneath some ilex trees on the height above the Spanish Steps, it commands a magnificent view over the rooftops, all the way west to St Peter’s on the far bank of the Tiber. When 112

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originally commissioned by Ferdinand de Medici in 1587, its water fell into a marble bowl from a Florentine lily. The lily has been replaced by a ball. By tradition this is a cannon ball, fired by Queen Christina of Sweden. She abdicated her throne after converting to Catholicism and in 1655 came to live in the holy city. Having been brought up by her father as a boy, when she was honored by a royal salute, she insisted on firing one of the salvoes herself. Her shot went astray and hit the Villa de Medici. The missile was rescued to grace the fountain.

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Source: Author

The Canon Ball Fountain of the Viale della Trinitá dei Monti

The Fountain of the Bees, just off the Piazza Barberini, built by Bernini in 1644, has water spouting from the mouths of three monstrous bees. This fountain has a secure place in the affections of the Romans and passers-by 113

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often stop to drink the cool, crystal-clear water. The theme of the bees comes from the three bees which, set on an azure field, were the heraldic symbol of the Barberini family. Urban VIII, a member of the family, wrote a Latin inscription for the fountain: Quid mirares apem quae mel floribus haurit, si tibi militam gutture fundit aquam?

In English translation this reads: Why should you be amazed at the bee that sucks honey from flowers, when he supplies you with water, sweet as honey?

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Source: Author

A Passerby taking a drink of water from the Fountain of the Bees

At an intersection on the Via delle Quattro Fontane, to which they give their name, four fountains set into the corner buildings, struggle to hold their own in the fume-laden air. They are creations of a quieter time. They were built in 1688, with the encouragement of Sixtus V, who wanted to persuade people to move from the overcrowded center of Renaissance Rome, to enjoy the purer air of the hills. The water drips from urns held by four classical figures, two male and two female. The male figures are gods of the rivers Tiber and Anio, some say the Nile. One of the matronly figures, leaning on a lion, represents Strength. The other, who seems to have her eyes closed, is Fidelity. It is difficult to get a good look at the fountains. It would be foolhardy to step back into the street for a better perspective and in any case they are, as often as not, hidden behind scaffolding for repair work.

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Fig. 37:

The Tiber: detail from the Quattro Fontane

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Strength—Detail from the Quattro Fontane 115

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From Past to Future Each generation expresses itself in its own way. Romans no longer build baroque mostre, but they still celebrate water in their architecture. The modern water towers at the high points of each of the pressure zones into which the city is divided are functional structures, as were the terminals of the fountains of old. A new breed of architects takes pride in technology and makes no attempt to hide function behind artificial facades. Yet their designs show sensitivity to wider considerations. They take care that, while making a public statement about the central place of water in the life of the city, these additions to the Roman skyline blend with the domes and spires of the churches and cathedrals.

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Source: Author

A Modern Mostra—the EUR District Water Tower 116

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The ultimate expression of this old-new attitude to water is to be found in the EUR District Water Centre, with its tower reaching eighty five meters into the sky. Pipes have been left exposed above ground, painted in different colors according to function, to make it easy for the visitor to understand the flow of water. To attract and enlighten the public, the whole complex has been built to include a museum, an amphitheatre and a special water garden. Although inclusion of elements not needed simply to supply water led to costs more than double the original estimate, additional funds were quite willingly approved. The spirit of the project—and incidentally, the spirit which animates the development of Rome’s water supply—is best explained by Francesco Palpacelli, its innovative and original architect: The implications [of creating the EUR project] have been multiple and fascinating; the use of steel for the entire work; the access of the public to all levels of the centre so that they become the protagonists; the harmonisation of its tall shape with the skyline of the city and the use made of stainless steel to cover it so that it reflects the colours of the sky; and the site which overlooks the old Appian Way. With this exciting project we went beyond the traditional concept of a water tower as a simple container … by closely merging its shape with all the technological, hydraulic and public aspects of the work. One cannot ignore the educational purpose of the external pipelines and equipment, the imposing strength of the exposed foundation blocks and plinths, the choice of annular, cylindrical and conical forms; all this constitutes an original design for a centre on an urban scale, with the idea of creating a science complex devoted to water, harmoniously inserted into the environment. … the discovery of an old Roman road at the edge of the area has acquired an almost symbolic value, representing a singular continuity in centuries of public works for improving the quality of life.

The Roman tradition of water management in the view of Palpacelli, embraces sensitivity to environmental issues and to the correct and harmonious use of the land; and encouragement of the active participation of the citizens in the implementation of works which belong to them. Carrying on this ancient tradition, the needs of the future can be met without sacrificing the accumulated heritage of many centuries.

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Chapter 3.3 Body and Soul The examination of practice and precept in all that relates to the intimate contact of the human body with water casts light on the cherished beliefs and mores of societies, on their science, their class structure and much more. The quest for bodily cleanliness for its own sake has never been the only, or even the primary, motive for washing. Over time and place the reasons have oscillated between the ritual and the raunchy, the saintly and the sybaritic. The search for good health has led some people to take the waters, while for others the studious avoidance of this dangerous fluid has been deemed a requisite for survival. Even by the simple criterion of cleanliness, the story is not one of linear progress. Evidence exists of ancient societies with practices of personal hygiene as fastidious as those of the most advanced societies of today. Others, nearer to our own times, have needed all the perfumes of Arabia to make social intercourse bearable. This chapter follows the zigzag trail of shifting attitudes to ablutions, pursuing their links with other facets of behavior. The early part of the story is speculative, based on slivers of evidence with some help from present day Stone Age societies, then on archaeological findings. Where written records have survived the ground becomes firmer and, as the centuries pass in review, more and more information becomes available, transforming the problem from one of locating data to its selection and analysis.

Early Days The earliest known manufactured tools were found embedded in river gravels, suggesting that the Stone Age people who made them lived by the riverside. There they discovered the pleasures of bathing and the usefulness of running water in disposing of waste. Their priests were wise enough to invent taboos to reinforce common-sense behavior and to prevent pollution by confining sanitary uses to downstream sites. Bathing was an early casualty of the spread of settlement away from riverine sites, for water is heavy and difficult to carry over any distance, and while drinking is essential for survival, washing is not. Only when an hierarchical class structure developed, with hewers of wood and drawers of water to serve the upper classes, would bathing at any distance from the sources of water come into its own.

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Source: National Library of South Africa | Public Domain

Fig. 40: Stone Age Style Living in the Cape of Good Hope Khoikhoi Family at the Water’s Edge59

Crete Crete is an island at the southern entrance to the Aegean Sea. Though of modest proportions—about two hundred and seventy-five kilometers long and nowhere more than sixty kilometers wide—its strategic situation and its many bays made it a busy anchorage for sailors from Africa, Asia and Europe even in prehistoric days. From Neolithic times some stayed to settle and work the land and by the middle of the third millennium agriculture was producing a sufficient surplus to maintain an urban population living in solidly constructed houses of brick and stone in neatly laid out towns. Over time the population grew, skills developed and society became more and more differentiated and hierarchical. By the beginning of the second 119

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millennium an aristocratic class was flourishing, its members living in great palaces. The most famous of these was the palace at Knossos, the reputed capital of King Minos, whose name has been given to the Minoan civilization. Extensive excavations carried out by Sir Arthur Evans, who first visited the island in 1893 and continued to explore it until 1923, give us a glimpse of the lifestyle of the palace dwellers. The Queen’s private bathroom was the epitome of elegance and comfort, spacious, well lit and well ventilated. The roomy terra cotta bath, in which the bather could stretch to full length, was painted inside and out. It might easily be mistaken for a product of the late Victorian enthusiasm for sanitation. Water was piped into the bathroom though the bath itself apparently had to be filled and emptied by hand. A drain in the floor carried away the used bath water. Down a short passage there was a toilet, equipped with a wooden seat and a flushing system superior to anything to be found in England before the 18th century.

Fig. 41:

Source: Flickr/Heather (Gruber) Williams/CC BY 2.0

A View of the Interior of the Palace at Knossos

The plumbing of the palace as a whole was of surprising sophistication. Water was supplied through terra cotta pipes, designed to interlock neatly with one another and tapered so that the water flowed with a shooting motion to minimize silt deposits. The pipes were cemented at the joints and fitted with special handles so that they could be lashed together to prevent displacement. Each quarter of the palace was served by its own drainage system. The sewers were built of stone, big enough for human access for 120

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maintenance. The excrement that accumulated was flushed out by torrential winter rains. Not only the royals bathed, as is evidenced by the facilities provided by an inn quite near the palace. Its courtyard was equipped with a footbath nearly two meters long, where travelers could gather at the end of a long journey and wash the mud and dust from their feet. Inside the inn, in a more private setting, they could stretch out in terra cotta baths which were little different from that of the queen. They too could enjoy the comforts of running water and sewage outlets. The relics of their art, architecture and plumbing suggest that the Minoans lived in a comfortable, even elegant world, where bathing was a creature comfort, not loaded with religious or ritual significance. No one knows how often they bathed, but surely they would not have invested in such lavish facilities only to reserve them for special occasions. The Minoan civilization lasted about six hundred years. It came to a peak in about 1600 BCE and ended mysteriously about a hundred years later, possibly as a result of the great eruption of Mount Thera.

BOX: A SCALDING DEATH FOR A MINOAN KING It is told that King Minos was served in the building of his palace by the fabled Daedalus, a man of many talents, a great craftsman and inventor and a skilled sanitary engineer, but also a man of violent and flawed character. He had to flee to Crete from his home in Greece because he was suspected of murdering his nephew, Talus, whose talents threatened to outshine his own, by pushing him off the roof of Athene’s temple on the Acropolis in Athens. In Crete he came to be suspected of helping the queen, Pasiphae, to couple with Poseidon’s great white bull. To escape the king’s fury he literally flew from the island with his son, Icarus. The sad fate of Icarus is known to all but the father kept a discreet distance from the sun and landed in Sicily without mishap. He was warmly received by King Cocalus and ensured his continued welcome by using his talents as a toymaker to ingratiate himself with the king’s two daughters. With murder in his heart Minos pursued Daedalus to the court of Cocalus where he was greeted with apparent hospitality and invited by the princesses to enjoy a warm bath. It was his last for Daedalus had led a pipe through the ceiling of the bathroom and disposed of his would be killer with a powerful jet of boiling water. He rewarded the girls for their help with two beautiful dolls.

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Egypt A spotlight on the habits of personal hygiene of members of Egyptian royal households comes from an unexpected source, the Bible of the Israelites. Two incidents are described in the book of Exodus—one concerning the infant Moses and another that occurred when he was a grown man. Yocheved, the mother of Moses, placed her firstborn son in an ark in the bulrushes at the edge of the river Nile to save him from the fate awaiting male Israelite babies at the hands of the Egyptians. She did so confident that he would be found by Pharaoh’s daughter, who could be relied on to arrive with her entourage to perform her daily ablutions at that particular spot. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. Exodus 2.5

Fig. 42:

Source: Public Domain

Pharaoh’s daughter rescuing the baby Moses from the river60 122

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Some years later, the Israelite God summoned the adult Moses and sent him to demand from Pharaoh that he free the Israelites from slavery. He assured Moses that he would find the ruler taking his daily bath on the banks of the Nile. Get thee unto Pharaoh in the morning, lo he goeth out unto the water; and thou shalt stand by the river’s brink against he come Exodus 7.15

Apart from its everyday use, water also played a vital role in the ceremonial rituals of religion and state developed over the long centuries of Egyptian civilization. A prospective ruler setting out on his journey to become Pharaoh—both God and High Priest—would be sprinkled with water by priests. This was both a rite of purification and a means of endowing him with the vital force and divine qualities that he would need to fulfill his destined role. An additional and more elaborate ceremony, which has been described as the baptism of Pharaoh, and which seems to have been the source of baptismal ceremonies in later cultures, took place at the actual coronation and bestowed on him the power of the gods. In this ceremony two priests, representing the gods Horus and Thoth, who themselves had undergone ritual purification in preparation for the task, poured water over him from two gold vessels, symbolizing life and purity. The cleansing water itself was the fountain of life and the source of good fortune, health and happiness. All the inhabitants of ancient Egypt lived by the river and from its bounty. During the irrigation season most of the population would spend many hours of the day wading in the water, regulating its flow in the irrigation ditches. During the dry season they would be busy in those same ditches making repairs and getting them ready for the next season of irrigation. At the end of a long, damp day’s work they must surely have washed the mud from their feet and clothes with much less indulgence in ceremony than the more privileged classes.

The Greeks Homer’s great epic poem, the Odyssey, is a goldmine of information about the society of his day and about the bathing habits of his contemporaries, or at least the privileged among them. One delightful story tells of the adventures of Nausikaa, the young princess of the island of Skheria, who had set out with friends to do her laundry and then enjoy a picnic lunch and bathe in the river. The girls loaded their arms with clothes and raced one another down to the washing pools which were fed by limpid, flowing water from the river. They drubbed the garments clean with their bare feet and then spread them to dry on the pebbly beach. Work done, they enjoyed an alfresco lunch and then took a dip in the river.

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Unbeknown to the girls, the fabled Odysseus, exhausted after being battered for twenty days by stormy seas, was deeply asleep in a thicket of olives on the riverbank. He was streaked with brine, his face swollen, his beard long and untended. He was stark naked as his clothes had been torn from his body during the storm. The beautiful nymph Kalypso had held him in bondage, vainly hoping to persuade him to reciprocate her love. Ten years passed before she acknowledged defeat, released him from servitude and allowed him to build a raft to continue his journey home. Stirred from his sleep by girlish voices, Odysseus emerged from the thicket covering his nakedness with a flimsy olive branch. The young maids fled in terror. Only the princess who, so it was said, had been given a bold heart and steady knees by Athena herself, stood her ground. Odysseus begged her for a cloth to cover his nakedness and for directions to the nearest town. She ignored his request and instead summoned her attendants back, instructing them to give him food and drink and to take him into the river, out of the wind, to bathe. Reluctantly they did as they were bid, but Odysseus was as embarrassed as they were and declared that he would not allow himself to be washed by a bevy of pretty young girls with braided hair. The girls withdrew and, granted his privacy, he proceeded with his ablutions. He scrubbed the thick coat of brine from his back and shoulders and rinsed the sea spume from his hair. He rubbed himself dry, anointed himself with oil and dressed in the clothes that the princess had given him. When the princess caught sight of him she was quite overcome by his transformation. Where before he had looked so rough and uncouth he now seemed to her like one of heaven’s people. She fantasized that this fine and handsome man might become her husband and stay forever on Skheria. While Odysseus was struggling to make his way home, the goddess Athena appeared to his son, Telemachus, in the guise of an old family friend. This friend encouraged him to go in search of his father and Telemachus expressed his gratitude for his kindness and wise counsel by inviting him to take a hot bath before proceeding on his way. Motivated by Athena, Telemachus set out in search of information as to the whereabouts of his father. Those of Odysseus’s comrades in arms who had returned home safely from the Trojan wars received him with warm hospitality. At the court of Nestor the king’s youngest daughter, Polycaste, was given the task of bathing him and rubbing him with oil. At the mansion of Menelaus, even before his identity was known, he and his companions received a similarly warm welcome. They were led into a room of polished tubs and, to their delight, were bathed by young maidservants who anointed them with oil and offered them fresh tunics. When they took their places in the dining hall the maidens poured water from a golden jug into a silver bowl for them to wash their hands. The picture of Greek bathing habits to be gleaned from later sources is far more austere. From the paintings on vases it would appear that baths 124

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were not designed for lolling about. This is hardly surprising as, at least in the public baths attached to the gymnasii, the water was always cold. The purpose of the exercise was health (sanitas), not pleasure. It was only under Roman influence that the Greeks eventually began to indulge in the decadent and dissolute practice of taking hot baths and even then they continued to start their ablutions in cold water.

The Israelites The first mark of hospitality that the Israelite tent dwellers of the wilderness offered to passing travelers was water to wash the dust from their feet. Thus Abraham’s treatment of the three men who approached him as he sat at the opening of his tent in the heat of the day was routine behavior on his part and not a special gesture towards those he knew to be the messengers of God: And he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, Let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash yourselves and rest you under the tree: Gen. 18:2,4

Abraham’s son-in-law, Lot, sitting at the gate of Sodom, made a similar gesture of hospitality to the two angels he saw approaching: And he said: Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant’s house, and tarry all night and wash your feet. Gen. 19:2

In view of its scarcity, the offering of water for washing feet was at least as generous a gesture as a whole bath in a country with a better endowed climate. Perhaps it was the chronic water shortage that kept the Israelites so preoccupied with cleanliness. Perhaps this is why water came to be used to purge the body of defilement and cleanse the spirit, not merely to wash off dust and dirt. The sources of uncleanliness with which they had to contend were many and diverse. Five chapters of Leviticus, chapters eleven to fifteen, are devoted to listing them. Simple dirt does not even merit a passing mention. Uncleanliness comes from physical contact with the unclean, which may be carrion, lepers or houses in which lepers have set foot, things that creep on the earth, or women during the menstrual cycle and a week after, or after childbirth. Men and women are made unclean by sexual intercourse as are every garment, and every skin, whereon is the seed of copulation. The man who released the scapegoat, which bore upon itself all the iniquities unto a land not inhabited, was made unclean by contact with the goat.

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Water had the power to wash away the pollution from all these sources, but only on condition that certain rules were followed to the letter. The cleansing ritual had to be performed in a bath, or mikveh, literally a collection of water, which conformed to a number of very strict specifications. It had to be watertight and not less than a certain minimum size. It had either to be cut from the living rock or built on the spot. A structure built elsewhere and brought to the site would not do. The water had to be natural spring water, or melted snow or ice, but not drawn water. Immersion had to be total. Even when all these conditions were met, the cleansing only took effect with the setting of the sun. Those who find the logic of these regulations hard to fathom at a couple of thousand years remove are fortunate in being able to turn for enlightenment to the illustrious medieval Jewish scholar, Moses Maimonedes (1135–1204), known as the Rambam (Hebrew acronym for Rabbi Moses, son of Maimon). Among his many works is a tractate codifying the law relating to the mikveh. The closing paragraphs of this work clarify the raison d’etre for the seemingly strange observances just described. It is plain that the laws about immersion as a means of freeing oneself from uncleanness are decrees laid down by Scripture and not matters about which human understanding is capable of forming a judgment, for behold, they are included among the divine statutes. Now uncleanness is not mud or filth which water can remove, but is a matter of scriptural decree and dependent on the intention of the heart. Therefore the sages have said: If a man immerses himself, but without special intention, it is though he has not immersed himself at all. Just as one who sets his heart on becoming clean becomes clean as soon as he immerses himself, although nothing new has befallen his body, so, too, one who sets his heart on cleansing himself from the uncleanness that besets men’s souls—namely wrong thoughts and false convictions—becomes clean as soon as he consents in his heart to shun those counsels and brings his soul into the waters of clear reason.

Maimonedes ended with a quotation from the prophet Ezekiel: And I will sprinkle clean water upon you and ye shall be clean; from all your uncleannesses, and from your idols will I cleanse you. Ezek. 36:25

There is only scant information about the actual use of the mikveh before the period of the Second Temple, but certainly by the time of Herod the observance of the rituals of cleanliness was firmly established among all classes. Baths have been found in Masada and Herodion and many other places scattered across the country. A quite disproportionate number have been excavated at Qumran, at the edge of the Dead Sea. This was the site of a monastic community of the Essenes, a sect that was fervent and even fanatical in its religious observances.

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Fig. 43:

Mikveh in Jerusalem—Period of 2nd Temple

Source: Author

Jerusalem and its environs were particularly well-endowed with ritual baths to cater for the pilgrims who flooded the city three times a year, on the festivals of Passover, Shavuoth and Succoth, to meet the obligation set out in the Bible: Three times a year shall all males appear before the Lord thy God in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of the weeks, and in the feast of the tabernacles. Deut. 16:16

Their destination was the Temple Mount, and entry to its precincts was allowed only to those who had purified themselves according to the strictest of rites. With the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the importance of the mikveh in Jewish life diminished considerably. However, it has remained a part of Jewish observance to this day. In Europe of the Middle Ages, the ritual bath was at the core of Jewish activity, which revolved around the synagogue. Jews, forbidden to bathe with their Christian neighbors, used it for ordinary hygienic purposes as well as for ritual bathing. During the years of the Black Death, the rituals of cleanliness served the Jewish community both well and ill. Washing brought not only spiritual but also bodily cleanliness, and so kept the death rate from the plague much lower among the Jews than among their Christian neighbors. Unfortunately, 127

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by some crooked logic this led to the conclusion that the Jews were causing the epidemic by poisoning the wells and for this the Christians took cruel revenge. Many innocent Jews escaped the plague only to be burnt to death.

Far Eastern Ablutions O cleansing Bath, cleansing as you flow, may I wipe out with the help of the Gods such sins as I have committed against my fellow men.61

The prominence of the great public bath house in the city of Daro, probably established in the 3rd century BCE, is evidence of the importance attached to bathing in the earliest known civilization of the Indian subcontinent, the Harappa civilization of the Indus valley. Perhaps the Hindu veneration of water was a legacy from this source. Certainly, from the earliest of Hindu holy writings, water is presented as a pure and purifying substance. The cleansing of both body and soul by bathing is a traditional observance that stretches from the time of the Vedas in the 2nd century BCE to the present. The many treatises that touch on the subject offer a variety of prescriptions for when, where, how and how often to bathe. The law of Manu stipulates one bath a day for celibates, and two or perhaps three for hermits. Over the centuries the rule for all Hindus has come to be one bath a day. In general this is to be taken during the day, but there are exceptions. For instance, when there is an eclipse, when the sun passes into the zodiac signs of Cancer and Capricorn, or in the event of a birth, death, marriage or the taking of a vow, bathing at night is permissible. The source of the water is very important. Though there is special provision for the sick or disabled to use water drawn in vessels of some sort, a natural source, such as river, lake or spring, is always to be preferred. Legend has it that all the waters of the world flowed from Mount Meru, the dwelling place of Shiva, a versatile deity of many forms—among them God of Creation and Destruction, and the Cosmic Dancer who through his dance sustains the endless rhythm of the universe. The waters of the Ganges are the holiest of all natural waters, because the river flows from Shiva’s hair and knows Shiva’s intentions for creation. In bathing, the faithful seek to be cleansed of sin and to free both the outer and the inner body from impurity. They aspire to a state beyond good and evil, a state of harmony with all beings. Prayer is always part of the ritual. There are a variety of hymns from which to choose, with much scope for personalizing the expression of devotion, but the following creation hymn is never omitted: From blazing Ardor Cosmic Order came and Truth; From thence was born the obscure night; from thence the Ocean with its billowing waves. From Ocean with its waves were born the year which marshals the succession of nights and days, controlling everything that blinks the eye. Then, as before, did the creator fashion the Sun and the Moon, the Heaven and the Earth, the atmosphere and the domain of light.

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Early Christians In the stressful years of Roman occupation of the Holy Land, when Jesus was a young man, John, known as the Baptist, preached the message of the imminent coming of the Messiah. He offered solace to his distressed listeners by immersing them in the waters of the Jordan river to wash away their sins and prepare them for the future. It was he who immersed Jesus in the Jordan waters, but this was quite different from what had gone before. It was the seminal act of Christianity, for as he performed this baptism, so it is told in the Gospels, John recognized Jesus as the Son of God. This is the account given in the Gospel of St Mark: And it came to pass in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan. And straightway coming out of the water, he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him. And there came a voice from heaven saying, Thou art my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Mark 1: 9–11

The earliest Christians were Jews, who did not discard their own customs when they adopted the new faith. When Paul of Tarsus decided to expand his proselytizing to the non-Jews, many of the more demanding observances, such as circumcision and the dietary laws, were foregone. Ritual bathing was absorbed into Christian doctrine in a most truncated form. All that was retained of the complex rituals of purification was baptism, a single immersion in holy water, either in infancy or at the time of conversion, that would last a lifetime. Later even this was to be reduced by most of the Christian sects to a mere sprinkling with holy water. When the centre of gravity of the new Church moved to Rome, Christians separated themselves from the mainstream of Roman life, rejecting the things of this world as mere vanities. According to Gibbon: They seriously renounced the business and pleasures of the age; abjured the use of wine, of flesh, and of marriage; chastised their body, mortified their affections, and embraced a life of misery as the price of eternal happiness.

As bathing was an activity in which Romans of all classes indulged with the greatest pleasure, it is not surprising to discover that the most devout of Christians were meticulous in their avoidance of water. Here are a few examples to illustrate the point.62 *St Benedict (480–550 CE), famous as the author of the Rule that bears his name, regulating every aspect of monastic life, pronounced that bathing should seldom be permitted to healthy people, and especially not to the young. *St Agnes, who lived for a brief thirteen years in the middle of the 4th century, was sanctified because she accepted death rather than sacrifice her virginity, which had been consecrated to Christ. Considering that she never bathed in her whole lifetime one might wonder who could possibly have wanted to rob her of her virginity. *One devout 4th century pilgrim boasted that she had not washed for eighteen years

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Writ in Water so as not to disturb the holy water used at her baptism. *St Jerome (Hieronymus) (341–420 CE), cantankerous scholar and author of the Vulgate, the standard translation of the Bible into Latin, was also famed for ranting at his followers for being too clean.

Ascetics did not simply shun the pursuit of cleanliness. They actively sought out physical contact with the leprous and the diseased, kissing their suppurating sores and emulating Mary Magdalene by wiping the ulcerated feet of the sick with their hair. The early Church turned away from cleanliness not once, but twice. First it discarded the Hebrew rituals of purification so as to make life easier for converts from paganism. Then it distanced itself from the hedonistic indulgences of the Romans, so that life on earth should not be too pleasant, and attention should not be diverted from the next world.

The Romans and After Romans of Republican days and their neighbors on the Italian peninsula seem to have regarded bathing as a necessity rather than a pleasure. If we are to believe Plutarch, Archimedes was so extreme in his aversion to water that he only managed to survive the ordeal by withdrawing into the world of mathematics. When forced by his servants to lie in the baths to be washed and anointed with oils and perfume, he would distract himself from the indignity and work himself up into a state of ecstasy by dipping his fingers in the soot of the chimney and drawing lines on his naked body. It must have been in such an ecstasy or trance that he grasped the principle of specific gravity, sprang naked from his bath and ran through the streets shouting: Eureka! I have found it.

The austere bathing habits of Republican Rome were transformed on the way to the Empire. The Stoic philosopher, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BCE– 65 CE), saw only the earlier part of the change, but what he saw he found deeply distasteful. While lodging at the villa which had once belonged to the Roman general Scipio Africanus, famed for his defeat of the great Hannibal over two centuries earlier, he wrote a long letter to his friend Lucilius devoted entirely to the change in habits of hygiene since the days of Scipio. He gave himself to an unrestrained outpouring of nostalgia for a better and healthier past: I am resting at the country-house which once belonged to Scipio Africanus himself … I have inspected the house … the small bath buried in darkness according to the old style, for our ancestors did not think that one could have a hot bath, except in darkness. It was therefore a great pleasure to contrast Scipio’s ways with our own. … We think ourselves poor and mean if our walls are not resplendent with large and costly mirrors … if our swimming pools are not lined with Thasian marble, once a rare and wonderful sight in any temple—pools into which we let down our bodies after they have been drained weak by abundant perspiration; and finally the water has not poured from silver spigots.

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Cities and Their Water What a profusion of statues! How many columns do I see supporting nothing, just placed as ornaments, merely for the expense! What quantities of water coursing down the steps! We are come to that pitch of luxury when we disdain to tread upon anything but precious stones. In the early days, however, there were few baths and they were not fitted out with any display … The bathers of those days did not have water poured over them, nor did it always run fresh as if from a hot spring; and they did not believe it mattered at all how perfectly pure was the water in which they were to leave their dirt … How some persons nowadays condemn Scipio as a boor … ‘Poor fool’, they say, ‘he did not know how to live. He did not bathe in filtered water; it was often turbid, and after heavy rains, almost muddy!’ But it did not matter to Scipio if he had to bathe in that way; he went there to wash off sweat, not ointment … Friend, if you were wiser, you would know that Scipio did not bathe every day. It is stated by those who have reported to us the old-time ways of Rome that the Romans washed only their arms and legs daily—because those were the members which gathered dirt in their daily toil—and bathed all over once a week. Here someone will retort: Yes, pretty dirty fellows they evidentially were. How they must have smelled! But they smelled of the camp, the farm and heroism. Now that spick-and-span bathing establishments have been devised, men are really fouler than of yore.63

As Rome, spearheaded by its legions, spread its law and administrative practices throughout the Empire, it also built baths to provide its soldiers and administrators with some of the comforts of home. The remains of such baths are to be found from the Near East and Africa to Hadrian’s Wall in northern Britain. As the Empire declined they languished and fell into disuse or, as in England where new rulers had no use for such refinements as bathing, were simply razed to the ground. Typically the wonderful complex of hot, mineral baths at Aquae Sulis, later to be known as Bath, disappeared from sight and was only unearthed in the 18th century. With the decline of Empire, urban life fell into decay all over Europe. Authority passed more and more into the hands of the great landlords, who ran their manors as autarkic mini-states, exercising almost absolute power over slaves and tenants. From all accounts, this was a miserable period of human history, with declining population, persistent threat of famine, physical insecurity and a general weakening of the forces of civilization. The long centuries until these trends were reversed with renewed economic expansion and the revival of city life in the 10th century, have been described as the thousand years in which Europe went unwashed. Of course, such a grand generalization cries out for qualification. The early Christians had distanced themselves from bathing on ideological grounds but, as Christianity became more firmly established, other patterns of behavior came to the fore. It was in the monasteries that the highest standards of cleanliness and personal hygiene were preserved during these dirty centuries. Many of the English monasteries were built with quite sophisticated water systems. In a typical English monastery, the monks were supplied with warm water and soap for bathing as often as three or four times a year. They also washed their feet every Saturday and washed their hands in cold water before and after each meal. Immersion in 131

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cold water was also practiced, though not for hygienic reasons. Its purpose was to cool the passions and banish worldly thoughts. While the laity of the time were more lax in their ablutions than their clerical brethren, it would be wrong to think that washing played no part at all in their lives. Washing hands, face and teeth in the morning was recommended in books of etiquette. Hand washing before and after meals was more or less mandatory in days when fingers, not forks, were used to take food from the common dish. The custom of offering a weary traveler a bath remained an accepted form of hospitality.

Urban Revival and New Patterns of Sanitation Europe began to emerge from stagnation at the beginning of the 11th century. In the year 1000 the population was about forty million. By 1300 it was seventy three million. Over three centuries of growth the continent underwent a considerable transformation. At the beginning of the period most people lived in scattered and rather isolated villages, drawing their livelihood from the resources of the land—by farming, fishing, animal husbandry and forestry. There was hardly a town whose population reached ten thousand. Three hundred years later the frontiers of habitation had been pushed back by settlement of newly cleared and drained lands. The villages had grown larger and more numerous. People had become more mobile, travelling by road, river and sea, trading in food, raw materials and in manufactured products. The population had become far more urbanized. Old-established cities had expanded and the greatest, like Paris, were approaching the quarter million mark, while quite a number had populations exceeding a hundred thousand. Many new towns were established over the centuries, particularly in Germany and the outlying regions of northern Europe. Society was revolutionized. Urban life revived. The medieval city emerged from the ravaged countryside. The new urbanity was reflected in new mores of washing and bathing. In the early medieval city, life was organized around what Lewis Mumford described as: the intimate union of domesticity and labor.64 The urban household was the scene of production as well as of domestic living. Nor was there much separation by social status. Master and servant took their meals together and slept cheek by jowl in common quarters. Various specialized functions tended to be carried on outside the home. There were hospitals to care for the sick and public bakeries to provide bread. Every town had its public bathhouses, usually run as municipal services, but sometimes as private enterprises. Mumford found mention of seven bathhouses in Wurzburg in the 14th century and by the end of the Middle Ages, eleven in Ulm, twelve in Nurnberg, fifteen in Frankfurt-am-Main and twenty-nine in Wien. In London, during the reign of Richard II, (1377–1399), there were so many public bathhouses along the Southwark waterfront that it became known as Stewsbank and the lane leading to it became Stew Lane. 132

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The bathhouses were public in every sense of the word. They drew their clientele from a representative section of the population, from casual laborers to the middle class. Private baths were found only in some of the homes of the nobility. The baths themselves were generally round, wooden tubs, bound like barrels, with iron hoops. A single room would be packed with as many tubs as it could hold, each used in common by a number of people. The water was heated by burning wood. Steam rooms were also available. The steam was often pumped from a next-door bakery, an early exercise in energy conservation which led to frequent jurisdictional disputes between the guilds of the Bakers and the Bathmen. Crusaders who had enjoyed the pleasures of the hamam, or Turkish bath as it was called, during their sojourn in the Holy Land must have had much to do with the revival of the public bath and the popularity of steaming, or stewing. Not surprisingly, the logo of the Bathman’s Company was the Turk’s Head. Bathing was for pleasure and socializing, not primarily for cleanliness, and certainly not for godliness. Food and wine were part of the service. Men and women often bathed together. They were attended by servants of either sex. Over the years, the friendly, open atmosphere of the baths degenerated into bawdiness and licentiousness. Words like stew, banio and bordello lost their original, innocent and descriptive meanings and became synonyms for brothel. An English Parliamentary Ordinance of 1162 makes it abundantly clear that many of the bathhouses were already brothels: for the repair of incontinent men to the like women.65

Regulations forbade the opening of such premises on holy days and the detention of women against their will. As for charges, it was laid down that: no single women to take money to lie with any man but she lie with him all night until the morrow.

The Bath—Precepts and Practice in Medieval Days How often people actually bathed in the heyday of the medieval public bath, we can only guess from scraps of information from a rag-bag of sources. The Medical School at Salerno was famed in its day and drew patients from all parts of the world, including many who paused on their way home from the Crusades, seeking to heal their wounds and cure their diseases. The school published a vade mecum66 to guide patients no longer in touch with their doctors. It included some very sensible advice on proper diet and the pursuit of a moderate way of life. On washing and bathing it had the following advice: Rise early in the morn and straight remember, With water to wash your hands and eyes. Now shall you see what hurtfull is for sight:

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Whether this last piece of advice meant that bathing should not be undertaken during the other three seasons of the year we do not know. Medieval physicians writing on child care, from the 12th to the 15th century, all recommended bathing infants once or even two or three times a day. It was recommended that baths should come before nursing, to avoid indigestion and vomiting. Bathwater was to be clean and lukewarm in the hot season, hot in the cold season. One of these forerunners of Dr Spock, Francesco de Barbaro, even stressed that children should be allowed to splash in the bath.67 The bodies of new-born babies were soft and porous. They were to be washed not only to remove the blood and mucous of birth, but also to mould them into shape. S. de Sainte-Marthe, writing in a child-care manual as late as the end of the 17th century, is specific on this point: Remember, too, while the bones of the limbs are softened by the heat of the bath in which they have been washed, to give each limb, by gentle manipulation, the form and straightness that is required to produce complete perfection.68

Doctors’ advice may have been acted on by the upper classes but it is doubtful whether infants of the urban working class were bathed at all frequently, or if peasant babies were given baths at all. Whatever the practice, physicians clearly did not regard bathing as dangerous, as they came to do in later centuries. In towns with bathhouses, women did take their children with them. We know that when Thomas Aquinas’s mother went to the bathhouse, the infant Thomas went with her, in the care of a wet nurse. In one medieval tract, the Danes were criticized for their foppishness because they combed their hair every day and bathed every Saturday. King John of England (1167–1216) reputedly took a bath once every three weeks. His subjects surely did so much less frequently.

The Decline of the Bath By the end of the 14th century, the enthusiasm for public baths had abated and the custom was under attack from all directions. So sordid had the goings-on become that, at the end of the reign of Henry IV, the operation of steam baths in London and its surrounding suburbs was totally forbidden for a while. The King’s ordinance of 1411 referred to: the grievances, abominations, damages, disturbances, murders, larcenies and other common nuisances … caused by the men and women of bad and evil life … in the stews in the cities and suburbs.

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The baths lingered on, but once the rot had set in repeated attempts to restore them to respectability seem to have had no effect. Ben Jonson, writing about two hundred years later, summed up the situation in his day thus: Where lately harbour’d many a famous whore, A purging bill, now fix’d upon the dore Tells you it is a hot-house: So it ma’, And still be a whore-house. Th’are Synonima.

While moral turpitude may have played its part by frightening off the more respectable clients, far more powerful forces were contributing to the decline of the bathhouse by driving up operating costs. Charcoal, which was used for heating, became more and more expensive as forests were decimated; and with the growth of the population of the towns, the local water supply had to be augmented from sources further and further afield. However, these problems were less than overwhelming. The real explanation must be sought in the wider context of the disasters that shook Europe throughout the 14th century and undermined the fragile fabric of European society.

Fig. 44:

Source: Hieronymus Bosch | Public Domain

Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights (circa 1500): 135

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Expansion came to a rather abrupt end in the 1300s. A series of bad harvests from 1320 on pushed the continent to the verge of famine. These were followed by epidemics of bubonic plague. The Black Death of 1348–1350 was the most catastrophic, but not the only one. The incidence of other killing diseases such as typhus, influenza and smallpox also surged. Frightening outbreaks of St Vitus’ Dance and St Antony’s Fire, both violent nervous disorders, were frequent. The precarious self-confidence of society collapsed. The population was decimated. A kind of collective madness seized many communities, expressed in pogroms of Jews, who were blamed for spreading the plague, and in the burning of witches and heretics. Europeans came to be haunted more than ever before by death and damnation. This fear can be in seen in every form of expression, permeating their painting, carving and literature. In this panic-ridden atmosphere, theories which associated the spread of the plague with bathing dealt a mortal blow to the practice. It came to be widely believed that disease penetrated the body through the skin. Bathing was dangerous because warm water softened the body and opened the pores, so that pestiferous vapors could find easy entry and cause sudden death. One picturesque figure of speech compared the body to a house, the pores to its doors and windows. These had to be closed against the plague, but water and steam opened them at will. For women there was an additional risk in this opening of the pores, for sperm floating in the bath water could lead to pregnancy. The fear of bathing persisted well into the 18th century and affected all classes of society. The lavish entertaining in bathrooms fitted out with luxurious marble baths, which had been common among the upper classes in the 15th century, had disappeared by the 16th. Bathing for medicinal purposes did survive but each bath was treated as a major enterprise, to be undertaken only with the greatest care and circumspection, for to expose the body to water was to court danger. An incident described by the Duc de Sully in his memoirs highlights how seriously the danger was taken. He writes of a day in the year 1610, when he was excused from attendance at court by his monarch, Henry IV, because he was taking a bath. The king instructed him to stay home even the day after, dressed in his nightshirt, leggings, slippers and nightcap, so that he should come to no harm from the bath. Dr. William Turner,69 writing in 1557, maintained that if appropriate care was taken, bathing in the right waters could cure a very wide range of ailments, from: The madness called melancholie

and Worms in the bellye,

to The vayne appetite of going to the stoole when a man can do nothing when he cometh there

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and The casting of children out before the dewe time appointed out by Nature.

However he insisted that no one should enter the water before first consulting a physician. He also regarded purging one’s sins by repentance and purging one’s bowels, either by nature or by craft, as essential preparation for the cure. Moreover he enjoined the strictest self-discipline: All the time that a man is in the bath he must keep himself chaste from all women. And so must he do a month after.

Dr. John Jones, who published his: Bathes of Bathes Ayde only fifteen years later, agreed with Dr. Turner on most things. He did offer reassurance to the potential bather that Savanorola had been wrong in warning against bathing in leap years. There was no special risk for: the leap year is not the work of nature but the invention of man.

A century after Turner, others were still advising the greatest circumspection. T. Renaudout (1586–1653), who became physician to Louis XIII of France, maintained that bathing, when not absolutely unavoidable medical reasons, was superfluous at best and almost certainly dangerous. He claimed that it destroyed the body, making it susceptible to the bad properties of air, while damaging nerves and ligaments. Even a warm bath might kill a child in its mother’s womb.

The Return to Respectability Bathing gradually began to come into its own again in the 18th century. It gained momentum as it came to be associated with the burgeoning bourgeoisie, rather than the decaying nobility. At least in theory, cold water was regarded as superior to hot. Praise was heaped on the cold bath as a source of spiritual as well as physical toughness, reflecting the asceticism and driving ambition of the rising middle classes. Theodore Tronchin, the doctor of the French Encyclopaedists, went so far as to attribute the destruction of Rome to the debilitating effect of warm water, and by analogy, to suggest appropriate behavior to his contemporaries: As long as the Romans, on leaving the Champ de Mars, went and plunged into the Tiber, they ruled the world. But the hot baths of Agrippa and Nero reduced them to slaves.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in his child-raising primer, Emile, attributed at least some of the defects of French character to the absence of early immersion in cold water. He compared French children with the infants of many races who were bathed newborn in rivers or in the sea. He did not suggest that this custom should be adopted by the French for their children were made tender by the softness of their parents and came into the world with a constitution already enfeebled. He did however suggest a regime by which they could be restored to health little by little as the heat of the water in

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which they were washed was slowly reduced until they were bathed, winter and summer, in cold, even ice-cold water. It did not really matter that, when choice was possible, practice, as is so often the case, fell far short of precept. The image conjured up by the cold bath was a compelling one, reflecting real social change. Fortunately for those who didn’t enjoy immersion in cold water, the vigor of the nation could apparently be sustained simply by imposing the ritual on such defenseless victims as the military cadets of France or the public schoolboys of England. The renewed interest in bathing did not immediately filter down to the urban working classes living in the overcrowded and filthy tenements of exploding cities, where even the most elementary services failed to keep pace with population growth. Conditions in Victorian England were worse than elsewhere because of the country’s lead over the rest of Europe in the process of urbanization and industrialization, but Edwin Chadwick’s description of the bathing habits of working class families in the industrial towns, against the backdrop of their living conditions, was largely true for the continent as a whole: The whole family of the labouring man in the manufacturing towns rise early before daylight, in wintertime, to go to their work; they toil hard and they return to their homes late at night. It is a serious inconvenience, as well as discomfort, to them to have to fetch water at a distance out of doors from the pump or the river, on every occasion that it may be wanted, whether it may be in cold, in rain or in snow. The minor comforts of cleanliness are, of course, foregone, to avoid the immediate and greater discomforts of having to fetch the water … It is only when the infant enters upon breathing existence, and when man has ceased to breathe—at the moment of birth and at the hour of death—that he is really well washed.

In the maelstrom of conflicting currents in 19th century social thinking, two attitudes to the miserable conditions of life of the urban poor, of which the lack of washing facilities was only one small element, moved people to act. Altruism and Christian conscience at the sight of so much suffering combined, as catalysts for change, with the more down-to-earth motives of maintaining order and damping down revolutionary ferment in the cities, and of nurturing the working population as an economic asset. There seems to have been a feeling that if only the poor could be kept clean they could also be kept submissive. This may explain the revival of public bathhouses, both in England and France, from the 1840s on. In England a whole series of Baths and Wash House Acts were passed by Parliament from 1846 until the end of the century. These Acts gave legislative expression to the belief that it was advisable to encourage local authorities to provide public bathing facilities for the health, comfort and welfare of the urban population. However, this flurry of activity does not seem to have produced more than some token cleanliness. In spite of the fact that a second class cold bath cost a mere penny and a hot bath tuppence, only two million baths were taken in London in 1896—about a bath a person—and over 80% of these by men.

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The picture was similar in Paris, where many new establishments were built and baths provided for token payment or none at all. Available statistics for the Parisian bathhouses indicate that the local citizenry took rather less than a bath and a half per person in the year 1850. The baths provided hygiene in a setting totally conceived for subject people.70 Everything was strictly controlled, from the quantity and temperature of the water to the time allowed in the bathtub. When the full immersion bath came to be seen as too time-consuming and costly, a new, more efficient washing technique was developed. It was used first in prisons and army camps, later in boarding schools, and eventually came into much more widespread use. The subject stood upright and had a jet of water directed at him. It was found possible in 1878 to bathe a whole French regiment of 1,300 soldiers in a fortnight, at a cost of only one centime per head. About fifteen liters of water was enough for a single shower.

Near Eastern Ablutions Europeans came to wallow in filth as Roman influence waned, and then to rediscover the bath, only to abandon it once again. Their neighbors to the east and south, once they had discovered the pleasures of the Roman bath, were never again willing to forego them, and over time added their own local refinements. The Prophet Mohammed was a vigorous opponent of bathing except for ritual purposes. Yet it is told of his followers that, when they sacked the city of Alexandria in 642 CE, they burned the seven hundred thousand volumes of the greatest library of the world just to heat the water in the city’s four thousand bathhouses. The story may be apocryphal but it does say something about how priorities were perceived. For those curious to know what really went on in Turkish baths, it would be difficult to find a better guide than Lady Mary Wortley Montague, wife of the British ambassador to Constantinople in the early years of the 18th century. She was not only a keen observer and an adventurous spirit, but luckily also an indefatigable letter writer. She ventured, incognita, into the famed hot baths at Sofia and described the experience in a letter to a friend: [The bagnio] is built of stone, in the shape of a dome, with no windows but in the roof, which gives light enough. There were five of these domes joined together, the outermost being less than the rest and serving only as a hall. … The next room is a very large one paved with marble, and all around it, raised, two sofas of marble, one above the other. There were four fountains of cold water in this room, falling first in marble basins, and then running on the floor in little channels made for that purpose, which carried the streams into the next room, something less than this, with the same sort of marble sofas, but so hot with steams of sulphur proceeding from the baths joining to it, it was impossible to stay there with one’s clothes on. The two other domes were the hot baths, one of which had cocks of cold water turning into it, to temper it to what degree of warmth the bathers have a mind to … I believe there were two hundred women … without any distinction of rank by their dress, all being in the state of nature, that is, in plain English, stark naked, without

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Lady Montague was saved the embarrassment of joining the other women in their nakedness, for when she showed them her stays: they believed I was so locked up in that machine, that it was not in my own power to open it, which contrivance they attributed to my husband.

Mark Twain, in the next century, took a more choleric view of the whole, outlandish business. Here endeth my experience of the celebrated Turkish bath, and here also endeth my dream of the bliss the mortal revels in who passes through it. It is a malignant swindle. The man who enjoys it is qualified to enjoy anything that is repulsive to sight or sense …71

Further north, in colder climates, various refinements such as birching were added to bathing. Here is a description from 19th century Russia: We first enter an open space, in which a set of men are sitting in a state of nudity on benches … The bather is ushered into [the vapour room] and finds himself in a room full of vapour, which is surrounded by a wooden platform rising in steps to near the roof of the room. The bather is made to lie down on one of the lower benches, and gradually to ascend to the higher and hotter ones. The first sensation on entering the room amounts almost to a feeling of suffocation. After you have been subjected for some time to a temperature which may rise to 145° the transpiration reaches its full activity and the sensation is very pleasant. The bath attendants come and flog you with birchen twigs, cover you with the lather of soap, afterwards rub it off and then hold you over a jet of ice-cold water. The shock is great, but it is followed by a pleasant feeling of great comfort.

What can one say to that other than: de gustibus non est disputandum.

Into the Twentieth Century Oh, I find much simple pleasure when I’ve had a tiring day, In the bath, in the bath Where the noise of sponging seems to blend with my top A In the bath, in the bath Michael Flanders & Donald Swann72

Moving beyond the middle of the 19th century and into the 20th century, bathing seems to have become fairly routine. The more privileged had bathrooms complete with bathtubs in their homes. Others had to be content with a jug and basin on a washstand in the bedroom. Contemporary literature is full of references that suggest that either way, washing provided a mix of hygiene 140

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and a modicum of sensual pleasure—sometimes for the bather, sometimes for others. Daisy Ashford, born in 1881, was only eleven years old when, observing with the sharp eye of a child, she described her hero taking a bath:73 Then Mr. Salteena got into a mouve dressing goun with yellaw tassles and seizing his soap he wanderd off into the bathroom which was most sumpshous. it had a lovly white shiny bath and sparkling taps and several towels arrayed in readiness by thoughtful Horace. It also had a step for climbing up the bath and other good dodges of a rich nature. Mr. Salteena washed himself well and felt very much better.

Not many years later, Christopher Robin just couldn’t keep his mind on his prayers for thinking of the bath he’d just enjoyed: God bless Mummy, I know that’s right. Wasn’t it fun in the bath tonight? The cold’s so cold and the hot’s so hot. Oh! God bless Daddy—I quite forgot.74

Bathing was a particular pleasure to those emerging, covered with coal dust, from a long day’s shift at the mine face. Emile Zola described every stage of the process, and its almost inevitable culmination, in loving detail:75 He crouched naked in front of the tub and began by dipping his head in, well lathered with soft soap. The use of this soap for generations past had discolored the hair of all these people and turned it yellow. Then he stepped into the water, soaped his chest, belly, arms, and legs and rubbed them hard with his fists … [She] rolled her sleeves up so as to do his back and the places that are hard to get at. Anyway, he loved her to soak him and rub him all over fit to break her wrists … She had gone down from his back to his buttocks and, warming up to the job, she pushed ahead into the cracks and did not leave a single part of his body untouched, making it shine like her three saucepans on her spring-cleaning Saturdays. He seized her again … The bath always ended up like this—she made him excited by rubbing so hard and then toweling him everywheres, tickling the hair on his chest. It was the time when all the chaps in the village took their fun and more children were planted than anybody wanted.

And Into the Twenty-First Century Present day attitudes to bathing reflect two opposing trends. The sexual revolution of past decades has once again legitimized the pleasures of indulging the body and in response, for those who can afford them, bathrooms have become increasingly large and luxurious. On the other hand, exploding populations and nagging environmental concerns have led to an awareness that water cannot be regarded as a free good, that even in generously endowed regions its supply is not without limits. Those popular stickers saying Bath with a Friend are not simply invitations to have fun, for they include, albeit in slightly smaller print, the injunction to: Save Water! To this end, an even more drastic proposal was made during the last great California drought—to keep piranhas in the bathtub. The latter half of the 20th century produced some unusual uses of the bath, two of them associated with childbirth.

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It is not a new idea that the anxiety associated with a traumatic experience can be dealt with by reliving the experience, through hypnotism for instance. There are those who believe that the most traumatic experience in anyone’s life is his or her birth. Thus there is tremendous therapeutic value in reliving the experience, with the bathtub playing the role of womb, and of course water substituting for the amniotic fluid. Perhaps being born in the bathtub could ease the trauma of birth, though this is not the prime purpose of those who choose to give birth in water, for the emphasis is on the health and comfort of the mother. One group of mothers-to-be believed so strongly in the beneficial effects of the watery environment that in 1992 they traveled from their homes in England to Eilat on the Red Sea, to give birth swimming with the dolphins. To their chagrin, the local health authorities scotched the plan. To conclude this section, what could be more appropriate than a mention of the jacuzzi, a facility for health, hygiene and pleasure. Designed as it is for togetherness, rather than for use behind locked doors, it could well serve as a symbol for the late 20th century sexual revolution. Probably few people know that this indoor spa was invented by an Italian, living in California, with quite another aim in mind. Candido Jacuzzi turned his imagination and knowledge of fluid dynamics to create a whirlpool bath to ease the pain of his young grandson, who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis.

BOX: AT THE RISK OF YOUR LIFE Bathing could occasionally prove to be dangerous or even fatal. Not only King Cocalus met an ignominious end in the bath. Agamemnon was another royal victim. After surviving the interminable Trojan wars and a long journey home, he was left little time to enjoy the fruits of victory. His wife, Clymenestra, had neither forgotten nor forgiven the sacrifice to Artemis, of their first-born daughter, Iphigenia, for the sake of fair winds to carry the fleet to Troy. According to one account, she caught him naked and vulnerable in the bath and killed him with two strokes of an axe. In another version, he was already out of the bath, struggling to put on his tunic, whose sleeves she had sewn up to make him helpless, when she struck him down. Tristan was luckier. He was almost killed in the bath by Isolde, but she looked into his eyes and couldn’t bring herself to perform the act. It didn’t help for long, for not much later they died together, having shared a poisoned potion.

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Fig. 45:

Source: Jacques-Louis David | Public Domain

Jean Paul Marat Dead in his Bath: Jaques Louis David 1793

Over two centuries ago, on 13th July, 1793, Jean-Paul Marat, the rabble-rousing Jacobin editor of L’Ami du Peuple [the Friend of the People], met his death in the bath at the hands of a poor but aristocratic supporter of the Girondists.76 Charlotte Corday held him responsible for the terror which had led to the guillotining of many thousands. She believed his assassination would break up the army of terrorists. She managed, after some importuning, to gain an audience with him. She found him lying in a bathtub, wrapped in towels, for he was suffering from a horrible skin disease, which had reduced him to a state of putrefaction. From her bosom she drew a dinner-knife, which she had bought the day before for two francs, and plunged it into his left side. It penetrated the lung and the aorta and he was dead within a few moments. She was guillotined soon after. Her act had been to no purpose, for she had killed a man already close to death. Assassination was not the only threat to life in the bathtub. That venerable repository of the wisdom of the age, the Encyclopedia Britannica, had these warning words in its 1910 edition: Baths often produce injurious effects when used injudiciously. Long continued warm baths are soporific, and have, owing to this action, often caused death by drowning. The effects of very hot baths are swimming in the head, vomiting, fainting, congestion of the brain, and in some instances, apoplexy. … The risk in cold baths is congestion of the internal organs, as often indicated by the lips getting blue. Extremely cold baths are always dangerous.

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Endword The way people have engineered the contact between water and the human skin is interesting, but the range of variations is limited. It can be done standing up or sitting down, with hot water or cold, with total immersion or application to selected parts of the body, in company or in seclusion, in a leisurely fashion or as rapidly as possible, once a year or once a day. What really fascinates, however, is not the process but the perception—what people believe they are doing when they wash, how their vision of themselves and their place in society and even in the cosmos is mirrored in the bath water. This has been influenced by climate and by social and economic conditions. The physical availability of water and the means to transport and heat it have played their part, as has the existing corpus of scientific and medical knowledge. But beyond all this it is the ethos of the culture that counts. Where the organizing principle of society is religion, washing is essentially an exercise in spiritual cleansing. In secular cultures the emphasis is more on the social and the sensual aspects. And the bath has also had its political uses. In Rome not only bread and circuses but baths too distracted the multitudes from their miserable living conditions. And in the 19th century it was widely believed that if the poor could only be kept washed they could also be kept well-behaved. Clean paupers could be relied on to provide cadres of docile workers for the factories.

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Chapter 3.4 Water Quality Introduction People have always cared about the water they drank, its taste, smell, color, limpidity, and its impact on health and well-being. Evidence of this goes back to antiquity. Amongst the early Greeks the list of those who had something to say on the matter is a distinguished one, including Thales, Solon, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, Aristotle, Polybius, Strabo and Thuycidides. However it was Hippocrates (c 460–377 BCE), remembered to this day as the father of medicine and the source of the Hippocratic Oath, who was the real pioneer in the field.

What Hippocrates Preached

Fig. 46:

Source: Peter Paul Rubens | Public Domain

Hippocrates

Hippocrates was a careful observer of the world around him. In his treatise, On Airs, Waters, Places,77 he made the first known attempt to give a systematic account of the influence of environment on health. He pinpointed climate, location, prevailing winds and water quality as the elements of urban environment with the most impact on health. He opened the work with words of advice to anyone who wishes to investigate medicine properly. He recommended paying attention to the environment, noting the effects of 145

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the seasons of the year, the direction of the prevailing winds and whether they blew hot or cold. He then followed the trail of cause and effect from wind to water to the health of the population. Hippocrates recommended paying careful attention to: The waters which the inhabitants use, whether they be marshy and soft, or hard, and running from elevated or rocky situations, and then if salted and unfit for cooking, and the ground, whether it be naked and deficient in water, or wooded and well watered.

According to him, cities exposed to the hot winds that blow between the wintry rising and wintry setting of the sun, have plentiful, brackish waters that lie near the surface. As a result they are hot in summer and cold in winter. The heads of the citizens: are of a humid and pituitous condition and their bellies suffer frequent disorders, owing to the phlegm running down from the head.

Moreover they are usually flabby in physique and are poor eaters and drinkers. Men suffer from dysentery, diarhorrea, chronic fevers in winter, eczema and hemorrhoids. Women are generally unhealthy, subject to excessive fluxes. Many are barren and, among those who succeed in conceiving, abortions are frequent. Children tend to convulsions, asthma and epilepsy. Cities exposed to cold winds, that blow between the summer setting and the summer rising of the sun, have hard, cold water. The natives of these cities tend to be sinewy and spare and to suffer constipation, i.e with discharges downward of the alimentary canal hard, and of difficult evacuation. Their heads are healthy and hard, but they have a tendency to suffer from internal haemhorrages. Many women become barren because the water is hard, indigestible and cold. Those who do succeed in bearing children cannot suckle them, for the hardness and indigestibility of the water dries up their milk. The best cities in which to live are those exposed to winds between the summer and winter risings of the sun. Their waters are clear, fragrant, soft and delightful to drink, purified by the rising sun which shines down on them. The inhabitants of these cities are for the most part more blooming than elsewhere and of good complexion. They have clear voices and are superior in temper and intellect to those who are exposed to the north. In these cities there is less disease than elsewhere and what does occur is less severe. Women conceive and give birth easily. Hippocrates had advice on what spring water to drink. This was not a problem for healthy people but it was important for the infirm to choose their drinking water according to their ailments. Those whose digestive organs were hard stood to benefit from sweet, light and sparkling water. Those whose bellies were soft, moist and phlegmatic, could expect to benefit most from harsh and brackish waters that would help to dry them up.

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Rainwater was the sweetest and best of all waters, because the sun raises and draws up the finest and lightest part. However it grew foul very quickly so that it had to be used with care. Waters from snow and ice were always bad. They easily lost their clear, light, sweet part, which disappeared leaving behind only the muddiest and heaviest part. Waters from different sources were not like one another. When combined they disagreed, with unpleasant results for those who drank them. For instance, those who drew their water from rivers an lakes fed from many streams, were particularly prone to sciatica, ruptures and diseases of the kidneys and urinary tract. On specifics, more often than not, Hippocrates was wildly wrong. This is hardly surprising given the very limited body of knowledge on which he could draw two and a half millennia ago. What is rather more surprising is how little was learnt in the centuries which followed.

And What Frontinus Practiced Romans, like Greeks, cared about their water. During the first four centuries after the birth of the city Rome’s residents drew their water from local springs or the river Tiber. When they had to look further afield, they chose sources of supply not only for their quantity but for their quality. When not too busy fighting among themselves or clashing with the outside world, they also took steps to prevent contamination and to extract maximum benefit from all water sources, by matching quality to use. Frontinus was the greatest of the managers of Rome’s waters. While no record exists of any pronouncement of his on bad water as a cause of illness, he was acutely sensitive to water quality. He expounded his point of view in the guise of words of praise for his Emperor, Nerva: Our Emperor … deems he has contributed too little to our needs and gratification merely by such increase in the water supply, unless he should also increase its purity and palatability …

and in words of censure for an earlier Emperor, Augustus: I fail to see what motive induced Augustus, a most sagacious sovereign—to bring in the Alsientinian water … For this has nothing to commend it,—is in fact positively unwholesome.

Frontinus was acutely aware of the characteristics of the water brought to Rome by each of its several aqueducts. He found the purity of the waters of the Marcia and the Claudia aqueducts perfect at their sources, and only made slightly turbid by rains. The water feeding the two Anios was far less limpid. It was muddied even in good weather by the loose and crumbling banks of the river. When he took office, Frontinus found the cool, sparkling water of the Marcia, ideal for drinking, being supplied instead for serving baths, fullers and even purposes too vile to mention. He also found the Claudia adulterated by the intake of murky waters from the New Anio. He took a number of 147

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steps to improve water quality. He made sure that the best water was kept separate from the rest and supplied only for drinking, while lower quality water was directed to watering gardens and the meaner uses of the city itself. He acted to correct the defects of the New Anio by moving the point of intake from the muddy river itself to the lake, which fed it from above. This lake was deep, its banks wooded and uncultivated, and the little extraneous matter which did reach it, settled to the bottom and left the water crystal clear. He claimed that without any addition to water supply these steps: by correcting the defects of certain waters, … enhanced the usefulness of all of them.

After the Romans The water management practices of its capital city were disseminated across the far-flung Roman Empire but, with the collapse of Empire, the towns of Europe retrogressed in this as in all else. When recovery began, centuries later, it was not immediately accompanied by water quality problems. On the whole, towns were small and urban populations lived in intimate symbiosis with the countryside. Municipal wastes, which could have been a source of pollution, became useful inputs of fertilizer and irrigation water for farmland. It was only when urban communities were cut off from their hinterland by spreading political unrest, that problems of waste disposal begin to plague the cities. These problems were exacerbated by an acceleration in population growth and in industrial expansion.

The English Experience Dank and foul, dank and foul By the smoky town in its murky cowl Foul and dank, foul and dank By wharf and sewer and slimy bank Darker and darker the further I go Baser and baser the richer I grow. Charles Kingsley, The Water Babies (1863)

England was less affected by political unrest than continental Europe, but it suffered the consequences of pioneering the Industrial Revolution. By the end of the 18th century factories had begun to replace widely dispersed cottage industries. Population was growing apace and moving from countryside to the towns. Ever-increasing amounts of industrial and domestic sewage poured into the streams and rivers of the country. Natural purification processes were no match for this overload of pollution. Yet these waterways continued to be the major sources of drinking water. Small wonder that, when beer was the one alternative to the diluted sewage which mas148

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queraded as potable water, so many of the working class were permanently inebriated. Even young children came to be given small beer to quench their thirst. The putrid state of much of the water was perceptible even to the naked eye and the common sense of ordinary people suggested that it was as unhealthy as it was unwholesome. Yet, even at the end of the 1820s, Britain’s medical profession had advanced very little beyond Hippocrates in its understanding of the link between water quality and health. Leading medical practitioners were not prepared to commit themselves beyond the acknowledgment of a tenuous connection between the two. In their considered view, no more could be said than that impure water—like polluted air, bad diet, lack of exercise and excessive aggravation—was bad for health. It weakened the constitution and predisposed the body to illness. Public attention was focused on London, the capital, and the largest and fastest growing city in the land.78 In 1828, a Royal Commission on Metropolitan Water Supply was charged with examining London’s water and recommending steps for its improvement. The Commission sent samples of the water drawn from the Thames by the Grand Junction Water Company to a number of physicians for their evaluation. All found the water highly unsatisfactory, describing it variously as filthy, impure and disgusting. Yet when it came to condemning it outright as a health hazard, they prevaricated. They said that it was capable of producing deleterious effects, or was not salubrious. The strongest statement any one of them dared to make was: that the daily use of impure water has a tendency to produce, or is a cause of many diseases, there cannot be any doubt; and it is a question of much importance, whether such matters in the stomach do not greatly contribute to the production of that state of faulty digestion, and impurity of blood, of which the inhabitants of this and other large cities are constantly complaining.79

An obvious question is why learned medical men, the elite of their profession, were not prepared to trust their senses and condemn the foul water unconditionally. Lack of courage is probably part of the explanation. Had they declared unequivocally that drinking polluted water endangered health they could not have avoided pressing for costly improvements in water supply. Head-on confrontation with the powerful vested interests of the water companies would certainly have followed. However they also had another problem and that was the lack of appropriate theory. They and their colleagues, like their predecessors over many centuries, believed in constitutional medicine. Health in their view was maintained, or restored, by making sure that the mind was at peace, the stomach and bowels were functioning properly and that undue lassitude or excessive activity did not disturb the patient.80 Few supported the contagionist view that disease was spread by specific toxins or poisons present in the environment that could be passed from person to person by physical contact. Practical and effective action 149

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to improve water quality came to be taken only after this view came to be widely held and water acknowledged as the source of the toxic substances. The change did not come in some blinding flash of revelation. The process stretched over decades, accompanied by fierce arguments and clashes of opinion among the experts; by the venal efforts of interested parties to protect their privileges and investments; by Royal Commissions and Parliamentary Enquiries, and by public hearings at which expert witnesses were subjected to merciless interrogation. Cholera, with its terrifyingly high mortality rate, hit London in recurring epidemics. It was given some attention in the continuing debate, but neither critics nor apologists laid responsibility for the disease at the door of bad water. The Times of 14th February, 1850 expressed the conventional wisdom of the time in writing that it was simplistic and illusionary to think of the disease as having a single cause, since like any other event, it had many causes. The turning point came to be associated with a single, seminal event— the publication in 1855 of the second edition of John Snow’s essay, On the Mode of Communication of Cholera. This essay was a report on an epidemiological study of the 1854 cholera epidemic that linked the disease to specific water sources. In the area around London’s Broad Street pump, Snow found that cholera developed only in households drawing water from the pump but not in neighboring households, that took water from other sources. He showed that the pump water had almost certainly been contaminated by the excreta of a single, identifiable cholera victim, a worker in the local brewery. In another London precinct, one side of the street was supplied with water by the Lambeth Water Company. The other side received its water from the Southwark and Vauxhall. Both drew their water from the Thames but the intake of the second company was upstream of the first. Snow found a much higher occurrence of the disease among consumers of the Lambeth water than among those of the Southwark and Vauxhall. Snow’s study helped to crystallize a new picture of reality. The circle of circumstantial evidence tightened around a single culprit as the cause of cholera. By the end of the 19th century it was universally accepted that not only cholera but other diseases as well were caused by microorganisms found in water. Specific organisms were responsible for specific diseases. If they were absent from the water supply, the disease could not be contracted. Predisposition, or the state of the patient’s constitution, was irrelevant.

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Fig. 47:

The Silent Highwayman

Source: Punch Magazine | Public Domain

Perception Precedes Practice By the end of the 19th century the flow of safe, potable water from the household tap was taken for granted in most of Great Britain and the western world in general. This was not simply a triumph of hydraulic engineering. It could not have happened had it not been preceded by far-reaching changes in the outlook, not only of doctors, but also of scientists, politicians, administrators and the general public. In addition to the transformation that the medical profession had to undergo, technical problems of water analysis had to be resolved. Issues of social philosophy—such as the nature of the right of the populace to safe water and the role of government in guaranteeing its supply—had to be confronted. The principles on which conflicting claims to water were to be adjudicated had to be formulated.

The Analysis of Water The great 18th century advances in chemistry provided some tools for the analysis of the chemical composition of water. Initially, their application had nothing to do with needs of public health. The motivation was purely commercial. The Napoleonic upheaval cut off British access to the spas of Europe and gave English towns the opportunity to turn a profit from the exploitation of the real or imagined curative qualities of their local springs. New entrants into the field had to compete with the spas of Bath, Epsom 151

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and Harringate, whose credentials stretched back to Roman times. They hoped to siphon off some of the affluent, free-spending clientele of these long-established enterprises, by proving that their waters were hardly distinguishable from those of the older spas. Even though the tools of the chemists’ trade were as yet hardly adequate for the task, many chemists, struggling to make a living, were happy to offer their services for reasonable remuneration. No Standard Methods existed to dictate procedures. Many early 19th century analysts looked to the Physical and Chemical Essays of the Uppsala professor of chemistry, Torben Bergman, for guidance. He used a combination of three approaches. The first, the inspection of physical characteristics, such as taste, odor and texture, went back to ancient times. The second approach, which was qualitative in nature had its beginnings during the Renaissance. Reagents, such as litmus paper, galls and tincture of cabbage were used as color indicators. Some tests were for specific substances. The blackening of silver spoons, for instance, indicated the presence of sulphur. The third approach, to which Bergman attached prime importance, was quantitative. It was the analysis of the residue remaining after the evaporation of large quantities of water in a carefully ordered series of steps. In the words of Hamlin, the system as a whole made what had seemed chaotic, idiosyncratic and ambiguous, appear orderly, uniform and straightforward. Even when analysis was carried out by the most highly respected practitioners, free from any suspicion of chicanery, different analysts came to widely differing conclusions about the same water. The disagreements were not only quantitative. Often enough, some found substances in the water which, in the learned opinion of others, were not there at all. Yet, however illusory the scientific accuracy of the results, chemical analysis gave an aura of respectability and credibility to claims made on behalf of the waters. Nor did accuracy really matter as long as the focus was on mineral waters. The link between the presence of specific minerals and the therapeutic effectiveness of the water was, at best, tenuous. When the focus shifted to the public supply of potable water, right answers became far more important. Now the purpose of analysis was to identify components which could threaten health and even life. Microbiological analysis took its place beside chemical analysis in the public eye when, in 1850, Arthur Hill Hassal, a struggling young doctor, published his: Microscopical Examination of the Water Supplied to the Inhabitants of London and Suburban Districts. His illustrations riveted attention. Though they were in fact composites, they were presented in circular frames, suggesting that they were accurate views of what was seen under the microscope. They portrayed, in full color, the ugly, wriggling monsters which populated the water. While research into the significance of these micro-organisms went on for many years, the immediate result was to strengthen the existing sense that something was very wrong with the water supply. No right-minded person could imbibe such repulsive creatures with his drinking water without a sense of revulsion. 152

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Fig. 48:

Source: Arthur Hassall, Microscopical Examination of the Water supplied to the Inhabitants of London and Suburban Districts, 1850, p. 193.

A microscopical view of the water supplied by the Grand Junction Water Company

The debate raged on. In 1867, the distinguished members of the Institute of Civil Engineers devoted three evenings to the subject of what, if anything, found in water was harmful to health. They considered germs and organic and inorganic poisons of various sorts, but reached no consensus. Nor could they agree on other important issues, such as how to analyze organic matter in water, or whether filters were effective in removing impurities. In the century and a half that have passed since, analytical procedures have been streamlined and standardized. The old problems have been solved but, with each new generation of toxic wastes which reach the water supply, the questions have to asked and answered anew.

Social Philosophy Throughout the 19th century—in Royal Commission enquiries, Parliamentary debates, Select Committee investigations and court cases—public discussion continued. The public health movement preached and politicked to bring Parliament and Government to set up the legal and administrative machinery needed to assure the supply of uncontaminated water. The most outstanding proponent of reform was Edwin Chadwick, a protégé of the famed Utilitarian philosopher, Jeremy Bentham. Chadwick, like Bentham, believed in the importance of rational and efficient public services. For water this meant comprehensive urban drainage, with enough flow to flush the cities clean of their wastes. Bentham’s first great venture into the field of public policy had been his controversial report on: The Sanitary Condition of the Laboring Population of Great Britain, published 153

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in 1842. His recommendations were embodied in the Public Health Act of 1848. This brought sanitary reform to the provinces, but left London out of its purview. To solve the capital’s problem, Chadwick thought it vital to free water supply from the clutches of the private water companies with their narrow vested interests and to transfer management to a public board run by professional administrators. He also held that the pure water from springs and wells in Surrey should replace supply from the polluted Thames. Chadwick lost his battle against the water companies who were powerful opponents in public debate. They never failed to find their own experts to refute accusations against them that they were supplying polluted water. As late as the 1866 cholera epidemic, they produced an expert witness, one Letherby, to attest that the disease was not carried in the water supply but was due to pollution in household cisterns, for whose cleanliness the companies were not responsible. The companies, with their skill in public relations, managed to retain their profitable monopoly in return for undertaking to mend their ways by moving intakes further upstream, filtering the water and covering the reservoirs and providing a constant and reliable supply of water. This was lip service only and it took long years to force the companies to honor their obligations and even longer to divest them of their monopoly power and make the provision of a safe and reliable water supply the responsibility of government.

At the Turn of the Millennium The English led the campaign for clean and safe water and they were followed by the rest of the industrialized Western world. From the often confused and acrimonious clash of ideas and interests which continued through much of the 19th century, a system of public health eventually emerged which gave the public confidence that the combined efforts of bacteriologists and engineers, managers and lawyers, would ensure that good and safe water would always come out of the tap. The populace of the less-developed world cannot share this confidence. Most of them suffer conditions of water supply reminiscent of, and often far worse than, those of early 19th century Britain. Any substantial improvement of the situation depends not only on a massive injection of resources, but also on the building of institutions which take into account geography and culture and the fundamental beliefs of the people they are meant to serve. The example of one post-WW2 attempt to provide a rural area of Thailand with a safe substitute for the river water, whose use was causing chronic, widespread gastric complaints, illustrates some of the complexities. On American initiative, modern, concrete water treatment plants were constructed in the villages. Unfortunately treatment depended upon the use of expensive, imported chemicals. Supplies seldom reached their destination 154

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and were more often than not siphoned off by middle-men for their own profit. The plants did bring one benefit. The river water was pumped to the villages and the children were freed to attend school, instead of being burdened with the chore of fetching water from several kilometers away. The water was treated quite effectively by the simplest of methods—filtering it through a column of rice and coconut husks, available everywhere at no cost.81 Into the 21st century, the industrialized world is once again in a state of some disarray in the matter of water supply. Trust in the quality of the water that flows from the taps has been undermined. Many households equip their domestic taps with elaborate filters, a tactic that was common in the 19th century. The mineral water industry is booming. People pay hundreds or even thousands of times the cost of a glass of tap water for the same amount of Perrier or similar bottled product. The water carrier is back in business, albeit in a new, modern guise. Faith in the ability of public enterprise is at a nadir. The British, the pioneers in the field of public management of public goods, have once again placed their water supply in the hands of the water companies. In popular parlance, they have privatized. Global uncertainties hover in the wings. Climatic changes may affect the quantity of water available. Population growth will certainly affect demand. Exotic new compounds, used in industry and finding their way into drinking water supplies in traces difficult to detect and even more difficult to remove, may be carcinogenic, threatening life, or even teratogenic, threatening the well-being of the yet unborn. All these elements combine to suggest that the water debate of the 21st century will be at least as stormy as that of the 19th century.

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Chapter 3.5 Circles, Cycles and Cascades A Word of Introduction The hydrological cycle depicts water traveling in an endless cycle, evaporating from the oceans into the atmosphere, falling on the land as rain and snow, then making its way, on the surface or beneath it, back to the ocean, to start the journey once again. This is a highly schematic picture of what really happens. It describes the main highway, but ignores the stops and starts, the minor whorls and eddies and even quite major diversions on the way. Each molecule of water has its own private history. In any particular interval of time, it may remain stationary, in a stagnant pool or frozen as snow or ice; it may travel only a short distance in a sluggish stream, it may evaporate, then condense and evaporate again in some closed circuit of heat exchange. In any brief period, the path of a water molecule may be linear or meandering, a closed circle or a spiral. Sometimes it is nature, sometimes human intervention, that is responsible for these detours. Eventually the journey to the ocean is always completed and the cycle is ready to begin again. One major human intervention in the natural cycle is the diversion of water for urban use. Urban life is unimaginable without such water supply, but with the benefits it brings, comes the inseparable problem of disposing of degraded residuals. This problem and its solution are the concern of this chapter.

From Water to Wastewater How towns love to hide under busy streets and elegant promenades, the subterranean canals of the filthy sewers where the sexual life of the young is supposed to take place invisibly … Arthur Schnitzler to Sigmund Freud The sewer has become just another mechanism of urban life. Post-modern Paris has its pyramid; who remembers its Cloaca Maxima? Donald Reid82

Not much of the water supplied to a city is really consumed. Only a small part changes its form, is taken up and becomes part of something else, like the human body, the plant in the garden, beer or tomato juice. Some part evaporates. But most water after providing a service, flowing over or through or around whatever it may be, washing, rinsing or flushing, cooling or heating, continues on its way. It is then variously described as drain156

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age water or sewage, depending on what agglomerate of mineral or organic substances, in suspension or in solution, it has accumulated on its journey. It may still be fit for some further use with lower quality demands, but finally a residue will remain, to be disposed of with a minimum of nuisance to society. From the beginning of urban settlement, the problem of disposal was inescapable. Each city dealt with it in the context of its own climate, sources of water supply and social organization. Some did it well, some badly, suffering unhealthy and malodorous consequences. Some husbanded their resources carefully. Some were profligate in their use of water and were left with great quantities of liquid waste to get rid of. That remains true to this day. Solutions were invented, forgotten and invented again. Neither wastefulness nor the present-day preoccupation with recycling and resource conservation are new. Both have long histories. We do not know as much as we might wish about the sewage of ancient cities. Answers are seldom found to questions which are not asked and, even though waste disposal is an essential component of orderly communal life, it was not within the normal purview of traditional archeology. There were exceptions. Sir Arthur Evans, who excavated Knossos in the early twenties of the last century, was close enough to the Victorian rediscovery of the joys of indoor plumbing to give admiring attention to the running water and flush sanitation of the ancient Minoans. And the excavators of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, working at about the same time as Sir Arthur was digging in Crete, could hardly ignore the sophisticated public and private sanitary arrangements, which were an integral part of those Indus valley cities. However, not until the 1990s did a researcher make water the central theme of a study of ancient cities. Dora Crouch, in her pioneering work, Water Management in Ancient Greek Cities, published in 1993, drew on a whole range of disciplines to construct an integrated picture of urban water use, re-use and disposal in the cities of Greece, during the period from the 8th century to the 4th century BCE. It was undoubtedly her conviction that attention to water supply and drainage was the sine qua non for urbanization and hence for that urban condition called civilization that led her to concentrate her attention on this facet of urban life.

Ancient Greeks With no rain for six months of the year, Greek city dwellers needed to manage their water supply carefully, matching use to quality and economizing by cascading water from higher uses to lower ones, so reducing the volume of sewage for disposal. To the observant eye, many examples of such judicious organization are to be detected in the ruins of the public spaces and private homes of urban Greece. In Athens, for one, the overflow from the drinking water fountain of the Southwest Fountainhouse filled a stone basin in the Sanctuary of the Twelve Gods and was used for cleaning up after sacrifices and then for watering the gardens around the shrine.83 157

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Nearly every Greek home had its own cistern for storing rainwater for the dry months. This water was clean and wholesome enough to be used for drinking and cooking if spring water was not available. More commonly it was used for personal hygiene and laundry; for watering domestic animals and plants; and for home crafts, such as pottery. Its final use in the household was to flush the latrines. These were generally adjacent to the outer walls of the houses, to make it easy to wash their contents into the public sewers. In most Greek cities drains and sewers lined the edges of the streets to collect storm water runoff and the discharges from public precincts and private homes alike. This effluent was carried beyond the city walls, to irrigate crops or trees, to percolate into the ground to maintain the level of the water table, or to be discharged to river or sea. .

Rome: the Cloaca Maxima and Some Lesser Sewers The site the first Romans selected for their city was surrounded by extensive, unhealthy and dangerous bogs. The only way they could create acceptable living conditions was to divert the excess water to the Tiber and so they embarked on sewage construction very early in their history. The first sewer, built in 616 BCE, was the work of Tartinius, fifth king of the city. It drained the area later to be occupied by the Forum and the Circus Maximus. This sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, still serves Rome in the 21st century. No other sewer anywhere in the world can compete with it in fame or in longevity. It dwarfed others built later to solve problems that the Romans created for themselves. These drained the city of the immense quantities of water brought from afar, to play in the city’s many fountains, to flow from taps which were never turned off, and to be used without restraint in the great public baths. The Romans took the underground world they had created seriously. The manholes which, every few meters, gave entrance to the sewers, always had fine marble covers. One that can still be seen at the entrance to the Church of S. Maria in Cosmedin, bears the bombastic inscription: La bocca della verita (the mouth of truth)

Pliny the Elder (23 BCE–79 CE), describing Rome in the first century, called its sewers the most noteworthy achievement of all. His admiration of the capacity of these sewers to cope with the most extreme conditions, knew no bounds: People are amazed and ecstatic at these works cut into the mountain and navigable underground … there are seven streams which are forced to carry all, especially when the rain increases the flow to raging proportions, smashing at the bottom and sides of the canal, or with waves sent back by the swollen Tiber, all without undermining the soundness of the tunnel. Nor does it collapse when an earthquake shakes the earth, when fire devastates the town, when palaces are swallowed by the earth …

Foreigners were also impressed. Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, who invaded the Italian peninsula in 488CE and crowned himself King of Italy, was full of praise for the magnificent sewers of Rome which he claimed 158

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easily surpassed the sights of all other cities and left strangers astounded. Many centuries later, the French used the Roman sewers as a standard to which to aspire and against which to measure their own achievements. Yet it would be amiss to idealize the sanitary situation of ancient Rome. Monumental sewers did nothing much to make the lives of ordinary citizens more comfortable or salubrious. Most of them lived in crowded, multi-storey tenement buildings without piped running water or flush sanitation. Householders had to carry water to the upper floors in containers, and carry their wastes back down in chamber pots, to be emptied at designated places. Many didn’t bother with this latter activity and simply threw the excreta out of their windows, putting pedestrians at risk and fouling the narrow streets, which were washed clean only when the rains came.

Sewers and Society—the Underground Life of Paris The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers. Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

In medieval Paris, which stirred to life after the centuries of stagnation which followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, just as in the cities of ancient Greece, resource use was optimized and the problems of liquid waste disposal were minimized by careful attention to city layout. Parisian dyers and tanners worked in different precincts so that the chemicals from the industrial sewage they discharged would help to purify the river water, while not becoming so concentrated as to kill off the fish. Skinners, glove-makers and curriers, drawing their water from the river, favored sites downstream to the dyers, because the alum used as a mordant in dyeing was useful in the dressing of leather. Farmers within and without the city walls, irrigated their crops with wastewater, enriched with fertilizing nitrates and phosphates from decomposed organic matter. Care was taken not to overload the effluent. Human feces were applied directly to the fields and household garbage was fed to the pigs. In symbiosis with the countryside, the ecology of the city worked well. However, the social and political unrest which spread across Europe from the 14th century on, pushed the city back within its walls, cut it off from its natural hinterland and led to serious deterioration in the urban environment. The authorities dealt with the problems which arose in rather sporadic fashion, stirring to action after each new epidemic of plague or cholera and then lapsing back into indifference and apathy. Early 16th century regulations required property owners to build separate cesspools for each dwelling but these regulations were honored in the breach. They were followed by more stringent provisions allowing for the confiscation of the homes of owners who failed to comply, but this too had little effect. Those who did build cesspools made them as leaky as possible to save on the unpleasant work of emptying them. Domestic waste was, in any case, only a 159

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small part of the problem. Paris was a city of odoriferous mud, composed of the sand spread on wet roads to prevent horses from slipping, horse manure and an admixture of decaying garbage. Towards the end of the 18th century, the street cleaners were getting rid of nearly three hundred thousand cubic meters of the stuff every year. On the eve of the French Revolution, Paris had a mere twenty-six kilometers of sewers. All were overloaded with mud. Some were no more than open ditches down the middle of streets. Not only was their contribution to solving the problem of waste disposal infinitesimal but they aroused feelings of fear and anxiety. The authorities perceived them as ideal sites for seditious and criminal activities and a threat to social order. This was true under the Old Regime and continued to be the case after the Revolution and well into the 19th century. The scurrilous journalist, Jean-Paul Marat spent much of his time hiding from the authorities and it was widely, though mistakenly, believed that the running sores which covered his body and the stench which emanated from him were due to his choice of the sewers as a place of concealment. Later, during the Restoration Monarchy (1814–1830), the sewer which served the Tuileries Palace was cleaned only once a year, when the king was not in residence for fear that otherwise it might be used by assassins. The first man seriously to take on the challenge of the sewers was the engineer, Pierre-Emmanuel Bruneseau, appointed Inspector of Public Works in 1805. For seven years, he explored and mapped this underground labyrinth, often bent double and with his nose in the offal, most often suffocating from méphitisme. He left the task uncompleted. He was driven by his perception that the cleanliness of the soul was reflected in the cleanliness of the body. By analogy he felt justified in maintaining that the cleanliness of a city provided a mirror image of the purity and morals of its inhabitants. This led him to the conclusion that: Cleanliness should be more sought after than adornment. It embellishes any state.84

Bruneseau was followed by public health experts. Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Parent-Dủchalet first achieved acclaim with his book on Paris Sewers, published in 1824. From his study of the sewers he moved to research on prostitution, the results of which were eventually published after his death in 1836. He saw a clear parallel between the two fields of study. For him the prostitute’s vagina was like a sewer, performing an essential function but calling for careful inspection and monitoring if it was not to become a source of infection. As he said: If I was able to enter the sewers, handle putrid matter and live in some sense in the midst of what society closets off as most abject and disgusting, without scandalizing anyone, why should I be embarrassed to take on a cloaca of another sort …

The engineers and public health experts did manage to bring about some improvements in the sewage system during the first half of the 19th century but real progress had to await Napoleon III and Baron Georges Hauss160

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mann, who became his Prefect of the Seine in 1853. Haussmann regarded the modernization of the water and sewage system of Paris as an integral part of his plan to transform the city into the Imperial Rome of his time. As they pulled up the city and redesigned its layout, his engineers had a golden opportunity to lay down water and sewage mains under the new streets, without further disruption of urban life. Haussmann, like others before him, drew heavily on human physiology to express his viewpoint, but his analogies emphasized the positive: The underground galleries, organs of the large city, would function like those of the human body, without revealing themselves to the light of day … Secretions would take place there mysteriously and would maintain public health without troubling the good order of the city and without spoiling its exterior beauty.

In 1867, the sewers of Paris attained respectability. They were opened to the public for tours which lasted three-quarters of an hour. Fear, mystery and romance evaporated as stylishly clad ladies and gentlemen of society were ferried along well-lit and almost sweet-smelling canals by sewermen, neatly dressed in clean white canvas overalls and blouses. Yet in spite of all, the use of sewer as metaphor did not disappear. Donald Reid draws a parallel between a session on the analyst’s couch and a tour of the sewers. In his words: If the sewers were a structure for concentrating and disposing of refuse far more efficiently than in the past, public visits to them … were something like a public group therapy, a means of reintroducing men and women to that which society had taught them to fear and despise.85

Note on Victor Hugo and the Sewers of Paris The history of men is reflected in the history of sewers. Victor Hugo Les Miserables

To Victor Hugo, the sewer was a mistake of momentous proportions, leaking the wealth of the community into the river and thence into the sea. In Les Miserables, he interrupted the flow of narrative to devote a long chapter, The Intestine of Leviathan, to discussing this thesis and to the history of the Paris sewers. He asked the rhetorical question: these fetid streams of subterranean slime, which the pavement hides from you, do you know what all this is?

and answered it at some length: It is the flowering meadow, it is the green grass, it is the marjoram and thyme and sage, it is game, it is cattle, it is the satisfied low of huge oxen at evening, it is perfumed hay, it is golden corn, it is bread on your table, it is warm blood in your veins, it is health, it is joy, it is life. Thus wills that mysterious creation which is transformation upon earth and transfiguration in heaven.

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He went on to lament the contemporary attitude to this potential source of prosperity and well-being: the cleverness of man is that he prefers to throw this hundred millions [francs] into the gutter. It is the very substance of the people which is carried away, here drop by drop, there in floods, by the wretched vomiting of our sewers into the rivers, and the gigantic collection of our rivers into the ocean. Each hiccough of our cloaca costs us a thousand francs. From this two results: the land impoverished and the water infected. Hunger rising from the furrow and disease rising from the river.

Hugo, like others, saw a strong resemblance between Paris and ancient Rome, but he approved of neither. He berated both cities for pouring their wealth down the sewers. He compared them scathingly to the Chinese peasantry that knew how, by stercoration, by use of their own excrement, to keep the soil as fertile as in the days of Abraham. Hugo’s thinking on the reuse of sewage owed much to his friend, Pierre Leroux. In 1853, after the fall of the Second Republic Leroux was exiled to the island of Jersey. There he used his own excrement to fertilize the land and grow food, putting into practice the concept of the circulus, which he had developed two decades earlier. In opposition to Malthus, who painted a grim picture of population outstripping food supply, Leroux saw the regeneration of society in the treatment of production and consumption as an endless cycle. If human excrement, the end-product of consumption, were used to fertilize the fields, agricultural production would be doubled and poverty eliminated. He visualized individuals gathering their own dung and contributing it to the State, in lieu of taxes. It was this vision that Hugo expanded into a broader social vision, with the sewer converted into an aquatic intermediary between the individual and the community. Hugo did not entirely denigrate what had been done to improve and expand the sewers of Paris, rather slowly for half a century after the fall of the Ancien Regime, and at an accelerated pace in the 1850s. He described the sewers of Paris before the Revolution thus: tortuous, fissured, unpaved, crackling, interrupted by quagmires, broken by fantastic elbows, rising and falling out of all rule, fetid, savage, wild, submerged, in obscurity, with stars on its pavements and gashes on its walls, appalling … Ramifications in every direction, crossings of trenches, branchings, goose-tracks, stars as if in mines, cul-de-sacs, arches covered with saltpeter, infectious cesspools, an herpetic ooze upon the walls.

By comparison, the contemporary sewer had become ‘respectable’, ‘comely and sober, drawn by the line, almost fresh from the bandbox’. However this in no way altered his view that the whole enterprise was based on a false ethic. In the following chapter, Mire, but Soul, Hugo described the journey of Jean Valjean through the sewers, with the grievously wounded Marius slung across his shoulders. Although the events described took place in 1832, that part of the system which Valjean traversed was much as it had been under the Ancien Regime.

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Source: Fortuné Louis Méaulle | Public Domain

Fig. 49: Jean Valjean in the sewers

Sewers from Scratch—Subterranean Manhattan At the beginning of the 17th century the island at the mouth of the Hudson river was known as Manhattes. The indigenous people who inhabited it lived in scattered villages and made their living by farming, fishing and hunting. They shared their surroundings with dolphins playfully leaping in the Hudson river and whales sending waterspouts into the air along the shore. They swam in bubbling streams and clear blue lakes and drank from sparkling springs. It was like living in paradise. This idyll came to an end with the arrival of settlers from Europe. In the summer of 1626, the Dutch West India Company purchased the island for trinkets worth no more than sixty guilders. Manhattan began its long journey from the bucolic to the metropolitan, but also from the pristine to the polluted. The Dutch chose to settle the southern tip of the island, because this flat, waterlogged area was reminiscent of home. They added to the effect 163

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by building their most elegant dwellings along newly-dug canals. Unfortunately they did not bring all the habits of home with them. Citizens dumped their refuse in the street and the pigs and goats that scavenged for food, added their droppings to the ordure. Hatters and starch-makers poured their dyes into the public domain. The canals became open sewers. When the English took over stewardship of the city from the Dutch, they simply covered them over. In 1696 they did build the first sewer actually intended as such, but no real and consistent effort was made to improve the situation. Population grew over the decades and by 1789, the year of the French Revolution, about sixty thousand people were living in the city. Sanitary provisions remained near to non-existent in spite of sporadic efforts by the Common Council, the municipality of the city, to deal with the matter. At one point they required householders to remove the dirt from their yards and street-fronts once a fortnight, but those few law-abiding citizens who did comply with the regulation simply dumped the nastiness into the river. The streets continued to act as sewers carrying much of the accumulated filth of the city into the waterways. The liquid remainder percolated downwards to pollute the groundwater and then be returned to the citizens, through springs and wells, as drinking water.86 As population—already about three hundred thousand in 1830—and pollution, continued to grow steadily, further half-hearted attempts were made to come to grips with conditions in the city but to no effect. In 1831, the Lyceum of Natural History reported that: Into the sand bank underlying the city, are daily deposited … about a 100 tons of excrement every 24 hours. In these deposites we may find all the ingredients … which destroy the purity of our waters.

This estimate did not include urine which, in the opinion of the Lyceum, made hard waters soft and helped to keep them fit for domestic consumption. In 1873, the Scientific American published an article putting the annual death rate from zymotic (infectious) diseases, within the limits of New York City at nine thousand. It pointed an accusing finger at the marshes which absorbed the filth flowing from faulty sewers and stressed the need for a thorough overhaul of the system. Sewers were built but, even at the turn of the century, it was deemed sufficient to dump untreated wastes into any river or waterway or into the ocean, and leave purification to dilution and to nature. Biologists and engineers began to doubt the validity of this thesis when they detected sharply falling levels of dissolved oxygen in the waters of the harbor, and then in the Harlem and East rivers. With population growing and industrial product expanding, prospects for the future were grim—contaminated drinking water, polluted beaches and the disappearance of wildlife as their habitat was destroyed. The need for action had become urgent. What the city fathers did, in the 1920s, was 164

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to reserve a number of waterfront sites for the building of sewage treatment plants. The first plant was opened in 1935 and from then there was no turning back. It had become clear to the dwellers on Manhattan Island and its surroundings that, in an urbanized and industrialized environment, the price of potable water, air fit to breathe, clean beaches and healthy surroundings was eternal vigilance and an adequate budget for the treatment of noxious water-borne wastes.

A Note on Water Purification Processes—in Nature and with Man’s Helping Hand Sewage is a highly turbid liquid, a dilute but complex mixture of mineral and organic matter in many forms—large and small particles of solid matter, floating and in suspension, substances in true solution and extremely finely divided colloidal matter. It contains living organisms such as viruses and protozoa. Bacteria flourish in it and each milliliter may contain several millions. The solid matter consists of paper, fibers, corks, soap, fats, oils, greases, food materials and feces as well as insoluble mineral matter such as sand and clay. The organic substances present in sewage include carbohydrates, lignins (complex compounds of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen), fats, soaps and synthetic detergents and proteins. Ammonia and ammonium salts are always present, some derived from the decomposition of urine. The objectionable character of sewage is due mainly to the presence of organic matter which, in the absence of dissolved oxygen, soon putrefies, with the formation of foul-smelling compounds.87 In natural watercourses, which are continuously aerated by the turbulence of their flow, conditions exist in which organic matter is broken down into its non-organic components, such as nitrates and phosphates. This is done by aerobic bacteria, colonies of micro-organisms which make use of the dissolved oxygen, feed on the organic matter and discharge carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The process is free of unpleasant odors. When the watercourses become overloaded with organic matter, the level of dissolved oxygen falls and new groups of micro-organisms, the anaerobic bacteria, come to the fore, drawing their oxygen supply from the organic wastes and releasing foul-smelling hydrogen sulphide into the air. Modern methods of sewage treatment make it possible to treat large quantities of sewage in relatively compact plants and to produce effluents of whatever standard is dictated by the means of disposal. At a push, even potable water can be produced from raw sewage, though the increase in cost for every additional increment of improved quality is exponential rather than linear. The first stages of treatment, the preliminary and primary treatment, are physical. Large pieces of solid matter are held back by bar screens. Suspended matter is given time to settle to the bottom in settling tanks. Whatever floats is skimmed from the surface. The remaining liquor goes on to the secondary stage of treatment that is an intensification, by artificial 165

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means, of the natural purification processes that take place in watercourses. This is done by creating optimal conditions for the bacterial colonies to flourish, in particular by assuring a generous supply of oxygen. The products are two—effluent and a large amount of sludge. The effluent may be discharged to a watercourse or into the ocean or used for irrigation under controlled conditions, or recharged underground. If requirements are high, it may undergo additional polishing or tertiary treatment to remove residual suspended solids, by flocculation, filtration, sedimentation. The sludge which, even after dewatering, is mostly water, often poses quite a difficult problem of disposal. It may be used for landfill or further dried out and sold as fertilizer.

In Conclusion Ancient Greeks applied their rational minds to finding modest but practical solutions to their sewage disposal problems. Romans gloried in the engineering of their grandiose sewers. Parisians philosophized about theirs, treating the world of sewers, sewage and sewermen as a metaphor, sometimes for the nether world of human society, sometimes for the nether parts of the human, particularly the female, body. And usually pragmatic New Yorkers, when it comes to their sewers give free rein to their fantasies. Many believe that hunting alligators is part of the regular work schedule of Public Works inspectors. These reptiles, five feet long and more, are reputed to have been brought to the city, as infants, by vacationers in Florida, and then flushed down the toilet as they lost their baby charm. In fact, no alligator could survive conditions in the sewers. Another animal, the rat, does flourish in that environment. No population census has been taken. Some estimate that no more than half a million rats live in the city sewers, while others guess that at least one rat makes its home in that labyrinthine underground for each human living above ground.

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Part 4 SETTLING THE ARID LANDS: MODERN TIMES

Introduction In ancient times people developed the art of irrigation in lands crossed by great rivers fed from external sources. On this foundation they built civilizations in Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China, South and Central America. Later the momentum of human development moved to other regions. Irrigation played no part in Europe as it emerged from the centuries of stagnation that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. Rainfall watered the crops. It not only shaped agricultural practice but influenced water and land law and social and economic organization in general. Modern irrigated agriculture was developed by migrants to arid lands from temperate climates. The accumulated experience of their past was irrelevant or misleading in this strange environment. Their story encompasses both impressive successes and failures of often dramatic dimensions. One striking example is the settlement of the American West in the 19th century and particularly after the Civil War.

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Chapter 4.1 Oh, East is East and West is West: The American Experience Beyond the Hundredth Meridian Eastward I go only by force; but westward I go free Henry David Thoreau88

The hundredth meridian divides America into east and west. From north to south it cuts through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. To the east of this line, annual rainfall exceeds five hundred millimeters (twenty inches). Agriculture is possible and profitable without irrigation. To the west of the line irrigation is a necessary, though not always sufficient, condition for intensive cultivation. In the north and on the slopes of the Rocky Mountains, the growing season is too short and the weather too cool even in summer, to sustain anything more than pasture. The migrants from Europe who settled the Atlantic seaboard and gradually moved westward found climatic conditions not dissimilar from those in the lands they had left behind. The farming lore of the temperate regions of the Old World was applicable in the New World. However once they crossed that invisible line, the new settlers found themselves in a different world for which nothing in their individual or collective experience had prepared them. This chapter tells of the people who flocked to the western lands in the latter years of the nineteenth century, their minds and hearts cluttered with unrealistic dreams promoted by some who should have known better and others simply driven by venal self interest. It tells how they came to a region with one of the harshest climates on earth, where temperatures fluctuated by as much as forty degrees centigrade from season to season and years of poor rainfall were sandwiched in between years of drought. It is the story of their response to the shock treatment administered by these natural conditions and of how they dealt with hardship without the benefit of that process of gradual accumulation of knowledge and step by step adaptation experienced by indigenous cultures. It is the story of the way in which men and women clung to myths which had lost all validity, in order to give shape and meaning to their lives, and of those who exploited the myths in order to make their fortunes. It is also the story of the attempts of the Federal and State governments to create appropriate institutional and physical structures for the develop-

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ment and management of the water resources of the western half of the continent. Decades of achievement have left in their wake an impressive infrastructure but also a legacy of uneasiness and some nagging doubts about future sustainability.

Before the Europeans—Indigenous Irrigated Agriculture Indigenous peoples were farming the south-west of North America two thousand years before the first Europeans set foot on the continent. They cultivated hardy plants that could thrive even with an annual growing season of only a hundred days or less. They watered their crops with the runoff from seasonal rain, supplementing whatever moisture was retained in the soil. Corn and beans were their staple foods. Cotton provided them with cloth as well as edible seeds and oil. Over time they learned every idiosyncrasy of terrain and stream flow and became progressively more adept at exploiting the scanty water available. Some of their number went on to develop full-scale irrigation systems. The pinnacle of agricultural development was attained by the Hohokam.89 From about 800 CE they settled in what is now central Arizona around the confluence of three perennial rivers—the Gila, the Salt and the Verde—fed by watersheds outside the desert. At their peak, they numbered about four hundred thousand souls. Their economy was based on irrigated agriculture. They built over two hundred and forty kilometers of major canals, the largest one twenty four kilometers long and nearly twelve meters wide, and a supporting network of smaller canals. The only tools they had at their disposal for this enterprise were stone hoes without handles, ironwood digging sticks and cottonwood spades and buckets. However with skilful engineering they maintained gradients that kept water flowing at a rate which held silt deposits to a minimum and allowed many thousands of acres90 to be irrigated.

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Fig. 50:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/MWyattB/CC BY-SA 4.0

The Restored Hohokam Canal

The Hohokam did not have a written language so no records exist to inform us how they organized their communities and managed their day-today lives; how they regulated the distribution of water between upstream and downstream users and how they allotted responsibility for maintenance and repair. We do not know whether they flooded their fields or used ditches. We have no way of knowing whether their social and political organization had any of the features of a centralized hydraulic society which, according to Karl Wittfogel,91 was the inevitable concomitant of large-scale irrigation. Yet much can be learned about them from the archeological evidence. Traces of fecal material preserved to this day in the dry, desert climate, attest that their diet was essentially vegetarian with only an occasional supplement of animal protein contributed by hunters and fishers. Clearly they succeeded in moving far beyond subsistence farming. Their yields of corn and beans provided sufficient surpluses to free some of their members to construct cities with four storey buildings, to craft fine objects from clay and flint and shell; and to build ball courts for leisure or ceremonial play.

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Fig. 51:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Wmpearl/CC0 1.0

A Figurative Jar from the Hohokam Period

This robust society functioned for five or six centuries and then disappeared abruptly in about 1400CE. It is not clear why. No great war or natural disaster brought the end. It may have been some change of climate, with too many years of drought following one upon the other in close succession. It may have been a creeping decline in standards of maintenance, leading to the silting up of canals or to deterioration of the drainage system, with waterlogging and salinization of the soil in its wake. The disappearance of the Hohokam did not mark the end of the practice of irrigation in the region but what followed was incomparably less sophisticated. In the next centuries North America belonged predominantly not to the irrigators, who tried to change natural conditions but to the hunters and gatherers, who adapted to them.

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The Mormons: the First European-American Irrigators Emancipation The Nation reaches its hand into the Desert. The wasting floods stand back, the streams obey their master, and the stricken forests spring to life again upon the foresaken mountains. William Ellsworth Smythe This is the Place! Oh faith rewarded! Now no idle dream, The long-sought Canaan before him lies; He floods the desert with the mountain stream, And lo! it leaps transformed to paradise. Traditional 19th century Mormon hymn

Four and a half centuries passed between the disappearance of the Hohokam and the next serious attempt to build a community in near desert conditions which relied on irrigated agriculture for its livelihood. The Mormons were a poverty-stricken band—outcasts from society because of their non-conformist beliefs and their practice of polygamy. Under the leadership of Brigham Young, who saw himself as a latter day Moses leading his people across the wilderness to the Promised Land, they left Pennsylvania and journeyed west to escape persecution. On the 24th July, 1847 they reached the valley of the Great Salt Lake. As they explored the surroundings, they found a fresh-water lake whose waters emptied into a river which flowed into the large salt lake to the north. The parallels with the Holy Land were inescapable. The fresh-water lake was the Sea of Galilee upon whose waters Jesus had walked. The river was the Jordan and the salt lake was the Dead Sea. Brigham Young knew that he had brought his people to their final destination. After the long and hazardous journey however they had been reduced to a very poor state. Apart from a few chickens, a few dozen mules and oxen, nineteen cows and a hundred horses, all their worldly wealth was packed into seventy-two wagons. They had almost exhausted their provisions and the threat of starvation loomed large. Their most urgent need was to plant a food crop. The desert soil was covered with a layer of white alkali and baked so hard by the sun that a plough could barely penetrate its surface. Brigham Young, whether inspired by God or simply sensible enough to take the advice of friendly Indians, immediately put the settlers to digging a ditch to divert water from a nearby creek to the fields where they planted the last of their stock of potatoes. This was a small but momentous act, the first time in history that Anglo-Saxon farmers poured water on the ground to make crops grow. It marked the opening of a new era for the arid lands of the West. 175

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Fig. 52:

Source: Charles Roscoe Savage | Public Domain

Brigham Young in Middle Age

The Mormons survived hardships and disappointment and eventually prospered in their desert home. Their success was no foregone conclusion and many who followed in their footsteps failed miserably. It is almost certainly attributable to the genius of one man and to the principles of community organization he laid down. With no previous experience on which to draw, Brigham Young immediately grasped the difference between the east, where the scarce factor of production was land and this vast new region, where the constraint on production was the dearth of water. He translated this insight into a practical policy of land and water management. Land, to be held in private ownership, was made available to all but within strict limits. Families were allotted no more than twenty acres, as much as they could exploit to advantage for their own needs. This was a remarkable policy decision to take as to this first small band of settlers the supply of land must have seemed infinite and in the east farms were typically ten or twenty times larger. Water, in contrast to land, was kept firmly in the public domain. The settlers cooperated to construct an irrigation and water supply system from 176

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scratch. Each land owner contributed labor in direct proportion to the size of his land holding and this labor was the only currency with which to acquire water rights. As might have been expected the project cost far more than originally estimated but, in the long run, the community found itself with a water supply which was cheaper and more reliable than any ever offered by private enterprise motivated by profit. Perhaps the Mormons were fortunate that they built their irrigation works at a time when no-one had sufficient private capital to engage in these very costly enterprises. Perhaps the choice of appropriate institutional arrangements for water management should be credited once again to the perspicacity of their leader. Certainly there was nothing pre-determined or inevitable about the rejection of private enterprise in water development. The Mormons were not socialists. Nor was there anything in law or in the moral philosophy of the time to make the private appropriation and exploitation of water reprehensible. The riparian doctrine, which was universally accepted in the temperate lands of its origin, linked the right to any source of water to ownership of the contiguous land. Even where this was replaced by the new concept of beneficial use, it remained the rule rather than the exception for water to be in private hands. In the early days, the community was isolated from markets both for the sale of produce and the purchase of staples. Mixed cropping was encouraged so that families could supply their own needs. This did not bring the rich rewards that sometimes came with single-crop farming—cotton in Texas, wheat in Dakota, oranges in California—but it did provide a reliable basis for economic activity. It never brought the disasters that dogged those who relied on a single, cash crop. Around the kernel of agriculture, the Mormons built a prosperous community engaging in the whole range of urban activities. They expanded their base and established new colonies so that by the end of the century they were cultivating six million acres of land, fully or partially irrigated. Some attribute their success to their religious faith. Others, such as William Ellsworth Smythe92 believed that this was putting the cart before the horse and that the Church of the Latter Day Saints succeeded because of the quality of life it assured its members—high living standards for the most successful and a large measure of social security for all. Writing at the beginning of the twentieth century, Smythe summed up the reasons for the preceding half century of Mormon success as follows: •

Land ownership, limited to the amount which families and individuals could apply to a useful purpose.

•

Self-sufficiency in agriculture, aiming at the complete economic independence of the people, individually and collectively.

•

The public ownership of public utilities, such as water supply for irrigation and domestic uses. 177

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White Settlement of the West—the Next Wave You can lay a track through the Garden of Eden, but why bother if the only inhabitants are Adam and Eve?

By contrast with the Mormons who were a very tightly-knit group with clear religious beliefs, led by powerful and charismatic leaders, the next wave of people moving west in search of the good life was far more amorphous and more easily subject to manipulation. During the Civil War the economy of the North boomed and wartime prosperity spilled over into the years that followed. In the first post-war decade alone over thirty thousand kilometers of railroad tracks were laid, almost all heading westward. This frenetic activity was lubricated by the beneficence of the Federal government which not only provided financing for rail construction but, in four short decades, gave away one hundred and eighty three million acres of land in the public domain to the railroad companies. Ownership of great stretches of land bordering the railroad tracks gave these companies an enormous vested interest in westward migration. To maximize their profits, they needed farmers to buy this land and to settle it. They needed to keep their trains busy carrying produce eastward and manufactured goods westward at rates that fully reflected their monopoly status. Many people were mesmerized by the pull of the West, desperate and ignorant enough to believe the most outrageous claims. Among the gullible were slum-dwellers of the cities of Europe and the eastern seaboard; victims of the potato famine in Ireland and of drought in the Ohio valley; subsistence farmers in Virginia who, after struggling to clear their land for cultivation, were still confounded in their ploughing by tree stumps and rocks and uneven topography. The railroad companies were without scruple in describing the promise of the new lands. Creative imagination was allowed to run riot in their newspapers. A small instance of their unbridled cynicism is the reply in the Rock Island Railroad Gazette93 to the question why to settle in Kansas: Because it is the garden spot of the world. Because it will grow anything any other country will grow, and with less work. Because it rains here more than in any other place, and at just the right time.

In all fairness it must be acknowledged that the railroad companies were not alone in spreading an atmosphere of starry-eyed and utterly unjustified optimism. Poets and publicists aided and abetted them. Many were honest believers in the promise of the West, but they might have been expected to display a little more perspicacity and caution. Henry David Thoreau, in 1862, near the end of his life, described how he decided in what direction to head on his daily walk. The choice was nearly always westward. The reasons he gave: 178

Modern Times The future lies that way to me and the earth seems more unexhausted and richer on that side.

Charles Mackay94 wrote: To the West! To the West! to the land of the free, Where the mighty Missouri rolls down to the sea.

Horace Greeley, of the New York Tribune popularized the phrase coined by John Babson Lane Soule, in an article in the Indiana Express in 1853: Go west young man, and grow up with the country.

William Gilpin, who had been a member of the expedition which explored Oregon in 1843, calculated that one thousand three hundred and ten million people could and therefore should be fitted into the continental bowl. Academics too were not immune to the dazzling allure of the West. The decade after the Civil War happened to be one of relatively benign temperatures and above average rainfall. Ferdinand V. Hayden, a leading geographer and Cyrus Thomas, a distinguished climatologist, intrepidly extrapolated the statistics of these few wet, western winters to draw a rising curve of rainfall which would, according to their theory, follow the plough. They should have known better, for sharp fluctuations in temperature and precipitation had always been a distinguishing feature of the region’s climate. In the decade from 1865 to 1875 agricultural production doubled. All the toothsome forecasts of the publicists seemed to be coming true, confirming that west-bound migrants had made the right choice. Sadly but predictably this impressive expansion was short-lived. The weather of the following decade was bad. The winter of 1886 was the worst in many years. Arctic storms crossing the plains held thousands of families prisoner in their homes for weeks on end. Blizzards and sub-zero temperatures decimated the herds of cattle left without shelter. This harsh winter ushered in a decade of drought. Summer temperatures reached unprecedented heights. The farmers themselves were without the resources to build dams and canals to make use of what little water there was. Entrepreneurs from the east who, in the 1870s and 1880s, set up hundreds of private irrigation companies, with high hopes of making their fortunes, failed ignominiously. The population of the Great Plains which had passed the million mark, soon fell back to below four hundred thousand. Even in California, the agricultural population had stopped growing by 1895. At the dawn of the new century, the American Dream had become a nightmare for many.

Myth and Reality The post-Civil War settlers could not have learned any sobering lessons from the history of the Hohokam, for nothing was known of this earlier society at the time. They might have learned from the stories of hunters and trappers or from the experience of white explorers and fortune seekers who journeyed into the region from the sixteenth century on. They might 179

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have learned much from the Mormons, though it would have been difficult for them to apply the principles of social organization which had made the Mormon experiment work. However they did not learn even from the experience of their immediate predecessors. The vision of a better life within their grasp was so strong that they were prepared to ignore the evidence of their own eyes. Streams of people continued to flow West, full of hope, averting their eyes from other streams of comparable size, flowing East, broken and embittered by failure. What mesmerized the west-bound settlers was the idea of conquering the arid western reaches of America and their belief that, with rugged individualism, faith, courage, hard work and dogged determination, they could transform virgin land into prosperous family farms. This was the stuff of the American myth. Yet their America was not an ancient land. Its myths were not shrouded in antiquity but new minted. Thomas Jefferson more than any other single individual crystallized the myth of emergent America as a democracy and an egalitarian agrarian society, free of the evils of European feudalism. It was his idea that the vast territorial holdings of the newly independent state should be divided into a checkerboard of neat, square, uniform plots of land, for distribution to all on easy terms. Moreover, he was responsible for a giant step towards the realization of the idea. It was on Jefferson’s initiative that the U.S Public Land Survey was set up in May, 1795. This government agency surveyed the land and, with cavalier disregard for natural features, covered it with a grid of six by six, thirty six square mile, townships. Every alternate township was sub-divided into thirty-six square sections, six hundred and forty acres apiece. These parcels of land were put up for sale. Over time, the unit parcel was reduced from a section to a quarter section, a hundred and sixty acres, and this came to be regarded as the ideal size for the family farm. The Homestead Act of 1862 enshrined it in law. It was the size of the plot to which an individual could lay claim simply by paying a nominal registration fee; and of which he could secure freehold by five years of residence and cultivation. In spite of Federal generosity, the Jeffersonian ideal never really got off the ground in the West. Farm-making was costly even on free land. Proud new owners had to fence their plots and build homesteads and barns. They had to purchase machinery and tools, farm animals and the fodder to feed them. They needed seeds for planting and the wherewithal to survive the critical months until their first crops were harvested. Many never got beyond being landless laborers or tenant share-croppers. Those who did manage to acquire ownership of their one hundred and sixty acres still faced daunting obstacles. Some observers sensed that they were not transient. Among the most perspicacious of these was John Wesley Powell. He was a man of limited formal education but he traversed the country on foot and by canoe and through his eyes and ears and the calloused soles of his feet acquired a deep understanding of its botany, zoology, hydrology and meteorology. In the Civil War he fought on the side 180

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of the Union and lost an arm. In 1869, undeterred by his disability, he led the first expedition ever down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. He was hailed as a national hero.

Fig. 53:

Source: John K. Hillers | Public Domain

John Wesley Powell talks with the Paiute Chief

In 1876, Powell distilled his experience of the arid lands into a work entitled: A Report on the Lands of the Arid Region of the United States, with a More Detailed Account of the Lands of Utah.

Hel maintained that in the western two-fifths of the United States agriculture was not possible without irrigation but that all the water running in the rivers and streams of these regions during the irrigation season would not suffice to cultivate more than 2.8% of the land. He categorically rejected the popular but baseless idea that human settlement could change climate and rainfall would follow the plough. He thought the land policy of the Homestead Act a disaster and the Jeffersonian dream of covering the country with small independent farmers a mirage. He regarded the quarter section as totally inappropriate to conditions in the West. With irrigation it was an area was far too large for a single family to work. Without irrigation, it was ludicrously small. No less than a full four sections would give a family a chance of making a living at dryland ranching and even then only if some water was guaranteed to assure survival of livestock in drought years. Powell pointed out the futility of grafting the riparian doctrine onto a region with a desert climate. It simply couldn’t work where land was parceled out without reference to the accessibility of water. He believed that the successful settlement of the West depended on proper, which to him meant public, water management and that leaving water in private hands 181

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was a sure recipe for failure. He was convinced that the central government had no choice but to take upon itself the construction of large dams and major networks of canals and the large-scale distribution irrigation water. Powell’s report did reach the desk of Carl Shutz, the Secretary of the Interior but his recommendations were given scant attention. His views were too far removed from the conventional wisdom of the day with its belief in private ownership.

The Debut of Public Enterprise—the Dam Building Era While Powell could be ignored experience could not. In the quarter century after his report the idea of public involvement in water resource management penetrated the public consciousness. During the intervening drought years, hundreds of private companies had been set up with eastern venture capital and most had failed miserably, shaking faith in the ability of private enterprise to supply irrigation water. Then in 1899 a dam built by the Pennsylvania Canal Company on a tributary of the Alleghany River collapsed. Two thousand lives were lost and the town of Johnston was simply wiped off the map. This tragic incident destroyed whatever trust remained in the civic responsibility and technical competence of private firms.

Fig. 54:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/W. Bulach/CC BY-SA 4.0

Lake Powell Reservoir and Glen Canyon Dam

The moment of opportunity for a drastic change of policy came in 1901. In that year Theodore Roosevelt was elected President of the USA. He was obsessed with the idea that American security was under threat from an expansionist Japan and. deemed it urgent to foster growth of population in the western states. Within a year of taking office he had brought Congress 182

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to pass the 1902 Reclamation Act, a seminal piece of legislation that established the Bureau of Reclamation and laid the institutional foundation for placing water supply in the public domain. This ushered in an age of dam building like nothing the world had known before. It transformed the West economically and socially, bringing undreamed of prosperity and a mountain of new problems. The Bureau attracted many fine engineers, stirred by the challenge of making the desert bloom. They managed to get over twenty projects under way in its first five years. In 1936 they completed the Hoover Dam, one of the wonders of the modern world, bigger than any dam before it, towering two hundred and twenty meters from its lower outlet to its lip The momentum was maintained through the late thirties and the forties under the presidency of another Roosevelt—Teddy’s nephew, Franklin Delano. Procedures were streamlined so that a single act of legislation could grant permission for the development of a whole river basin, embracing dozens of dams and irrigation projects stretching from the headwaters of a river to its outlet to the sea. The statistics were impressive. By 1950 the Bureau had built nearly two hundred dams and laid down about 30,000 kilometers of canals and laterals. It had erected forty seven power plants with fifteen thousand kilometers of transmission lines to distribute the electricity generated. Three hundred and fifty pumping stations were pumping irrigation water to otherwise inaccessible areas.95 By the end of the 1980s it had added another hundred and sixty dams and a hundred and thirty kilometers of canals and laterals.

The First Ninety Years While the engineers rose magnificently to the technological challenges of water development, they had little understanding of the problems of the farmers, the end users of the product of their dams and canals. They failed to give the economic aspects of water resource planning the meticulous attention they gave to their engineering. Water projects were initially financed by the sale of Federal lands. The investment was supposed to be recouped in ten years by the sale of water to farmers. This turned out to be wildly optimistic. Although water prices were heavily subsidized from the start by the exclusion of interest charges, even the most efficient small farmers on the best-endowed lands had difficulty in paying their water bills. To make use of the water they had to invest heavily in supplementary irrigation and drainage systems on their own land and for this no Federal aid was available. They were left with little or no cash in hand to pay for the water. To compound the problem, many of the early projects were ill-conceived. Much water was made available where there was no real demand, where soil was poor or where markets for crops were beyond reach. In 1914 the repayment period was extended from ten to twenty years. In 1924 it was raised to forty and later to fifty years. These concessions to 183

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the consumers eventually reduced the price of Federal water to a mere token payment. Water prices were set according to the farmers’ ability to pay and lost any link at all with the cost of supply. Even then the majority of farmers continued to default, secure in the knowledge that it was politically unthinkable to cut off their water. Meanwhile farms were growing in size as absentee owners using an array of subterfuges built up large estates and displaced small independent farmers. No-one intervened. The Bureau of Reclamation was well satisfied with the new owners, who were better than their predecessors at paying their water bills. Little or nothing remained of Jefferson’s vision. Powerful economic forces pulled irrigated agriculture away from family farming into large-scale agri-business. Under the presidency of another Roosevelt—Teddy’s nephew, Franklin Delano—the slow process of approving water projects one by one was streamlined to allow a single act of legislation to grant permission for the development of a whole river basin, embracing dozens of dams, irrigation and power projects stretching from the headwaters of a river to its outlet to the sea. The logic was clear. The many competing demands on the services of any river needed to be reconciled with one another and a first come first served approach was no way to maximize benefits to the community. However river basin accounting lumped good and bad projects together and if net benefits were positive the whole heterogeneous package was approved. Typically profits from electricity generation masked losses from irrigation works that were sub-marginal even on paper and allowed them to be approved. In ninety years the wild and free-flowing rivers of the West were tamed and brought under human control and even quite minor streams were diverted from their original courses. The landscape was transformed by artificial lakes backed up behind dam walls, and by aqueducts carrying water for hundreds of miles across the country. Dam construction provided the engineering marvels of the mid-20th century world. It created a monumental architecture which invited comparison with the pyramids and temples of ancient Egypt. To some it gave the feeling that man’s destiny, so aptly defined by John Widstoe,96 was indeed being fulfilled: The destiny of man is to possess the whole earth; and the destiny of the earth is to be subject to man. There can be no full conquest of the earth, and no real satisfaction to humanity, if large portions of the earth remain beyond his highest control. John Widtsoe, Success on Irrigation Projects, 1928

Others reacted differently with an uncomfortable sense that something had gone astray, that the original motivation for this great outpouring of human endeavor, and incidentally of public funds, had been forgotten. One can only speculate how John Wesley Powell would have viewed what took place in the nine decades after his death in the year that the

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Bureau was born. Perhaps he would have agreed with the harsh judgment of Marc Reisner.97 According to Reisner the original irrigation project proposed by Powell lost sight of its goal along the way and was transformed into a monster that caused enormous damage both to nature and to the economy. Powell had visualized the rivers of America’s West being used to irrigate a tiny fraction of the land suitable for this use. In his words: It is hard to imagine that the first explorer of the Colorado River would have welcomed a future in which there might be no rivers left at all.

It is worth noting in passing that the Jeffersonian myth survived the changes which followed on the disillusionment with private enterprise in water development relatively unscathed, for it still had a function to perform. It helped to make huge transfers of taxpayers’ money into the pockets of large-scale agro-business palatable. It enabled both those giving and those receiving to push from the conscious mind the uncomfortable fact that it was not the enterprising spirit and rugged individualism of small private farmers that was keeping the whole business going, but rather gigantic subsidies from the Federal purse, the bulk of which was finding its way into the pockets of firms whose primary interest was not even in agriculture.

Groundwater to the Rescue? The western states grew apace from the 1920s and boom conditions prevailed in the war years and after. Towns sprouted in areas that in summer were uninhabitable without air-conditioning. They doubled and redoubled their populations in record time. The new denizens of the desert guzzled water for their lush lawns, swimming pools and golf courses, but agriculture remained the predominant consumer, often accounting for 90% and more of consumption. Even the damming of the rivers on an heroic scale had not generated a water supply sufficient to slake the thirst for irrigation water, but over a great part of the West another resource was there to be tapped-groundwater. The Ogallala aquifer is the largest discrete aquifer in the world. It reaches from South Dakota to West Texas and underlies a great part of the states of Texas, Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Nebraska. Very little use was made of it before World War II. Windmills and artesian wells did not provide the technology for pumping large quantities of water from underground. The introduction of the centrifugal pump made intensive exploitation possible and then pumping went shooting up exponentially. In western Texas there were barely a thousand wells just before the war, whereas by 1954 there were nearly 28,000. By the beginning of the 1980s about twelve million acres of farmland were being irrigated with water pumped from underground.

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Fig. 55:

Source: United States Geological Survey | Public Domain

A Map of the Ogallala Aquifer, showing Changes in Water Level from 1950 to 1995

When large-scale use of the aquifer began, its water must have seemed as inexhaustible a resource as had the buffalo on the Great Plains. The analogy is appropriate for, at present rates of exploitation, in fifty years time the aquifer may be as much a memory as the buffalo. By the mid-seventies the overdraft was running at an annual rate of about fourteen million acre-feet. The water was being mined in the same way as oil, to produce great wealth, but only for a limited time. Within a generation or two what has become one of the richest and most productive farming regions in the United States will be at risk. Three courses of action offer some hope of melioration. They are an immediate switch to a more careful and conservative use of the aq186

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uifer, a large-scale return to dry farming and the massive importation of water from some outside source. Dry farming is a rather miserable prospect. It means a drastic fall in income per acre. When drought comes, as inevitably it does in this region, the danger is of a new dust bowl as the topsoil, no longer anchored either by crops or by natural vegetation, is blown away. Imports of water, if possible at all, must come from very far afield as all the easily accessible rivers are being exploited to the full. The rivers of Canada and Alaska have been considered as possible sources of supply but the political feasibility of such plans seems close to zero. The citizens of these other regions are unlikely to put bailing out the prodigal western states high on their own agendas. Even if this barrier were surmounted, costs would be prohibitive, whether measured in terms of direct investment or of ecological disruption. Thus a more conservationist approach to use of the aquifer seems the least painful alternative. However this poses the perennial problem of natural resource management—the choice between present and future benefits, the weighing of the comfort and welfare of this generation against the claims of those as yet unborn.

Triumph or Tragedy There were once men capable of inhabiting a river without disrupting the harmony of its life. Aldo Leopold, Song of the Gavilan, 1940

In the development of the American West, one phase seems to have followed another with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy. First there was the great migration west, powered by human aspirations so compelling that they built a mythical world, impervious to the facts about the true nature of the new Promised Land. This was followed by the inescapable impact of reality—a land in which no crop would grow without irrigation, except in the occasional wet years, and even livestock could not hope to survive the inevitable drought years without the provision of a reliable source of water. The efforts of private enterprise to meet the need for irrigation water were doomed from the start because of the utter disproportion between the magnitude of the problem and the picayune means available for its solution. Only the mobilization of the great resources of the Federal government could bring Nature to its knees and subdue wild and unpredictable rivers, store their waters behind massive dams and then release them, at human convenience, to generate power and to flow in great linear canals to irrigate distant fields. As even these great surface water projects proved insufficient, the fossil waters of the most extensive underground reservoir in the world—the Ogallala aquifer—were drafted to help slake the thirst of the region. By human ingenuity, imagination, intelligence and hard labor, the desert was made to bloom. Its dry, desiccated hues of brown and yellow were 187

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turned to lush green. Great quantities of food were produced to feed people around the world. What then of tragedy? Part of the tragedy looms on the horizon. The staying power of this great irrigation civilization is in doubt. Its time-span may be measured not even by the centuries of the Hohokam, certainly not by the millennia of Egypt. The salinization of the soil and water, the silting up of the great reservoirs, the exhaustion of underground stores of water which took many millennia to accumulate and which only renew themselves in a trickle—all spell disaster. Another part of the tragedy is a sense of loss which has come with the transformation of attitudes to the environment. It is the obverse of the sense of accomplishment at the conquest of nature. A new generation has grown up, disillusioned with arrogant, grandiose concepts of conquest; a generation which, more modestly, views humanity as part of the natural world and not its master. They mourn the irreversible changes, the subjugation of nature, the regulation out of existence of free-flowing rivers. This attitude to nature will certainly strike many as an overly sentimental and totally unrealistic approach to a world, which is always in a state of flux. They do not doubt that natural resources are there to be exploited to their best advantage by the most advanced of the species inhabiting the earth. In this context the one relevant question is whether the settlement of the West has indeed served humanity well. The irrigation society which has grown up in the western states has strayed very far from the Jeffersonian ideal. The myth however survived. It helped to make huge transfers of taxpayers’ money into the pockets of large-scale agro-business palatable. Both those giving and those receiving pushed from the conscious mind the uncomfortable fact that it was not the enterprising spirit and rugged individualism of small private farmers that was keeping the whole business going, but rather gigantic subsidies from the Federal purse, the bulk of which was finding its way into the pockets of firms whose primary interest was not even in agriculture.

A Note on Irrigation Canker in the musk-rose bud William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Irrigation is massive interference with the natural order. On the credit side, given the right conditions of soil and temperature, it wrings bountiful crop yields from lands which would be barely cultivable without it. It does indeed make the desert bloom. On the debit side it contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction. It increases the salinity of the soil irrigated, with a consequent drop in yields. It causes degradation of the quality of the water available to subsequent users. 188

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Fig. 56:

Pattern of Crop Fields in Kansas Created by Circular Pivot Irrigation

These problems threaten because all water contains dissolved salts. When a field is irrigated some of the water evaporates from the surface of the soil, leaving its salts behind. Most is taken up by the roots of plants, then passes up through the stems to the leaves and is released to the atmosphere by transpiration. This water does not carry away its original load of salts, which remain in the soil solution. Roughly speaking, about three quarters of the water is lost by evaporation and transpiration, while the remaining quarter is retained in the soil, holding practically all the original salt. Unless there is a sufficient quantity of water applied to the land to leach out this salt and an efficient drainage system to carry it away, the water in the root zone will become more saline and some of the salt will precipitate out and become part of the soil. Such changes have an adverse effect on plants. The damage may take the form of slow growth, lower yields or, at the extreme, wilting and dying. The extent of the damage depends on the type of plant and on the composition and concentration of the salts.

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In light soils with favorable topography, natural drainage may be sufficient to keep fields from becoming waterlogged and saline even when they are irrigated. With heavier soils, without artificial drainage any irrigation project will have a very limited life. Drainage may solve the problem of a given field, but water which flows from a field after irrigation has to go somewhere. If uninterrupted in its flow—on the surface or underground—it will eventually reach the sea. It is more likely, particularly in an arid region, that it will be diverted and used again and again on its way to the sea, accumulating an additional load of salts with each use and becoming more and more problematical and less productive as irrigation water. There is plenty of evidence of this in the rising salinity of the rivers of the West. The problem even took on the aspect of an international conflict when the salinity of the Colorado river waters supplied to Mexico under an international agreement rose so high that it threatened the fertility of Mexico’s richest farm lands. In its report, the National Research Council Committee on Irrigation Induced Water Quality Problems summed up the problem: Irrigated agriculture over time cannot avoid causing an adverse offsite effect. This effect must be acknowledged: it can be minimized, internalized or rejected, but it cannot be ignored. If irrigation is a desired use of water, then its waste waters must be treated and/or disposal provided for.

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Part 5 SOME RIVERS AND THEIR EXPLORERS

Introduction Whether they bring life like the Nile, or provide succor in the hour of death like the Ganges; whether like the Mississippi or the Yangtse they day-in day-out tax the resources of human ingenuity; whether like the Volga and the Danube they have served as ramparts against invasion; or whether they have kept many of their secrets like the mighty, impetuous Amazon and Congo, the world’s greatest rivers are an essential part of the history of mankind.98

Rivers are a vital element in the story of water and the human experience. Some aspects of this story—as reflected in the emergence of early civilizations and of modern irrigated agriculture; in the development of power and communications, in art and poetry—are touched on in other parts of the book. The following chapters concentrate on only one of the many facets of the interaction between human beings and rivers. They deal with a varied cast of people who, over the centuries, have charted the course of rivers from source to sea and filled in—not always correctly—the huge blank spaces on maps of the world. Some set off in search of gold, some in search of knowledge, some because circumstances left them no alternative. Many put their lives on the line to satisfy the curiosity of staid stay-at-homes who gathered in musty clubrooms. What unites all the explorers is that they were all outsiders. For the riparians who lived along the banks of the Upper Nile and the Niger and the Amazon these rivers were home but what they knew and took for granted was not easily available to the outsiders. There were no written records available to peruse so that they had to gain their knowledge through the soles of their feet or carried over land or water by local porters.

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Chapter 5.1 Profile of a River—The Amazon What’s in a Name? The Amazons of Greek legend were a race of man-hating women warriors, led by a beautiful queen, Hippolyta. They amputated their right breasts, the better to handle their bows in battle. The myth of the women warriors of South America is somewhat similar. The first sighting of mighty women warriors on the South American continent was reported by the Dominican friar Jaspar de Carvajal, in his account of the Spanish expedition along the length of the river, led by Francisco de Orellana in 1542. He described an armed clash with them, at the head of a band of Indians, thus: … we ourselves saw these women, who were there fighting in front of all the Indian men as women captains, and these latter fought so courageously that the Indian men did not dare to turn their backs, and anyone who did turn his back they killed with clubs right there before us.

He goes on to detail the appearance of these Amazons: These women are very white and tall, and have hair very long and braided and wound about the head, and are very robust and go about naked [but] with their privy parts covered, doing as much fighting as ten Indian men.99

The tribes of the region have many legends of women warriors and all-female tribes, but no evidence has been found to support them. Indeed, no trace has been found of any powerful matriarchal societies in the river basin. However the name stuck to the river and the region.

River and People To Europeans, the ancient Amazon is a new river. It has no human history going back thousands of years. The great civilization of the Incas in the high Andes touched it at source, but was not challenged and formed by it, as the Nile and the Euphrates challenged and formed the ancient civilizations of the east. The river basin was long inhabited by indigenous peoples, living in small tribal groups, each with its own language and traditions, but humans, though the most advanced, were just one more species that had found a niche for itself in this very ancient eco-system. Human beings were too scattered and their numbers too small to dominate the system or even have any significant impact on it. A new era started five hundred years ago when a European explorer first set eyes on the mouth of the river.

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The First Wave of Exploration: Conquistadores and Treasure Hunters When Christopher Columbus, in his search for the passage to India, crossed the Atlantic Ocean with his fleet of three small ships, one of them, the Nina, was captained by a young Spaniard, Vincente Yanez Pinzon. Pinzon went on to lead an expedition of his own to explore the Brazilian coast and in 1500CE he became the first European to enter the mouth of the Amazon. He sailed up the river for about fifty miles. He named it the Rio Santa Maria de la Mar Dolce, soon abbreviated to Mar Dolce. The next stage of exploration of the river proceeded from west to east, sparked by Spanish penetration of the South American continent from the Pacific coast. This was a cruel and bloody undertaking in which the great Inca culture was mindlessly wiped out by invaders from a purportedly higher civilization. The conquistadores behaved as treacherously to one another as they did to the Indians and carried on endless wars among themselves. However, in their clashes with one another and their almost crazed pursuit of gold, they crossed high mountains and drove themselves through jungle and swampland in what were, regardless of motivation, great journeys of exploration. One of the greatest of these journeys was the first navigation of the full length of the Amazon river. This was an incidental consequence of the mishaps which befell an expedition which had set out in search of the golden land of Eldorado and the country where cinnamon trees grew. The expedition was mounted in 1541 by Gonzales Pizarro, on orders from his brother, the great conquistador, Francisco Pizarro. He took with him two hundred Spaniards, four thousand Indians, five thousand pigs, more than a thousand hounds and a herd of llamas. He made his way from Quito to the eastern base of the Andes. By Christmas this impressive party was in grave trouble, stuck on the banks of the Coca river, left with nothing to eat but wild grass, seeds and worms. Pizarro had his young lieutenant, Francisco de Orellana, build a small boat and sent him downstream with a contingent of fifty men, to forage and reconnoiter. The Coca flowed into the Napo river and from there into the Amazon. After eight days of travel, on the dangerous and turbulent river, they came on an Indian village and managed to obtain supplies. However the strong current and the rapids prevented them from retracing their journey upstream. They were left with no choice but to continue moving with the current. Seven months later they emerged on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean. Hedged in on both banks by dense tropical forests and threatened by unknown dangers, they had managed to traverse the whole five thousand kilometer course of the previously unexplored river. Orellana returned to Spain after this great journey but the pull of Eldorado brought him back to the Amazon. He drowned in the river in 1546, while trying to travel upstream against the current, in pursuit of the will-o’-the wisp City of Gold.

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The age of the conquistadores was over by the middle of the sixteenth century. By that time Spain and Portugal had consolidated their political control of the region. Their interests lay in exploiting the wealth to which they had gained access and in keeping potential rivals at bay. During the following two centuries only the Jesuits penetrated into the Amazon basin. As they brought the word of God to the local inhabitants they mapped the territories that they traversed and kept meticulous diaries. For many years this treasure of information about the region remained almost completely inaccessible to the outside world, locked away in secret archives.

The Second Wave of Exploration: the Search for Knowledge The second wave of exploration of the Amazon was carried out by men who were in search neither of gold, nor of men’s souls. They were a special breed, prepared to sacrifice health and fortune in the pursuit of knowledge. The French nobleman, Charles Marie la Condamine born in 1701—a fine mathematician, a gifted scientist and an adventurous spirit—was such a one. In May 1735 he led a small team of scientists100 to the Audencia de Quito (present-day Ecuador) to conduct observations and measurements needed to resolve the burning controversy of the day about the shape of the earth—whether or how much it bulged at the Equator. After seven years of hard labor on a bare desert-like plateau in the high Andes, and much suffering,101 the expedition had proof that Sir Isaac Newton was right, that the earth was a spheroid, flattened at the poles. Sadly, this outstanding piece of applied research brought neither fame nor fortune, which was preempted by another team of scientists working in Lapland. La Condamine did not join his colleagues when they returned to France in 1742. He took two servants, a few mules and his bulky telescope and set out to follow the Amazon to its mouth and to map its course with scientific accuracy. He was joined by Pedro Vicente Maldonado, a mathematician, cartographer and explorer. He was a native of the region, with invaluable, first-hand knowledge of the local people. His elder brother was a Jesuit priest and through his good offices La Condamine gained access to the secret archives of the Order of Jesus in Quito and was allowed to examine the remarkable maps prepared by the priest, Samuel Fritz, who had lived in the region for twenty years. The two scientists surveyed the river, measuring whatever could be measured—volume and speed of flow, depth and water level. The maps they drew are accurate enough to be used today. La Condamine returned to France at the end of 1744. He emerged from the Amazon a sick man, deaf in one ear and with a gammy leg which, with the passing years, crippled him completely. Yet his willpower and enthusiasm never deserted him. He spent the next thirty years, until his death in 1774, analyzing and evaluating the enormous amount of material he had brought back with him: This involved him not only in geographical and mathematical problems, but also with questions about quinine and rubber, 197

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the speed of sound, the legends of the Amazon, curare—the poison used by the Indians on their arrows—and vaccination against smallpox, which he was the first to effect successfully.102 The next of the great Amazon explorers was Alexander von Humboldt. He was born in 1769 and lived to the ripe old age of ninety, busy to the end with his attempts to explain the physical world. He came from a family of Prussian soldiers and legend has it that when, as a ten-year-old, he was asked by the King of the Prussians whether he too would like to conquer the world, he replied: Yes your Majesty—but with my head!

He came as close to realizing this ambition as any man could expect to do. In 1800, he was in the Amazon basin. Ignoring hunger, torrential tropical rains and the persecutions of biting, stinging and blood-sucking insects, he searched for an answer to the question of whether or not the Orinoco joined the Rio Negro and so linked up with the Amazon. La Condamine had believed that it did. Others, such as the priest Jose Gumilla, had thought differently. Humboldt traversed the Orinoco and the Negro and finally found what he was seeking, the river Casiquiare, which does indeed link the Orinoco to the Amazon. As a botanist, Humboldt faced obstacles as great as those with which he had to deal as an explorer. The difficulties of collecting specimens and then preserving them drove him to the brink of despair. He was able to collect specimens of barely one-tenth of the wealth of plants with which he was surrounded. Over a third of these were ruined by the immeasurable dampness of the climate. More were destroyed by the new insects that appeared every day to demolish plants and papers alike. Daily downpours of rain ruined much of what remained. Yet in spite of these difficulties he returned to Paris with no less than sixty thousand plants and his published findings eventually filled twenty nine volumes. After the pioneering work of La Condamine and Humboldt the scientific exploration of the Amazon basin proceeded apace. The English naturalist, Henry Walter Bates, spent ten years from 1848 to 1857 in the region. In 1863 he published his book, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, one of the classics of the river to this day. Bates was followed in 1849 by Richard Spruce, who spent seventeen years in the region. With his outstanding collection of botanical specimens, far superior to anything that had been achieved before, he provided a solid basis for the scientific botany of the region. He collected a hundred thousand seeds of the chinarinda tree, which were eventually planted in India. Their derivative, quinine, used for the treatment of malaria, became an indispensable aid in the exploration of other tropical regions. He does not enjoy the reputation he deserves in the annals of Amazon exploration, probably because he never took the time to write a book. Many others followed in the footsteps of these explorers. In the mid19th century a United States Navy expedition placed the emphasis of its 198

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research on topics with a direct practical application—navigation, natural resources and health problems. Even U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt, after his term of office was over, got into the act and in 1913 explored the Rio Teodora (later named Rio Roosevelt). His partner was Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, one of a number of distinguished Brazilian explorers. Rondon was a colonel in the Engineering Corps of the Brazilian Army. He had been responsible for building government telegraph lines, which opened up communications over an extensive area and is also credited with setting up the Brazilian Indian Service for the protection of the indigenous peoples from exploitation and their integration into the mainstream of Brazilian life.

The Third Wave of Exploration: the Search for Understanding One of the latest of the great Amazon expeditions was undertaken, in the early 1980s, by Jaques Cousteau and his seasoned team of explorers of the world’s waters. This expedition belongs to a new wave of exploration, where the central concern is the understanding of ecological processes in order to protect them from the growing damage caused by human activity; in particular, the exploitation of natural resources without careful enough attention to the consequences for the future. Their concern, which is gradually coming to be shared by more and more citizens of the planet, was for the preservation of the environment and all it has to offer for the enrichment of human life. By river, by land and from the air, and with the most modern of scientific aids, including satellite communications, they spent a year and a half studying the total environment of the Amazon from its headwaters in the Andes to its mouth on the Atlantic coast. Modern explorers enjoy all sorts of advantages which were not available to their predecessors. Yet even with all the marvels of modern science and medicine at their disposal, explorers of this region take considerable risks with their health and even their lives. They are pestered by: ticks, chiggers, stinging ants, bees and wasps, sandflies, and a batfly whose mosquito-carried larvae climb into human hosts after hatching and mature into inchlong maggots. Malaria, tuberculosis, hepatitis, leprosy, yellow fever, shistosomiasis (a liver disease transmitted by river snails) and river blindness all lie in wait for them in the invisible microbial life surrounding them. Add to this mix the threats from the longest constrictors in the world, poisonous snakes and spiders and blood-sucking bats; rivers populated with caimans, and fish such as the infamous piranha and the frightening candirus, which enters any orifice of the human body and secures itself firmly by extending stiff spines into the surrounding tissue—and one can form an idea of the magnitude of the challenge to human courage even in such modern-day explorations. 199

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Ecology of the River Basin The Amazon basin is the typical and largest example of the rain forest biome. There is never a shortage of water, nor a time of the year when temperature limits growth. Yet on close inspection the environment turns out to be rather poorly endowed. Millions of years of tropical rain have leached all the soluble minerals from the soil. What is left is a thin covering, lacking the nutrients which sustain plant and animal life alike. The wonderful diversity of the environment is the product of some amazing inventions of nature and a most delicate balance of give and take among the different components of the eco-system. First, let us look at the vegetation, guided by the insights of the botanists. The luxuriant growth of the rain forest is based on the thinnest of soils. What has developed might be described as a great hydroponic system. The dense growth is synthesized almost entirely from sun and water. The small and precious stock of nutrients is not stored in the soil. It is stored above ground in the leaves of the trees, protected from the leaching action of the constant rain. These leaves have a shorter life-span than those of temperate-zone trees. When they fall to the ground they decompose quickly and their components are reabsorbed with little delay through the root hairs of the widespread superficial root systems sent out by plants to cover the forest floor. Even the towering hardwoods are only shallowly rooted in the skimpy soil. The great buttresses protruding from the base of their trunks are needed to keep them upright.

Fig. 57:

A Great Buttress in the Amazon Rain Forest 200

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Voluptuous growth has been achieved in an environment apparently very deficient in many of the constituents needed to maintain life, by a stratagem of nature—diversification. As Jaques Costeau explained, each species makes its living in a slightly different way, with dissimilar food needs, root systems, shapes, so that efficient use is made of the scarce nourishment and nothing is wasted. All animal life depends directly or indirectly on plants for sustenance. The shortcomings of the vegetation of the rainforest as a source of nutrients and vitamins have a direct bearing on the animal life that it can sustain. The great herds of herbivores, typical of the grasslands, have no place here. The buffalo of the American plains, the deer of the African savannah, consuming enormous quantities of grasses, rich in nutrition derived from a fertile soil, could not exist in such an environment; nor could the great predators which feed on such herds. The stratagem of diversification applies as much to animal life as it does to plant life. The many species of animals, each represented by only a few members in any one area, find their special niche and together exploit the available food sources to the full. Study of the river itself has revealed it to be as poor in nutrients as the surrounding forest and yet, like the forest, it is capable of supporting a large and variegated population. The pioneering expedition led by Jacques Cousteau in 1982 investigated this seeming paradox of plenty in the midst of poverty and offered some fascinating insights. Using the concentration in the river water of the tiny aquatic organisms which form the basis of the food chain as an index, the scientists concluded that there should have been a liquid desert beneath the surface of the river. Instead they found the water teeming with life. Two phenomena helped them explain the paradox—the boost in productivity from the meeting of the black and white waters, and the strange feeding habits of many species of fish, which harvest the fruit of the forests. The meeting of the waters is a sight which no visitor to the Amazon basin would dream of missing. The Rio Negro river comes from the northwest. It is not really black as its name suggests, but a dark reddish brown, colored by the humic acid dissolved from the soil over which it has passed. The Amazon (Solimeos as it is called on this stretch) comes from the west. It is not really white, but a distinctive beige-brown from the enormous load of Andean silt it carries. A few miles to the east of Manaus the two great streams of water meet. Their mixing is retarded by differences in temperature, rates of flow and chemical composition, so they continue to flow side by side for many kilometers before losing their separate identities. Above their confluence, both rivers are rather poor in nutrients. The Solimeos is slightly alkaline and very turbid. The silt prevents the sun penetrating into the water and inhibits photosynthesis. The Negro is free of suspended solids which block the light, but what flows in it is more like vinegar than pure water. It is what the local river people call a hungry river, an environment hostile even to mosquitoes. Mixing corrects the acidity of the Negro and the turbidity of the Solimeos and boosts productivity. The tourist can enjoy watching the result—grey dolphins and sometimes even pink ones, attracted by the abundance of fish, frolicking where the waters meet. 201

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Fig. 58:

Meeting of the Waters East of Manaus

Source: Author

The phenomenon of black and white rivers repeats itself along the course of the Amazon. The black rivers come from the north and south and, wherever they join the main river, fish populations increase substantially. So does the human population, a step higher up on the food chain. All the main settlements along the river—Santarem, Manaus, Coari and Tefe—started out as fishing villages and all of them are at or near such river junctions.

Fig. 59:

View of Manaus from the River 202

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Another example of the wondrous workings of nature is the harvesting of the fruits of the forest by fish. During the long months of the wet season many species of fish follow the waters which spread beyond the banks of the river into the varzea, the floodplain. Some species of fish feed on the fruit and nuts which fall from the trees in great quantities. Many of these show special adaptations of the jaws and teeth, designed to deal with their unusual source of food. Other species live by preying on the harvesters. The harvest is generous because the silt deposits of the flood waters enrich the forest soil and nourish the trees. Some of the fruit and seeds, not consumed by the fish in the floodplain during the wet season, are sucked into the river by the receding waters. Here they provide another link in the food chain, supplying some of the organic matter which cannot be synthesized in the turbid river.

Human Impact on the Amazon Environment The superficial account, given above, of the myriad interrelationships which go to make up the Amazon eco-system is sufficient to make it clear that the breaking of even the smallest link in the chain may have extensive and unforeseen consequences. Over the centuries, human intervention was on such a small scale that it posed no threat to the fragile balance of forces in the ecology of the region. The indigenous human population was just one more element in the total environment.

Fig. 60:

A Peaceful Inlet on the Amazon

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Fig. 61:

Young Amazon Dweller

Fig. 62:

House Built on Stilts for Protection against High Tides

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Fig. 63:

Floating home on Amazon Inlet

Source: Author

Even the great rubber boom at the turn of the century left little mark. Today for the first time, with all the tools of modern technology at its disposal, human activity has grown to threatening proportions. In counterproductive clearing of the land for farming and settlement, in logging and mining on a commercial scale, in cutting great swathes across the forest to build highways and so bringing the pollution which comes with vehicular traffic, in hunting threatened species of animals for skins or meat or to meet the demand for exotic pets, in supplying an expanding trade in cocaine, enterprising people, some rapacious but many of goodwill, are doing enormous and irreversible damage in return for uncertain or ephemeral benefits. The polluted and ravaged rivers of regions, with a much longer and more intensive history of human settlement, should serve as warning beacons to the developers. So too should those civilizations of the past which failed to protect their water resources and sank into oblivion.

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Chapter 5.2 Profile of a River—The Nile What’s in a Name? The name Nile is derived from the Semitic root Nahal, meaning stream. The ancient Egyptians called it the Aur, or black, for the color of its sediments. Color is still important in naming the river. The three main tributaries are known as the White, Blue and Black Nile. The names do not quite conform to the real colors of the waters. At Khartoum, where the first two tributaries flow side by side for a few kilometers, with the dividing line between them clearly visible, the White Nile is a muddy grey, the Blue Nile is blue only for a few moments at dawn and dusk and for the rest of time a greenish-brown. The Black Nile, or the Atbara as it is more commonly called, is more brown than black.

The Physiography Of The River The Nile rises south of the equator and flows north into the Mediterranean Sea. Its headstreams in Central Africa feed into Lake Victoria-Nyanza and Lake Albert-Nyasa, and then continue northward through the Sudd to the Sudan, where they are joined by two tributaries, the Blue Nile and the Atbara, or Black Nile, that flow down from the Ethiopian highlands. The present configuration of the river dates back no more than twenty or thirty thousand years. For thirty million years, the Nile was a short river, fed by a single Ethiopian tributary. No link existed with the great lakes of Central Africa. They drained eastward to the Indian Ocean, until tons of accumulated silt finally blocked their passage and forced their overflowing waters to seek a new route of escape. Lake Victoria cut a passage to Lake Sudd, eight hundred kilometers to the north and 680 meters closer to sea level. In primeval times, this lake covered a gigantic expanse of nearly a quarter of a million square kilometers, like no lake to be found on the face of the earth today. Eventually it cut its own opening to the north and linked up with the Nile. Over time the great lake withered to a mere six thousand square kilometers of swampland, but a new river was born, with a drainage basin stretching from the Equator to the Mediterranean Sea. This new Nile has a strong claim to the title of longest river in the world. Measured from its farthest source, the Luvironza river, which flows into Lake Victoria-Nyanza, to the Mediterranean, it stretches for 6,825 kilometers. However, the claim is a little tenuous, more a question of definition than of fact. A discernible current does cross the lake from the mouth of the Luvironza to the point of outflow, but the Nile travels in a clearly defined bed for only about 6,000 kilometers after leaving the lake. With a little manipulation, by measuring from the sources of their longest rather than their straightest tributaries, both the Amazon and the Mississipi come 206

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out a little ahead. Africa’s next river, the Congo, is only 4,700 kilometers long. The other vital statistics of the river are less impressive than its length would suggest. Its catchment area of three million square kilometers is smaller than that of the Amazon (7 million km²), the Congo (3.7 million km²), or the Mississipi (3.2 million km²). Its annual discharge to the sea is an unimpressive 84 BCM, hardly more than that of the Rhine, which draws its water from a catchment basin a twentieth of the size. This is less than 3% of what flows into the sea from the Amazon and about 6% of the outflow of the Congo. The 110 million tons of sediment it carries annually are quite overshadowed by the 2,000 million tons of the Hwang Ho, the 900 million tons of the Amazon and the 600 million tons of the Mississipi, though in this respect at least, the Congo, with its mere 70 million tons a year, is left far behind.

In Search of the Source Father Nile, how can I explain the cause of this, Or in what lands you have hidden your head? Albius Titullus, Elegy 1.7, 1st century BCE

Emerging from somewhere in the tropical centre of Africa, flowing from south to north like no other river, crossing a great desert without a single tributary to nourish it, the Nile fascinated the peoples of the Mediterranean basin from earliest times, and mystified Westerners until well into the 19th century. In the fifth century BCE Herodotus (484–430BCE), famed as the father of history, made a serious effort to resolve the mystery of the Nile’s source. He examined various theories that were current at the time and dismissed them out of hand as the offerings of certain Greeks, advertising their own cleverness. One theory held that the water of the river came from melting snow, another that it flowed from Ocean, the mythical stream that encircled the world. In search of a more reliable answer he traveled widely in Egypt and reached as far south as Elephantine. He was a convivial man who chatted with all and sundry and took careful note of all he heard but gleaned not a jot of information to which he gave credence. The story told him by the registrar of the treasures of Athene in the Egyptian city of Sais was typical of the tall tales with which he was regaled. The registrar claimed that the waters of the Nile flowed from springs situated between two cone shaped mountains named Crophi and Mophi, in the neighborhood of Thebes and Elephantine. Half of their waters flowing northwards to Egypt and the rest southwards to Ethiopia. According to this registrar the Egyptian king Psammetichus had had a rope made that was many thousands of fathoms in length and had let it down into the water without succeeding in touching bottom, proof positive that the source of the river lay at a fathomless depth.103

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Herodotus summed up the conclusions to be drawn from all his researches as follows: Nobody knows anything about the source of the Nile, because the river runs through a part of Libya which is uninhabited and desert … It enters Egypt from the country beyond.104

In the 1st century CE, two Roman centurions, sent by the Emperor Nero, made their way further south than Herodotus, but they got bogged down in the Sudd, an enormous stretch of almost impenetrable vegetable matter blocking navigation of the river. Later travelers reached the vicinity of Juba, about five degrees north of the equator, but no-one penetrated further. Their health and strength were undermined by malaria. Their progress was hindered by natural barriers—cataracts, forests of papyrus and marshland—and fierce opposition from the local people. One story, which survived the centuries, told of a Greek merchant, Diogenes who, in the middle of the 1st century, did not follow the course of the river but cut inland from Zanzibar. After journeying for twenty-five days, he was said to have reached a region where a range of snow-topped mountains towered over two great lakes. A 1st century CE mosaic at Palestrina, near Rome, shows the upper Nile with exotic buildings, strange animals and hunters armed with bow and arrows.

Fig. 64:

1st Century CE Mosaic of Upper Nile 208

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Ptolemy, in his 2nd century map, showed the mountains and the lakes, with the Nile rising from the lakes on the equator and flowing north to the Mediterranean. The map was regarded as a curiosity. The maps current until the mid-19th century still showed a blank space, leaving the imagination to fill the middle of the continent: with a thousand monstrosities, dwarf men and cannibals with tails, animals as strange as the fabulous griffin and the salamander, huge inland seas, and mountains so high they defied all nature by bearing on their crests, in this equatorial heat, a mantle of perpetual snow.105

In the 19th century, evidence began to accumulate that Ptolemy’s map might be based on something more substantial than legend. German missionaries, who made their way to the interior, reported seeing great lakes and a snow-clad mountain, known as Kilimanjaro. Then, in 1856, a concerted effort of exploration began and within two decades, the blanks were filled. This whole great project was undertaken by western Christians, but it would not have been achieved without the help of others. Arab traders had long been familiar with the Central African Plateau, criss-crossing it as a matter of routine, in pursuit of ivory and slaves. They were not interested in geographical conundrums, such as the source of the Nile, but their help was invaluable to the explorers. Even more important were the services of locally recruited porters, without whom the journeys of exploration would have been quite impossible. They carried the equipment and food of the explorers and sometimes the explorers themselves, on their backs. Yet they remain an anonymous crowd, occasionally mentioning in passing for their loyalty, often condemned for deserting their employers. Only two, Susi and Chuma, the devoted servants of David Livingstone, are remembered by name. The personae who led the expeditions—Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, James Grant, Samuel Baker and Florence, his second wife, David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley—were an odd assortment but, for explorers, not an unusually eccentric band. Burton was thirty-six years old, when he led his African expedition. He had behind him seven years of service in the Indian Army and two very daring journeys, disguised as a Muslim, into territory forbidden to Christians, to Mecca and to the walled Islamic city of Harar in Abyssinia. He was a man of many parts, a scholar, a linguist, a brave soldier, a skilled swordsman and a writer of undoubted talent.106

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Fig. 65:

Sir Richard Francis Burton

Source: Public Domain

Speke was thirty when he joined Burton. He was a West country Englishman, who had joined the Indian Army as a young cadet. During his military service, he was in the habit of going off on his own into the Himalayas on long hunting expeditions. His ambition was to build up a collection of specimens of rare birds and animals and to turn his father’s country house in England into a natural history museum.

Fig. 66:

Source: Johann Baptist Zwecker | Josiah Wood Whymper | Public Domain

John Hannings Speke and James Grant107 210

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James Grant, the same age as Speke, accompanied him on his second expedition. He was an accomplished amateur botanist, an artist, a sportsman, and a soldier decorated for his part in the relief of Lucknow. In an occupation crowded with large egos, he was a totally loyal lieutenant, described by Moorehead as: the most modest and self-effacing man who ever entered the turmoil of African exploration. Samuel Baker was born into a wealthy family in 1821, the same year as Burton. His father was the director of a bank and a railway, and was also a ship owner. Baker chose not to go into business but rather to travel the world, following his passion for big-game hunting to India (for tigers), Ceylon (for elephants), the Balkans (for bears), and then on to Africa, to see what it had to offer. Being of independent means, he took instructions from no-one and combined exploring with hunting. He left his first wife at home to raise their large family. On her death, he married the beautiful, blond Hungarian, Florence Ninian von Sass, fifteen years his junior. She accompanied him everywhere, sharing his travels in Africa and proving herself a brave and resourceful companion.

Fig. 67:

Samuel and Florence Baker

Source: Public Domain

David Livingstone was born in 1813. He was the most famous of the explorers. He first set foot in Africa in the 1840s as a medical missionary. In the early years he worked to save the souls of individuals. Later he devoted much of his energy to fighting the slave trade, for he had come to believe that the land could be opened to civilization and Christianity only if the trade in human beings was brought to an end. In 1865 he was back in England and planning to remain there. However, when the Royal Geographical Society invited him to return to Africa to try to settle the controversy about the lakes and rivers of the centre of the continent, he accepted for he saw it as an opportunity to strike another blow against slavery. 211

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Fig. 68:

Source: Thomas Annan | Public Domain

David Livingstone

Henry Morton Stanley, born Rowlands, spent a miserable childhood in a Welsh workhouse. He reached New Orleans as a cabin boy and was lucky to be adopted by a kind American, who gave him his name and nationality. He grew up to be a competent newspaperman and foreign correspondent. It was an assignment to search for Livingstone that brought him to Africa for the first time. He was concerned more with fame and fortune than with the fate of the man, but meeting Livingstone turned out to be the supreme experience of his life.

Fig. 69:

Source: National Library of Wales

H.M. Stanley 212

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Burton and Speke headed westward from the coast opposite Zanzibar in June 1857. They grossly underestimated the difficulties which lay ahead and did not even take proper clothing. According to Burton: not looking forward to so long a journey, we left Zanzibar without a new outfit, consequently we were in tatters before the end, and in a climate where flannel fights half the battle of life against death, my companion was compelled to invest himself in overalls of American domestics and I was forced to cut up blankets into coats and wrappers.

When they returned to Zanzibar nearly two years later they were in rags. In February 1858, the two men, both miserably ill—Burton with an ulcerated jaw which limited his food intake to liquids, and Speke almost blind from an acute attack of the ophthalmia which plagued him all his life— reached Lake Tanganyika. Their momentary sense of triumph soon turned to disappointment as it became clear that this could not be the source of the Nile. Burton had hoped to find a river flowing north from the lake. In fact, the Rusizi flowed south leaving him, in his own words, sick at heart. After rest and recuperation, Burton worked on his notes and refitted the caravan for the next stage of the journey. Speke, with his eyesight improved, set off with a small party to investigate reports that a far larger lake, Nyanza, lay about three weeks journey to the north. He reached the southern tip of the lake at the beginning of August. Of the moment he caught sight of it, he wrote: I no longer felt any doubt that the lake at my feet gave birth to the interesting river, the source of which has been the subject of so much speculation, and the object of so many explorers.

In honor of his sovereign, he named it Lake Victoria. Burton was skeptical of Speke’s discovery and relations between the two men deteriorated as each held to his own views. The breach became final when Speke, who reached England twelve days ahead of Burton, broke his solemn promise to await his companion’s arrival and went straight to the President of the Royal Geographical Society to announce that he had found the source of the Nile. Burton had not yet set foot in England when Speke was invited to lead a new expedition to explore the west and north of the newly-discovered inland sea. In all the furor, his arrival passed almost unnoticed, and his painstaking, scientific report on the environs of Lake Tanganyika got scant attention. Speke chose James Grant to accompany him on his second expedition. Once again he set out from Zanzibar but this time he headed towards the western bank of the lake instead of its southern shore. After spending more time than he wished at the court of Mutesa, king of the Buganda, who was fascinated by the first white men he had ever seen, Speke headed for a waterfall, which he had been told he would find at the northern end of the lake. At a place called Urondogani, about forty miles downstream from the 213

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lake, he reached the banks of a river and knew that he was standing by the Nile. He told his men, who were Muslims and not affected as he was, that: they ought to shave their heads and bathe in the holy river, the cradle of Moses …

They followed the stream until they came to the waterfall, which Speke named Ripon, after the President of the Royal Society, who had sent him on his way. Grant traveled with Speke on most of this leg of the journey, but only a few days travel from their destination Speke dispatched him northward to the court of Kamerasi, king of the Bunyoro, to prepare the ground for the next stage of their journey. Though this deprived him of participation in the high point of the expedition, Grant accepted the assignment without even a murmur of protest. A month after parting, the two men joined forces once again and pushed on wearily to the north, for Speke, before leaving London, had arranged that supplies would be sent up river from Khartoum. In February 1863, two and a half years after setting out, they reached Gondokoro. Of their original group of one hundred and sixty-six porters, only eighteen men and four women remained in the party. One hundred and forty-three had deserted along the way and one had died. The loyal survivors were generously remunerated and eventually sent back to Zanzibar from Cairo. The two explorers were surprised to be welcomed by Samuel and Florence Baker, who had come in search of them. Baker reported his first impression of them: Speke appeared the more worn-out of the two: he was excessively lean, but in reality he was in good, tough condition; he had walked the whole way from Zanzibar, never having once ridden during this wearying march. Grant was in honourable rags; his bare knees projecting through the remnants of his trousers that were an exhibition of the rough industry in tailor’s work. He was looking tired and feverish, but both men had a fire in the eye, that showed the spirit that led them through.

Speke believed that he had settled the question of the source of the Nile, but others thought differently. Livingstone, who had no personal axe to grind, thought that Speke was mistaken and that the river’s source lay much further south of the Equator. Burton, who had a very personal score to settle, accused Speke, in one of his milder moments, of an extreme looseness of geography. He illustrated his point by ridiculing Speke’s two-fold assumption that every river of which he caught a glimpse on his overland journey north to Gondokoro was a continuation of the stream that he had found flowing from the lake he had called Victoria, and that the stream was indeed the Nile. In September 1864, at the height of the controversy, the British Association for the Advancement of Science arranged a meeting in Bath, at which the two men were to present their views from the same platform. The confrontation never took place. Speke died tragically the day before the date set. Scrambling over a low stone wall while out hunting, he accidentally discharged a bullet into his chest at point-blank range and survived for only a brief fifteen minutes.108 214

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To return to Africa, at Godoroko, Speke had made it clear to the Bakers that much remained to be explored. He had not followed the course of the Nile, nor had the strength to travel to the lake called Luta Nzige, of which he had been told. He gave them the map of his route and they decided to continue south. It was one of the worst of African journeys. They suffered horribly. Conflicts among the local tribes delayed their progress. Malaria, lack of food and pouring rain sapped their strength. Treacherous swamps, the charges of wild beasts and disaffection among the porters threatened their lives. At one point, Mrs Baker lost consciousness and awoke in a raving delirium. Then Baker collapsed, but came to after some hours to find that his wife’s brain had cleared so that they were able to continue. Eventually, after crossing a deep valley and staggering up the opposite slope, Lake Nyanza lay beneath them. Baker had planned to mark the moment with a very English three cheers, but his voice choked on his emotion. He described the scene revealed to them: There, like a sea of quicksilver, lay far beneath the grand expanse of water—boundless sea horizon on the south and south-west, glittering in the noon-day sun; and on the west, at fifty or sixty miles distance, blue mountains rose from the bosom of the lake to the height of about 7,000 feet above its level.

Burton named the lake Albert, after the recently deceased Prince Consort. If it was not the source of the Nile, it was: the great basin of the Nile that received every drop of water even from the passing shower to the roaring mountain torrent that drained from Central Africa towards the north. This was the great reservoir of the Nile.

In 1865, the Royal Geographical Society sent David Livingstone on what turned out to be his last African journey, to sort out the competing claims of the various Central African lakes. This expedition made no direct contribution to solving the conundrum and it ended in Livingstone’s death.109 For Nile exploration, its importance was indirect. If Stanley had not gone in search of Livingstone, he would certainly not have made his second expedition to Africa. Stanley returned to Africa in 1874 and by the middle of 1875 he had made his way around the perimeter of Lake Victoria-Nyanza, confirming that it was one lake, fed by the Kagera river and flowing out at the Ripon Falls. The great questions were now solved, though where the Nile began seemed a matter of judgment rather than fact. The Ripon Falls had a strong claim, but a current from the Kagera could be traced across the lake. A German explorer, not an Anglophone, may have had the final word. In 1937, Dr Burkhart Waldecker110 placed a monument in the shape of a pyramid above a spring in Burundi, four degrees south of the Equator. The spring, known by the local Tutsi as Kasumo, the cascade, feeds the Luvironzo river. The monument bears a bronze plaque with Latin inscription: Caput Nili 215

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Chapter 5.3 The Strong Brown God—The Niger I do not know much about gods, but I think that the river Is a strong brown god—sullen, untamed and intractable … T.S. Eliot111 The river of rivers, n’ger-n-gereo.112

The Niger is a maverick river. From source to mouth it follows a bizarre course, behaving quite differently from other great rivers of the world. It rises not far inland from the underbelly of the West African coast and then describes an enormous U, over four thousand kilometers long, with the bend of the U traversing the southern reaches of the Sahara desert. It finally spills into the ocean at the Gulf of Benin, almost two and a half thousand kilometers east of its point of departure. There is a geological explanation for this strange contour. In days gone by, there were two rivers, not one. The Oliba, as it is known to the local people, flowed north from its present source and emptied into a salt lake, past Timbuktu. The Quorra rose in the Saharan mountains and flowed south. The Sahara was fertile and well-watered and, judging by archeological evidence, a region of human settlement from neolithic times. A drastic and permanent change in climate, which occurred at some time between 4000 and 400BCE, turned the Sahara to desert and led the rivers to change their courses, until one was captured by the other: The Niger bend is the elbow of capture, where the retrenched waters of the south-bound Quorra absorbed the deviated channel of the north-bound Oliba. From this curious geological graft of two amputated rivers the Niger was born.113 Although the odd conduct of the river confused and confounded geographers and explorers until well into the 19th century, something was already known of it in antiquity. The Greeks knew of its existence as early as the C5BCE. Herodotus, though he did not give it a name, described it as a swift and violent river, flowing from the West to the rising sun, populated by hideous and terrible serpents called crocodiles. The Romans never penetrated into black Africa and what they knew of the river was gleaned from travelers’ tales. Pliny the Elder (23–79CE), whose encyclopedic Natural History summed up the knowledge of his day, believed the river to be of the same nature as the Nile, with papyrus and reeds growing along its banks. Claudius Ptolemy, (87–150CE), the famed Alexandrian astronomer and geographer, came no closer to the truth. Though he lived in the greatest trading city of his day, and was able to learn much from the first-hand accounts of traders and merchants, his map of the region showed the Niger flowing west into the Atlantic Ocean, near the 216

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Canary Islands. Al-Idrisi, writing in the 12th century, called the West African river, the Nile of the Negroes and claimed that the river shared the headwaters of Nile. He too believed that the river flowed west to the Atlantic. Leo the African, who published his History and Description of Africa and the Notable Things Contained Therein in 1526, confirmed this view, making an error quite remarkable for a man, who said he had navigated the river for several hundred miles and who described much of sub-Saharan Africa with impressive accuracy. Occasionally travelers, like the Arab, Ibn Batuta, in the 14th century, described the Niger flowing east rather than west, but their evidence weighed little against authorities of greater reputation. The 15th century Genovese merchant, Antonio Malfante, who reached Timbuktu in 1447, saw the eastward flow with his own eyes but extrapolated too far. He described the great river he saw at the gates of the city as crossing Egypt until it reached Cairo. After the Moslems were driven from Spain in 1492, the route across the Sahara to Black Africa was closed to Christians. European adventurers turned to the sea and limited their activities in West Africa to a narrow strip of coast, sufficient to serve the profitable trade which developed in gold and slaves. Only late in the 18th century did the mysteries of the geography of West Africa and, in particular, of the course of the Niger river, so pique the curiosity of an unlikely and dilettantish group of upper-class Englishmen as to lead them to action. On Saturday, 9th June, 1788, nine of the twelve members of a dining club, drawn from the aristocracy and landed gentry, passed the following resolution at their London meeting place, St Albans Tavern: That, as no species of information is more ardently desired, or more generally useful, than that which improves the science of Geography; and the vast continent of Africa, notwithstanding the efforts of the Ancients, and the wishes of the Moderns, is still in a great measure unexplored, the Members of this Club do form themselves into an Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Inland Parts of that Quarter of the world.

Tropical Africa did not easily surrender its secrets to white intruders. Its size was enormous. Its coast was without good harbors or navigable rivers cutting into the interior. The culture of the local inhabitants was an enigma and hostility fed on misunderstanding. Europeans had no immunity to the killing diseases of the region; nor did they have any medical expertise relevant to the treatment of malaria, yellow fever, bilharzia or sleeping sickness. On one expedition after another, the explorers suffered the ravages of climate, debilitating illness, theft of their possessions and humiliation at the hands of local chiefs. Over thirty Niger explorers and innumerable members of their entourages lost their lives before the conundrum of the river’s course was finally solved, fifty years after the first expedition sent out under the auspices of the Africa Society in 1788.

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The first of the explorers was the American-born John Ledyard. He was unlettered and quite ignorant of Arabic, the lingua franca of the region, but he had some experience of venturing into the unknown, for he had sailed with Captain Cook on his last voyage. Instructed to traverse the continent from east to west, he got no further than Cairo. There he died of a bilious complaint, or possibly of the powerful acid of vitriol with which he treated his ailment. Simon Lucas also set off in 1788, intending to travel south across the Libyan desert. He had more experience of the region than Ledyard, for in his youth he had been captured by pirates and had spent three years as a slave at the Moroccan court. However he was overly cautious for his task and, when warned of danger from warring tribes along his route, returned to England without venturing inland from the coast. Daniel Houghton, an Irishman, was next. He was a retired Army major, who had been posted for many years on the island of Gorra, off the coast of Senegal. He was familiar with the local languages and on friendly terms with some of the chiefs of the region. He was instructed to make his way inland along the Gambia river and to continue on, collecting information about: the rise, the course and the termination of the Niger, as well of the various nations that inhabit its borders.

He was to visit Timbuctu and then return by caravan across the desert. Houghton’s instructions reflected the optimism and ignorance of the hardships of travel in Africa of his principals. He did manage to penetrate further inland than his predecessors and to send back valuable information about the interior. However, in February, 1796, on reaching Simbing, luck deserted him. He was robbed by Moorish merchants and abandoned to his fate. He died without seeing the river, 250 kilometres away. The greatest of the Niger explorers was Mungo Park, a Scotsman, who qualified as a doctor in 1791, when only twenty years old. He was employed by the Africa Society, with instructions identical to those given to Houghton. He started out from England in May, 1795. He suffered all the now familiar agonies of the African explorer, but he also encountered kindness and hospitality, which kept him alive and helped him to reach the banks of the Niger, at Segou, only ten months after setting out. Of the moment, he wrote: I saw with infinite pleasure the great object of my mission—the long-sought-for, majestic Niger, glittering to the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly to the eastward. I hastened to the brink, and having drunk of the water, I lifted up my fervent thanks in prayer to the Great Ruler of all things, for having thus far crowned my endeavors with success.

From Segou, Park struggled along the river bank, on horseback until his mount collapsed under him, and then on foot. Finally, near starvation, penniless and in rags, he turned back. He made his way to the coast in the 218

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company of a slave-dealer and his thirty-five slaves, roped to one another like animals. By Christmas of 1797, he was back in England. In 1799 he published his Travels in the Interior of Africa, a matter-of-fact account of his amazing journey. It became an instant best-seller, with the first edition of fifteen hundred copies sold out within a week of publication. Since then it has remained almost continually in print. Back home, his health permanently impaired and plagued by recurring nightmares of capture by the Moors, Park married, had three children and seemed to settle down to the humdrum life of a general practitioner in Scotland. Yet in 1805 he was once again in Africa, this time on the first African expedition sponsored by the British Government. This was an abortive venture. It ended in his tragic death on the river in the vicinity of Bussa, where he was ambushed and killed by local tribesmen in circumstances never completely clarified. Exploration continued and as did speculation and clashes of opinion about the Niger, in learned geographical journals and in letters to the newspapers. The controversy was only laid to rest in 1830, when Richard Lander finally reached the mouth of the river. Lander was a Cornishman, the unlettered son of a publican and grandson of a professional wrestler. From his early youth he worked as a manservant, first in the West Indies and later in South Africa. At twenty-one he accompanied Commander Hugh Clapperton, as his personal servant, on an expedition to persuade Sultan Bello of Sokoto to embrace trade in merchandise instead of in slaves and: to trace the course of the river which is known with certainty to flow past Kabara, or the port of Timbuktoo, and which has been known in modern times by the name of Niger.

Neither mission was accomplished. Clapperton succumbed to dysentry. Lander, surviving malaria, near drowning and the aggression of hostile tribesmen, succeeding in making his way cross-country back to the coast, at Badagri. This part of his journey was somewhat eased by the ministrations of a young slave girl, presented to him as a wife, by an Emir, grateful for cures for barrenness and other ailments—in fact scraps of paper inscribed with English ballads. In 1828 he was back in England. In the face of all adversity, he preserved Clapperton’s journals and brought them home for publication. This was an act of almost filial devotion to a man who had treated him with respect and affection, as a partner rather than a servant. After this experience, Lander, like Park, tried to settle down to the normal, everyday routine of life. He married and had a daughter. He obtained a job with the Excise and even petitioned for inside work to ease his suffering from malaria and rheumatism. Yet he could not resist the pull of Africa. He made an offer to the Colonial Office to lead an expedition to follow the river to its end. This was readily accepted but he had to be satisfied with remuneration which was miserly even by the standards of the time: 219

Writ in Water For the performance of this service you are furnished with all the articles which you have required for your personal convenience, during your journey, together with a sum of two hundred dollars in coin, and in case, upon your arrival to Badagri, you should find it absolutely necessary to provide yourself with a further supply of dollars, you will be at liberty to draw on this department any sum not exceeding three hundred dollars. During the ensuing years, the sum of one hundred pounds will be paid to your wife, in quarterly payments, and upon your return a gratuity of one hundred pounds will be paid to yourself.

The Colonial Office agreed that Lander’s younger brother, John, should accompany him, but did not offer to pay him. In February 1830, Lander, with brother John, was back in Badagri. He had only unpleasant memories of the place, where people practiced human sacrifice and he, himself, had nearly succumbed to a poisoned potion which he had been forced to drink. He left as soon as possible, heading north to join the river at Bussa, where Mungo Park had met his death. From there, on 2nd Agust, the expedition set off down the last, unexplored section of the river. It was not an easy journey. They had trouble in finding any river-worthy craft and had to switch craft a number of times. They were buffeted by rough weather and unnerved by the proximity of hippos and crocodiles. They, in turn, unnerved people living along the river, who were seeing white men for the first time. Towards the end of October they sighted a seagull and knew they were approaching their destination. A frightening ordeal still lay ahead. They were captured by Ibo river pirates and held for ransom. No Englishman could be found to advance the ransom but, by lying and subterfuge, they eventually made their escape. By February 1831 they were back in England. Lander had completed his mission. He was honored with the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. His achievement was summed up thus: The long sought-for termination of the Niger has now been discovered, and by a very humble but intelligent individual who, without having a theory to support or prepossession to gratify, set about the task in a straight forward manner, and accomplished, not without difficulty and danger, an undertaking in which all former travelers had failed.114

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Fig. 70:

Source: Émile and Adolphe Rouargue | Public Domain

19th Century Illustration of the River

With the length of the great river mapped, and traders, missionaries and representatives of colonial government on the brink of replacing explorers, this is an opportune moment to leave the white presence along the Niger and to look at the river from the viewpoint of people who did not have to discover the river, because they had always known it. To them, though at times capricious, it is essentially benevolent, the mainspring of their existence. Sanche de Gramont who, in 1972, with his wife, followed the course of the river, by car, boat, dugout, train, truck and camel, described it as a moving path into the heart of the continent, a long liquid magic wand that fertilized the soil it touched. He conjured up a picture of cattle grazing on its green banks and fish and game birds providing food for its riparians. He stressed its essential benevolence and the protection it offered against hunger, thirst and isolation.115 About fifty million people live along the banks of the Niger. The ancestry of some can be traced back to neolithic times. Others are recent arrivals. They follow different traditions and earn their livings in all sorts of ways. De Gramont tells of many of them.

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Fig. 71:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Jibrin Ebenezer/CC BY-SA 4.0

Fishermen on the River

The Bozos, living in the bend of the river, are among its most ancient inhabitants. They are said to have migrated from Egypt five thousand years ago and to have preserved language and traditions which date back to the days before the fall of Memphis. Watching a religious ceremony, with the dancers’ heads covered with animal masks, is like watching living hieroglyphics. The Bozos are fishermen and have a healthy disdain for those who earn their livelihood by other means. They say that if you see a Bozo bent over, you should know that he is throwing up, not working the land. The people of Denne, in the interior delta of the river, are also fishermen. They come naturally to the occupation for, when the river is high., their city becomes an island, accessible only by boat. Though their clay houses have decorations which are reminiscent of ancient Egypt, they are Moslems and the most impressive building of the town is a mosque. Not all the people of this stretch of the river are fishermen. The Peulh are herdsmen, who regard the cow as one of the greatest of God’s creations. Their light skin color and their aquiline noses are evidence of their original abode, in some distant past, in the Red Sea region. Strictly observant Moslems, they do not share the enthusiasm of most of their neighbors for the arts of song and dance and sculpture. Timbuktu grew up on the river, at the point that it turned eastward across the desert. It began as a seasonal camp for the nomadic Tuaregs and grew prosperous on the trade across the desert, in gold and slaves and other commodities. It was at its peak from 14th to 16th century, a great 222

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city of learning as well as trade, home to one of the oldest universities in the world. Today Timbuktu is stranded in the desert, miles from the river, which has changed its course. It is a town of baked clay houses, with a devoutly Moslem population of some thousands, with little to recommend it to the outsider. Summer temperatures in the shade, are in the forties. Sand penetrates everywhere. Even the bread is made crunchy by it. Yet the mystery that clings to its name attracts a trickle of tourists, many of the new breed of back-packers and ecology-minded travelers.116 Further downstream the river demarcates the border between Dahomey and Nigeria. Here hippos and alligators live in the river and monkeys abound in the surrounding rainforest. As it enter its great delta, second in extent only to that of the Ganges, and then flows into the sea, the river is broad and easily navigable. Here Europeans met and traded with Africans, in slaves and later in palm oil, without realizing that this was the sought-after mouth of the Niger river. The trade of the delta is still dominated by oil, now of the mineral, not the vegetable, variety.

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Part 6 TRANSPORT, COMMUNICATION AND POWER

Chapter 6.1 Canals Overview There are three things that make a nation great and prosperous: a fertile soil; busy workshops; and an easy conveyance of men and commodities from one place to another. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) Bridges and canals claim attention as fountains from which flows wealth to the public weal; they give subsistence to the industrial indigent, they facilitate and encourage commerce, cause the culture of the ground, the establishment of towns, manufactures, villages, etc., increase population by multiplying the conveniences of human life, and diffuse universal blessings on every side. R. Dodd (1800)

Rivers make their way from source to sea following the dictates of geology and topography and climate. People settle their banks to take advantage of the bounty they have to offer—food and water and transport. Then, in the manner of the human species, they begin to shape nature to their needs, at first marginally and then more and more audaciously. They dig ditches to bring water to their crops and other ditches to drain the excess water from their fields. They build barriers against floods. They clear debris and silt from riverbeds to ease the passage of their small craft. They link up meanders and straighten the courses of winding rivers to shorten their journeys. They go on to create waterways where none existed before. They persuade water to cross mountains, building locks so that boats can travel uphill and down. In short, they become canal builders and set in train processes which transform the landscape, change patterns of settlement and alter ways of life. They have done so at different times and in many places. This chapter takes a selective look at people and canals—in ancient China, in Europe shaking off post-Roman stagnation, in England of the Industrial Revolution and in the nascent United States of America.

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The First Grand Canal

Fig. 72:

Source: Daderot | Public Domain

A Section of a Contemporary Map of the Grand Canal

Five separate river systems cross the Chinese mainland, all flowing from the mountains in the west to the sea in the east. From north to south they are the Hai, the Hangho [the Yellow], the Huai, the Yangtze [Changjiang] and the Chientang117 [Qiantang]. No natural waterway connects the north of the country with the south and when the Chinese felt a need for such a connection they had to build it themselves. This they did, linking Beijing to Hangzhou, one thousand eight hundred kilometers to the south. Construction, with many stops and starts and changes of course, took about eighteen hundred years.[roughly from 506BCE to 1289CE]. This Grand Canal remains to this day the longest man-made waterway in the world. The building of the canal started from the middle. Military needs provided the impetus. By the 6th century BCE the small kingdoms of Wu and Chu, on the Yangtse River, and Lu and Yueh, to the north and south, were struggling with one another for hegemony of the Middle Kingdom, the great central plain of China. King Ho Lu of Wu had a fine fleet of war junks on the Yangtse River. To keep his southern neighbor in check, he needed his boats on Tai Hu, the big lake in the south of his kingdom. The natural link between river and lake was a shallow stream, navigable only by the smallest of craft; so he set his peasants to work to deepen and widen the creek and make possible the passage of large vessels. The new canal gave Ho Lu great freedom of maneuver. He moved his fleet south to subdue Yueh and then sent it back to the Yangtse to deal with the up-river kingdom of Chu. Fu Chai inherited his father’s throne and his imperial ambitions. To give his fleet access to the Huai river system to the north and to conquer the still independent kingdom of Lu, he set about building a further sixty kilometer canal. The construction of the canal was successfully completed but the naval battle it made possible ended in Fu Chai’s ignominious defeat and suicide. His naval strategy had been sound, but his concentration had wavered. His attention was diverted from war by the seductive attentions of a beautiful spy, smuggled into the palace by the king of Yueh. When she

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danced and the bells on the hem of her dress tinkled, he could think of nothing but her. In the next centuries the rulers of many kingdoms discovered that improved communications, bringing trade and prosperity, could be as useful in peace as in war. They built canals that linked the Yangtse and its tributaries to other river systems, but a thousand years passed before any significant extension was made to the Grand Canal itself. In 581 CE, Yang Chien established the Sui dynasty. He ascended the throne after a hundred years of civil disorder and found the canals of the Wu kings in a sad state of disrepair. One of his first Imperial acts was to have them deepened and widened and lined with stone. When he died suddenly in 604 CE, he was succeeded by his son, Yang Kuang, a ruthless man, rumored to have been impatient enough to speed up his inheritance of the throne by having his father poisoned. Yang built a new canal to the Wei River and canalized the river itself so that it could carry ships across the North China Plain as far as Tientsin. Five and a half million laborers were employed on the project. Many died during the six years of construction—some from exhaustion and disease, others beheaded for not working hard enough. The overwhelming stench of death was banished from the canal by planting willow trees along its length. The Emperor encouraged this with a present of a length of silk for each tree planted.

Fig. 73:

Source: Mayanne Feldmann

Boating on the Canal118

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While the peasants suffered under a heavy burden of taxation and forced labor, the Emperor became ever more extravagant. He toured his new canal with a fleet of fifty barges. His personal barge was a floating palace—sixty-five meters long, with four decks and every imaginable luxury. He built a park with an artificial lake of thirty-five square kilometers. There he tried to banish the seasons by having his servants fasten leaves and flowers of silk to the bare trees in the autumn. When the people could no longer stand the profligate behavior of Yang Kuang, they rose against him and drove him from the throne. The rebellion was led by General Li. He founded the Tang dynasty, which lasted for three hundred years. The canal system he inherited served him and his successors well in their efforts to hold the north and south together. It opened up avenues of trade and communication and contributed much to the prosperity of the people. Some might feel that the unwilling sacrifices forced on one generation by Yang Kuang were redeemed by the wellbeing of their descendants. In the assessment of a latter-day Chinese historian, even though he though he ruled without benevolence and shortened the lives of so many of his subjects he benefited posterity to ten thousand generations. One dynasty followed another, flowering and then decaying. In the 13th century, Kubla Khan, an invader from Mongolia, elbowed aside the withering Sung dynasty and established his hegemony first in the north of China and then in the south. To maintain his hold on the country, the new Emperor had to keep the population of the northern provinces fed with the rice he collected as tribute in the south. He could not do this without the Grand Canal but he found it badly neglected. The Sung dynasty, like all decaying regimes, had failed to maintain the waterways. The task of rehabilitating the canal system was a daunting one. Whole sections were in need of rerouting because the Yellow River had made a drastic change of course some years before (1194). Major extensions were also called for. Though Kubla Khan usually reserved top government posts for his fellow Mongols, he entrusted this job to Kuo Shou-ching, a Chinese hydrologist. He chose well and by 1289 the whole of the Grand Canal, from Khanbalik to Hangchow, was in use. A horseman could ride its length on the paved road, which skirted it, in forty days.

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Fig. 74:

Source: Public Domain

Kublai Khan

Marco Polo, who arrived at the court of the Khan in 1275 and stayed for another seventeen years, observed the unfolding scene as each section was brought back into operation. He was very impressed by the great inland trade. He noted the enormous quantity of goods—much on its way to or from foreign lands—being moved along the canal and other inland waterways, serving a huge, rich, peaceful empire, full of wealth and commerce and learned men and beautiful things. Over the centuries, the canal continued to have its ups and downs, following the rhythm of political development and decay. The constant vigilance and continuous maintenance, which were needed to keep it in good working order, were always early victims of war or civil unrest. Some centuries after Marco Polo, another shrewd observer and careful note taker arrived at the Chinese court from the West. Lord Macartney came to China in 1793. He was the first envoy from the court of George III to one of the greatest of the Ching emperors, Chien Lung. His mission to open up trade with China was a total failure, but he traveled the Grand Canal from north to south and wrote of all he saw. He was particularly interested in the canal system itself as England, at the time, was in the midst of a great canal-building boom. He described a scene that Marco Polo would have had no trouble in recognizing—Imperial barges carrying great quantities of rice from south to north; private junks and sampans transporting other goods and passengers as well. He saw boats, moving under sail and making about three kilometers an hour when there was sufficient wind, and being dragged by teams of men on the tow-path when the wind dropped. 231

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Macartney was deeply impressed by the engineering skills of the Chinese, who had found solutions to the difficult problems posed by a terrain with a marked gradient both from west to east and from north to south. Pound locks, water gates and weirs were all Chinese inventions. He was observant of technical details and commented on the dams and sluice gates which regulated the flow of water in and out of the canal. The Grand Canal was at its peak during the reign of Chien Lung. Decline set in after his death. The rulers who followed him were weak and incompetent. Inefficiency and corruption spread through the government and tax monies were diverted from canal maintenance to the pockets of officials. The grain trade was taken over by private merchants, who began to carry rice in large sea-going vessels rather than by canal. In the 1850s, after two centuries of stability, the Yellow River once again changed course, spreading havoc, flooding farmlands and filling the canals and rivers with silt. Then, towards the end of the century, the railways, built by foreigners, began to drive whole sections of the canal out of business. In 1902 the Emperor dismissed all the officials responsible for water management and abandoned any pretence of keeping the canal open as a north-south transport route.

Fig. 75:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/猫猫的日记本/CC BY-SA 4.0

A View of the Grand Canal at Chongfu

The Chang dynasty finally collapsed in 1912 and the decades which followed were filled with conflict within and aggression from without. Political control was fragmented and it was only in 1949 that a single, unified government came to rule the whole country once again. The People’s Republic of China took steps to revitalize the canal system but, with competi232

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tion from more modern and rapid forms of transport, the Grand Canal will never again be quite as deserving of its name as in past centuries. China is today the most populous unitary state in the world, a huge player in determining the future of all humanity. Yet only hindsight makes this outcome seem inevitable. The forces at work on the great expanse of the Chinese plains were centrifugal as well as centripetal and the region could well have coalesced into separate states concentrated along the westeast axes of the individual river systems. Instead, in consequence of large and small decisions taken by many rulers over many centuries to serve their own martial, political and economic interests, a powerful link was forged to hold the whole region together as a single entity—a link of water, constructed by canal builders. Truly an amazing story.

Europe Awakens In Europe, as in China, canal building got its first impetus from the needs of the military. For Rome, the mobility of its legions was of paramount importance in controlling its far-flung Empire. Man-made waterways contributed to this mobility. Drusus, who commanded the western army of Emperor Augustus at the turn of the millennium, built a canal from the Rhine to the Zuider Zee, to move his troops more easily. And in England the Romans built the forty mile long Caerdike to help consolidate their hold over East Anglia. When the Empire they served decayed, the Roman canals lost their raison d’etre and along with it fell into decay. With the disappearance of the unifying influence of Roman rule, Europe disintegrated into a patchwork of small, isolated, autarchic settlements. Only in the 11th century did communication and trade begin to revive among communities which had been cut off from one another for centuries. As the continent stirred to life, manufacture and commerce came to need means of moving raw materials and finished goods over long distances. Interest in canals revived and by the high Middle Ages they had come into their own. Europe is a continent of many rivers. Often they rise close to one another in the same mountain massif, then radiate across the land in different directions. Most are navigable, at least along some stretches. Such topography did not lend itself to the construction of a European Grand Canal. There was great scope for shorter canals, linking rivers to one another and increasing the distances over which traffic could be moved by water, without the cost and inconvenience of overland portage. Canals were built to solve local and regional problems of transport, to expedite the movement of goods. Military considerations were never absent, but from medieval times on, the main purpose of canal building was economic. Over the centuries, a web of natural and artificial waterways came to cover the continent. The Dutch and the Italians led the way in advancing the technology. Flash locks were widely used in Holland by the end of the 11th century and in Italy a century later. In the 14th century the Dutch used the pound 233

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lock for the first time, at Vreeswijk, on the river Lek. Though such locks had long been used by the Chinese,119 this was apparently an independent invention. It was a significant advance, enabling canals to be built across quite varied terrain. During the Renaissance period Dutch and Italian engineers continued to lead the field. When, in 1516 the French king, Francois I, wished to link the Loire to the Rhone, through its major tributary, the Saόne, he turned to Leonardo da Vinci. Nothing was done at the time, probably for lack of funds. The plan came to fruition only in 1794, when the Canal du Centre was built, integrating the Seine and the Rhone in a single inland waterway system. In the interval, during the 17th century, France was busy with the construction of some other important canals. Most striking among them was the Canal Languedoc, afterwards known as the Canal du Midi, built in the reign of Louis XIV. It took fifteen years to build (1666–1681) and, on completion, connected the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. It was a complicated feat of engineering. Two and forty kilometers long twenty five meters wide, it needed many locks and three major aqueducts to overcome the undulations of the terrain.

Fig. 76:

Canal du Midi Crossing the River Orb

Source: Vpe | Public Domain

Some of the greatest of European rulers were canal-minded. There was Charlemagne (742–814CE), the first to bear the title of Holy Roman Emperor. He ruled from the North Sea to the Mediterranean. He was an innovator and an enthusiastic proponent of the development of trade, who dreamed of joining two of Europe’s greatest rivers by canal. This was so far 234

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beyond the technology of his day that it had to wait a millennium before it became reality. In 1828, King Ludwig of Bavaria initiated the project and by 1846 a twenty-nine kilometer canal was in place, joining Bamburg on the Main to Dietford on the Danube. For a short while, the canal was a great success. It was soon carrying nearly two hundred thousand tons of goods a year, but alas, if Charlemagne had been too early, Ludwig was too late. Prosperity lasted only a few brief years before business was undermined by the inroads of the railways. Peter the Great (1672–1725), Czar of Russia, was another great reformer and canal enthusiast. He was set on modernizing his kingdom. He reorganized the army and navy, established hundreds of factories and built a number of canals. He dreamed of creating a mercantile link between St. Petersburg and Persia, by building a canal from the city, which he had made his capital, to the Caspian Sea. It was left to his successors to carry out the project. To this day canals remain important in Europe’s transport system but, as elsewhere, they have not remained unchallenged. The trend in the volume of water-borne freight in most countries is quite sharply downward. In France, by the 1990s, it had fallen to less than seventy million tons a year, down from over a hundred million in the 1960s. One reason for this fall is the phasing out of coal as the primary industrial fuel. Another is the change in the nature of economic activity—with heavy industry falling behind and high technology and service and information industries coming to the fore. The choice sites for new factories, not needing bulky raw materials nor manufacturing bulky goods, are those with easy access to motorways, not to canals. Those major canals which are plied by large boats are holding their own. Smaller canals are falling into disuse and being clogged up by silt and debris. Only those that have been adapted to a new reality and converted to serve the needs of tour boats, pleasure craft and floating restaurants, still prosper.

Canals and Industry Transform England The Middle Ages and After The seven decades from 1760 to 1830 are described in the textbooks of English economic history as the Industrial Revolution. In textbooks of the history of transport they are described as the Canal Age. These are two faces of the same coin. No industrial transformation could have occurred at that time and place without the canals, but there would have been no acceleration in canal building had it not been for the pressures exerted by an impatient new generation of industrialists, chafing at the poor facilities for getting their raw materials and finished products moving. The build-up to the frenetic activity of those few decades was gradual, stretching over centuries. Early medieval England was much like the rest of Europe, a country of scattered, isolated villages, each supplying almost all its own needs and trading for the rest at local fairs and markets. These villages had little contact with one another and even less with the world 235

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beyond. Roads were almost impassable, hardly more than rutted paths. Pack animals struggled along them, moving small loads over short distances with disaster awaiting any attempt to transport anything fragile or breakable. Whatever reaches of streams were navigable were used mostly for carrying the stone for the important buildings of the day—monasteries, churches and castles. Coastal shipping was of limited usefulness as goods still had to be moved inland on river craft or on the backs of pack animals. As the pace of economic activity slowly picked up, sporadic efforts were made to improve the inland waterways. The history of the Fossdyke Canal is representative. This was the oldest canal in England, built by the Romans and probably intended originally for drainage rather than navigation. In 1121, Henry I had it deepened and widened to allow boats coming up the River Witham to Lincoln to continue on to Trent. It was not well maintained and in time became almost impassable. Eventually, in 1671, in the reign of Charles II, an Act of Parliament was passed to remedy the situation. Part of the preamble reads: Whereas there hath been for some hundreds of yeares a good navigacion … and thereby a great trade … which offered an honest employment and livelyhood to great numbers of people. But at present the said navigacion is much obstructed and in great decay by reason that the rivers or auntiest channells of Witham and Fosdyke, which run betwixt Boston and Trent are much silted and landed up and thereby not passable by boats and lyters as formerly, to the great decay of the trade and intercourse of the said citty and all market and other towns neare any of the said rivers, which hath producet in them much poverty and depopulation.

The Act empowered the Mayor and Corporation of the City of Lincoln to improve the navigation on the Witham and the Fossdyke and to levy tolls to provide the necessary finance. Legislation did not guarantee action, and while something was done about the Fossdyke, the Witham had to wait for a century and another Act of Parliament before its turn came. During the 16th and 17th centuries processes were afoot which would eventually transform English society beyond recognition. Land enclosures forced many peasants out of agriculture and into manufacture, particularly textiles. At first they worked in their own homes. Lack of adequate transport, for raw materials and finished goods alike, held up the change from domestic workshop to factory. The demand for better waterways was not easily met. By comparison with mainland Europe, England was very backward in civil engineering. During the Middle Ages a high level of skill had developed in monastic communities, which had carried out extensive reclamation works but this was lost with the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. The period, which followed, from the reign of Elizabeth I, was marked by wars with France and financial instability; and a climate of unrest and religious persecution, which culminated in the civil war which led to the Commonwealth. Conditions were not conducive to investment. The Restoration brought Acts in the 1660’s for making divers rivers navigable, but experience was lacking and many of the works undertaken proved disastrous because of bad design or faulty execution. Real progress in the improvement of inland navigation had to wait for the middle of the 18th century. 236

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Dawn of the Canal Age Francis Egerton, born in 1736, third Duke of Bridgewater, was a most unlikely man to usher in a new age. He was one of five brothers, all of sickly disposition, the single survivor into adulthood. He was twelve when the title passed to him. At seventeen, as was customary for young men of his class, he was sent on a Grand Tour of Europe. The relics of past civilizations left him so unmoved that the cases of souvenirs—statues and paintings and sketches—which came back with him from the tour, were not even opened until after his death. Only the Languedoc Canal seems to have stirred his interest.

Fig. 77:

Source: Craig | E. Scriven | Public Domain

Francis Egerton, 3rd Earl of Bridgewater

Back in London, he took his place in Society, but only briefly. A disastrous love affair and a bitter quarrel with the beautiful but flighty Duchess of Hamilton drove him back to his estates. The consequences of this affair were dramatic: He is said never to have spoken to another woman in the language of gallantry. A Roman Catholic might have built a monastery, tenanted a cell, and died a saint. The Duke, at the age of twenty-two, betook himself to his Lancashire estates, made Brindley [his surveyor and engineer] his confessor, and died a benefactor to commerce, manufacture, and mankind.120

The young Duke returned to his estates to find his coal mines at Worsley in trouble. His competitors were enjoying the advantages of improved navigation on the river Sankey. With the lower prices they could offer, they were attracting customers away from his land-locked collieries, leaving him badly in need of new markets. He saw his best prospect in supplying coal to the fast-growing manufacturing districts around Manchester. To this end he decided to build a cross-country canal from the colliery to Salford, 237

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just outside Manchester. This canal was to be independent of any existing waterway. Though such a project had never been attempted in England, he remembered the Languedoc and knew it was possible. Not allowing his ignorance of the technicalities or of the costs to dampen his enthusiasm, he sent his agent, John Gilbert, to the House of Commons, with a plan for a canal from Worsley Mill to Salford: sufficient for the Navigation of Boats and Vessels of considerable Burthens, whereby the Carriage of Goods will be greatly facilitated and become less expensive.121

Parliament passed the necessary Act in March 1759. In the summer of the same year, with Parliamentary approval in hand, he employed, as his engineer, one James Brindley, a barely literate millwright of tremendous practical talent and ingenuity, already known in the region for some useful inventions. A fruitful partnership was set in motion. Each of the partners staked his all—the Duke his fortune and the millwright his reputation. Two further Acts of Parliament in the following years amended and extended the original plan so that the canal could reach Manchester and link up with the Mersey River at Runcorn.

Fig. 78:

Source: Public Domain

James Brindley

Bringing the project to a successful conclusion was no mean task. Trading groups like the Mersey and Irwell Company, which felt their interests threatened, did their best to sabotage the plan. Sophisticates ridiculed the whole idea and scoffed at Brindley’s three-arched aqueduct over the Irwell, mocking it as a castle in the air. Though the Duke was a rich man, spiraling costs stretched his means to the limit and beyond. He mortgaged his 238

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estates and then borrowed from whomsoever he could. At one point the situation became so desperate that he had to hide in a hayloft to escape the local parson whose loan he could not repay. In spite of the odds, the two men persevered and in March 1776 the Bridgewater Canal was finally completed and became an immediate success. The Duke’s mines were no longer landlocked and were able to supply Manchester with coal at competitive prices. His finances were soon restored. The story does not end here. Only four years after the opening of the canal, Arthur Young,122 on his famous tour of the north of England described its far-reaching impact on the region it served. It became a major route for moving goods between Liverpool and Manchester. Canal maintenance created a demand for stone masons, who plied their trade in the immediate vicinity. The need for sand and lime and stone led to the opening of new quarries, which were linked to the main artery by the cutting of auxiliary canals. Timber yards opened to supply the wood needed for the canal and then expanded their activities into boatbuilding. Corn mills were set up along the canal to take advantage of easy access to water power and transport facilities. One activity stimulated another. Employment grew. New uses were found for waste products. The Duke, who was primarily a farmer, mixed the mud dredged from his canal with dung, to produce fertilizer for his fields. He converted useless bog land into productive pasture by using a mixture of manure and stone chippings from his mines as landfill. The public’s attitude to the canal changed from ridicule to wonderment. One anonymous observer123 described it thus: Tis not long since I viewed the artificial curiosities of London, and now have seen the natural wonders of the Peak; but none of them have given me so much pleasure as I now receive in surveying the Duke of Bridgewater’s navigation in this county. His projector, the ingenious Mr Brindley, has indeed made such improvements in this way, as are truly astonishing. At Barton Bridge he has erected a navigable canal in the air; for it is as high as the tops of the trees. While I was surveying it with a mixture of wonder and delight, four barges passed me in the space of about three minutes, two of them being chained together and dragged by two horses, who went on the terras of the canal, whereon, I must own, I durst hardly venture to walk, as I almost trembled to behold the large river Irwell underneath me, across which this navigation is carried by a bridge, which contains upon it a canal of water, with barges in it, drawn by horses, which walk upon the battlements of this extraordinary bridge.

The canal became a great tourist attraction, not to be missed by anyone traveling in the north of England. Bridgewater cashed in on the interest and had two boats, with room for two hundred passengers, plying a brisk trade from Manchester to Warrington. The Captains’ wives were kept busy dispensing drinks from the coffee room. The Bridgewater Canal was the catalyst that triggered the great boom in canal building. The canals covered Britain with an intricate network of waterways and helped transform the Midlands and the north of England from quiet backwaters of the prosperous South into regions leading the world in industry. 239

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The Transformation Brindley conceived the bold plan of building a great silver cross, over two hundred and sixty miles of canals, which would integrate the four major river basins of England’s industrial heartland—the Trent, the Thames, the Severn and the Mersey—in a single network of inland waterways. Then one day in 1772 he caught a chill while out surveying. Sadly this turned out to be fatal and it was left to others to realize his dream. The Trent and Mersey Canal—the Grand Trunk, as Brindley urged the promoters to call it—formed the arms of the cross. It was completed in 1777, after eleven years of construction. With its seventy-six locks, five tunnels and an aqueduct over the Mersey, it was a complex undertaking for its day. The building of the rest of the system took longer due to delays from periodical disagreements and financial crises, but, by 1790, coal from Coventry was making its way by water to the Thames. Many feeder canals and branch lines augmented the usefulness of the major canals. Three more canals were completed around the turn of the century. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the Rochdale and the Huddersfield, cut across the Pennines further north and strengthened the link between Yorkshire and Lancashire. A less attractive side to the story is the exploitation of the canal-building mania to promote schemes whose only purpose was to part the gullible from their money. The financial collapse that came in 1792 was inevitable. What happened was vividly described in a pamphlet published in 1795: the passion of speculation spread like an epidemical disease … every man believing that he would gain thousands by his adventures. The shares that were at 50 premium today were expected to rise to 60 tomorrow and to a 100 in a week. Unfortunately for these dreams, the financial panic to be noticed presently caused a general collapse.

In the first decades of the 18th century England was still predominantly rural and agricultural. What industry there was clung to the coast, to enjoy the benefits of sea transport. Most of the population was concentrated in the south and east, in a region stretching from the basin of the Thames to the basin of the Severn. By 1800 the picture had changed radically. Population had grown dramatically and moved north and west, away from the countryside, inland from the coast; into industrial cities such as Leeds, Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester. Innovations in the use of water were critical in this transformation. The availability of fast-flowing streams as a source of energy, was an important factor in selecting factory sites in the early stages of industrialization. However the remoteness of these sites created problems for the transport of raw materials and finished goods alike and it was only the construction of canals that made it possible to exploit them to the full. Canals led to the growth of bustling new ports and towns, and the stagnation and decay of other settlements, such as the old river ports. They made regional specialization possible and gave rise to characteristic industrial landscapes. In a few decades they converted England from a fragmented, coast-oriented state into a integrated, coal-oriented community. They changed the face of Britain.124 240

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America Follows Suit The great rivers of North America were the highways along which early European explorers penetrated beyond the coastal shell of the continent. Yet rapids and waterfalls made them impassable over long stretches. Explorers fantasized about the possibility of building artificial paths around these obstacles and also of linking rivers, one to another, to eliminate the need for overland portage. The Frenchman, Louis Joliet, who discovered the Mississippi River, dreamed of joining the Illinois River to Lake Michigan, to create a continuous waterway from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. According to his official chronicler, the Jesuit Father Pierre Dabon, he believed that this could be achieved with the cutting of a single canal from the lake of Illinois to the St Louis River,125 which empties into the Mississippi. A century after Joliet, Americans in their newly gained independence from colonial bondage, were not only dreaming about canals, but building them. The South led the way. The driving force behind their initiative came from none other than George Washington. In 1772 Washington obtained the authorization of the Virginia legislature to form a Potomac Navigation Company, for the purpose of making the Potomac River more navigable. The project came to nothing because of the outbreak of war with Great Britain and when the fighting, in which he played a distinguished role, was over, he wanted only to retire to his estates and, as he said: [to] move gently down the stream of life, until I sleep with my Fathers.

His battle fatigue did not last for long. He was too young and vigorous for retirement and he was soon back to his pre-war pursuits. In 1784 he wrote to Thomas Jefferson: Respecting the practicability of an easy and short communication between the Waters of the Ohio and the Potomac … I am satisfied that not a moment ought to be lost in recommencing the business.

He lobbied the Virginia and Maryland legislatures and in the next year, after the two states had reached a compromise on waterway rights, the Patowmack Company was granted a charter. The cooperation of other states with interests in the Ohio territory had to be won. In 1786 the representatives of all thirteen states met at Annapolis to discuss this and other inter-state problems. Though they didn’t resolve all their differences, they honed their skills of negotiation and compromise. In 1787 they gathered once again, in Philadelphia, and proceeded to draft the Constitution of the United States. From being President of a canal company, intent on solving the political problems blocking his planned waterway, George Washington went on to become President of the Constitutional Convention and then first President of the United States of America.

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Fig. 79:

A View of the Potomac River

Source: Skeeze | Pixabay

Two elements—self-interest and patriotic concern for the future of his country—combined in Washington’s preoccupation with improving the navigability of the Potomac. Over the years, through land grants from a grateful government and by purchases on his own behalf, he had come to own considerable tracts of land in the Ohio valley and he stood to benefit by improved transport. However his major worry was that the easy access of these peripheral lands beyond the Appalachian range, to territories under Spanish jurisdiction to the south and to Canada via the Great Lakes, in the north, would have dire political consequences. He warned: The Western Inhabitants composed in a great degree of Foreigners can have no predilection for us; and a commercial connection is the only tie we can have upon them. The flanks and rear of the United States are possessed by other powers, … and formidable ones too … The western settlers stand as it were upon a pivot; the touch of a feather would turn them any way.

In the first years of its activity, the Potowmack Company improved long stretches of the riverbed and built side routes around four points along the river, which could not be made navigable. At House Falls a short bypass, only 150 feet long, was built. At the Shenandoah and Seneca Falls the diversions were longer—each about a mile. At Little Falls the canal stretched for two miles and three locks made it possible to negotiate a drop of thirty-eight feet. The most complex part of the system was left to last. This was the canal, which skirted the Great Falls. It had to deal with a seventy seven-foot drop and this called for five locks. On its way the water from

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this canal was used to generate power for a gristmill, a sawmill and an ironworks. It was completed in 1802, after Washington’s death. All in all, the Potomac canal system was of modest physical proportions. Though it provided employment and sharply reduced outlays of time and money on freight to and from the Ohio valley, it made no profits for its shareholders and in 1830, after a brief four decades of operation, collapsed into bankruptcy. Yet without it the history of America might have been very different. Canal building was also going on in other parts of the South in the last decade of the 18th century. About thirty canal companies were busy in the field, most of them with simple river improvements, and none with projects, which breached the Alleghenies. Among the more ambitious projects was the James River Canal, which carried the pork, the grain and the whiskey of the farmers of the Virginia valley to market. There was also the appropriately named Dismal Swamp Canal, to which Washington pledged $500. It was plagued by problems of construction and many slave laborers lost their lives in the mosquito- and snake-ridden swamp but, after it was finally completely in 1828, it came to be an important link between North Carolina and the Virginia ports. From the last decade of the 18th century the northern states, like their southern neighbors, set about improving their waterways. The best-known of the early canals in the region was the Middlesex, which joined Boston harbor to the Merrimack River at Lowell. Henry Thoreau, in his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, written in 1839, described his travels on the canal with his brother: We entered the canal, which runs, or rather is conducted, six miles through the woods to the Merrimack, at Middlesex; and as we did not care to loiter at this part of our voyage, while one ran along the towpath drawing the boat by a cord, the other kept it offshore with a pole, so that we accomplished the entire distance in little more than an hour.

In their hurry, the brothers probably violated the speed limit, which was then set at four miles an hour. Thoreau thought this canal the oldest in the country but he was mistaken. The two-mile canal at Hadley Falls, on the Connecticut River was built even earlier than the Middlesex. It incorporated the first inclined plane in America—two hundred and thirty feet long, with a lift of fifty-three feet. These early projects shrank into insignificance in the shadow of the Erie Canal. This was not only the greatest canal but the greatest engineering project undertaken in the United States in the early years of the 19th century. The motive for the building of the Erie Canal was similar to that for improving the Potomac. Having crossed the Appalachians on foot or by mule train, the pioneers, who settled the western reaches of New York State, found it much easier to trade with Canada across the Great Lakes than to manhandle goods eastward across the mountain barrier. New York politicians and merchants feared that political bonds might follow the eco243

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nomic ones and searched for a way to bind the two parts of their state more firmly together. Even quite large boats could make their way along the Hudson River from New York as far upstate as Albany, but that was the end of the line for river transport. From there the way west led along the valley of the Mohawk River, which rose near the Great Lakes and cut eastward through the mountains, to join the Hudson just north of Albany. However the river itself was an obstacle course of waterfalls and treacherous stretches of rapids. A man-made canal might provide the sought after link, but this was a daunting project, involving the construction of hundreds of miles of artificial waterways and innumerable locks and bridges and aqueducts. Thomas Jefferson, who was a great canal buff, was enthusiastic about the idea, but he thought it would be a century before such a project might be practical and a little short of madness to think of it at this day. The believers were not deterred and they somehow convinced the New York legislature to provide the financing. The first sod was turned in 1817—on the 4th of July, a day chosen to rouse the patriotic feelings that would make the heavy tax burden acceptable. In 1829 the longest canal ever built as a single unit was completed. The three chief engineers of the project had acquired their skills on the job. Two were lawyers whose only qualifications were a little surveying and a visit overseas to inspect the English canals. The labor force was largely Irish, new immigrants fresh off the boats, attracted by the relatively high wages. The work was back-breaking and many sickened and died, particularly in the treacherous swampland of the Montezuma Marshes.

Fig. 80:

Source: engraved after a picture by W.H.Bartlett |Public Domain

View east of eastbound Lockport on the Erie Canal by W. H. Bartlett 1839 244

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The Erie Canal proved to be a great success. It became the nation’s busiest thoroughfare. Thousands of boats carrying people and goods plied its length. Freight rates fell sharply and travel time from Lake Erie to New York was reduced to a mere six days. Boom towns sprouted along the canal banks and Buffalo, at the end of the line, was transformed from a small village into a busy port. There were important spin-off effects. The experience gained at every level was not wasted. An experienced labor force had been created. Raw Irish navvies had acquired new and useful skills. Engineers who had served their apprenticeship on the Erie went on to work on other canals and on railroads, to build roads and bridges and dams and to lay down municipal water supply systems across the country. Many canals were built during the boom years which lasted into the middle of the century. As individual projects they were almost miniscule by comparison with the Erie, but together they made major contributions to the transport system and to the integration of the economy. In the second half of the 19th century the railroads superseded the waterways as the prime means of transportation and they in turn were superseded by road and air transport. Yet canals have not disappeared from the scene. Over twenty five thousand miles, dispersed through most of the mainland states, are still in operation at the beginning of the 21st century, holding their own in the competition with their rivals, particularly in transporting bulk cargoes like coal and minerals, and liquid petroleum. About 10% of all the freight carried between US cities is carried by canal. New canal systems are still being built. The Tennesse-Tombigee Waterway, only completed in 1985, is a good example of the continuing vitality of this form of transport. Built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, it is two hundred and thirty four miles long. It connects two major rivers in Tennessee and Alabama and links up with an extensive network of inland waterways to provide a short-cut from the states of the mid-west and south-east to the Gulf of Mexico.

Life on the Shallow Waterways Grand Openings The official opening of important canals has always been a cause for celebration, marked with great fanfare and ceremony. Here are some examples drawn from three continents. Early in the 7th century, when the great work of repairing, restoring and extending the Grand Canal which had been initiated by his father was finally completed, the Chinese Emperor Yan Chuang set out to tour the length of his new project. He headed a fleet of fifty barges in a magnificent junk of palatial proportions, shaped like a dragon, seventy meters long and four decks high, equipped with two audience halls and luxurious living quarters. After him came his Empress and her entourage in a vessel dis245

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tinguished by its phoenix-bird symbol. The junks that followed were as ostentatious as the distinguished folk who travelled in them—princes and diplomats, merchants and officials—could afford to make them. The retinue stretched for kilometers along the canal. The vessels were propelled by the wind blowing in their silken sails or, when the wind dropped, by the muscle power of troops of men clad in silk uniforms pulling them along with ropes. The banks were lined with spectators—a sprinkling of pretty girls and gamboling lambs, but mostly townspeople and peasants. They must have enjoyed the spectacle but, as the boats disappeared leaving behind only a faint trail of perfume, no doubt were quick to complain of the squandering of public money.126 About twelve hundred years later, the English celebrated the opening of a much more modest canal. The ceremony was described in some detail in an October, 1809 edition of The Times: On Monday last, the navigation of this Canal, from the Thames to the town of Croydon was opened. The proprietors … met at Sydenham and there embarked on one of the company’s barges, which was handsomely decorated with flags, &c. At the moment of this barge’s moving forward an excellent band played ‘God Save the King’, and a salute of 21 guns was fired. The proprietors’ barge then advanced, followed by a great many barges, loaded some of them with coals, others with stone, corn, &c, &c … When the proprietors barge approached the basin at Croydon, they saw it surrounded by many thousands of persons, assembled to greet, with thanks and applause, those by whose patriotic perseverance so important a work had been accomplished. As the Proprietors’ barge entered the basin] the band was playing ‘God Save the King’, the guns were firing, the bells of the churches were ringing; and this immense concourse of delighted persons were hailing by universal and hearty, and long continued shots, the dawn of their commerce and prosperity.

A piece of doggerel written in honor of the occasion gives a taste of the blend of patriotism and self-satisfaction which typified the prospering commercial and industrial middle classes that the Canal Age had done so much to create: Long down its fair stream may the rich vessel glide, And the Croydon Canal be of England the pride. And may it long flourish while commerce caressing, Adorns its gay banks with her wealth-bringing stores; To Croydon, and all round the country a blessing, May industry’s sons ever thrive on its shores!127

In October, 1825 the Erie Canal was opened in great style. Governor Clinton, on the Seneca Chief, led a procession of boats of all shapes and sizes along the length of the canal from Lake Erie to New York. At every town and village on the route the ladies and gentlemen, crowded onto these craft, joined the local citizenry in raucous celebrations, fuelled by a plentiful supply of alcohol. A trail of inebriated crew members lined the banks of the canal and replacements had to be found. On arriving at his destination, Clinton ceremoniously poured a barrel of Lake Erie water into the New York harbor and the canal was officially open. 246

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Source: William L. Stone, Cadwallader D. Colden, Philip Meeder, DeWitt Clinton | Public Domain

Fig. 81:

The Symbolic Marriage of the Erie Canal to the Hudson River

Life on the Water Through the Eyes of Some Intrepid Travelers When all the noise and excitement was over, life on even the most spectacular of canals settled into the routine of carrying goods and passengers along tightly constrained routes. Yet for many voyagers there was nothing routine about a journey by canal boat. Sometimes it even bordered on high adventure. Fortunately, some very literate travelers committed their impression to paper. The impressions left by the Grand Canal of China on Marco Polo at the end of the 13th century and on Lord Macartney five centuries later, have already been described, so here we will turn our attention further west, to the canals of England and America. The 17th century poet, John Taylor, celebrated his journey along England’s most ancient canal in verse:128 From hence we pass a ditch of weeds and mud, Which they doe (falsely) there call FORCEDIKE FLOOD: For I’ll be sworn, no flood I could find there, But dirt and filth, which scarce my Boate would beare. ‘Tis 8 miles long, and there our paines was such As all our travel did not seem so much, My men did wade and draw the Boates like Horses, And scarce could tug her on with all our forces: Moyl’d, toyl’d, myr’d, tyr’d, still la’ring, ever doing, Yet were we nine hours that 8 miles going. At last when the day was well-nigh spent We gat from FORCEDIKES floodlesse flood to TRENT.

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Taylor added a footnote to his poem: It (the Fossdyke) is a passage cut thorow the Land eight miles from LINCOLN into TRENT, but thorow either peoples poverty or negligence, it is growne up with weedes, and mudde, so that in Summer it is in many places dry.

Later travelers had more edifying experiences. In 1842 Charles Dickens published a book on his travels in the United States of America.129 His affectionate dedication expresses the spirit in which it was written: To Those Friends of Mine in America, who loving their country, can bear the truth, when it is told good humouredly, and in a kind spirit.

Dickens traversed the length of Pennsylvania’s Grand Canal. He recorded all that his sharp eye observed—his fellow travelers; the odd living arrangements on the canal boat; the newly settled countryside along the route; the inclined plane that took the travelers up and down the mountain, crossing the Alleghenies where there was no natural break in the mountain chain, in a marvel of engineering and illogic. His descriptions bring the milieu to pulsating life: On starting the day: The washing accommodations were primitive. There was a tin ladle chained to the deck, with which every gentleman who thought it necessary to cleanse himself (many were superior to this weakness) fished the dirty water out of the canal, and poured it into a tin basin, secured in like manner. There was also a jack-towel. And hanging up before a little looking-glass in the bar, in the immediate vicinity of the bread and cheese, were a public comb and brush.

On taking a stroll: [on] a very small deck, … being rendered still smaller by the luggage, which was heaped together in the middle under a tarpaulin covering; leaving on either side, a path so narrow, that it became a science to walk to and fro without tumbling overboard into the canal. It was somewhat embarrassing, at first, too, to have to duck nimbly every five minutes whenever a man at helm cried: Bridge! And sometimes, when the cry was: Low Bridge!, to lie down nearly flat.

On meals: At eight o’clock [in the morning] everybody sat down to the tea, coffee, bread, butter, salmon, shad, liver, steak, potatoes, pickles, ham, chops, black puddings and sausages … Some were fond of compounding this variety and having it all on their own plates at once … When everybody was done with everything, the fragments were cleared away: and one of the waiters, appearing anew in the character of a barber, shaved such of the company as desired to be shaved; … Dinner was breakfast again, without the tea and coffee; and supper and breakfast were identical.

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On accommodation for the night: I remained in the same vague state of mind [relative to the sleeping arrangements on board the boat] until ten o’clock or thereabouts, when, going below, I found suspended, on either side of the cabin, three long tiers of hanging bookshelves, designed apparently for volumes of the small octavo size. Looking with greater attention at these contrivances (wondering to find such literary preparations in such a place), I descried on each shelf a sort of microscopic sheet and blanket; then I began dimly to comprehend that the passengers were the library, and that they were to be arranged edgewise on these shelves till morning.

Fig. 82:

Source: Stav Feldmann

Sleeping Acommodation on a Canal Boat—Berths Suspended from the Ceiling

On life on the banks of the canal: There were new settlements and detached log-cabins and frame-houses, full of interest for a stranger from an old country: cabins with simple ovens, outside, made of clay; and lodgings fit for the pigs nearly as good as many for the human quarters; broken windows patched with worn-out hats, old clothes, old boards, fragments of blankets and paper; and home-made dressers standing in the open air without the door, whereon was ranged the household store, not hard to count, of earthen jars and pots.

On the cost of human settlement: The eye was pained to see the stumps of great trees thickly strewn in every field of wheat, and seldom to lose the eternal swamp and morass, with hundreds of rotten trees and twisted branches steeped in its unwholesome water. It was quite sad and oppressive to come upon great tracts where settlers had been burning down the trees, and where their wounded bodies lay about like those of murdered creatures, where here and there some charred and blackened giant reared aloft two withered arms, and seemed to call down curses on his foes.

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On an engineering wonder: On Sunday morning we arrived at the foot of the mountain, which is crossed by a railroad. There are ten inclined planes; five ascending and five descending; the carriages are dragged up the former and let down the latter, by means of stationary engines … Occasionally the rails are laid upon the extreme verge of a giddy precipice, and looking through the canal window, the traveler gazes sheer down, without a stone or scrap of fence between, into the mountain depths below.

On the end of one leg of the journey: On the Monday evening, furnaces fired and clanking hammers on the banks of the canal warned us that we approached the termination of this part of our journey. After going through another dreamy place—a long aqueduct across the Alleghany River … being a vast, low, wooden chamber full of water—we emerged upon that ugly confusion of backs of buildings, and crazy galleries and stairs, which always abuts on water, whether it be river, sea, canal or ditch: and were at Pittsburg.

Everyday Life on the Canals Many people earned their livings in and around the canals. The Erie Canal, at the peak of its activity, provided employment for about twenty five thousand souls, the majority not actually manning the boats. Large maintenance crews were needed to keep the canals in working order. They cleared debris and silt from the channels, repaired leaks and looked after the towpaths and embankments. Locks had to be attended twenty-four hours a day. Many lock tenders added to their income by supplying food and drink and other goods to boat crews and passengers. A typical boat crew was made up of the captain, a couple of steersmen, one or two drivers and a cook. However modest the boat, the captain was a personage of some importance, at least in his own eyes. Frederick Marryat, British naval captain turned novelist, wrote of the captain of the fifty-foot craft on which he traveled the Oswego Canal in 1837: The captain of her was, however in his own opinion, no small affair; he puffed and swelled until he looked larger than his boat. {After collecting the money due from the passengers, he] went on deck to walk just three feet and return again. After all, there is nothing like being a captain. The steersmen, fore and aft, kept the boat from hitting the sides of the canal or colliding with other boats. The drivers, often youngsters, walked the mules or horses that pulled the boats, along the towpath. They were commonly known as hoggees, for their cries of Haw and Gee to their animals. The cook, male or female, prepared meals in a tiny gallery and absorbed the insults of the rest of the crew.

On the barges of the European and English canals life was traditionally a family affair. Many bargees owned their own small craft and passed them from one generation to the next. Men and women worked side by side. Sun and wind, rain and snow weathered their features as they spent their time fighting the elements and the rust. It was a hard life, typically lived on board in cramped and primitively equipped quarters, with whole families sharing a single living room. Chil250

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dren were packed off to boarding school at the tender age of six to suffer at the hands of their landlubber classmates and few went beyond primary school. They tended to marry among themselves and to live their whole lives within the confines of the canal banks. Yet in spite of all the difficulties many took pride in their way of life ad expressed this in the time they devoted to keeping their barges attractively painted and decorated. Few traces remain anywhere of this lifestyle.

Fig. 83:

Source: Alexander P Kapp/All tied up/CC BY-SA 2.0

Painted barges on Lancashire Canal

Canal Songs To relieve the monotony of the humdrum chores which made up their working day—standing at the tiller, leading mules along the towpath—canal boat sailors drank and sang. As they usually worked alone, they most often sang solo. There was no equivalent to the shanties, the work-songs of deep-sea sailors. The tunes were taken from the popular songs of the day. Some lyrics reflected their everyday preoccupations. Mules and cooks were popular subjects. Others were adapted from the songs of ocean-going sailors. Sailing ditches in which a man could stand with his feet on the bottom and still breathe fresh air they sang, with self-deprecating humor, of danger and heroic feats. The best-known of all the American canal songs is The E-R-I-E Canal, gives the flavor of the genre.

251

Writ in Water We were forty miles from Albany Forget it I never shall. What a terrible storm we had one night On the E-R-I-E Canal. Chorus: O the E-R-I-E was rising, And the gin was getting low, And I scarcely think we’ll git a drink Till we get to Buffa-lo-o-o Till we get to Buffalo We were loaded down with barley, We were chock-up full of rye; And the captain he looked down at me With a goddurn wicked eye. Two days out of Syracuse The vessel struck a shoal, A we like to all been foundered On a chunk of Lackawanna coal We hollered to the captain On the towpath, treading dirt; He jumped on board and stopped the leak With his old red flannel shirt. The cook was a kind old soul, She wore a ragged dress; We heisted her upon a pole As a signal of distress. The winds begin to whistle And the waves begin to roll And we had to reef our royals On the raging Canawl. When we got to Syracuse, The off-mule he was dead, The nigh-mule he got blind staggers And we cracked him on the head.

The Irish song, The Good Ship Calabar, also gives a tongue-in-cheek depiction of the dangers of life on a canal boat: Then we all fell into the water, And we all let out a roar. There was an old farmer standing on the edge of the bank, And he threw me the end of his braces, And he pulled me into shore. No more I’ll be a sailor and go sail the raging main. The next time I go to Lisburn, I’ll take the bloody train.

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Overtaken The days of glory are over. Here for centuries, there for decades, from China to America, canals served their countries well, but there came a time when more efficient means of transport undermined their position. From the mid-19th century, railways began to make deep inroads into canal traffic. Some canals became mere feed-lines to railway depots. Others were left to silt up and choke with weeds. Only the most economic survived. Then came road transport to deal a further blow. And the death-knell was sounded with the post-industrial revolution, the switch from heavy industry and manufacturing to high technology. By contrast with the past, the new, high-tech industries normally needed to transport high-value, lowbulk loads. For them the choice locations were along the motorways, not the waterways. The canals, with the factories and warehouses that lined their banks, were left to rot. And yet, this is not quite the end of the story. No longer playing a central economic role, here and there canals are taking on a new life, meeting the growing demand for leisure-time activity. One can now dine romantically on a barge tied up alongside a towpath or take a leisurely, family holiday along routes once crowded with barges carrying the raw materials and finished goods of an earlier age.

Fig. 84:

Kennicot-Avon Canal 2004

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A Glance at the Engineering Weir: 1. A barrier or dam to restrain water, especially one placed across a river or canal in order to raise or divert water for driving a mill wheel. 2. A fence or enclosure of stakes made in a river … for taking or preserving fish. Lock: (on a canal or river): A portion of the channel cut off above and below by folding gates provided with sluices to let water out and in, and thus raise or lower boats from one level to another. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary Given a level stretch of uninhabited land, then canal building is simplicity itself; all the canal builder needs is enough men with shovels and barrows to dig a trench across this open plain and then make it watertight.130

Canal routes have always been selected to serve some human need to connect one place with another, certainly not for the convenience of the canal builders. Few stretches of canal were ever built in ideal conditions across level, uninhabited land, with a reliable source of water, soil firm enough not to collapse on excavation or run dry by percolation, and not so hard as to make digging with available tools too back-breaking a task. Inevitably the terrain selected was full of natural and man-made obstacles which challenged the ingenuity of engineers and led them to some remarkable technological advances. The major problems for canal engineers have always come from the ups and downs of the terrain. Hills were dealt with directly or indirectly. Sometimes circuitous routes were taken around them. More often they were tackled directly, by going up one side and down the other or even occasionally, by tunnelling through them. Valleys were circumvented or negotiated by the construction of raised aqueducts.

The Flash Lock Stretches of river not used for navigation were often blocked by weirs, which served to trap fish or build up water pressure to drive a mill. The flash lock was essentially such a dam or weir, with a section which could be moved to allow the dammed-up water to flow through it. The opening made it possible to draw boats upstream by means of winches. The flush or ‘flash’ of water, which gave the lock its name, carried the downstream traffic more or less safely over the shallows below the weir. It was a most unsatisfactory arrangement, a constant source of conflict between the mill and weir owners and the boatmen, who might find themselves delayed for days or weeks until they paid a handsome ransom for a flash.

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The Pound Lock The most common solution to the problem of moving boats uphill and down was and still is the pound lock. The principle is simple. The lock is simply a chamber closed at each end by a watertight gate, equipped with sluices, which can be opened and closed to regulate the water level. One gate is opened for the boat to enter the lock. It is then closed and the chamber is either filled or emptied until the water reaches the level in the stretch of canal ahead. The second gate is opened and the gate proceeds on its way. The first known pound lock was Chinese, built towards the end of the 10th century. Its invention is attributed to Chiao Wei-yo, an engineer working on the Grand Canal. After building two flash locks about two hundred metres apart, he realized that he had created an equalizing pound, whose level could be regulated by the opening and closing of the weir gates at each end. The pound lock became a standard feature of the Canal. The principle remained the same but the sophistication of its engineering grew over time. Kuo Shou-Ching, the Chinese hydrologist, who was Water Commissioner to the fabled Kubla Khan in the latter part of the 12th century, used a series of such locks to negotiate a drop of thirty meters along the central section of the Grand Canal.

Fig. 85:

A pound lock on the Kennicot Avon Canal 255

Source: Author

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The Europeans seem to have reinvented the device independently. It was in use in the Netherlands in the 14th century. They were used extensively along the greatest of Europe’s canals, the heavily locked one hundred and fifty mile Canal du Midi (the Languedoc), which linked the Atlantic to the Mediterranean. The pound lock came to Britain rather late, in the 17th century. The Americans, who built their first canals to ease the way west across the Appalachean range, used this type of lock from the beginning on. The great Erie Canal had eighty-three. A single lock was limited in the amount of lift it could provide. It was usually not more than six to eight feet. When something more was required, a number of locks were joined together to form a flight. Sometimes the flight was compressed into a staircase, with the top gate of one lock serving as the bottom gate of the next. The Bingley Five Rise on the Leeds and Liverpool Canal is an impressive example of this technique. Its five connected locks lift the canal almost sixty feet. The sophisticated technology of the 20th century has not generated a more efficient way than the pound lock of overcoming changes of elevation. Locks are built today on the very same principle as that of the first 10th century pound lock. The St Lawrence Waterway, the greatest of the late 20th century canals, makes it possible for sea-going vessels to travel 2,342 miles from the Atlantic coast to the city of Duluth on Lake Superior, while climbing six hundred feet through a series of locks.

The Inclined Plane The pound lock was not the only solution to the problem of getting boats to climb hills. The inclined plane was another. It too was invented by the Chinese and was in use by the mid-fourth century. In this early version, the boats were taken out of the water and dragged up or down an incline, using a system of cables and pulleys powered by oxen. Later the boats were not taken out of the water but floated into large wheeled containers, known as caissons, which were moved up and down railed tracks. Power was provided by water or steam. In some cases the caissons were paired so that they could act as counterweights to each other. To make it easier to negotiate the peaks, long boats were sometimes hinged in the middle. Only limited use was made of the inclined plane, which was never serious competition for the pound lock.

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Fig. 86:

Source: Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, NJ-29-25

Inclined Plane—Morris Canal, New Jersey

The Tunnel Another method of getting from one side of a hill to another was to tunnel directly through it. No evidence exists that the Chinese ever used this method, nor was it in widespread use in Europe. It was however popular with the English who came to canal building with considerable expertise gained in the mining industry.

Fig. 87:

Source: Stav Feldmann

Tunneler at Work 257

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The first tunnels were minimalistic in construction, without towpaths. Negotiating such tunnels required skill in the rather strange specializations of shafting and legging: Shafting was done by pushing a pole against the side of the tunnel and then walking the length of the boat, rather as in punting. Legging, or clogging, as it was known in the north of England, was an exhausting process by which the boatmen lay on their backs with their feet against the roof or the side of the canal and ‘walked’ the boat along.131 Passing through tunnels became somewhat easier when they came to be built with towpaths and horses could be used to drag the boats along.

Embankments and Aqueducts Wherever possible, engineers would avoid taking their canals to the bottom of valleys and then up again for this could not be done without expensive locks. Instead they built embankments and, where this was not possible because water flowed in the valleys, they constructed aqueducts. The technique had been known to the Romans. The one technical problem was the need to ensure that the conduit itself was strong enough to resist the tremendous water pressure.

Fig. 88:

Source: Gloverepp | Public Domain

Pont Canal de la Cesse

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Bridges Canals have to cross rivers without interrupting their flow and roads without halting traffic. They cannot be allowed to isolate one half of a town or village from another or to cut farmers off from their fields. So the building of bridges has always been an integral part of canal construction. These vary enormously—in size, in architecture and in the materials from which they are made. They range from light, low-strung wooden structures, which lift up or swing aside to allow boats passage, to massive structures to carry heavy rail and road traffic.

Source: © by Nigel Cox/CC BY-SA 2.0

Fig. 89:

Canal Bridges

Source: Mr Biz/Bridge 196, Oxford Canal/CC BY-SA 2.0

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Water Supply Water is a prime problem for canal builders. Assuring an adequate supply is not as simple as it may seem at first glance. For those canals which are diversions around obstructions—such as waterfalls or rapids—in a river’s course, or links between bodies of water, the main source of supply is obvious, though there is no guarantee that it will be reliable the year round. For canals not directly linked to such sources, water must come from elsewhere—from reservoirs or springs or streams in the vicinity. The Bridgewater canal, for instance, was supplied with groundwater pumped out of the Duke’s coalmines. Locks are very profligate in their use of water. Each time a craft passes through, headed up or down, a lock-full of water is discharged. A lock on the English Grand Junction Canal, for example, contains two hundred and fifty cubic metres of water, enough to keep an average urban family comfortably supplied for a year. Various techniques have been developed to economize on this water use. One of these is the side pond, which makes it possible to retain and reuse some of the water. The side pond is a chamber, usually brick-lined, built adjacent to the lock, half way between the upper and lower pounds of the canal. When a boat enters a full lock, half of the water is discharged into the side pond, while the rest is released in the ordinary way. In reverse, when a boat enters an empty lock, this is first half filled from the side pond before water is drawn from above. In this way it takes only half a lock-full of water to lock a boat through. The principle is sound but boatmen tend to avoid using side ponds when they can get away with it, for to them saving time is far more important than saving water. This brief look at the engineering of canals casts a little light on the ingenuity with which the challenges of building and operating canals were met, even with the simple tools of earlier times.

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Chapter 6.2 Stronger Than a Hundred Men —Ancient and Medieval Use of Water Power Introduction But of all the inconveniences, shortage of water is most to be avoided … because the lifting power of a [water] wheel is much stronger and more certain than that of a hundred men.132

In an endlessly repetitive cycle, the sun’s heat causes water in the oceans to evaporate and rise to the skies, whence it falls to earth as rain or snow and then continues its downward journey back to the ocean. The energy of this falling water is the free gift of nature, an inexhaustible storehouse of power. It was the first source of power beyond their own muscles and those of the animals they had domesticated, that human beings learned to put to work for their convenience and comfort. Unlike muscle power that is immediately available for use, harnessing the energy of falling water requires the mediation of some mechanical device or other. The first simple but ingenious devices for this purpose were invented millennia ago. Today, on an existentially different scale, massive hydro-electric projects continue to perform essentially the same task. Knowledge of the means for harnessing water power had spread across the civilized world by the 1st century BCE but the economic and social conditions of the time did not encourage their widespread application in practice. There was no shortage of energy. On the contrary the world was plagued by surplus population and a surfeit of human muscle power. In Roman times the only significant use of the water wheel was for grinding corn and even after the collapse of Empire this continued around towns and in the monasteries. The spread of water power across Europe from these isolated nuclei started to gain momentum in the 8th century CE and it found a place in nearly every branch of production. Medieval society offered much more favorable conditions to the technology than the ancient world. Indeed it is no exaggeration to talk of a Power Revolution in the Middle Ages, leading to: the building for the first time in human history of a complex civilization which rested not on the backs of sweating slaves, or coolies, but primarily on non-human power.133

By the 16th century the era of the water wheel was drawing to a close. Demand for power, particularly in the mines, was outstripping what the water wheel could supply. As the Industrial Revolution got under way in the 18th century quite another source of power, the steam engine, usurped 261

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the function of the water wheel. The technology did require water but coal, not water, was the prime source of energy. Only many years later, in the era of electricity, did the kinetic energy of water once again become a significant source of power. In the present day it is exploited in great and small hydro-electric projects though, lacking the flexibility of location of power plants driven by fossil and nuclear fuels, it will never come to dominate power generation as it did in the Middle Ages.

Early Days The beginnings of the human use of water power are almost impossible to trace. Archeological sites provide little information and the few apparent written references to hydraulic devices are open to varying interpretations. Indian texts of the 4th century BCE refer to acakkavattaka, a machine with wheel-pots attached. This might have been a noria, the first ever water-powered prime mover, but it might well have been a tread- or hand-operated device. The San Kuo Chih, a Chinese document written in the 3rd century CE, referring back to conditions some six hundred years earlier, describes how Han Chi adapted a furnace bellow to the use of ever-flowing water, achieving an efficiency three times that of horse- or human-power. Neumatica, written by Philo of Byzantium, probably early in 2nd century BCE, contains illustrations of five water wheels. One of them rotated, two could blow whistles and the largest moved a series of pots to raise water. However the only surviving manuscripts of this work are copies and these sketches may well have been later embellishments of the original. Certainly by 1st century CE when Antipater of Thessalonica wrote this hymn of praise, the water wheel must have been known throughout the Mediterranean basin. Cease from grinding, ye women who toil at the mill; Sleep late even if crowing cocks announce the dawn. For Demeter134 has ordered the Nymphs to perform the work of your hands, And they, leaping down on top of the wheel, turn its axle, which, with its revolving spokes, turns the heavy, concave Nisyrian millstones, We taste again the joys of the primitive life, Learning to feast on the products of Demeter without labor.

Vitruvius, writing towards the end of the 1st century, provided quite lengthy descriptions of the noria and of the vertical undershot water wheel, the first used to raise water from rivers and the second, geared to a horizontal wheel, used to turn stones for grinding grain. In spite of its potential for transforming everyday life, the technology for exploiting water power on a large scale aroused remarkably little interest in the ancient world. The reasons for this indifference were embedded deep in the very tissue of ancient society. The gods of the Greek, and later the Roman, Pantheon, bore responsibility for managing the natural world and it was unseemly, possibly even dangerous, for men to trespass on this godly 262

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prerogative. A striking example of this is seen in the proclamation of the Delphic Oracle to a request by the Cnidians to approve a plan to build a canal across their peninsula. She told them quite categorically that had Zeus wanted their peninsula to be an island, he would have made it so himself. Such declarations must have contributed to a reluctance to even consider building dams or constructing the waterfalls needed to make hydro-power work. It is even more likely that the decision-makers of ancient society were just not interested. Manual labor, and the people who carried it out, were held in contempt by the upper classes. No self-respecting patrician displayed any interest in menial tasks. Flour-milling, the one important use for water power, was work reserved for women and for slaves and society seems to have been oversupplied with both. No incentive existed for the privileged male establishment to advance a technology simply to improve the lot of these inferior classes?135 When conditions began to change so did attitudes. Towards the end of the Roman era as the Empire began to contract. population started to fall across Europe and the supply of slaves dwindled. By the 4th century the labor surplus of centuries had been replaced by a chronic labor shortage. Labor-saving was coming to make economic sense. One famous historical incident must certainly have enhanced the respect of the citizens of Rome itself for the lowly water wheel. In 536CE the Ostrogoths besieged the city and cut the aqueducts which supplied water for the flour mills. With amazing ingenuity, Belisarius, the military commander of the city, mounted water wheels between boats on the Tiber and used the current of the river to turn the wheels, grind the corn and save the Romans from famine and starvation.

Into the Middle Ages Medieval Europe provided a far more favorable environment for the development of water power than the ancient world. The reasons lie both in geography and climate and in the changed social, economic and religious ambience. The centers of the ancient world were in arid or semi-arid regions. During the wet season, rivers and streams carried great volumes of flood water that were difficult to control. During the dry season, the flow was low and some streams were without water for months on end. In the use of available water, irrigation and navigation enjoyed priority over power generation. Western Europe was far better endowed with water. As it rained the year round, irrigation was unnecessary for agriculture. Suitable sites for developing water power without the need for heavy investment in storage and diversions were widely available. While conflicts did arise between the claims of milling and transport, the power use was commonly given priority The ancient world was pagan in its beliefs. Medieval Europe was Christian. Pagan and Christian perceptions were radically different, even diametrically opposed, on issues which extended far beyond the nature of God or the gods, and permeated every aspect of life. Unlike the pagans, 263

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Christians did not see Nature as the preserve of the gods, but rather as a resource provided, by God’s grace, for the benefit of mankind. They saw manual labor as dignified, not ignoble and vulgar, as Archimedes had described it. These were attitudes which created an atmosphere favorable to technological progress. Ironically, the monasteries were at the forefront of the development of water power. St. Antony, the first Christian monk, would have found this very surprising. He believed that the monks’ calling was the worship of God, through prayer and fasting and mortification of the flesh. In 270CE he withdrew to the Egyptian desert to live as a hermit, far from anything that might distract him from his purpose. The monasticism that spread to the west did not follow very closely in the footsteps of its founder. Many adherents, drawn from among the well-born and the intellectual elite, seeking personal salvation and a haven in a disintegrating world, soon strayed far from the original guiding principles. At the beginning of the 6th century, St. Benedict, shocked by what he saw around him, felt obliged to set up a monastery of his own. He laid down a rigid code of conduct for his monks. This Rule, as it came to be known, turned out to be one of the seminal documents of Western Christianity. Emphasis was on the monastic community rather than the individual. Benedict treated not only prayer but also study and manual labor as forms of worship and posited an orderly division among them. He also aspired to make the monastery a self-sufficient community, producing for itself everything that it needed, and so keeping it distanced from the worldly corruption surrounding it. The Benedictine monks, if they were to accomplish everything expected of them, needed to make efficient use of their time. In this context, the exploitation of water power for time-consuming tasks such as grinding grain for flour, made very good sense. The Rule was quite specific in its approval of such an approach. It laid down that all necessary things, such as water, mill, garden and various crafts, should, if possible, be situated within the enclosure of each monastery. Powerful groups outside the monasteries were also interested in water power. The land-based feudal aristocracy came to enjoy a monopoly of milling rights, known as the soke, on their feudal estates. They very carefully protected themselves from any attrition of this lucrative source of income, even to the extreme of banning hand mills within their jurisdiction. In England, peasants were fined as much as sixpence, about a week’s earnings, when caught defying the ban. As the towns grew and the citizens shook themselves free of feudal allegiances, a capitalist merchant class developed and they too found investment in water power and milling attractively profitable. The Domesday Book, the census of England ordered by William the Conqueror and carried out in the years 1080–1086CE, gives a remarkable picture of the extent of the use of water power by the 11th century. Over five thousand water mills were found in three thousand different locations, a mill for every fifty households or so, in a country that was among the more backward in Europe. 264

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Considerable technical progress accompanied and made possible the physical spread of water wheels. In the ancient world the wheels had been fed by small streams or aqueducts. In the medieval period the harnessing of larger streams and even rivers became practical as techniques of dam building and canalization were improved. This allowed the regulation of the peaks and valleys of natural flow conditions, the building up of head and the diversion of flows. Boat mills on rivers became commonplace. Toulouse had sixty boat mills in the late 12th century, while Paris at one time had seventy on a single mile of the Seine.136 Hydraulic engineers also learned to take advantage of the acceleration of flow which resulted from the narrowing of channels as they passed under bridges. They built bridge mills, integrated with the bridges, saving labor and materials while reaping hydraulic benefits. The increase in the number of water mills and their growing technical sophistication sharpened the conflict between competing uses and led to a proliferation of legislation and of litigation between milling and navigation interests over water rights.

Powering Medieval Industry Ancient water-driven mills had ground flour. This function never ceased to be important, but in medieval times the range of productive activities powered by water grew by leaps and bounds. By the 16th century: there were hydro-powered mills for smelting, forging, sharpening, rolling, slitting, polishing, grinding and shaping metals. Water wheels were available for hoisting materials and for crushing ores. There were mills for making beer, olive oil, poppy oil, mustard, coins and wire. Water wheels were used in the preparation of pigment, paper, hemp, and tanning bark, and for fulling, sawing wood, boring pipes, and ventilating mines.137

All these processes, like flour milling, were based on rotary motion. When the problem of converting circular motion into reciprocating motion was resolved, first by the use of the cam and later by the crankshaft, new avenues of opportunity opened up. The cam is defined in the Shorter Oxford dictionary as: a projecting part of a wheel, or other revolving piece of machinery, adapted to impart an alternating or variable motion to another piece, by sliding or rolling contact. Much used where a uniform, revolving motion is employed to actuate any kind of non-uniform, alternating, elliptical or rectilineal movement.

In antiquity the cam had been known but hardly used. In the Middle Ages it converted the rotary motion of the water wheel into the pounding motion of hammer or mallet. This was useful in the manufacture of paper, where it helped to beat rags to a pulp. It also had a significant effect on the iron industry, in the conversion of cast iron or pig iron into the far more malleable wrought iron. Above all it had a central function in the textile industry, in fulling. This was one of the most important processes in cloth-making. It involved pummeling woven cloth, in water and out, 265

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to thicken and shrink the material, to scour it clean and to remove the oil which had been used to strengthen the warp threads before spinning. The mechanization of this process was, according to E.M. Carus Wilson, historian of the textile industry, as decisive an event as the mechanization of spinning and weaving in the 18th century.138 It not only replaced the feet of fulling workers stamping on the cloth by machinery. It caused an upheaval in the location of industry, for it needed the power of upland streams and waterfalls, far from the established towns of the lowlands. The establishment of fulling mills at remote sites where water power was easiest to exploit by-passed the craft monopolies of the towns. Though they fought back it was to no avail. Decrees such as that passed in Bristol in 1346, which forbade any man to take outside the city for fulling any kind of the cloth known as raicloth … were simply ignored. By the end of the medieval period many of the amenities and even necessities of life were available only because the power of water had been harnessed to drive a whole variety of processes: The house medieval man lived in might have been made of wood sawed at a hydro-powered sawmill; the bowls he ate from turned on a water-powered lathe; the pipes that his water flowed from, bored by water power. The flour he ate was probably ground at a water mill; the oil he put on his bread could have been crushed from olives by a water wheel. The leather of the shoes he put on his feet and the textiles he wore on his back could have been produced, in part, by water-powered tanning and fulling mills. The iron of his tools could have been mined with the aid of water-powered drainage pumps, ventilating fans, hoisting devices; was probably melted in a furnace with water-activated bellows; and was probably forged with hydraulic stamps and bellows. If he was a clerk, the paper he wrote on was, most likely, the product of a water-powered mill. If he was a soldier, his armor and weapons might have been polished and sharpened by stones turned by vertical water wheels.139

Fig. 90:

Source: Wikimedia Commons/Smallbones/CC0 1.0

The Wheel of an Historic Water Mill 266

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A Note on the Mechanics of Water Power In order to be useful and perform work the kinetic energy of water has to be harnessed by one mechanical device or another. Only a handful of basically different devices, some simple, some more sophisticated, have been developed for the purpose. They are the water lever, the horizontal and vertical water wheels, the water-pressure engine, the hydraulic ram and water turbine. Some of these—the horizontal water mill, the vertical undershot water mill, the noria and the water lever—seem to have made their appearance as early as the 4th century BCE. The efficiency of the various devices, measured as the percentage of the initial power of the water that they convert into mechanical power, varies widely. The following is a brief description of their essential features. The Water Lever was the simplest of all water-driven machines. It was a see-saw with a hammer at one end and a spoon-shaped water container at the other. Water flowed into the container from a falling stream, moving the hammer up. Then, as the water poured out of the open-ended container, the hammer came down with enough force to turn grain into flour. The empty container rose once again and the action repeated itself. Efficiency was probably less than 10%. The Horizontal Water Wheel was a wheel attached to millstones above its shaft. Water from a stream was directed at perpendicular paddles around its circumference, turning the wheel and thus the grinding stone. There was no gearing and no way for compensating for changes in stream flow. This was a very simple machine, cheap to construct and suitable for use with streams of low flow but high head. At best its efficiency could not have exceeded 15%. Vertical Water Wheels took a number of different forms. The Undershot Water Wheel operated in a vertical plane and was fixed to a horizontal axle. It was turned by the force of water flowing under the wheel and hitting vertical blades radiating out from its circumference. It could work on any stream but its efficiency was improved if the water was directed through a narrow artificial channel, or race, which could provide a steady, controlled flow of water at fairly high velocity. The water power was directed through the axle and a gearing system to provide rotary motion for a whole range of activities. Its efficiency may have reached as high as 30%. The Noria was the simplest and earliest form of the undershot vertical water wheel. Instead of blades around its circumferences it had containers of one sort or another. These raised water from the stream and spilled it out into a trough or channel, as each passed the high point of rotation. Water supply was its only function. It was not designed for any other activity. The Overshot Water Wheel was fed from above. Water flowed into containers built into its rim and the weight of the water rotated the wheel. As each bucket moved down it spilled its contents and returned empty to the top. This type of wheel was quite efficient, reaching 50%–70%, but it required a heavy, peripheral investment. Water first had to be dammed to build up a sufficient head, and then led through a channel to the wheel’s summit. 267

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Beyond the Water Wheel —a Very Brief Note on Hydro-Electric Power By the 16th century the era of the water wheel was drawing to a close. Demand for power, particularly in the mines, was outstripping what the water wheel could supply. As the Industrial Revolution got under way in the 18th century the steam engine usurped the function of the water wheel. This technology did use water, but coal, not water, was the prime source of energy. It was only centuries later, in the era of electricity, that the kinetic energy of water once again became a significant source of power. These days it is exploited in great and small hydro-electric projects and has even become the dominant source of energy in such countries as Norway, Brazil, Uruguay and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Hydro-electricity was born of the marriage of hydraulic energy and the electric generator. Its modest beginnings can be traced back to the second half of the 19th century and a remarkable man, William Armstrong, eventually to become the first Baron Armstrong. He was born in Newcastle-on-Tyne in the year 1810. He was nearly lost to engineering as his father insisted that he pursue a career as a lawyer. For years it was only his spare time that he devoted to engineering projects but he persevered and went on to design and manufacture a very successful hydraulic crane and in the course of time to be elected President of the Institute of Civil Engineers. In 1863 he bought a steep sided valley cut by a flowing stream and there he built his home, which he named Cragside. He developed his seven square kilometer estate with much care, planting it with seven million trees and adorning it with five artificial lakes. He used the power from the lakes to generate electricity and to light his home with incandescent bulbs, making it the first in the world to be lit by hydroelectricity. Since that modest beginning hydroelectric projects have become widespread, taking advantage of suitable sites the world over and coming to generate perhaps 20% of the world’s electricity. The largest projects are mammoth undertakings, whose construction and management are feasible only for governments or great international consortia. Realistic estimates of both their benefits and their costs of are well-nigh impossible to make. They transform the lives of those who come to enjoy the blessings of electrification and flood control while undermining whole ecosystems and destroying the fabric of life for the many thousands of families whose homes and communities are swallowed up by new man-made lakes. From the 1930s when the first of these megaworks, the Boulder, (later renamed Hoover), Dam, was constructed, it has taken enormous vision and courage, some would say hubris, to embark on such projects. The greatest of all of them to date is the Chinese Three Gorges Project, with a capacity of 20,300 MW, which started operation in 2008. The next in size is the Itaipu, shared by Brazil and Paraguay, with a capacity of 14,000 MW. Its onomatopoeic name echoes the sound of water crashing on the rocks.

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Fig. 91:

Source: flickr/David Holt/CC BY-SA 2.0

The Itaipu Dam

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Part 7 WATER, SOUL AND PSYCHE

Chapter 7.1 Water and the Poets Old pond— A frog leaps in— Water’s sound Matsuo Bashó (1644–1694)

The Imagery of Poetry Poetry deals with the abiding concerns of humanity—the progress of life from birth through youth and maturity to old age and death, friendship and love, the place of human beings in the Universe and their relationship to God and Nature. These concerns are universal. The imagery of poetry is more particular. While each poet draws on the quality of his soul, he is also influenced by time and place, by climate and social setting. The desiccated landscape and the tension and apprehension which precede the coming of the winter rains permeate the poetry of arid regions. Year-round rain, perennially flowing rivers and bubbling brooks give rise to the gentler imagery which suffuses the poetry of more temperate climates.140 This chapter focuses on the way in which poets have turned to water, in all its varied manifestations, to help express their thoughts and feelings. Due to my own limitations, the selection below is drawn almost entirely from poems written originally in English or Hebrew or easily available in English translation.

Creation Poets over many centuries have been inspired by the activities attributed to God on the second day of Creation. That was the day when He separated the upper waters from the lower waters, creating dry land and the space needed for the next stages of Creation. Inspiration however was only the starting point and each poet went on to elaborate on the theme in his own, original and often surprising way. The psalmist of Psalm 104 sang a paean of praise to the one God and his Creation, but the waters of the psalm are not the inanimate waters of Genesis. They are independent of spirit and have to be forced into submission to God’s will. Bless the Lord … Who layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds his chariot: … Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should be moved forever. Thou coverest it with the deep as with a garment: the waters stood above the mountains.

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Writ in Water At thy rebuke they fled; at the voice of thy thunder they hasted away. They go up by the mountains; they go down by the valleys unto the place which thou hast founded for them. Thou hast set a bound that they may not pass over; that they turn not again to cover the earth.

Liturgical poetry flourished in Palestine, the Land of the Bible, until the end of the 8th century CE, when prayer became more formalized. As long as they linked their outpourings to some appropriate Biblical source poets enjoyed almost unlimited freedom of expression. Pinchas Hacohen, who lived on the banks of the Sea of Galilee in the second half of the 8th century, was one of the last of this Palestinian school of liturgists. In Water he treated the separation of the upper and lower waters on the second day of Creation as hardly more than a pretext for some rollicking erotic fantasizing: And from this day on, teeming waters shall be seen: jets of water from below and torrents of water from above; male and female —mingled waters; sweet and salty—waters with waters. And when the clouds are laden with water, they shall empty the male upon the female waters, to inseminate the waters; the sweet upon the salty, to improve the waters. And by them shall the earth conceive, by these mingled waters, to give birth and sprout, from the heaven of heavens.

Amitai ben Shephatiah continued the Palestinian liturgical tradition in Southern Italy where he lived towards the end of the 9th century. In For the Marriage of Cassia, a poem he wrote to celebrate the marriage of his sister, he treated the six days of Creation as days of preparation for the marriage, with God in the role of host and best man. Here are His activities on the third and fourth days: On the third day he assembled the waters, thus clearing a stage for the players; He brought forth trees, for pleasure and delight, and made a royal garden for their bridal chambers. On the fourth day, He lit up two torch-like lamps, which even gusts of wind and pouring rain could not put out; and He lit all the others for beauty’s sake, to adorn the bridal canopy

In A Negro Sermon, by James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938) of Jackson, Florida, Creation appears in a quite different garb. In the American South, at the turn of the twentieth century, God looked down on the hot and barren earth and decided it needed some improvement: So God stepped over to the edge of the world And he spat out the seven seas; He batted His eyes and the lightning flashed;

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Water, Soul and Psyche He clapped his hands and the thunders rolled; And the waters above the earth came down, The cooling waters came down.

Then, after the lakes had found their place in the hollows of the ground and the rivers had found their way to the sea, Johnson’s God settled himself down by a deep, wide river and decided to make a man.

Nature Water appears in nature in many guises—as rain and snow, clouds and mist, streams and rivers, waterfalls and lakes. Poets have responded directly to these natural phenomena, with lyrical descriptions of what they saw. More often than not, though, their observation of nature has served merely as a point of departure for reveries on the human condition.

Rivers and Streams Rivers and streams have inspired a greater body of poetry than any other of nature’s watery phenomena. Some poets have written quite generally, others of particular rivers. For some the river itself has been the central theme, but for many it has merely served as catalyst for pursuing some quite different, introspective, preoccupation. Here are some examples.

Of Rivers in General Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a 14th century tale by an anonymous poet, tells of the courage, honor and chastity of the perfect knight, Sir Gawain. The natural setting of the story is vividly described: The brooks foamed and bubbled on hillsides about them, And brightly broke on their banks as they rushed down.

James Thomson (1700–1748) was the first English poet to make a description of nature the subject of a major poem. He observed with a sharp eye and described what he saw without sentimentality. Here is an excerpt from Winter, written in 1728, part of a quartet, The Seasons: At last the roused-up river pours along: Resistless, roaring, dreadful, down it comes, From the rude mountain and the mossy wild, Tumbling through rocks abrupt, and sounding far; Then o’er the sanded valley floating spreads, Calm, sluggish, silent; till again, constrained Between two meeting hills, it bursts away, Where rocks and woods o’erhang the turbid stream; There gathering triple force, rapid and deep, It boils and wheels and foams, and thunders through.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born in Lincolnshire in 1809, fourth son of a country parson. He wrote The Lotos-Eaters in 1832, inspired by Odysseus’s 275

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description of his visit to the coast of the Lotos-Eaters. He anchored his ship to take on water and his crew ate of the honeyed plant, the Lotos. Those who tasted the fruit longed to stay forever browsing on that native bloom, forgetful of their homeland. Tennyson described this well-watered land, in which it seems always afternoon, thus: A land of streams! some like a downward smoke, Slow-dropping veils of thinnest lawn, did go; And some through wavering lights and shadows broke, Rolling a slumbrous sheet of foam below. They saw the gleaming river seaward flow From the inner land; far off, three mountain-tops, Three silent pinnacles of ancient snow, Stood sunset-flushed; and dewed with showery drops, Up-clomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was born in Boston in 1803. He grew up dogged by ill-health and self-doubt. He entered the Christian ministry, abandoned it and turned to nature to restore his spirit and tranquility of mind. In 1840 he wrote in his journal: I defy you strait-laced, weary social ways and modes. Blue is the sky, green the fields and groves, fresh the springs, glad the rivers …

In the same year he wrote in Woodnotes, I: He (the Poet) goes to the river-side,— Not hook nor line hath he; He stands in the meadows wide … I found the water’s bed. The watercourses were my guide; I travelled grateful by their side, Or through their channel dry; They led me through the thicket damp, Through brake and fern, the beavers’ camp, Through beds of granite cut my road, And their resistless friendship showed. The falling waters led me, The foodful waters fed me, And brought me to the lowest land, Unerring to the ocean sand.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, (1807–1882), was born in Portland, Maine. He came from a well-established family, his mother tracing her ancestry to the Mayflower, his father a successful lawyer. His well-ordered life was marred only by the tragic deaths of two wives. He taught modern languages at Harvard University and during his lifetime was a much loved and widely read poet. When not yet nineteen, he wrote thus of a woodland brook: There is a quiet spirit in these woods … That spirit moves In the green valley, where the silver brook

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Water, Soul and Psyche From its full laver pours the white cascade; And, babbling low amid the tangled woods, Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter.

And still youthful, but in more somber mood: Where, from the eye of day, The dark and silent river Pursues through tangled woods a way O’er which the tall trees quiver, The silver mist, that breaks From out that woodland cover, Betrays the hidden path it takes, And hangs the current over So oft the thoughts that burst From hidden springs of feeling, Like silent streams, unseen at first, From our cold hearts are stealing.

Of Particular Rivers The poet Ovid (43 BCE–17 CE) was born in Rome and grew to manhood during a period of peace and prosperity. Poetry flowed from him effortlessly. He wrote that whatever he tried to say came out in verse. In 8 CE his carefree life came to an abrupt end when he was banished to Tomi, in Bessarabia, and never allowed to return home. His crime seems to have been no more than an excess of frivolity. He was foolish enough to publish The Art of Love, a three volume guide to seduction for both men and women, at a time when the Emperor Augustus was struggling to resurrect stern Republican standards of morality. Ovid distilled all his bitterness at his cruel fate into this description of the river Ister. Should any one there in Rome remember Ovid the exile, And without me, my name still in the city survive; Tell him that under stars which never set in the ocean I am existing still, here in a barbarous land. … Why should I tell you how all the rivers are frozen and solid, And from out of the lake frangible water is dug? Ister,—no narrower than the river that bears the papyrus,— Which through its many mouths mingles its waves with the deep; Ister, with hardening winds, congeals its cerulean waters, Under a roof of ice, winding its way to the sea.

To His Coy Mistress is a love poem in which Andrew Marvell (1621–1678) used the Ganges and Humber rivers to express the timelessness that is not the lot of young lovers. Had we but world enough and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. We would sit down and think which way To walk, and pass our long love’s day

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Writ in Water Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide Of Humber would complain. I would Love you ten years before the flood, And you should, if you please, refuse Till the conversion of the Jews:

William Wordsworth (1770–1850), renowned as England’s greatest nature poet, was often more preoccupied with thoughts and emotions triggered by nature, than with its sights and sounds. He had fished the river Duddon as a child and relaxed on its banks as a young student, but when he came to celebrate it in verse, in a strain of love and admiration, he was as much taken up with his own mortality as with the river. Thus The River Duddon: Return, content! for fondly I pursued, Even when a child, the streams—unheard, unseen; Through tangled woods, impending rocks between; Or, free as air, with flying inquest viewed The sullen reservoirs whence their bold brood, Pure as the morning, fretful, boisterous, keen, Green as the salt-sea billows, white and green, Poured down the hills, a choral multitude! … I thought of thee, my partner and my guide, As being passed away,—Vain sympathies! For, backward, Duddon! as I cast my eyes, I see what was and is and will abide; Still guides this stream, and shall forever glide; The Form remains, the Function never dies; While we, the brave, the mighty and the wise, We men, who in the morn of youth defied The elements, must vanish;—be it so!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) had a rare ability to make the supernatural seem real. In Kubla Khan, trying to reconstruct his elusive dream of the Khan’s palace, he depicted the sacred and imaginary river Alph thus: And ’mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean …

The lyric poetry of Heinrich Heine (1797–1850) was rich in images drawn from nature. Here are thoughts inspired by two rivers, the Ganges and the Rhine: On the wings of song far sweeping, Heart’s dearest, with me thou’lt go, Away where the Ganges is creeping: Its loveliest garden I know,— … While afar, deep rushing and sweeping,

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Water, Soul and Psyche The waves of the Ganges sound. We’ll lie there, in slumber sinking ’Neath the palm-trees by the stream, Rapture and rest deep drinking, Dreaming the happiest dream

and: In the Rhine, in the glorious river, Reflected as waves roll on, With its high cathedral, ever Lies the holy, great Cologne.

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888), ends his long, dramatic poem, Sohrab and Rustum, with a loving look at the Oxus,141 on whose banks the tragic destiny of the two protagonists reaches its climax: But the majestic river floated on, Out of the mist and hum of that low land, Into the frosty starlight, and there moved, Rejoicing, through the hush’d Chorasmian waste, Under the solitary moon;—he flow’d Right for the polar star, past Orgunye, Brimming and bright, and large, then sands begin To hem his watery march and dam his streams, And split his currents; that for many a league The shorn and parcell’d Oxus strains along Through beds of sand and matted rushy isles— Oxus, forgetting the bright speed he had In his high mountain-cradle in Pamere, A foil’d circuitous wanderer—till at last The long’d-for dash of waves is heard, and wide His luminous home of waters opens, bright And tranquil, from whose floor the new-bathed stars Emerge, and shine upon the Aral Sea.

Sydney Lanier (1842–1881) was born in Georgia, in the American South. During the Civil War he served in the Confederate Army and was taken prisoner. Song of the Chattahoochee was written not long before his premature death from the tuberculosis he had contracted in a Federal prison. It is an exercise in anthropomorphism. The river talks of its responsibilities, to water the plain and to provide power for the mill: Out of the hills of Habersham, Down the valleys of Hall, I hurry amain to reach the plain, Run the rapid and leap the fall, Split at the rock and together again, Accept my bed, or narrow or wide, And flee from folly on every side With a lover’s pain to attain the plain Far from the hills of Habersham, Far from the valleys of Hall.

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Writ in Water But oh, not the hills of Habersham, And oh, not the valleys of Hall Avail: I am fain to water the plain. Downward the voices of Duty call— Downward to toil and be mixed with the main; The dry fields burn and the mills are to turn, And a myriad flowers mortally yearn, And the lordly main beyond the plain Calls o’er the hills of Habersham. Calls through the valleys of Hall.

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) was born in Massachusetts. He studied law, but abandoned its practice in 1825, rescued from an occupation he hated by the success of his adolescent poem, Thanatopsis. In Green River, written in 1818, he contrasted the delight of the time spent along the banks of his beloved river with the drudgery of providing legal services to clients he despised: When breezes are soft and skies are fair, I steal an hour from study and care, And hie me away to the woodland scene, Where wanders the stream with the waters of green; As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink, Had given their stain to the wave they drink; And they, whose meadow it murmurs through, Have named the stream for its own fair hue. … Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men, And scrawl strange words with barbarous pen, And mingle among the jostling crowd, Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud— I often come to this quiet place, To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, And gaze upon thee in silent dream, For in thy lonely and lovely stream, An image of that calm life appears, That won my heart in greener years.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote Two Rivers in 1856: Thy summer voice, Musketaquit, Repeats the music of the rain; But sweeter rivers pulsing flit Through thee, as thou through Concord Plain. Thou in thy narrow banks are pent: The stream I love unbounded goes Through flood and sea and firmament; Through light, through life, it forward flows.

Longfellow serenaded four rivers—the Charles, the Rhone, the Yvette and the Mad. Of the Charles he wrote with affection, for the part it played in his life, in good times and bad: 280

Water, Soul and Psyche Thou hast taught me, Silent River! Many a lesson, deep and long; Thou hast been a generous giver; I can give thee but a song. Oft in sadness and in illness, I have watched thy current glide, Till the beauty of its stillness Overflowed me, like a tide. And in better hours and brighter, When I saw thy waters gleam, I have felt my heart beat lighter, And leap onward with thy stream.

In Birds of Passage, he wrote sensuously of the River Yvette: O lovely river of Yvette! O darling river! like a bride, Some dimpled, bashful, fair Lisette, Thou go to wed the Orge’s tide. … The valley of Chevreuse in vain Would hold thee in its fond embrace; Thou glidest from its arms again And hurriest on with swifter pace. Thou wilt not stay; with restless feet Pursuing still thine onward flight, Thou goes as one in haste to meet Her sole desire, her heart’s delight O lovely river of Yvette! O darling stream! on balanced wings The wood-birds sang the chansonette That here an unknown poet sings.

His sonnet, To the River Rhone, was a more formal tribute to what he described as a king among the rivers: Thou Royal River, born of sun and shower In chambers purple with the Alpine glow, Wrapped in the spotless ermine of the snow And rocked by tempests!—at the appointed hour Forth, like a steel-clad horseman from a tower, With clang and clink of harness dost thou go To meet thy vassal torrents, that below Rush to receive thee and obey thy power. And now thou movest in triumphal march, A king among the rivers! On thy way A hundred towns await and welcome thee; Bridges uplift for thee the stately arch, Vineyards encircle thee with garlands gay, And fleets attend thy progress to the sea!

Appropriately, the last poem published in the poet’s lifetime was The River, a dialogue between a traveler and the river: 281

Writ in Water A brooklet nameless and unknown Was I at first resembling A little child, that all alone Comes venturing down the stairs of stone, Irresolute and trembling. Later, by wayward fancies led, For the wide world I panted; Out of the forest dark and dread, Across the open fields I fled, Like one pursued and haunted! I tossed my arms, I sang aloud, My voice exultant blending With thunder from the passing cloud, The wind, the forest bent and bowed, The rush of rain descending. I heard the distant ocean call, Imploring and entreating; Dawn onward o’er this rocky wall, I plunged, and the loud waterfall Made answer to the greeting. And now beset with many ills, A toilsome life I follow; Compelled to carry from the hills These logs to the impatient mills, Below there in the hollow Yet something ever cheers and charms The rudeness of my labors; Daily I water with these arms The cattle of a hundred farms, And have the birds for neighbors. Men call me MAD, and well they may When, full of rage and trouble, I burst my banks of sand and clay, And sweep their wooden bridge away, Like withered reeds and stubble.

Hart Crane (1899–1932), was born in Ohio. He was the child of a broken home and his troubled life ended in a watery suicide, when he jumped into the sea from a ship, homeward bound from Mexico. The River is part of a large work, The Bridge, which the poet described as an organic panorama. Of the Mississippi he wrote: Poised wholly on its dream, a mustard glow, Tortured with history, its one will—flow! —The Passion spreads in wide tongues, chocked and slow, Meeting the Gulf, hosannas silently below.

Martin Jamison’s vision is different from that of any other poet. He comes to the rivers of nature through printer’s rivers, as he sits bored and daydreaming in the classroom:

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Water, Soul and Psyche One alternative, when the air in the classroom thickened and the words on the page spread out as dull as mud, one alternative was to follow the streams that twisted down among the words. You remember. You would let your eyes move out of focus, and you’d ride the snaky channels to their own level. … Once I saw one coursing through the page all the way from top to bottom, as distinct and purposeful as the Susquehanna. It was a passage to remember, but since then I have learned that printers call them rivers, and that skilful ones notice them before they pour into readers’ hands, and dam their flow with clever spacing. Well. In the innocent pursuit of their craft, the printers slog along the bank with the teachers and parents who have long since quit rafting down those streams.

Rain and Drought At the end of every long dry summer, dwellers in arid regions, anxiously awaiting the coming of the first winter rains, have turned to their gods in prayer. Here for instance is a supplication to the Almighty by an anonymous Palestinian poet of the Byzantine period. O you who know the times of the Universe, avert us from the times of wrath. Accept our offerings of praise, You who create water in the birthplace of waters. You are pure and untouched by sin; You are alive, untouched by death. Purify us for Your sake, and revive us. Let us see bounteous waters.

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Writ in Water You have no other people like us; we have no other god like You, who open Your one hand to those who repent, While the other opens the storehouse of water.

When the rains did arrive to water the earth, fulsome thanks and praise followed such anxious prayers. Here, for instance, are the words of gratitude to God from the Biblical psalmist. You visit the earth and water it, You greatly enrich it with the river of God, which is full of water; You prepare the corn, when You have provided for it You water the ridges thereof abundantly, You settle the furrows thereof; You make it soft with showers You bless the springing thereof. Psalm 56

And from a different time and place, from the mountain and desert region of North America comes the Night Chant of the Navaho people. It is a prayer to the dark bird who is chief of pollen and a lyric description of thunder-cloud and rain: In Tsegibi,142 In the house made of dawn, In the house made of evening twilight, In the house made of dark cloud, In the house made of rain and mist, of pollen, of grasshoppers, Where the dark mist curtains the doorway, The path to which is on the rainbow, Where the zigzag lightning stands high on top, Where the he-rain stands high on top, Oh, male divinity! With the far darkness made of the dark cloud over your head, come to us soaring,143

When, despite all entreaties, the rains fail to materialize, men are left to face drought. The anguish this involves was movingly expressed by Levi Ibn Altabban, a little known Jewish liturgical poet of the late 11th century in his Prayer in Time of Drought. Lord, our hearts are filled with fear and our souls with gloom, for the sky is locked and there is no water. Shame covers our faces, so great is our guilt; our eyes run with tears, our eyelids are moist with water. Now that the clouds are stopped up, we come shamefacedly, paupers and wretches, to beg for water. The hungry and the thirsty faint like wild asses [in a drought]. They stand on the bare heights and say: ‘Give us water!’ The soil is parched and all our hands are gashed in mourning; our

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Water, Soul and Psyche hearts are in anguish because they are gone, the waters. Order Your thunder to resound in the whirlwind; let Your steadfast love reveal itself, so that we may lift our sickles at harvest-time, as Your love gives us the sound of tumultuous waters. Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy and triumph; there will be shouts of deliverance when the wilderness gushes with water. O remove the reproach of hunger, and torment us no more; declare to Your poor and helpless people: Happy shall you be who sow beside all waters!

The South African poet Francis Carey Slater (1876–1958) did not turn to God for salvation. In Drought he depicted the life of the Xhosa people as their sources of water dwindled away. His style is matter-of-fact but the impact of his words is bone-chilling in its effect. The women rise before the morning-star, And hasten away to draw water At distant wells now daily drying up, As they return dejectedly With cans of muddy water Balanced upon their heads, The few starved sheep and goats (All that are left of the livestock) Scenting the water Totter after the women Bleating dismally: But that mud-stained water Is more precious than pearls, And the thirst-stricken animals Cry for it in vain … The last of the water-wells Is almost dry: the people will perish. And there is wailing and distress Of the dark people.

No poet from a temperate climate could conceivably have written with the intensity of feeling of the above. Yet everyone shares joy in rain. Here are the words of Christina Rosseti. Though writing in the mild clime of England in the mid-19th century, her awareness of the gifts brought by rain was intense. Every valley drinks, Every dell and hollow: Where the kind rain sinks and sinks, Green of spring will follow. … But for fattening rain We should have no flowers,

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Writ in Water Never a bud or leaf again But for soaking showers; Never a mated bird In the rocking tree-tops, Never indeed a flock or herd To graze upon the lea-crops. … We should find no moss In the shadiest places, Find no waving meadow grass Pied with broad-eyed daisies: But miles of barren sand, With never a son or daughter; Nor a lily on the land, Or lily in the water.

In Mediterranean lands spring brings the end of the rainy season. Go in Peace, Come in Peace was written in Palestine by an unknown poet, during the period of Byzantine rule. This extract celebrates the passing of the winter rains and the coming of spring: I shall sing praises now that the time of the singing of the birds has come, and I shall answer in song; go in peace, rain. I shall look at the deeds of my God, so pleasant in their season, and sweetly say, come in peace, dew. The rains are over and gone, the winter is past; everything is created with beauty; go in peace, rain. The mandrakes give forth their perfume in the lovers’ garden; sorrows are past; come in peace, dew. The earth is crowned with new grain and wine, and every creature cries: go in peace, rain!

For Longfellow, living in America, spring did not bring the end of the year’s rain and he could celebrate Rain in Summer: How beautiful is the rain! After the dust and heat, In the broad and fiery street, In the narrow lane, How beautiful is the rain! Across the window-pane it pours and pours; And swift and wide with a muddy tide, Like a river down the gutter roars The rain, the welcome rain!

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950), in Renascence, catches the reader unawares, with her bizarre vision of the rain: And all at once, and over all The pitying rain began to fall: I lay and heard each pattering hoof Upon my lowly, thatched roof,

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Water, Soul and Psyche And seemed to love the sound far more Than ever I had done before. For rain it hath a friendly sound To one who’s six feet underground; And scarce the friendly voice or face: A grave is such a quiet place. The rain, I said, is kind to come and speak to me in my new home. I would I were alive again To kiss the fingers of the rain, To drink into my eyes the shine Of every slanting, silver line, To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze From drenched and dripping apple trees. … O God, I cried, give me new birth, And put me back upon the earth! Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd And let the heavy rain downpoured In one big torrent, set me free, Washing my grave away from me.

A contemporary of St. Vincent Millay, the Hebrew poet, Uri Zvi Greenberg (1896–1981) wrote of a night of rain in Jerusalem: The few trees in the yard moan like a forest. The thunderous clouds are heavy with rivers. The Angels of Peace stand at the head of my sleeping children, as the trees moan and the heavy rains pour down.

Clouds and Mist Clouds have been fortunate in their lyricists. Tempest at Dawn is by Solomon Ibn Gabirol (1021–1055CE), one of the greatest of the medieval secular poets writing in Hebrew. And Shelley’s 1820 poem, The Cloud, is one the most lyrical poems in the English language. The heavy clouds of heaven lowed like oxen, for the winter was scowling with rage. They were like light clouds driven on by a tempest, like captain sounding their horns in alarm. Then the face of heaven was darkened by fog, and the morning-stars stammered out their light. The sun bore the clouds on its wings over the earth, and when they burst, the face of the earth burst open. How still they stood, how heavily they faced the earth, where once they were swift and flew like eagles! The wind

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Writ in Water beat the plates of rain, cut the cloud into strips which reached down to the abyss. The cloud and its battalions levelled the earth’s ridges, prepared its furrows for sowing. Then the harvest of the hills, hidden away, like a secret known to one man but not disclosed to the many, was revealed. All winter long its clouds wept until the trees of the field, which had been dead, lived again.

Solomon Ibn Gabirol

and: I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers, From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid In their noonday dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother’s breast, As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the flashing hail, And whiten the green plains under, And then again I dissolve it in rain, And laugh as I pass in thunder … I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nurseling of the sky; I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change but I cannot die. For after the rain when, with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the wind and sunbeams with their convex gleams Build up the blue dome of air I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. Percy Bysshe Shelley

Henry Thoreau (1817–1862), was born in Concord, Massachusetts and lived his entire life in its immediate vicinity. He loved nature and observed it keenly, but without sentimentality. In Sic Vita,—Such is Life—written in 1841, he celebrated the mist: Low-anchored cloud, Newfoundland air, Fountain-head and source of rivers, Dew-cloth, dream drapery, And napkin spread by fays; Drifting meadow of the air, Where bloom the daisied banks and violets, And in whose fenny labyrinth

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Water, Soul and Psyche The bittern booms and heron wades; Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers, Bear only perfumes and the scent Of healing herbs to just men’s fields!

Five centuries before Thoreau, the anonymous author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, had also been moved to write of mist: The clouds hung aloft, but ’t was lowering beneath them. On the moor dripped the mist, on the mountains melted; Each hill had a hat, a mist-cloak right huge.

Water as Metaphor Poets have always turned to water for images and metaphors to clarify and illuminate their thoughts and feelings.

Tao Laotse, the father of the Taoist philosophy, drew extensively on water for metaphors to explain the nature of Tao and the nature of man. Here are some of his aphorisms, from Book of Tao: The Character of Tao: Tao is all-pervading. And its use is inexhaustible! Fathomless! Like the fountainhead of all things. Its sharp edges rounded off, Its tangles untied, Its light tempered, Its turmoil submerged, Yet crystal clear like still water it seems to remain. Water: The best of men is like water; Water benefits all things And does not compete with them. It dwells in the lowly places that all disdain, Wherein it comes near to the Tao. Nothing Weaker than Water: There is nothing weaker than water But none is superior to it in overcoming the hard, For which there is no substitute That weakness overcomes strength And gentleness overcomes rigidity.

Love and Beauty The Song of Songs provides some striking imagery drawing on water to describe the power of love. For instance:

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Writ in Water Vast floods cannot quench love, nor can rivers sweep it away.

Song of Songs, 8.5–7

Yehuda Halevi (1075–1141), surprisingly, saw his love as The Laundress, and his tears as her supply of water: My love washes her clothes in the water of my tears, and spreads them out in the sun of her beauty. She has no need of spring-water—she has my two eyes; nor of the sun—she has her own radiance.

Samuel Daniel (1569–1626), in Sonnets to Delia, compared beauty to the morning dew: Beautie, sweet love, is like the morning dewe, Whose short refresh upon the tender greene, Cheers for a time but tyll the Sunne doth shew, And straight is gone as it had never beene.

Both Francis Quarles (1592–1644) in Canticle and Shelley, two hundred years later, in Love’s Philosophy, drew parallels between the commingling of water from different sources and the coming together of lovers. Ev’n like two little bank-dividing brookes, That wash the pebles with their wanton streames, And having rang’d and search’d a thousand nookes, Meet both at length, in silver-brested Thames; Where in a greater Current they conjoyne: So I my Best-Beloveds am; so He is mine. Francis Quarles

and: The fountains mingle with the river And the rivers with the Ocean, The winds of Heaven mix forever With a sweet emotion; Nothing in the world is single; All things by a law divine In one spirit meet and mingle. Why not I with thine? Percy Bysshe Shelley

And into the 20th century Vivian Rakoff, a youthful South African poet, later psychiatrist, in 1945 compared his love to the river itself: To a man in search of water You must forever seem the river, Curling your hair in a flowing progression …

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The Mutability of Life Poets return over and over again to the ephemeral nature of youth and beauty and life itself. Some have seen a similarity between the passage of life and the changing flow of water in a river. Others have contrasted the impermanence of life with the eternal flow of the river. In Fear of Death, Samuel Hanagid, (993–1056), who had enjoyed a distinguished career and been the first Spanish Jew to be honored with the title of Nagid (Prince), mourned the passing years: … Now that I have passed my sixty-first year, is there any room in my heart—even a hair’s breadth—for the delights of singing women? Now that heaven has locked up the rain-clouds of my youth, will time bring down the dew of youth upon my blossoms? … But old age has shaken all the water of my youth out of my beard and made me loathsome to women!

Edmund Spenser (1552–1599), in The Faerie Queen, compared the constantly changing nature of men to the transformations that take place in rivers and lakes: And men themselves doe change continually, From youth to eld, from wealth to poverty, From good to bad, from bad to worst of all. Ne do their bodies only flit and fly: But eeke their minds (which they immortall call) Still change and vary thoughts, as new occasions fall. Ne is the water in more constant case; Whether those same on high or those belowe. For, th-Ocean moveth still, from place to place; And every river still doth ebb and flowe: Ne any lake that seems most still and slowe, When any winde doth under heaven blowe; With which, the clouds are also tost and roll’d; Now like great hills; and streight, like sluces them unfold.

Sir Walter Scott, (1771–1832) in Coronach, a lament for the dead king, Duncan, made a similar comparison: He is gone on the mountain, He is lost to the forest, Like a summer-dried fountain, When our need was the sorest … Like the dew on the mountain, Like the foam on the river,

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Writ in Water Like the bubble in the fountain, Thou art gone and forever!

In To the River Charles, Longfellow was quite specific in his choice of simile: I have seen thy water stealing Onward, like the stream of life.

Wordsworth, in Yarrow Revisited, stressed the contrast between the enduring flow of the river and the impermanency of human life. And if, as Yarrow through the woods And down the meadow ranging, Did meet us with unaltered face, Though we were changed and changing; … Flow on for ever, Yarrow Stream! Fulfil thy pensive duty, Well pleased that future Bards should chant For simple hearts thy beauty;

And W.B. Yeats, in The Old Men Admiring Themselves in the Water (1902), played his own variation on the recurring theme: I hear the old, old men say Everything alters, And one by one we drop away They had hands like claws, and their knees Were twisted like old thorn-trees By the waters. I heard the old, old men say, All that’s beautiful drifts away Like the waters.

Moods Moods of joy or melancholy are often associated with the seasons of the year, or simply with the weather. This is what the 15th century Frenchman, Charles D’Orleans had to say of spring and winter: Gentle spring! In sunshine clad, Well dost thou thy power display! For winter makes the light heart sad, And thou, thou makest the sad heart gay. He sees thee, and calls to his gloomy train, The sleet and the snow and the wind and the rain, And they shrink away and they flee in fear, When thy merry step draws near. Winter giveth the fields and the trees, so old, Their beards of icicles and snow; And the rain, it raineth so fast and cold, We must cower over the embers low; And, snugly housed from the wind and weather, Mope like birds that are changing feather.

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And from two poems by Swinburne (1837–1909): For winter’s rains and ruins are over, And all the season of snows and sins; The days dividing lover and lover, The light that loses, the night that wins; From Atlanta in Calydon

and: The burden of four seasons. Rain in spring, White rain and wind among the tender trees; A summer of green sorrows gathering; Rank autumn in a mist of miseries, With sad face set towards the year, that sees The charred ash drop out of the dropping pyre, And winter wan with many maladies; This is the end of every man’s desire. From A Ballad of Burdens (1866)

A single rainy day was enough to put Longfellow in a melancholy mood, though he did find some comfort in the thought that the sun was not gone forever. The day is cold and dark and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; The vine still clings to the mouldering wall, But at every gust the dead leaves fall, And the day is dark and dreary. My life is cold and dark and dreary; It rains, and the wind is never weary; My thoughts still cling to the mouldering Past, But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast, And the days are dark and dreary. Be still, sad heart! And cease repining; Behind the clouds is the sun still shining; Thy fate is the common fate of all, Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. The Rainy Day Miscellaneous poems, 1841–46144

And here is C. Day Lewis with not a good word to spare for Spring showers: When bullying April bruised mine eyes With sleet-bound appetites and crude Experiments in green …

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When Nature Plays

Writ in Water

Miscellaneous Metaphors Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), grandfather of Charles of Origin of Species fame, was a poet as well as a physician and a philosopher. In Zoomania, or the Laws of Organic Life, he made a formal contribution to the advancement of evolutionary theory. The Economy of Vegetation, which he wrote in 1795, is a scientist’s poem—an allegorical description of the hydrological cycle: Your buoyant troops on dimpling ocean tread, Wafting the moist air from his oozy bed, Aquatic nymphs—you lead with viewless march, The winged vapours up the aerial arch, On each broad cloud a thousand sails expand, And steer the shadowy treasure o’er the land, Through vernal skies the gathering drops diffuse, Plunge in soft rains or sink in silver dews.

In the poem, Lincoln, Man of the People, read at the dedication of the Lincoln Memorial in 1922, the poet Edwin Markham drew on water for idioms to describe the special qualities of the man he was eulogizing: The color of the ground was in him, the red earth; The smack and tang of elemental things: … The good-will of the rain that loves all leaves; The friendly welcome of the wayside well; … The secrecy of streams that make their way Under the mountain to the rifted rock;

The South African poet, Michael Cope, in his Rain Poem, (1991), makes an unusual comparison of rain to poetry. That day it rained poetry. … the Iliad and the Odyssey came down In a sudden squall of dark, archaic drops … … words and mud roiled Towards the storm-drain but from the window, through the gathering and changing verses we couldn’t make out their content.

Francis Carey Slater, in the poem Drought, quoted above, uses drought as a metaphor for human shortcomings: Like our tortured land, We have suffered tribulation. Droughts of hate have devastated us: Erosions of the spirit have made us poor: The waters of love sweeping over us, Have escaped unheeded. How long shall we wander aimlessly In deserts of drought and despair?

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Tributes The following poems could not be more different in character, but they both draw on water to pay tribute to men loved and admired. To Thomas Moore: Were’t the last drop in the well, As I gasped upon the brink, Ere my fainting spirit fell, ’Tis to thee I would drink. With that water, as this wine, This libation I would pour Should be—peace with thine and mine, And a health to thee, Tom Moore

Alfred, Lord Byron

And Gunga Din: You may talk o’ gin and beer When you’re quartered safe out ’ere, But when it comes to slaughter You will do your work on water, An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of him that’s got it. … I sha’n’t forgit the night When I dropped be’ind the fight With a bullet where my belt-plate should ’a’ been, I was choking mad with thirst, An’ the man that spied me first Was our good old grinnin’, gruntin’ Gunga Din. ’E lifted up my ’ead, An’ ’e plugged me where I bled, An ’e guv me ’arf-a-pint o’ water green. It was crawling and it stunk, But of all the drinks I’ve drunk, I’m gratefullest to one from Gunga Din. Rudyard Kipling

Comic and Curious The Comic On a lighter note, water has provided versifiers with many themes for humor, from the Biblical to drinking and bathing. Here are two versions of the story of Noah, the first, Wine and Water by G.K. Chesterton, used as a springing board for a heated protest against temperance. The second, Darky Sunday School, is an anonymous piece of business analysis: Wine and Water: And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine, I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.

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Writ in Water … The seven heavens came roaring down for the throats of hell to drink, And Noah he cocked his eye and said, It looks like rain, I think. The water has drowned the Matterhorn as deep as a Mendip wine, But I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine … But Noah he sinned, and we have sinned; on tipsy feet we trod, Till a great black teetotaller was sent for us for a rod, And you can’t get wine at a P.S.A, or chapel, or Eisteddfod, For the Curse of Water has come again because of the wrath of God, And water is on the Bishop’s board and the Higher Thinker’s shrine, But I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t go into the wine.

And, from the folksy Darky Sunday School: Noah was a mariner who sailed around the sea, With half a dozen wives and a big menagerie; He failed the first season when it rained for forty days, For in that kind of weather no circus ever pays.

On the dangers of bathing, Ogden Nash had this to say: I test my bath before I sit, And I’m always moved to wonderment, That what chills the finger not a bit, Is so frigid on the fundament.

Concern for drinking water quality was expressed by Harry Graham: In the drinking well Which the plumber built her, Aunt Eliza fell— We must buy a filter.

Some lack of enthusiasm for drinking the stuff, even at its purest, was expressed by another anonymous poet: Pure water is the greatest gift That man to man can bring But who am I that I should Have the best of everything Let Princes revel at the Pumps Let peers the ponds make free But whiskey, wine or even beer Is good enough for me.

And the Curious Samuel Archevolti, (1515–1611), gave tongue to the frustrations of a poor, exploited donkey, in these words: Why is my back loaded with fine flour, while in my mouth there is no bread at all, but only straw? I drink well-water

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Water, Soul and Psyche though I carry wine. And the stick goes on fracturing my skull!

The Ass’s Complaint

Ephraim Luzzato, (1729–92), studied medicine in Padua and in 1763 was appointed physician to London’s Portuguese Jewish community. His Kidney Sonnet was written to comfort his mentor, Jacob Hai Hefetz, who was suffering from a kidney ailment. Arise, afflicted master, see how this people, silent as a stone, is here shedding water. At their groans of distress the waters of the sea pile up. Beams cry out from the woodwork, and stones from the wall. Now, mighty one, give forth a torrent of water and—gently, easily—discharge the stone … The merciful God, who once made streams of water run from a rock in the wilderness, will now draw out water for you from his springs of deliverance.

The Twentieth Century Twentieth century poets still draw on water for their images, but in general not to give lyrical expression to the beauties of nature. Two world wars seem to have turned their minds to more somber topics. In Fire and Ice (1919), Robert Frost (1875–1953) wondered how the world was going to end: Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. From what I’ve tasted of desire I hold with those who favor fire. But if I had to perish twice, I think I know enough of hate To say that for destruction ice Is also great And would suffice.

In The Waste Land (1922), T.S. Eliot painted a grim picture of boredom and pointlessness in a world without water: V. What the Thunder Said Here is no water but only rock Rock and no water and the sandy road The road winding above among the mountains Which are mountains of rock without water If there were water we should stop and drink Amongst the rock one cannot stop or think …

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In the same year as The Wasteland saw light, Langston Hughes, an African American, only twenty-four years old, published the remarkable poem, Negro Speaks of Rivers, proudly laying claim to a heritage stretching back to ancient civilizations. I’ve known rivers I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins My soul has grown deep like the rivers

Writing of the air raids over London in 1940, Edith Sitwell (1887–1964) turned to rain for her chilling metaphor: Still falls the rain— Dark as the world of man, black as our loss— Blind as the nineteen hundred and forty nails Upon the Cross.

The Spanish poet, Frederico Garcia Lorca,145 (1899–1936), was one of the few 20th century poets whose use of water as metaphor has a lyrical quality. Morning is an early poem: But the song of water Is an eternal thing. … It is the mist and the rose Of the eternal tomorrow.

And in Lluvia, the sound of falling rain evokes the following: Each drop of water trembles on the dim glass Leaving divine wounds of diamond. They are the poets of water who have seen and meditate Things which the vast crowds of rivers ignore.

The Polish poetess, Wislawa Szymborska, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996. In her 1962 poem Water she wrote: 1962. There are not enough names to utter all your fleeting names, O water.

and: Whenever, wherever whatever has happened is written on waters of Babel.

On the Pulse of the Morning was the poem that was read by its author, Mary Angelou, at the inauguration of Bill Clinton as president of the United States in 1993. Through the voice of the river it speaks of the clouded legacy of the twentieth century, yet does not abandon hope for the future. It concludes, as I conclude this chapter, with a line that rings with optimism. The River sang and sings on.

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Chapter 7.2 Water and the Visual Arts The Roles of Water Of all inorganic substances, acting in their own proper nature, and without assistance or combinations, water is the most wonderful. If we think of it as the source of all the changefulness and beauty which we have seen in clouds; then as the instrument by which the earth we have contemplated was modelled in symmetry, and its crags chiselled into grace; then, as in the form of snow, it robes the mountains it has made, with that transcendent light which we could not have conceived if we had not seen; then as it exists in the foam of the torrent—in the iris which spans it, in the morning mist which rises from it, in the deep crystalline pools which mirror its hanging shore, in the broad lake and glancing river; finally in that which is to all human minds the best element of unwearied, unconquerable power, the wild, various, fantastic, tameless unity of the sea; what shall we compare to this mighty, this universal element, for glory and beauty? It is like trying to paint a soul. John Ruskin Modern Painters I (1843)

Water has a role in the art of every culture, from the Stone Age to the present, from the Far East to the Far West. It appears in the drawings of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia, in the temple and tomb reliefs of the Egyptians, in the mosaics of the classical world of Greece and Rome, in the didactic Church art of Christendom, in a millennium of Chinese landscape painting and in the works of the great Renaissance artists. Water dominates representations of the prosaic, man-made landscape of Holland of the 16th and 17th centuries and of the natural landscape of the American West of the 19th century, then barely touched by human intervention. Water’s reflection of light mesmerized the greatest of the French Impressionists. It remains a vivid presence into the twenty first century. Water is endlessly versatile. It appears in landscapes—as rivers, lakes and waterfalls, as rain and snow, mist and cloud—sometimes in spectacles of overwhelming grandeur and at other times in gentle pastoral scenes. It provides the setting for human activities for production and pleasure—activities at spring and well-side, farming, fishing and fowling, boating and swimming, washing and bathing. It has its place in the illustration of religious and historical events and of pagan myths.

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In some works of art water is an essential component of the subject-matter. In others its contribution is evocative, concerned with ambience, atmosphere and emotional response. Its portrayal in any instance is the result of the interplay of the many factors which influence the artist’s perception of the world around him. History, geography and climate play their part. So do the social, economic and cultural milieus and the conventions of artistic discipline current at any particular time. Beyond these is the transcendent genius of the individual, whose unique vision transforms the way the rest of us see.

Dreamtime The beginning of the symbiotic relationship between water and art dates back at least forty thousand years, to the first settlers who came to Australia overland, during the Ice Age. When the ice melted water levels rose and they were cut off from the Asian mainland and from the rest of humanity until the arrival of Europeans in the 18th century. Isolated on their island continent, the Aborigines, as they were called by European latecomers, developed a unique culture. Art played an important role in its ceremonials and in the preservation of its traditions. A few ancient cave paintings are still to be seen. Most works were made of perishable materials such as sand and bark, often deliberately destroyed as part of the ceremonies for which they had been created. However the codes for their creation were passed from one generation to the next and have survived to this day. A remarkable initiative, in the early 1970s, started Aboriginal artists using modern materials and painting in acrylic on canvas, while remaining true to their traditions.146 Their pictures have come to the attention of a wide public, far beyond their own community, or even their own country. Accessibility, combined with scholarly research, have helped towards deepening understanding of what to an outsider, at first glance, appears to be a purely abstract art form. The Aboriginals believe in a primeval time that they refer to as Dreamtime. It was then that the Ancestors, who were supernatural beings, rose from their sleep. They journeyed across the world and created the landscape and its human inhabitants. When their work was completed they went back to sleep beneath the earth, but their spirits continued to inhabit the world.

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Fig. 92:

Source: Author

Examples of Symbols related to Water in Australian Aboriginal Art

Aboriginal paintings are maps of Journeys and accounts of mythical events which took place in Dreamtime. They are full of information, but not easy to interpret. Many symbols have multiple meanings, while some concepts are represented in alternative ways. A number of the symbols represent water in its various manifestations. The frequent use of these symbols will be instantly intelligible to anyone with experience of arid lands, where life depends on water and journeys are planned from one water-hole to the next. On the other hand, for someone quite foreign to this culture, penetrating beneath the surface, beyond the obvious, into the metaphysical aspect and complex iconographic meanings of Aboriginal culture, is wellnigh impossible.

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Fig. 93:

A Flooded Road

Fig. 94:

Fording a River

Source: ID 33639329 © Inge Hogenbijl | Dreamstime.com

Source: ID 33370012 © Deboracilli | Dreamstime.com

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Illustrating the Bible Over two millennia the stories of the Bible have been interpreted and reinterpreted for generation upon generation of believers. The Jewish artists who illustrated the Biblical tales worked within far more stringent limits than their Christian counterparts. They were limited to the subject matter of the Old Testament and they were bound by the Second Commandment: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth Exodus 20.4

During some periods this was understood as an absolute prohibition on the representation of the human form in pictures or sculpture but, fortunately for art at least, there were other periods when it was more flexibly interpreted, or even ignored. Christian artists were free to draw both on the New Testament and the Old. Their pictures are crowded not only with ordinary human beings, but even with representations of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, from his birth to his death on the Cross.

In the Jewish Tradition The 3rd century murals of the Dura Europos synagogue provide a good starting point for looking at Jewish illustrations of the Bible.147 Dura, on the banks of the Euphrates, was a city with a checkered history. Important as a trading post—where goods brought up the river from India were transferred onto camels to complete their journey to the Mediterranean—it was much fought over and changed hands over and over again. The city was under Roman rule when attacked by the Sassanids in 256 CE but by that time the Romans had lost interest in their far-flung outpost. The local residents were left to fend for themselves. In a last-ditch effort to strengthen the defenses of the city, they tore the roofs from the houses adjacent to the outer walls and poured desert sand into the hollow shells of the buildings. This did not save the city from being razed to the ground but it did preserve the buildings, much in the manner of those buried under the volcanic ash of Pompeii. The site was excavated in 1932. A synagogue was among the most important of the finds. Its facade did not distinguish it in any way from the rest of the street front but inside, away from prying eyes, it had been adapted to its function. It was quite elaborate and had been built over an older and more modest structure at a lower level. When the city fell it was still new. The decorations which covered its walls had been completed only five years before and, when unearthed seventeen hundred years later, almost smelled of fresh paint. Isolated from the restraining hand of orthodoxy, the artists had dared not only to ignore the Second Commandment, but also to mix pagan images with Jewish ones. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and many others jostle one another on the walls for all to see.

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Fig. 95:

Source: Public Domain

Exodus from Egypt: a Wood Panel in the Dura Europos Synagogue

Moses was depicted at a number of critical points in his life. One fresco