‘Here,’ I explained, ‘is the spot whence the Grand Junction Company derive their water. In the bed of the river is an enormous culvert pipe laid parallel to this path. Its mouth—open towards Richmond—is barred across with a grating, to intercept stray fish, murdered kittens, or vegetable impurities, and—except now and then the intrusion edgeways of a small flounder, or the occasional slip of an erratic eel—it admits nothing into the pipe but what is more or less fluid. The culvert then takes a bend round the edge of the islet opposite to us; burrows beneath the Brentford road, and delivers its contents into a well under that tall chimney and taller iron “stand-pipe” which you see on the other side of the river.’ ‘And is _this_ the stuff I have to pay four pounds ten a year for?’ exclaimed Mr. Lyttleton, contemplating the opaque fluid; part of which was then making its way into the cisterns of Her Majesty’s lieges. ‘Certainly; but it is purified first. We will now cross the bridge to the Works.’ Those of my readers who make prandial expeditions to Richmond, must have noticed at the beginning of Old Brentford, a little beyond where they turn over Kew Bridge, an immensely tall thin column that shoots up into the air like an iron mast unable to support itself, and seems to require four smaller, thinner, and not much shorter props to keep it upright. This, with the engine and engine-houses, is all they can see of the Grand Junction Waterworks from the road. It is only when one gets inside, that the whole extent of the aquatic apparatus is revealed. Determined to follow the water from the Thames till it began its travels to London, we entered the edifice, went straight to the well, and called for a glass of water. Our hosts—who had received our visit without hesitation—supplied us. ‘That,’ remarked one of them, as he held the half-filled tumbler up to the light, ‘is precisely the state of the water as emptied from the Thames into the well.’ It looked like a dose of weak magnesia, or that peculiar London liquid known as ‘skim-sky-blue,’ but deceitfully sold under the name of milk. ‘The analysis of Professor Brande,’ said Lyttleton, ‘gives to every gallon of Thames water taken from Kew Bridge, 19·2 parts of solid matter; but the water, I apprehend, in which he experimented must have been taken from the river on a serener occasion than this. To-day’s rain appears to have drained away the chalk—so as to give in this specimen a much larger proportion of solids to fluids than his estimate.’ ‘In this impure state,’ one of the engineers told us, ‘the water is pumped by steam power into the reservoirs to which you will please to follow me.’