at an elevation of about 2,600 feet, that the supply was drawn. The
main aqueduct which was of oval section, measuring fifty feet by
thirty feet, led underground to an enormous heart-shaped reservoir.
This lay deep below the palace, in fact at the very base of the hill
on which the palace and the city stood. From this reservoir a
perpendicular shaft of about 500 feet up through the solid rock gave
passage to the water which welled up in the palace grounds, and thence
was distributed throughout the city. Various pipes from the central
reservoir also led to different parts of the city to supply drinking
water and the public fountains. Systems of sluices of course also
existed to control or cut off the supply of the different districts.

From the above it will be apparent to any one possessed of some little
knowledge of mechanics that the pressure in the subterranean aqueduct
and the central reservoir from which the water naturally rose to the
basin in the palace gardens, must have been enormous, and the
resisting power of the material used in their construction
consequently prodigious.

If the system of water supply in the "City of the Golden Gates" was
wonderful, the Atlantean methods of locomotion must be recognised as
still more marvellous, for the air-ship or flying-machine which Keely
in America, and Maxim in this country are now attempting to produce,
was then a realized fact. It was not at any time a common means of
transport. The slaves, the servants, and the masses who laboured with
their hands, had to trudge along the country tracks, or travel in rude
carts with solid wheels drawn by uncouth animals. The air-boats may be
considered as the private carriages of those days, or rather the
private yachts, if we regard the relative number of those who
possessed them, for they must have been at all times difficult and
costly to produce. They were not as a rule built to accommodate many
persons. Numbers were constructed for only two, some allowed for six
or eight passengers. In the later days when war and strife had brought
the Golden Age to an end, battle ships that could navigate the air had
to a great extent replaced the battle ships at sea--having naturally
proved far more powerful engines of destruction. These were
constructed to carry as many as fifty, and in some cases even up to a
hundred fighting men.

The material of which the air boats were constructed was either wood
or metal. The earlier ones were built