PONT NOTRE-DAME, FROM THE QUAI DE GESVRES,
AS THEY APPEARED IN 1861. THEY WERE DEMOLISHED IN 1866.

From a drawing by H. Toussaint, after a contemporary engraving.]

A detailed report has been preserved, setting forth the condition of the
streets of the capital, made by Anne de Beaulieu, Sieur de
Saint-Germain, to the king, in April, 1636. Everywhere, _ordures_,
_immondices_, _boues_, and _eaux croupies et arrestees_, the latter
proceeding from the broken sewers; in the quartier Saint-Eustache, the
egouts were stopped up, as everywhere else, "which causes the aforesaid
waters to stagnate and to rise nearly to the church of Saint-Eustache
and to give forth such a stinking vapor, in consequence of the
carriages, carts, and horses which pass through the aforesaid waters,
which is capable of polluting the whole quarter, and the same rising and
stagnating of water is caused in the Rue du Bout du Monde as far as the
aforesaid Rue Montorgueil; and it is to be remarked that the stench of
the aforesaid waters is much more stinking and infectious in this
locality than in others, because of the butchers and pork-butchers who
have their slaughter-houses on the aforesaid _esgout_ (the egout of the
Rue Montmartre), and that the blood and the garbage and other matters
proceeding as much from the aforesaid slaughter-houses as from the
sweepings of the houses."

In 1670, the city established the two pumps at the Pont Notre-Dame to
raise the river-water, which, elevated "to the height of sixty feet and
to the quantity of eighty inches, was conducted into different quarters
of the city by pipes six inches in diameter." Two mills which were
standing on this site were purchased by the city, which diminished
considerably the expense and hastened the completion of the work. These
pumps were enclosed in a building of the Ionic order of architecture,
the door of which was decorated with a medallion of Louis XIV, and with
two figures sculptured in bas-relief by Jean Goujon, one representing a
naiad, and the other personifying a river. These had previously
ornamented an edifice in the Marche Neuf which had been demolished. An
inscription by the poet Santeuil completed the decoration of this
building. These pumps were restored and reconstructed in 1708, and
finally abandoned in 1854.

The most important reformation effected in the eighteenth century was
the reconstruction, throughout its whole length, of the great main sewer
and the construct