In the funerary chamber, in which the mourners assemble, in the second
story, the coffin is received by the attendants, placed on a metallic
chariot, running on rails, the long shafts or extensions of which carry
it, with its contents, directly into the fiery heart of the furnace and
there deposit it. The time required for the complete combustion is, at
present, twenty-five minutes for a child, and fifty-five for an adult.
An urn of a peculiar model is now provided for the reception of the
ashes, and this can be either buried in the family vault or placed in
one of the cells of the municipal columbarium, erected in 1895. Although
this latter receptacle does not, as yet, meet with much favor, and has
been irreverently compared by one of the apostles of cremation to a
shed, it might be made a very neat and unobjectionable mausoleum. At
present, it is a species of lofty white marble arcade, or porch, the
wall side of which is filled up with cells about two feet square, the
panels closing which bear the name and dates of the occupant. This
panelled white marble wall is, however, defaced by the black wreaths,
beadwork, and artificial flowers which the misguided mourners hang over
the remains of their departed. In this municipal columbarium, families
have a right to deposit their ashes for the space of five years, at the
end of which period the urns are taken out and emptied in the fosse
commune. A concession perpétuelle for the urns in a cemetery may,
however, be purchased for the sum of three hundred and sixty-nine francs
and eighty centimes. The columbarium provides for three hundred urns;
less than half these receptacles are as yet filled, but the number of
cremations increases slowly year by year. There is also a similar
establishment in the cemetery at Clichy, and others are projected for
other sites.
Statistics show that the annual mortality in Paris is about 22.6 per
thousand inhabitants, which the Parisian publications erroneously claim
is below the average for large cities. In London, for example, in the
week ending January 14, 1899, it was 18 per thousand, and averaged 18.5
in thirty-two provincial towns. In some of them, as Brighton, Derby,
Leicester, and Hull, it ranged from 11 to 12.9; and the highest rates
were from 22.4 in Manchester to 24 in Sunderland. It is a constant
source of wonder to the newly-arrived in Paris, however,--especially if
he be inoculated with modern ideas concerning sanitary sewage in
dwelling-houses,--that the city escapes an annual epidemic of typhoid
fever. So very primitive are the methods of cesspools, and the official
emptying of them, in very many quarters of the city, that it is an
article of faith with the citizens to close all their windows tightly at
night,--an article of faith that is adopted by many American and English
residents with the usual wholesome Anglo-Saxon ideas concerning
ventilation of sleeping-rooms. It may be stated, however, as the result
of much experience, that--even for those who are able thus to sleep in
tightly-closed rooms--the open windows at night are _not_ deadly. The
prejudice against night air, which is by no means confined to France,
here takes on an acute form,--it is even asserted stoutly, and this,
too, is believed sometimes by the otherwise intelligent foreigner, that
the entrance of fresh air into the sleeping-room at night produces
affections of the eyes. The quarters of Paris in which the mortality is
the lowest--those which show quite white on the graded annual mortality
plan of the city--are the arrondissements of the Élysée and the Opéra,
11.1 and 14.5 respectively; and those which are printed quite black on
the same plan are those of the Observatoire and the Gobelins, 32.8 and
31.4 respectively.
Nevertheless, the sewerage system of Paris is conceived and carried out
in its general plan with an appreciation of the requirements of modern
sanitary science and an intelligent employment of the science of the
engineer that are quite admirable. The methods of disposing of the
city's refuse in use by many American municipalities, as those of New
York and Chicago, are, by comparison, but dull and stupid perpetuation
of antiquated traditions. The animated controversy over the great
question of _Tout à l'égout_, "all refuse to the sewer," was not finally
settled till 1894, and this method has as yet not been applied to all
the quarters of the city, as stated above, but is being gradually
extended, and nothing but time seems to be wanting to bring about in
this capital a complete solution of one of the most difficult problems
of material civilization. The object of the Parisian method is to avoid
fouling the Seine in any way, and to utilize all the city's refuse,
instead of throwing it away or allowing it to accumulate, a menace to
health and a hideous nuisance. By an excellent system of underground
conduits, well lighted and ventilated, the sewage and the rain-water are
collected, carried by canals and pipes outside the city, and applied,
after proper treatment, to the fertilization of certain arid tracts of
land farther down the river. The principal agent in this "hygienic
transformation of Paris" was the engineer Belgrand, who, at his death,
in 1870, had increased the length of the municipal sewers from two
hundred and twenty-eight kilomètres in 1860 to six hundred. It has now
attained a total of fourteen hundred and twenty-one, representing a
capital of a hundred and fifty millions of francs.
The first principle of Belgrand's system was to avoid any discharge from
the sewers into the river during its course through Paris. The great
main sewer, the _collecteur général_, of the right bank, called the
collecteur d'Asnières, follows the quais from the basin of the Arsenal
to the Place de la Concorde, then burrows under the heights of the
Batignolles to reach Clichy; the collecteur général of the left bank,
which includes the poor little Bièvre, traverses the bed of the Seine by
means of a siphon at the Pont de l'Alma and is prolonged by the
collecteur Monceau, which passes under the hill of the Place de l'Étoile
to join the collecteur d'Asnières. A third collecteur, known as the
_départemental_, or _du Nord_, at a higher level, receives the drainage
of Belleville and Montmartre, and issues from the city by the Porte de
La Chapelle to reach the Seine at Saint-Denis. A new siphon, constructed
under the Seine in 1895 and 1896, unites the collecteur général of the
left bank to the collecteur d'Asnières. The sewage of the Iles
Saint-Louis and de la Cité is carried by two other siphons to the
collecteurs of the quais of the right and left banks.
A new main sewer, called the collecteur général de Clichy, was commenced
in 1896, to supplement those of Asnières and Monceau, become
insufficient; this passes under the Avenue and the Rue de Clichy to
terminate at the Place de la Trinité. The prolongation of the line of
the Orléans railway to the Quai d'Orsay, by means of a tunnel, has
necessitated a very important modification of the sewers of the left
bank of the river, which has had much to do with the lengthening of the
work of excavation which has so greatly annoyed the dwellers on this
side of the river in 1898 and 1899. It was understood that this
excavating was to be done entirely underground, whereas it has blockaded
many of the narrower streets, and even when it tunnels it contrives to
raise the street level about a mètre and substitute a wooden floor, as
along the Quai Voltaire. It is stated that this work will cost the
railway company not less than five million francs.
[Illustration: UNDERGROUND PARIS: LICENSED RAT-CATCHER IN A SEWER.
After a design by G. Amato.
Henri Dayre: Chasseur de rats de la Ville de Paris, fournisseur de
toutes les Sociétés de France et de l'Étranger.]
The diameter of the vault of the _égouts collecteurs_ varies between
four and six mètres; that of the _égouts secondaires_ from two mètres to
three mètres, seventy centimètres; that of the _égouts ordinaires_,
including ten varieties, from one mètre to one mètre, seventy-five. The
size the most in use has a diameter of one mètre, forty. The problem of
purifying and utilizing the contents of the sewers, which were
provisionally discharged into the Seine at Saint-Denis and at
Asnières, occupied the attention of the municipality from the period of
the establishing of the collecteurs, but the vigorous local opposition
which was encountered greatly delayed the carrying out of these
projects. Consequently, the purification of the river is not yet
complete. On the sandy and arid plain of Genevilliers, situated in the
first loop of the Seine, beyond Clichy, the experiment of fertilizing
with this drainage was commenced in 1869. At present, the ground thus
under cultivation includes some seven hundred and ninety-five
_hectares_,--about two and a half acres each,--of which six belong to
the city of Paris and constitute the model garden. The remainder is held
by private individuals, who pay a rental of from four to six hundred
francs the hectare. The distribution of the sewage is effected by agents
of the administration in regular rotation, in three zones. In 1896, each
hectare absorbed thirty-seven thousand and sixty-seven cubic mètres. All
varieties of vegetables are grown, and this land, on which were raised
formerly only meagre crops of rye and potatoes, is now a flourishing
garden.
A second agricultural establishment at Achères, farther on, on both
sides of the Seine, was inaugurated in 1895, the larger portion of which
is held by individuals, but as each hectare of land can absorb not more
than forty thousand cubic mètres annually, it has been found necessary
to seek additional _champs d'épuration_. These have been secured by the
municipality at Méry and les Gresillons and in their neighborhood, still
farther westward, and the completion of these is promised for the summer
of 1899. In the model garden of Asnières, all varieties of culture are
practised, the sewage is carried in trenches into the cultivated land in
such a manner as to bathe only the roots of the plants. The extremely
winding course taken by the Seine west of Paris renders it necessary
for the conduits conveying this drainage to cross the river three times
before reaching Achères, as may be seen by reference to the map. From
the _usine elévatoire_ of Clichy it is carried under the Seine by a
siphon, four hundred and sixty-three mètres in length; the aqueduct
crosses the river again near the usine de Colombes, opposite Argenteuil,
on a steel bridge, and again near Herblay, by another siphon. In 1897,
on the total surface, a thousand hectares, under cultivation, there were
spread seventy million cubic mètres of sewage.
After many and long debates, carried on both in the Conseil Municipal
and the Chamber of Deputies, the much-discussed question of _Tout à
l'égout_ was disposed of by a law passed on the 10th of July, 1894, by
which the proprietors of all houses situated in streets provided with a
public sewer were required to make connections with this and drain into
it all the refuse of their _cabinets d'aisances_. This connection was to
be made within the space of three years, and a proportionate tax for
this privilege was laid upon each dwelling. But the streets in which
there are no public sewers,--including those private streets,
_impasses_, and _cités_ which the municipality considers as the property
of individuals, and for which it provides neither policemen nor
street-cleaners,--and those buildings in which this connection has not
been made, still furnish occupation for those nocturnal vehicles the
mere thought of which drives the careful citizen to close his windows.
In the seventeenth century, this nocturnal agent was known as _Maître
fy-fy et des basses-oeuvres_, and he fulfilled his task by carting his
material to one of the public dumping grounds and there discharging it.
Many of the now picturesque sites of the city owe their characteristics
to these eminences of refuse,--the Buttes of the Rues Meslay and
Notre-Dame-de-Nazareth, Bonne-Nouvelle, des Moulins, the labyrinth of
the Jardin des Plantes. "The _voirie_ of Montfaucon," says M. Strauss,
"with its infected basins, its pestilential reservoirs, its charnier and
its gibbet, was a cause of shame and anxiety to several quarters of
Paris; even after being transferred from the Faubourg Saint-Martin to
the foot of the Buttes Chaumont, it was an object of horror and disgust.
An army of rats garrisoned the charnier, whilst the basins overflowed
with rottenness. This horrible establishment had its clientèle; in 1832,
the Préfet de Police, M. Gisquet, found, according to the account of M.
Mille, a hideous thing,--individuals who, in the midst of these lakes,
fished up again the dead fish.
"In 1848, this notorious laystall was installed in the forest of Bondy,
where it has undergone various transformations; for many years the
basins were encumbered with a stock but very slightly appetizing; to
reduce these mountains of refuse to industrial products was a very
serious undertaking. After being, by slow desiccation by drying in the
air and grinding, transformed into a fertilizer called _poudrette_, they
are subjected to various chemical processes; there is extracted from
them sulphate of ammonia, etc. The odors which are disengaged during
these operations, while not injurious to the health of man, are not of
those which leave public opinion indifferent; the girdle of insalubrious
establishments which immediately surrounds Paris, individual
_dépotoirs_, private _voiries_, manufactories of fertilizing materials,
is no less menacing than disgraceful.
"A single establishment is an exception to this rule, it is the dépotoir
of La Villette, in the neighborhood of the _Marché aux bestiaux_. It
would never be thought, from its appearance, that it was the nightly
rendezvous of the most infectious scavengers' carts that traverse Paris.
A coquettish garden, of a surprising greenness, all flowery and
perfumed, charms the eyes; the receiving cisterns conceal themselves
under vaults that do not reveal their secret to the first comer. The
basin of the water of the Ourcq has the most innocent air in the world,
and the return-pumps reveal nothing.
"All night long, the dépotoir is visited by vehicles, two or three
hundred in number, which arrive in single file, with a mysterious
heaviness, to discharge themselves in the cisterns. What a discharge! a
thousand to twelve hundred cubic mètres--of matter!
"The next morning, all this deposit is relegated to a distance of nine
kilomètres, as far as Bondy, by elevating machines: the cisterns are
washed out and cleansed by floods of water; the heavy matter which the
pumps do not take up is put in casks and taken away to be employed
directly in the manufacture of manure, by mixing it with other
fertilizing materials. The transportal of the liquid matter to Bondy is
effected by means of a machine of twenty-five horse-power, through a
conduit thirty centimètres in diameter, which follows the right bank of
the canal de l'Ourcq."
[Illustration: SERVICE MUNICIPAL FORESTIER: TRANSPLANTATION OF TREE ON
THE BOULEVARDS.