Urban History (2020), 1–27 doi:10.1017/S096392682000084X RESEARCH ARTICLE ‘A mere gutter!’ The Carioca Aqueduct and water delivery in mid-nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro Alida C. Metcalf1* , Sean Morey Smith2 and S. Wright Kennedy3 1Department of History, MS 42, Rice University, PO Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892, USA 2Humanities Research Center, MS 620, Rice University, PO Box 1892, Houston, TX 77251-1892, USA 3Department of History, 413 Fayerweather Hall, MC 2527, Columbia University, 1180 Amsterdam Ave., New York, NY 10027, USA *Corresponding author. Email:
[email protected] Abstract The two key aspects of water infrastructure – engineered and human – in mid-nineteenth- century Rio de Janeiro are the foci of this article. On the one hand, gravity flow engineer- ing brought fresh water from the Tijuca Forest to the fountains in the city, but on the other, hundreds of slaves carried heavy jugs of water from the fountains though the streets to residences. Using the account of Thomas Ewbank (1856), georeferenced historical maps and a field study, this article first reconstructs the route of the Carioca Aqueduct, then, using the accounts of Ewbank and other travellers, turns to the delivery of water in the city by enslaved water carriers. In 1849, the year before Brazil banned the transatlantic slave trade, the Frenchwoman Adèle Toussaint-Samson set aside a day for the famous excursion from the city of Rio de Janeiro to the Corcovado – the peak known as ‘the hunch- back’. Many visitors to Rio made the trip that wound up into the forest along the aqueduct that brought water to the city.