1885, a French company, La
Compagnie des Eaux, has rendered a great service by bringing water to
Stamboul, Pera, and the villages on the European side of the Bosporus,
from Lake Dercos, which lies close to the shore of the Black Sea some 29
m. distant from the city. The Dercos water is laid on in many houses.
Since 1893 a German company has supplied Scutari and Kadikeui with water
from the valley of the Sweet Waters of Asia.

_Trade._--The trade of the city has been unfavourably affected by the
political events which have converted former provinces of the Turkish
empire into autonomous states, by the development of business at other
ports of the empire, owing to the opening up of the interior country
through the construction of railroads, and by the difficulties which the
government, with the view of preventing political agitation, has put in
the way of easy intercourse by natives between the capital and the
provinces. Most of the commerce of the city is in hands of foreigners
and of Armenian and Greek merchants. Turks have little if anything to do
with trade on a large scale. "The capital," says a writer in the
_Konstantinopler Handelsblatt_ of November 1904, "produces very little
for export, and its hinterland is small, extending on the European side
only a few kilometres--the outlet for the fertile Eastern Rumelia is
Dedeagach--and on the Asiatic side embracing the Sea of Marmora and the
Anatolian railway district. Even part of this will be lost to
Constantinople when the Anatolian railway is connected with the port of
Mersina and with the Kassaba-Smyrna railway. Some 750 tons of the
sweetmeat known as 'Turkish delight' are annually exported to the United
Kingdom, America and Rumelia; embroideries, &c., are sold in fair
quantities to tourists. Otherwise the chief articles of Constantinople's
export trade consist of refuse and waste materials, sheep's wool (called
_Kassab bashi_) and skins from the slaughter-houses (in 1903 about
3,000,000 skins were exported, mostly to America), horns, hoofs, goat
and horse hair, guts, bones, rags, bran, old iron, &c., and finally
dogs' excrements, called in trade 'pure,' a Constantinople speciality,
which is used in preparing leather for ladies' gloves. From the
hinterland comes mostly raw produce such as grain, drugs, wool, silk,
ores and also carpets. The chief article is grain."

The average value of the goods passing through the port of
Constantinople at the opening of the 20t