Recently a leak in the dam, which necessitated temporary resumption of the use of the Mariquina River water, was immediately followed by a marked increase in the number of deaths from such diseases, thus conclusively demonstrating the fact that we were right in ascribing the previous reduction in deaths to a better water supply.
This annual saving of lives is an important result, but more important yet is the fact that when Asiatic cholera reappears in the Mariquina valley, as it inevitably will sooner or later, we shall not live in constant fear of a general infection of the Manila water supply, which, judging from the experience of other cities where modern sanitary methods have been introduced, might result in the death of a third of the population.

In every country a very considerable part of the population always fails to boil its drinking water, no matter how great the resulting danger may be.
Manila lacked any facilities for the proper disposal of human waste, and the conditions which resulted were unspeakable, especially in the little _barrios_, or groups of houses, placed close together, helter-skelter, on wet, swampy ground and reached by means of runways not worthy even of the name of alleys, as one often had to crouch to pass along them.
A modern sewer system costing $2,000,000, supplemented by a pail system, has very effectively solved this problem, while thousands of homes closely crowded on disease-infected, mosquito-breeding ground have been removed to high, dry, sanitary sites.

The regions thus vacated have in many instances been drained, filled, provided with city water and good streets, and made fit for human occupancy.
The old moat around the city walls was a veritable incubator of disease.

It has been converted into an athletic field where crowds of people take healthful exercise.

The _esteros_, or tidal creeks, reeked with filth.