The Ohio Democrat

OLDEST MONUMENT.

Sydney's "Scent Bottle" and the Purpose It Serves.

The Artistic Sense of the Australians Leads Them to Make Their Sewer Vent an Object of Beauty—A Shaft Without an Inscription of Any Kind.

The strangest monument in the world exists in Sydney, Australia. The shaft itself is not of an unusual sort, but while it is a unique ornament to the community in the midst of which it stands, it is also the most precious and the least understood of all structures in the great southern city.

This odd spire has no inscription upon it. It is as plain as a monolith, with a plinth and a slightly elevated pedestal. Facetious people, who are not versed in sewerage and sewer gas, call it the "Scent Bottle." Strangers scan it, strain at its unlettered faces, carry their vision up its plain sides to the pinnacle, which stands about 180 feet above the street level, and wonder what notable person or event it commemorates. Three-fourths of the residents of Sydney have not the remotest idea of what this modified Cleopatra's needle represents. This "scent bottle" commemorates sewer gas, and it stands as a monument to the people who are not killed by that vile subterranean agency.

As it has no other name, "scent bottle" will serve with which to designate it here, since the nickname somewhat symbolizes its business. This lonely column stands on Elizabeth street, in a small circle, against Hyde Park. Around it are a cordon of low, round-headed posts at short distances and chained to each other by strong traces upon which the park loafer and small boys lounge. None of these thousands of people ever think that the tall spire in the unique circle is the safest friend they and the city have. Take it away, close the 18-foot square hole, and in less than 24 hours the whole country about would be strewn with wreckage and the air filled with foul, poisonous gases. Remove it and leave the whole open, then, in less than a day, the lower city would be unfit for habitation. The great sewers of the city have their vent here. They come down with their filth and deadly gases, throw the latter off through this shaft, join the main sewer, and carry the remaining sewage on over the high bluffs of Hawkesbury sandstone to the sea.

The "scent bottle" sits over this meeting of the waters, and draws off the foul gases from the burdened pipes below. It is hollow, of course, and has an opening at the top which is not perceptible to the eye upon the street. Through its great throat the underground city breathes and all the sewers of the city are relieved. The "bottle" being nearly 200 feet high rises above any inhabited house in the city, and the rushing sewers giving the gas a forced draft, shoot it many feet above the top of this great gray chimney, whence this dangerous aeriform fluid is carried away, so that it never reaches a human being. This perpendicular gas sewer was built before 1850. It feeds the elements daily with enough foul stuff to fill a good-sized city, or to blow Gibraltar into atoms. Since its construction at their junction there has not been one explosion along the line of ramified sewers which converge toward this point.

The "scent bottle" is not an eyesore. Its business is so disguised that it is an object of beauty, and it is readily mistaken for a real monument. Indeed, it is the biggest, most conspicuous and picturesque of all the notable monuments in New South Wales, of which colony Sydney is the capital. The Sydney "scent bottle" is not an expensive structure. It is suggested to other cities in other parts of the world as vertical lungs for the safety of sewers, and the nervous populace who tramp thereon in the pursuit of other things.