Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 8.djvu/67

 The Middlesex Canal. 53

$6,195.77. The canal dividends had the Merrimac and Concord at one been kept up to their highest mark extremity, and Charlestown mill- by the sale of its townships in Maine pond and Woburn at the other, were and other real estate : but now they to be wholly discontinued. Flowing began to drop. The year the Lowell along the open channel of the canal road went into full oj^erution the from the Concord river to Horn-pond receipts of the canal were reduced locks in Woburn, from thence it was one-third; and when the Nashua & to be conducted in iron pipes to a Lowell road went into full operation, reservoir upon Mount Benedict in in 1840, they were reduced another Charlestown, a hill eighty feet above third. The board of directors waged the sea-level.

a plucky warfare with the railroads. The good quality of the Concord- reducing the tariff on all articles, and river water was vouched for almost abolishing it on some, till the by the " analysis of four able and expenditures of the canal outran its practical chemists. Dr. Charles T. income; but steam came out trium- Jackson, of Boston; John W. Web- phant. Even sanguine Caleb Eddy ster, of Cambridge University; S. L. became satisfied that longer competi- Dana, of Lowell, and A. A. Hayes, tion was vain, and set himself to the Esq., of the chemical works at Rox- difficult task of saving fragments from bury." The various legal questions the inevitable wreck. involved were submitted to the Hon. At this time (1S43) Boston num- Jeremiah Mason, who gave an opin- bered about ICO, 000 inhabitants, and ion, dated Dec. 21, 1842, favorable was dependent for water upon cisterns to the project. The form for an act and wells. The supply of water in of incorporation was drawn up; and the wells had been steadily diminish- a pamphlet was published, in 1843, ing for years, and what remained was by Caleb Eddy, entitled an " Historical necessarily subject to contamination sketch of the Middlesex Canal, with from numberless sources. " One remarks for the consideration of the specimen which I analyzed," said Proprietors," setting forth the new Dr. Jackson, " which gave three per scheme in glowing colors, cent, of animal and vegetable putres- But despite the feasibility of the cent matter, was publicly sold as a plan proposed, and the energy with mineral water; it was believed that which it was pushed, the agitation water having such a remarkable fetid came to naught; and Eddy, despair- odor and nauseous taste, could be no ing of the future, resigned his posi- other than that of a sulphur spring; tion as agent in 1845. Among the but its medicinal powers vanished directors during these later years were with the discovery that the spring Ebenezer Chadwick, Wm. Appleton, arose from a neighboring drain." Wm. Sturgis, Charles F. Adams, Here was a golden opportunity. A. A. Lawrence, and Abbott Law- Eddy proposed to abandon the canal rence; but no business ability could as a means of transportation, and long avert the catastrophe. Stock convert it into an aqueduct for sup- fell to $150, and 'inally the canal plying the City of Boston with whole- was discontinued, according to some water. The sections between Amory's Life of Sullivan, in 1846.

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