tion of the canal, removed
the first turf, Sept. 10, 1794. The progress was slow and attended with
many embarrassments. The purchase of land from more than one hundred
proprietors demanded skilful diplomacy. Most of the lands used for the
canal were acquired by voluntary sale, and conveyed in fee-simple to the
corporation. Sixteen lots were taken under authority of the Court of
Sessions; while for thirteen neither deed nor record could be found when
the corporation came to an end. Some of the land was never paid for, as
the owner refused to accept the sum awarded. The compensation ranged
from about $150 an acre in Medford to $25 in Billerica. The numerous
conveyances are all in Sullivan's handwriting.

Labor was not easily procured, probably from the scarcity of laborers,
as the wages paid, $10 a month and board, were presumably as much as
could be earned in manual labor elsewhere. "An order was sent to England
for a levelling instrument made by S. & W. Jones, of London, and this
was the only instrument used for engineering purposes after the first
survey by Weston." Two routes were considered; the rejected route was
forty years later selected for the Lowell Railroad. The canal, 30 ft.
wide, 4 ft. deep, with 20 locks, 7 aqueducts, and crossed by 50 bridges,
was, in 1802, sufficiently completed for the admission of water, and the
following year was opened to public navigation from the Merrimac to the
Charles. Its cost, about $500,000, of which one-third was for land
damages, was but little more than the estimate. Commencing at
Charlestown mill-pond, it passed through Medford, crossing the Mystic by
a wooden aqueduct of 100 ft., to Horn pond in Woburn. Traversing Woburn
and Wilmington it crossed the Shawshine by an aqueduct of 137 ft., and
struck the Concord, from which it receives its water, at Billerica
Mills. Entering the Concord by a stone guard-lock, it crossed, with a
floating tow-path, and passed out on the northern side through another
stone guard-lock; thence it descended 27 ft., in a course of 5-1/4
miles, through Chelmsford to the Merrimac, making its entire length
27-1/4 m.

The proprietors made Charlestown bridge the eastern terminus for their
boats, but ultimately communication was opened with the markets and
wharves upon the harbor, through Mill Creek, over a section of which
Blackstone street now extends.

As the enterprise had the confidence of the business community, money
for prosecuting the work had