been procured with comparative ease. The
stock was divided into 800 shares, and among the original stockholders
appear the names of Ebenezer and Dudley Hall, Oliver Wendall, John Adams
of Quincy, Peter C. Brooks of Medford, and Andrew Craigie of Cambridge.
The stock had steadily advanced from $25 a share in the autumn of 1794
to $473 in 1803, the year the canal was opened, touching $500 in 1804.
Then a decline set in, a few dollars at a time, till 1816, when its
market value was $300 with few takers, although the canal was in
successful operation, and, in 1814, the obstructions in the Merrimac had
been surmounted, so that canal boats, locking into the river at
Chelmsford, had been poled up stream as far as Concord.

Firewood and lumber always formed a very considerable item in the
business of the canal. The navy-yard at Charlestown and the shipyards on
the Mystic form any years relied upon the canal for the greater part of
the timber used in shipbuilding; and work was sometimes seriously
retarded by low water in the Merrimac, which interfered with
transportation. The supply of oak and pine about Lake Winnipiseogee, and
along the Merrimac and its tributaries, was thought to be practically
inexhaustible. In the opinion of Daniel Webster, the value of this
timber had been increased $5,000,000 by the canal. Granite from
Tyngsborough, and agricultural products from a great extent of fertile
country, found their way along this channel to Boston; while the return
boats supplied taverns and country stores with their annual stock of
goods. The receipts from tolls, rents, etc. were steadily increasing,
amounting,

in 1812 to $12,600,
" 1813 " 16,800,
" 1814 " 25,700,
" 1815 " 29,200,
" 1816 " 32,600,

Yet, valuable, useful, and productive as the canal had proved itself, it
had lost the confidence of the public, and, with a few exceptions, of
the proprietors themselves. The reason for this state of sentiment can
easily be shown. The general depression of business on account of the
embargo and the war of 1812 had its effect upon the canal. In the deaths
of Gov. Sullivan and Col. Baldwin, in the same year, 1808, the
enterprise was deprived of the wise and energetic counsellors to whom it
owed its existence.

The aqueducts and most of the locks, being built of wood, required large
sums for annual repairs; the expenses arising from imperfections in the
banks, and from the erection of toll-houses and publi