975.51; in 1836 the income from this source had dwindled to
$6,195.77. The canal dividends had been kept up to their highest mark by
the sale of its townships in Maine and other real estate: but now they
began to drop. The year the Lowell road went into full operation the
receipts of the canal were reduced one-third; and when the Nashua &
Lowell road went into full operation, in 1840, they were reduced another
third. The board of directors waged a plucky warfare with the railroads,
reducing the tariff on all articles, and almost abolishing it on some,
till the expenditures of the canal outran its income; but steam came out
triumphant. Even sanguine Caleb Eddy became satisfied that longer
competition was vain, and set himself to the difficult task of saving
fragments from the inevitable wreck.

At this time (1843) Boston numbered about 100,000 inhabitants, and was
dependent for water upon cisterns and wells. The supply of water in the
wells had been steadily diminishing for years, and what remained was
necessarily subject to contamination from numberless sources. "One
specimen which I analyzed," said Dr. Jackson, "which gave three per
cent, of animal and vegetable putrescent matter, was publicly sold as a
mineral water; it was believed that water having such a remarkable fetid
odor and nauseous taste, could be no other than that of a sulphur
spring; but its medicinal powers vanished with the discovery that the
spring arose from a neighboring drain." Here was a golden opportunity.
Eddy proposed to abandon the canal as a means of transportation, and
convert it into an aqueduct for supplying the City of Boston with
wholesome water. The sections between the Merrimac and Concord at one
extremity, and Charlestown mill-pond and Woburn at the other, were to be
wholly discontinued. Flowing along the open channel of the canal from
the Concord river to Horn-pond locks in Woburn, from thence it was to be
conducted in iron pipes to a reservoir upon Mount Benedict in
Charlestown, a hill eighty feet above the sea-level.

The good quality of the Concord-river water was vouched for by the
"analysis of four able and practical chemists, Dr. Charles T. Jackson,
of Boston; John W. Webster, of Cambridge University; S.L. Dana, of
Lowell, and A.A. Hayes, Esq., of the chemical works at Roxbury." The
various legal questions involved were submitted to the Hon. Jeremiah
Mason, who gave an opinion, dated Dec. 21, 1842, favorable to the
project. The