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Middlesex Canal?” A: “PART OF THE NATURAL LANDSCAPE.” Q: “WHAZZA MIDDLESEX CANAL?” On page 74 of WALKING TOWARDS WALDEN: A PILGRIMAGE IN SEARCH OF PLACE (Reading MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995), John Hanson Mitchell asserts that the Concord River flows northward into the Merrimack because of the glacial phenomenon known as “rebound.” “The ice of the last great glacier was so heavy it compressed the very earth, and when the glacier departed (for the time being — we are in an interglacial period), the land rose behind it, creating a general north-running slope.” Of course, the reason why the Concord River empties into the Merrimack is that it empties into the Middlesex Canal and the Middlesex Canal connects to the Merrimack. Had rebound been the case, as the land sprang back upward after the weight of the ice was taken off of it the rivers would gradually have etched deep river gorges into the landscape and the landforms in the vicinity of Boston would be considerably different from what they are today, perhaps not nearly the magnitude of the Grand Canyon but impressive nonetheless. The vicinity of Concord would definitely not be meadow land but would consist of high dry plateaus.1 The 27¼-mile Middlesex Canal connected Boston to the Merrimack River at Lowell. The canal played an important role in the development of the region north of Boston as far as Concord, New Hampshire. Freight and passengers were carried up and down the canal from 1803 to 1853 — but then it was superseded by the Boston & Lowell Railroad. Dimensions: 30½ feet at the waterline, 20 feet at the bottom, and 3½ feet in depth Facilities: 20 locks, 8 aqueducts, 48 bridges Sources of water: Concord River, Horn Pond Route: generally, the pre-glacial course of the Merrimack River Speed limit: passenger boats 4 mph, barges 2½ mph, rafts 1½ mph Surveyors: Samuel Thompson (Woburn), William Weston (England) 1.This is not the only factual error in Mitchell’s book. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL 1745 January 10, Thursday (1744, Old Style): The canal engineer Loammi Baldwin was born in Woburn MA. (He would be an officer in the Revolution, would become the discoverer of the Baldwin apple, and, in addition, in the 1794-to-1804 time frame, would supervise the digging of the Middlesex Canal.) Volume I of William Richard Cutter’s HISTORIC HOMES AND PLACES AND GENEALOGICAL AND PERSONAL MEMOIRS RELATING TO THE FAMILIES OF MIDDLESEX COUNTY, MASSACHUSETTS (NY: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1908): “In early life he discovered a strong desire for acquiring knowledge, and attended the grammar school in Woburn under the instruction of Master John Fowle, a noted teacher of that time, the school being a moveable one being kept at successive periods first in the centre of the town and secondly at the precinct, or the part of Woburn now incorporated in the town of Burlington. At a more advanced period of life, with the intention of obtaining a thorough acquaintance with natural and experimental philosophy, he would walk from North Woburn to Cambridge, in company with his schoolmate, Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, and attend the lectures of Professor John Winthrop at Harvard College, for which liberty had been given, and upon their return home on foot they were in the habit of illustrating the principles they had heard enunciated in the lecture room by making rude instruments for themselves to pursue their experiments.” HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL 1793 Construction began on the Dismal Swamp Canal and on South Carolina’s Santee and Cooper Canal. The first canal inclined plane was built, on Massachusetts’s Middlesex Canal, to bypass the falls at South Hadley MA. Construction begins on the Little Falls Canal. “HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE. Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL June: Governor John Hancock signed his big name on the project for a “Middlesex Canal,” making that project a paper reality. The inland region that had been open only by way of going out onto the open ocean around Cape Ann would be connected directly from the Merrimack River to the Mystic River and thus the port of Boston by a safe and easy inland waterway. Note that this project, for a canal to connect the port of Boston with the waterway of the Merrimack, was to be the 1st great work of engineering on the North American continent since the building of the last of the mounds in time immemorial, and note that of course because it was the 1st, the job was to be unclear in the concept and badly botched in its execution. This would in fact destroy the hopes of Newburyport at the mouth of the Merrimack by making of that municipality a backwater through which nobody would ever need to ship cargo (although some of the money that created the canal was coming from investors in the city of Newburyport!) — and yet the canal itself would be usable for only a few decades before railroads would render it likewise technologically quite obsolescent except perhaps for the movement of water from one location to another location. MIDDLESEX CANAL THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO’S CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST HAS AS ITS OFFICIAL MOTTO “TURNING HINDSIGHT INTO FORESIGHT” — WHICH INDICATES THAT ONLY PANDERERS ARE WELCOME THERE. IN A BOOK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HISTORY, ISSUED BY RANDOM HOUSE IN 2016, I FIND THE PHRASE “LOOKED UPON FROM THE BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF HISTORY, ....” ONLY A MERE STORYTELLER, NEVER A HISTORIAN, COULD HAVE PENNED SUCH A PHRASE — BECAUSE NO BIRD HAS EVER FLOWN OVER HISTORY. Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL 1794 As a candidate for congress, Colonel Loammi Baldwin received all but one of the votes cast in Woburn MA. From this year into 1804 he would be the civil engineer responsible for the construction of the Middlesex Canal. NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE March 25, Tuesday: The Richardson mill that had come into possession of the original gristmill privilege obtained by Christopher Osgood at the Billerica Falls in the Concord River in 1704 sold that water-power entitlement to the proprietors of the Middlesex Canal Company. Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL September 10, Wednesday: First excavation, symbolic, in the Middlesex Canal project to create a waterway between the Merrimack River above its first falls at Pawtucket and the port of Boston. “May Providence give eternal prosperity to this canal.” Into 1804, Loammi Baldwin would be civil engineer for the construction of this new waterway: NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE SEPTEMBER 10TH, 1794 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL AT BEST). Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL 1797 November: The 6-mile section of the Middlesex Canal project from the Billerica millpond on the Concord River to the Merrimack above the falls at Pawtucket was opened by a couple of horse-drawn canal barges laden with dignitaries. Laborers armed with spades as insignia of their calling and accompanied by their families were marshaled along the banks to cheer and sing –the officials floated by in their dignity –and a good time was had by all. A wooden dam was being created across the Concord River in North Billerica. This dam is still there but now holds no water back; it is just downstream of the present dam. There is an exhibit about the dam in the Middlesex Canal Museum and Visitor Center in the Faulkner Mill building across the street. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Middlesex Canal “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL HDT WHAT? INDEX THE MIDDLESEX CANAL MIDDLESEX CANAL A WEEK: Shad are still taken in the basin of Concord River at Lowell, where they are said to be a month earlier than the Merrimack shad, on account of the warmth of the water. Still patiently, almost pathetically, with instinct not to be discouraged, not to be reasoned with, revisiting their old haunts, as if their stern fates would relent, and still met by the Corporation with its dam. Poor shad! where is thy redress? When Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee the heart to bear thy fate? Still wandering the sea in thy scaly armor to inquire humbly at the mouths of rivers if man has perchance left them free for thee to enter. By countless shoals loitering uncertain meanwhile, merely stemming the tide there, in danger from sea foes in spite of thy bright armor, awaiting new instructions, until the sands, until the water itself, tell thee if it be so or not.
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