Historic leaves, volume 2, April, 1903 - January, 1904

The canal as built was twenty-seven and one-quarter miles long, thirty feet wide at the surface, eighteen feet wide at the bottom, and four feet deep, with seven aqueducts over rivers and streams, twenty locks, and crossed by fifty bridges. Four of the levels were five miles each in extent, the rest of from one to three miles each. The total cost to 1803 was $528,000, of which one-third was for land damages. Much of the work was done by contract. Laborers received about $8 per month wages, and carpenters from $10 to $15 per month. The locks were eleven feet wide and seventy-five feet long, with an average lift of about seven feet, some being built of wood and others of stone. In the wooden locks the outside walls were of stone, the space between the inner and outer walls being packed with earth. In this way expensive masonry was avoided, though the cost of maintenance in after years was increased.

[To be continued.]