It is difficult to ascertain the whole number of boats employed at any one time. Many were owned and run by the proprietors of the canal, and many were constructed and run by private parties who paid the regular tolls for whatever merchandise they carried. The original toll was placed at twopence per ton per mile; it was afterward, by Act of Legislature, placed at one-sixteenth of a dollar per ton per mile for goods carried in the boats, and the same for every ton of timber floated in rafts. The actual rates ranged from one to two dollars per gross ton for the twenty-seven miles from Boston to Lowell. Boats belonging to the same parties were conspicuously numbered and lettered, and private boats, of which there were many, were painted with such designs as to be easily recognized, as in the case of freight cars of to-day. The luggage or merchandise boats, of which there are probably none in existence, were peculiarly constructed to meet the requirements of canal navigation, and the mode of propulsion was as peculiar as their model. They were about seventy-five feet long, nine feet wide in the middle, and a little narrowed at the ends; flat-bottomed across the full width, but the bottom sloped or rounded up from near the mid-length of the boat, both towards the stem and stern, so that while the sides were level on top and about three feet deep at mid-length they were only a foot or less in depth at either end. A load of twenty tons would make the boats draw two feet or more near the middle, while the bottom would be
