332 HISTORY OF COM ASSET. 



order to discharge the water. Strong gates at the upper 

 end had to be built and hinged so that the pressure of a 

 full tide moving up the flume would only close them the 

 tighter. 



The great work was begun in the spring of 1804. Ten 

 thousand feet of lumber were brought down from Boston 

 by Naaman Nichols' schooner, for which transportation he 

 received thirty dollars. Laborers, some from Hingham 

 and some from Cohasset, dug and tugged at heavy tim- 

 bers and stones all that summer. Common laborers got 

 two shillings a day — thirty-three and a third cents — and 

 carpenters one dollar a day. What food they ate may 

 be inferred from the barrels of "mess beef" and of pork 

 which were bought in Boston. Our own storekeepers, 

 Levi Tower, Zealous Bates, and Christopher James, had 

 bills against the proprietors of " Cohasset Meadows & 

 Flats " for biscuit, hard bread, potatoes, sugar, rum, 

 chocolate, tumblers, and spikes. 



The sugar cost twelve and fourteen cents a pound ; the 

 New England rum sixty-seven cents a gallon, and on a 

 warm day two quarts was about the least the gang would 

 drink. 



The hauling of timbers was done by oxen, and Thomas 

 Fearing, of Hingham, used five cattle in carting timber 

 from the Cove. 



Many other details of the work are to be seen in the 

 vouchers preserved by the grandson of Elisha Doane ; but 

 the outcome of it all was the completion of a water course 

 through the beach by December of that year, 1804, at a 

 cost of $2,107.69. 



The committee in charge of this work was Jacob 

 Lewis, Caleb Nichols, James Stephenson, and Joel Will- 

 cutt, besides John Leavitt, of Hingham. Several of 

 the proprietors of these lands were Hingham people, 

 and one interesting bill was by that town. It reads as 

 follows : — 



