The first important and courageous improvement in inland transportation to reach fruition in the United States was the Middlesex Canal uniting Boston and Chelmsford and the upper reaches of the Merrimac River. It was built under stress and hardship when the science of civil engineering in this country was in its infancy. Today one short segment of the trough of the former waterway is a public parking place for pleasure cars, another segment forms the cellars of a row of workmen's houses, much of the line in those places where it is not covered by streets, warehouses, railroads, and residences is merely a dry ditch. The canal in any complete form remains principally as a faint memory in the minds of some few members of the oldest living generation.