Early this morning, as we were rolling up our buffaloes and loading our
boat amid the dew, while our embers were still smoking, the masons who
worked at the locks, and whom we had seen crossing the river in their
boat the evening before while we were examining the rock, came upon us
as they were going to their work, and we found that we had pitched our
tent directly in the path to their boat. This was the only time that we
were observed on our camping-ground. Thus, far from the beaten highways
and the dust and din of travel, we beheld the country privately, yet
freely, and at our leisure. Other roads do some violence to Nature, and
bring the traveller to stare at her, but the river steals into the
scenery it traverses without intrusion, silently creating and adorning
it, and is as free to come and go as the zephyr.
As we shoved away from this rocky coast, before sunrise, the smaller
bittern, the genius of the shore, was moping along its edge, or stood
probing the mud for its food, with ever an eye on us, though so
demurely at work, or else he ran along over the wet stones like a
wrecker in his storm-coat, looking out for wrecks of snails and
cockles. Now away he goes, with a limping flight, uncertain where he
will alight, until a rod of clear sand amid the alders invites his
feet; and now our steady approach compels him to seek a new retreat. It
is a bird of the oldest Thalesian school, and no doubt believes in the
priority of water to the other elements; the relic of a twilight
antediluvian age which yet inhabits these bright American rivers with
us Yankees. There is something venerable in this melancholy and
contemplative race of birds, which may have trodden the earth while it
was yet in a slimy and imperfect state. Perchance their tracks too are
still visible on the stones. It still lingers into our glaring summers,
bravely supporting its fate without sympathy from man, as if it looked
forward to some second advent of which _he_ has no assurance. One
wonders if, by its patient study by rocks and sandy capes, it has
wrested the whole of her secret from Nature yet. What a rich experience
it must have gained, standing on one leg and looking out from its dull
eye so long on sunshine and rain, moon and stars! What could it tell of
stagnant pools and reeds and dank night-fogs! It would be worth the
while to look closely into the eye which has been open and seeing at
such hours, and in such solitudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye.
Methinks my own soul must be a bright invisible green. I have seen
these birds stand by the half-dozen together in the shallower water
along the shore, with their bills thrust into the mud at the bottom,
probing for food, the whole head being concealed, while the neck and
body formed an arch above the water.
Cohass Brook, the outlet of Massabesic Pond,—which last is five or six
miles distant, and contains fifteen hundred acres, being the largest
body of fresh water in Rockingham County,—comes in near here from the
east. Rowing between Manchester and Bedford, we passed, at an early
hour, a ferry and some falls, called Goff’s Falls, the Indian Cohasset,
where there is a small village, and a handsome green islet in the
middle of the stream. From Bedford and Merrimack have been boated the
bricks of which Lowell is made. About twenty years before, as they told
us, one Moore, of Bedford, having clay on his farm, contracted to
furnish eight millions of bricks to the founders of that city within
two years. He fulfilled his contract in one year, and since then bricks
have been the principal export from these towns. The farmers found thus
a market for their wood, and when they had brought a load to the kilns,
they could cart a load of bricks to the shore, and so make a profitable
day’s work of it. Thus all parties were benefited. It was worth the
while to see the place where Lowell was “dug out.” So likewise
Manchester is being built of bricks made still higher up the river at
Hooksett.
There might be seen here on the bank of the Merrimack, near Goff’s
Falls, in what is now the town of Bedford, famous “for hops and for its
fine domestic manufactures,” some graves of the aborigines. The land
still bears this scar here, and time is slowly crumbling the bones of a
race. Yet, without fail, every spring, since they first fished and
hunted here, the brown thrasher has heralded the morning from a birch
or alder spray, and the undying race of reed-birds still rustles
through the withering grass. But these bones rustle not. These
mouldering elements are slowly preparing for another metamorphosis, to
serve new masters, and what was the Indian’s will erelong be the white
man’s sinew.
We learned that Bedford was not so famous for hops as formerly, since
the price is fluctuating, and poles are now scarce. Yet if the
traveller goes back a few miles from the river, the hop-kilns will
still excite his curiosity.
There were few incidents in our voyage this forenoon, though the river
was now more rocky and the falls more frequent than before. It was a
pleasant change, after rowing incessantly for many hours, to lock
ourselves through in some retired place,—for commonly there was no
lock-man at hand,—one sitting in the boat, while the other, sometimes
with no little labor and heave-yo-ing, opened and shut the gates,
waiting patiently to see the locks fill. We did not once use the wheels
which we had provided. Taking advantage of the eddy, we were sometimes
floated up to the locks almost in the face of the falls; and, by the
same cause, any floating timber was carried round in a circle and
repeatedly drawn into the rapids before it finally went down the
stream. These old gray structures, with their quiet arms stretched over
the river in the sun, appeared like natural objects in the scenery, and
the kingfisher and sandpiper alighted on them as readily as on stakes
or rocks.
We rowed leisurely up the stream for several hours, until the sun had
got high in the sky, our thoughts monotonously beating time to our
oars. For outward variety there was only the river and the receding
shores, a vista continually opening behind and closing before us, as we
sat with our backs up-stream; and, for inward, such thoughts as the
muses grudgingly lent us. We were always passing some low, inviting
shore, or some overhanging bank, on which, however, we never landed.
Such near aspects had we
Of our life’s scenery.
It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The smallest stream
is _mediterranean_ sea, a smaller ocean creek within the land, where
men may steer by their farm-bounds and cottage-lights. For my own part,
but for the geographers, I should hardly have known how large a portion
of our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep a
cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the mouth of my Snug
Harbor. From an old ruined fort on Staten Island, I have loved to watch
all day some vessel whose name I had read in the morning through the
telegraph-glass, when she first came upon the coast, and her hull
heaved up and glistened in the sun, from the moment when the pilot and
most adventurous news-boats met her, past the Hook, and up the narrow
channel of the wide outer bay, till she was boarded by the
health-officer, and took her station at Quarantine, or held on her
unquestioned course to the wharves of New York. It was interesting,
too, to watch the less adventurous newsman, who made his assault as the
vessel swept through the Narrows, defying plague and quarantine law,
and, fastening his little cockboat to her huge side, clambered up and
disappeared in the cabin. And then I could imagine what momentous news
was being imparted by the captain, which no American ear had ever
heard, that Asia, Africa, Europe—were all sunk; for which at length he
pays the price, and is seen descending the ship’s side with his bundle
of newspapers, but not where he first got up, for these arrivers do not
stand still to gossip; and he hastes away with steady sweeps to dispose
of his wares to the highest bidder, and we shall erelong read something
startling,—“By the latest arrival,”—“by the good ship——.” On Sunday I
beheld, from some interior hill, the long procession of vessels getting
to sea, reaching from the city wharves through the Narrows, and past
the Hook, quite to the ocean stream, far as the eye could reach, with
stately march and silken sails, all counting on lucky voyages, but each
time some of the number, no doubt, destined to go to Davy’s locker, and
never come on this coast again. And, again, in the evening of a
pleasant day, it was my amusement to count the sails in sight. But as
the setting sun continually brought more and more to light, still
farther in the horizon, the last count always had the advantage, till,
by the time the last rays streamed over the sea, I had doubled and
trebled my first number; though I could no longer class them all under
the several heads of ships, barks, brigs, schooners, and sloops, but
most were faint generic _vessels_ only. And then the temperate twilight
light, perchance, revealed the floating home of some sailor whose
thoughts were already alienated from this American coast, and directed
towards the Europe of our dreams. I have stood upon the same hill-top
when a thunder-shower, rolling down from the Catskills and Highlands,
passed over the island, deluging the land; and, when it had suddenly
left us in sunshine, have seen it overtake successively, with its huge
shadow and dark, descending wall of rain, the vessels in the bay. Their
bright sails were suddenly drooping and dark, like the sides of barns,
and they seemed to shrink before the storm; while still far beyond them
on the sea, through this dark veil, gleamed the sunny sails of those
vessels which the storm had not yet reached. And at midnight, when all
around and overhead was darkness, I have seen a field of trembling,
silvery light far out on the sea, the reflection of the moonlight from
the ocean, as if beyond the precincts of our night, where the moon
traversed a cloudless heaven,—and sometimes a dark speck in its midst,
where some fortunate vessel was pursuing its happy voyage by night.
But to us river sailors the sun never rose out of ocean waves, but from
some green coppice, and went down behind some dark mountain line. We,
too, were but dwellers on the shore, like the bittern of the morning;
and our pursuit, the wrecks of snails and cockles. Nevertheless, we
were contented to know the better one fair particular shore.
My life is like a stroll upon the beach,
As near the ocean’s edge as I can go,
My tardy steps its waves sometimes o’erreach,
Sometimes I stay to let them overflow.
My sole employment ’t is, and scrupulous care,
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides,
Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare,
Which ocean kindly to my hand confides.
I have but few companions on the shore,
They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea,
Yet oft I think the ocean they’ve sailed o’er
Is deeper known upon the strand to me.
The middle sea contains no crimson dulse,
Its deeper waves cast up no pearls to view,
Along the shore my hand is on its pulse,
And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew.
The small houses which were scattered along the river at intervals of a
mile or more were commonly out of sight to us, but sometimes, when we
rowed near the shore, we heard the peevish note of a hen, or some
slight domestic sound, which betrayed them. The lock-men’s houses were
particularly well placed, retired, and high, always at falls or rapids,
and commanding the pleasantest reaches of the river,—for it is
generally wider and more lake-like just above a fall,—and there they
wait for boats. These humble dwellings, homely and sincere, in which a
hearth was still the essential part, were more pleasing to our eyes
than palaces or castles would have been. In the noon of these days, as
we have said, we occasionally climbed the banks and approached these
houses, to get a glass of water and make acquaintance with their
inhabitants. High in the leafy bank, surrounded commonly by a small
patch of corn and beans, squashes and melons, with sometimes a graceful
hop-yard on one side, and some running vine over the windows, they
appeared like beehives set to gather honey for a summer. I have not
read of any Arcadian life which surpasses the actual luxury and
serenity of these New England dwellings. For the outward gilding, at
least, the age is golden enough. As you approach the sunny doorway,
awakening the echoes by your steps, still no sound from these barracks
of repose, and you fear that the gentlest knock may seem rude to the
Oriental dreamers. The door is opened, perchance, by some Yankee-Hindoo
woman, whose small-voiced but sincere hospitality, out of the
bottomless depths of a quiet nature, has travelled quite round to the
opposite side, and fears only to obtrude its kindness. You step over
the white-scoured floor to the bright “dresser” lightly, as if afraid
to disturb the devotions of the household,—for Oriental dynasties
appear to have passed away since the dinner-table was last spread
here,—and thence to the frequented curb, where you see your
long-forgotten, unshaven face at the bottom, in juxtaposition with
new-made butter and the trout in the well. “Perhaps you would like some
molasses and ginger,” suggests the faint noon voice. Sometimes there
sits the brother who follows the sea, their representative man; who
knows only how far it is to the nearest port, no more distances, all
the rest is sea and distant capes,—patting the dog, or dandling the
kitten in arms that were stretched by the cable and the oar, pulling
against Boreas or the trade-winds. He looks up at the stranger, half
pleased, half astonished, with a mariner’s eye, as if he were a dolphin
within cast. If men will believe it, _sua si bona nôrint_, there are no
more quiet Tempes, nor more poetic and Arcadian lives, than may be
lived in these New England dwellings. We thought that the employment of
their inhabitants by day would be to tend the flowers and herds, and at
night, like the shepherds of old, to cluster and give names to the
stars from the river banks.
We passed a large and densely wooded island this forenoon, between
Short’s and Griffith’s Falls, the fairest which we had met with, with a
handsome grove of elms at its head. If it had been evening we should
have been glad to camp there. Not long after, one or two more were
passed. The boatmen told us that the current had recently made
important changes here. An island always pleases my imagination, even
the smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the globe. I
have a fancy for building my hut on one. Even a bare, grassy isle,
which I can see entirely over at a glance, has some undefined and
mysterious charm for me. There is commonly such a one at the junction
of two rivers, whose currents bring down and deposit their respective
sands in the eddy at their confluence, as it were the womb of a
continent. By what a delicate and far-stretched contribution every
island is made! What an enterprise of Nature thus to lay the
foundations of and to build up the future continent, of golden and
silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant-like industry! Pindar
gives the following account of the origin of Thera, whence, in after
times, Libyan Cyrene was settled by Battus. Triton, in the form of
Eurypylus, presents a clod to Euphemus, one of the Argonauts, as they
are about to return home.
“He knew of our haste,
And immediately seizing a clod
With his right hand, strove to give it
As a chance stranger’s gift.
Nor did the hero disregard him, but leaping on the shore,
Stretching hand to hand,
Received the mystic clod.
But I hear it sinking from the deck,
Go with the sea brine
At evening, accompanying the watery sea.
Often indeed I urged the careless
Menials to guard it, but their minds forgot.
And now in this island the imperishable seed of spacious Libya
Is spilled before its hour.”
It is a beautiful fable, also related by Pindar, how Helius, or the
Sun, looked down into the sea one day,—when perchance his rays were
first reflected from some increasing glittering sandbar,—and saw the
fair and fruitful island of Rhodes
“springing up from the bottom,
Capable of feeding many men, and suitable for flocks;
and at the nod of Zeus,
“The island sprang from the watery
Sea; and the genial Father of penetrating beams,
Ruler of fire-breathing horses, has it.”
The shifting islands! who would not be willing that his house should be
undermined by such a foe! The inhabitant of an island can tell what
currents formed the land which he cultivates; and his earth is still
being created or destroyed. There before his door, perchance, still
empties the stream which brought down the material of his farm ages
before, and is still bringing it down or washing it away,—the graceful,
gentle robber!
Not long after this we saw the Piscataquoag, or Sparkling Water,
emptying in on our left, and heard the Falls of Amoskeag above. Large
quantities of lumber, as we read in the Gazetteer, were still annually
floated down the Piscataquoag to the Merrimack, and there are many fine
mill privileges on it. Just above the mouth of this river we passed the
artificial falls where the canals of the Manchester Manufacturing
Company discharge themselves into the Merrimack. They are striking
enough to have a name, and, with the scenery of a Bashpish, would be
visited from far and near. The water falls thirty or forty feet over
seven or eight steep and narrow terraces of stone, probably to break
its force, and is converted into one mass of foam. This canal-water did
not seem to be the worse for the wear, but foamed and fumed as purely,
and boomed as savagely and impressively, as a mountain torrent, and,
though it came from under a factory, we saw a rainbow here. These are
now the Amoskeag Falls, removed a mile down-stream. But we did not
tarry to examine them minutely, making haste to get past the village
here collected, and out of hearing of the hammer which was laying the
foundation of another Lowell on the banks. At the time of our voyage
Manchester was a village of about two thousand inhabitants, where we
landed for a moment to get some cool water, and where an inhabitant
told us that he was accustomed to go across the river into Goffstown
for his water. But now, as I have been told, and indeed have witnessed,
it contains fourteen thousand inhabitants. From a hill on the road
between Goffstown and Hooksett, four miles distant, I have seen a
thunder-shower pass over, and the sun break out and shine on a city
there, where I had landed nine years before in the fields; and there
was waving the flag of its Museum, where “the only perfect skeleton of
a Greenland or river whale in the United States” was to be seen, and I
also read in its directory of a “Manchester Athenæum and Gallery of the
Fine Arts.”
According to the Gazetteer, the descent of Amoskeag Falls, which are
the most considerable in the Merrimack, is fifty-four feet in half a
mile. We locked ourselves through here with much ado, surmounting the
successive watery steps of this river’s staircase in the midst of a
crowd of villagers, jumping into the canal to their amusement, to save
our boat from upsetting, and consuming much river-water in our service.
Amoskeag, or Namaskeak, is said to mean “great fishing-place.” It was
hereabouts that the Sachem Wannalancet resided. Tradition says that his
tribe, when at war with the Mohawks, concealed their provisions in the
cavities of the rocks in the upper part of these falls. The Indians,
who hid their provisions in these holes, and affirmed “that God had cut
them out for that purpose,” understood their origin and use better than
the Royal Society, who in their Transactions, in the last century,
speaking of these very holes, declare that “they seem plainly to be
artificial.” Similar “pot-holes” may be seen at the Stone Flume on this
river, on the Ottaway, at Bellows’ Falls on the Connecticut, and in the
limestone rock at Shelburne Falls on Deerfield River in Massachusetts,
and more or less generally about all falls. Perhaps the most remarkable
curiosity of this kind in New England is the well-known Basin on the
Pemigewasset, one of the head-waters of this river, twenty by thirty
feet in extent and proportionably deep, with a smooth and rounded brim,
and filled with a cold, pellucid, and greenish water. At Amoskeag the
river is divided into many separate torrents and trickling rills by the
rocks, and its volume is so much reduced by the drain of the canals
that it does not fill its bed. There are many pot-holes here on a rocky
island which the river washes over in high freshets. As at Shelburne
Falls, where I first observed them, they are from one foot to four or
five in diameter, and as many in depth, perfectly round and regular,
with smooth and gracefully curved brims, like goblets. Their origin is
apparent to the most careless observer. A stone which the current has
washed down, meeting with obstacles, revolves as on a pivot where it
lies, gradually sinking in the course of centuries deeper and deeper
into the rock, and in new freshets receiving the aid of fresh stones,
which are drawn into this trap and doomed to revolve there for an
indefinite period, doing Sisyphus-like penance for stony sins, until
they either wear out, or wear through the bottom of their prison, or
else are released by some revolution of nature. There lie the stones of
various sizes, from a pebble to a foot or two in diameter, some of
which have rested from their labor only since the spring, and some
higher up which have lain still and dry for ages,—we noticed some here
at least sixteen feet above the present level of the water,—while
others are still revolving, and enjoy no respite at any season. In one
instance, at Shelburne Falls, they have worn quite through the rock, so
that a portion of the river leaks through in anticipation of the fall.
Some of these pot-holes at Amoskeag, in a very hard brown-stone, had an
oblong, cylindrical stone of the same material loosely fitting them.
One, as much as fifteen feet deep and seven or eight in diameter, which
was worn quite through to the water, had a huge rock of the same
material, smooth but of irregular form, lodged in it. Everywhere there
were the rudiments or the wrecks of a dimple in the rock; the rocky
shells of whirlpools. As if by force of example and sympathy after so
many lessons, the rocks, the hardest material, had been endeavoring to
whirl or flow into the forms of the most fluid. The finest workers in
stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and
water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
Not only have some of these basins been forming for countless ages, but
others exist which must have been completed in a former geological
period. In deepening the Pawtucket Canal, in 1822, the workmen came to
ledges with pot-holes in them, where probably was once the bed of the
river, and there are some, we are told, in the town of Canaan in this
State, with the stones still in them, on the height of land between the
Merrimack and Connecticut, and nearly a thousand feet above these
rivers, proving that the mountains and the rivers have changed places.
There lie the stones which completed their revolutions perhaps before
thoughts began to revolve in the brain of man. The periods of Hindoo
and Chinese history, though they reach back to the time when the race
of mortals is confounded with the race of gods, are as nothing compared
with the periods which these stones have inscribed. That which
commenced a rock when time was young, shall conclude a pebble in the
unequal contest. With such expense of time and natural forces are our
very paving-stones produced. They teach us lessons, these dumb workers;
verily there are “sermons in stones, and books in the running streams.”
In these very holes the Indians hid their provisions; but now there is
no bread, but only its old neighbor stones at the bottom. Who knows how
many races they have served thus? By as simple a law, some accidental
by-law, perchance, our system itself was made ready for its
inhabitants.
These, and such as these, must be our antiquities, for lack of human
vestiges. The monuments of heroes and the temples of the gods which may
once have stood on the banks of this river are now, at any rate,
returned to dust and primitive soil. The murmur of unchronicled nations
has died away along these shores, and once more Lowell and Manchester
are on the trail of the Indian.
The fact that Romans once inhabited her reflects no little dignity on
Nature herself; that from some particular hill the Roman once looked
out on the sea. She need not be ashamed of the vestiges of her
children. How gladly the antiquary informs us that their vessels
penetrated into this frith, or up that river of some remote isle! Their
military monuments still remain on the hills and under the sod of the
valleys. The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legible
characters in every quarter of the Old World, and but to-day,
perchance, a new coin is dug up whose inscription repeats and confirms
their fame. Some “_Judæa Capta_” with a woman mourning under a
palm-tree, with silent argument and demonstration confirms the pages of
history.
“Rome living was the world’s sole ornament;
And dead is now the world’s sole monument.
* * * * *
With her own weight down pressed now she lies,
And by her heaps her hugeness testifies.”
If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a fiction of
the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the walls of the
temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the shields taken from the
enemy in the Persian war, which were suspended there. We have not far
to seek for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust takes
shape and confirms some story which we had read. As Fuller said,
commenting on the zeal of Camden, “A broken urn is a whole evidence; or
an old gate still surviving out of which the city is run out.” When
Solon endeavored to prove that Salamis had formerly belonged to the
Athenians, and not to the Megareans, he caused the tombs to be opened,
and showed that the inhabitants of Salamis turned the faces of their
dead to the same side with the Athenians, but the Megareans to the
opposite side. There they were to be interrogated.
Some minds are as little logical or argumentative as nature; they can
offer no reason or “guess,” but they exhibit the solemn and
incontrovertible fact. If a historical question arises, they cause the
tombs to be opened. Their silent and practical logic convinces the
reason and the understanding at the same time. Of such sort is always
the only pertinent question and the only satisfactory reply.
Our own country furnishes antiquities as ancient and durable, and as
useful, as any; rocks at least as well covered with lichens, and a soil
which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mould, the very dust of nature.
What if we cannot read Rome, or Greece, Etruria, or Carthage, or Egypt,
or Babylon, on these; are our cliffs bare? The lichen on the rocks is a
rude and simple shield which beginning and imperfect Nature suspended
there. Still hangs her wrinkled trophy. And here too the poet’s eye may
still detect the brazen nails which fastened Time’s inscriptions, and
if he has the gift, decipher them by this clew. The walls that fence
our fields, as well as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself,
are all built of _ruins_. Here may be heard the din of rivers, and
ancient winds which have long since lost their names sough through our
woods;—the first faint sounds of spring, older than the summer of
Athenian glory, the titmouse lisping in the wood, the jay’s scream, and
blue-bird’s warble, and the hum of
“bees that fly
About the laughing blossoms of sallowy.”
Here is the gray dawn for antiquity, and our to-morrow’s future should
be at least paulo-post to theirs which we have put behind us. There are
the red-maple and birchen leaves, old runes which are not yet
deciphered; catkins, pine-cones, vines, oak-leaves, and acorns; the
very things themselves, and not their forms in stone,—so much the more
ancient and venerable. And even to the current summer there has come
down tradition of a hoary-headed master of all art, who once filled
every field and grove with statues and god-like architecture, of every
design which Greece has lately copied; whose ruins are now mingled with
the dust, and not one block remains upon another. The century sun and
unwearied rain have wasted them, till not one fragment from that quarry
now exists; and poets perchance will feign that gods sent down the
material from heaven.
What though the traveller tell us of the ruins of Egypt, are we so sick
or idle, that we must sacrifice our America and to-day to some man’s
ill-remembered and indolent story? Carnac and Luxor are but names, or
if their skeletons remain, still more desert sand, and at length a wave
of the Mediterranean Sea are needed to wash away the filth that
attaches to their grandeur. Carnac! Carnac! here is Carnac for me. I
behold the columns of a larger and purer temple.
This is my Carnac, whose unmeasured dome
Shelters the measuring art and measurer’s home.
Behold these flowers, let us be up with time,
Not dreaming of three thousand years ago,
Erect ourselves and let those columns lie,
Not stoop to raise a foil against the sky.
Where is the spirit of that time but in
This present day, perchance the present line?
Three thousand years ago are not agone,
They are still lingering in this summer morn,
And Memnon’s Mother sprightly greets us now,
Wearing her youthful radiance on her brow.
If Carnac’s columns still stand on the plain,
To enjoy our opportunities they remain.
In these parts dwelt the famous Sachem Pasaconaway, who was seen by
Gookin “at Pawtucket, when he was about one hundred and twenty years
old.” He was reputed a wise man and a powwow, and restrained his people
from going to war with the English. They believed “that he could make
water burn, rocks move, and trees dance, and metamorphose himself into
a flaming man; that in winter he could raise a green leaf out of the
ashes of a dry one, and produce a living snake from the skin of a dead
one, and many similar miracles.” In 1660, according to Gookin, at a
great feast and dance, he made his farewell speech to his people, in
which he said, that as he was not likely to see them met together
again, he would leave them this word of advice, to take heed how they
quarrelled with their English neighbors, for though they might do them
much mischief at first, it would prove the means of their own
destruction. He himself, he said, had been as much an enemy to the
English at their first coming as any, and had used all his arts to
destroy them, or at least to prevent their settlement, but could by no
means effect it. Gookin thought that he “possibly might have such a
kind of spirit upon him as was upon Balaam, who in xxiii. Numbers, 23,
said ‘Surely, there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there
any divination against Israel.’” His son Wannalancet carefully followed
his advice, and when Philip’s War broke out, he withdrew his followers
to Penacook, now Concord in New Hampshire, from the scene of the war.
On his return afterwards, he visited the minister of Chelmsford, and,
as is stated in the history of that town, “wished to know whether
Chelmsford had suffered much during the war; and being informed that it
had not, and that God should be thanked for it, Wannalancet replied,
‘Me next.’”
Manchester was the residence of John Stark, a hero of two wars, and
survivor of a third, and at his death the last but one of the American
generals of the Revolution. He was born in the adjoining town of
Londonderry, then Nutfield, in 1728. As early as 1752, he was taken
prisoner by the Indians while hunting in the wilderness near Baker’s
River; he performed notable service as a captain of rangers in the
French war; commanded a regiment of the New Hampshire militia at the
battle of Bunker Hill; and fought and won the battle of Bennington in
1777. He was past service in the last war, and died here in 1822, at
the age of 94. His monument stands upon the second bank of the river,
about a mile and a half above the falls, and commands a prospect
several miles up and down the Merrimack. It suggested how much more
impressive in the landscape is the tomb of a hero than the dwellings of
the inglorious living. Who is most dead,—a hero by whose monument you
stand, or his descendants of whom you have never heard?
The graves of Pasaconaway and Wannalancet are marked by no monument on
the bank of their native river.
Every town which we passed, if we may believe the Gazetteer, had been
the residence of some great man. But though we knocked at many doors,
and even made particular inquiries, we could not find that there were
any now living. Under the head of Litchfield we read:—
“The Hon. Wyseman Clagett closed his life in this town.” According to
another, “He was a classical scholar, a good lawyer, a wit, and a
poet.” We saw his old gray house just below Great Nesenkeag
Brook.—Under the head of Merrimack: “Hon. Mathew Thornton, one of the
signers of the Declaration of American Independence, resided many years
in this town.” His house too we saw from the river.—“Dr. Jonathan Gove,
a man distinguished for his urbanity, his talents and professional
skill, resided in this town [Goffstown]. He was one of the oldest
practitioners of medicine in the county. He was many years an active
member of the legislature.”—“Hon. Robert Means, who died Jan. 24, 1823,
at the age of 80, was for a long period a resident in Amherst. He was a
native of Ireland. In 1764 he came to this country, where, by his
industry and application to business, he acquired a large property, and
great respect.”—“William Stinson [one of the first settlers of
Dunbarton], born in Ireland, came to Londonderry with his father. He
was much respected and was a useful man. James Rogers was from Ireland,
and father to Major Robert Rogers. He was shot in the woods, being
mistaken for a bear.”—“Rev. Matthew Clark, second minister of
Londonderry, was a native of Ireland, who had in early life been an
officer in the army, and distinguished himself in the defence of the
city of Londonderry, when besieged by the army of King James II. A. D.
1688-9. He afterwards relinquished a military life for the clerical
profession. He possessed a strong mind, marked by a considerable degree
of eccentricity. He died Jan. 25, 1735, and was borne to the grave, at
his particular request, by his former companions in arms, of whom there
were a considerable number among the early settlers of this town;
several of them had been made free from taxes throughout the British
dominions by King William, for their bravery in that memorable
siege.”—Col. George Reid and Capt. David M’Clary, also citizens of
Londonderry, were “distinguished and brave” officers.—“Major Andrew
M’Clary, a native of this town [Epsom], fell at the battle of Breed’s
Hill.”—Many of these heroes, like the illustrious Roman, were ploughing
when the news of the massacre at Lexington arrived, and straightway
left their ploughs in the furrow, and repaired to the scene of action.
Some miles from where we now were, there once stood a guide-post on
which were the words, “3 miles to Squire MacGaw’s.”
But generally speaking, the land is now, at any rate, very barren of
men, and we doubt if there are as many hundreds as we read of. It may
be that we stood too near.
Uncannunuc Mountain in Goffstown was visible from Amoskeag, five or six
miles westward. It is the north-easternmost in the horizon, which we
see from our native town, but seen from there is too ethereally blue to
be the same which the like of us have ever climbed. Its name is said to
mean “The Two Breasts,” there being two eminences some distance apart.
The highest, which is about fourteen hundred feet above the sea,
probably affords a more extensive view of the Merrimack valley and the
adjacent country than any other hill, though it is somewhat obstructed
by woods. Only a few short reaches of the river are visible, but you
can trace its course far down stream by the sandy tracts on its banks.
A little south of Uncannunuc, about sixty years ago, as the story goes,
an old woman who went out to gather pennyroyal, tript her foot in the
bail of a small brass kettle in the dead grass and bushes. Some say
that flints and charcoal and some traces of a camp were also found.
This kettle, holding about four quarts, is still preserved and used to
dye thread in. It is supposed to have belonged to some old French or
Indian hunter, who was killed in one of his hunting or scouting
excursions, and so never returned to look after his kettle.
But we were most interested to hear of the pennyroyal, it is soothing
to be reminded that wild nature produces anything ready for the use of
man. Men know that _something_ is good. One says that it is
yellow-dock, another that it is bitter-sweet, another that it is
slippery-elm bark, burdock, catnip, calamint, elicampane, thoroughwort,
or pennyroyal. A man may esteem himself happy when that which is his
food is also his medicine. There is no kind of herb, but somebody or
other says that it is good. I am very glad to hear it. It reminds me of
the first chapter of Genesis. But how should they know that it is good?
That is the mystery to me. I am always agreeably disappointed; it is
incredible that they should have found it out. Since all things are
good, men fail at last to distinguish which is the bane, and which the
antidote. There are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically
opposite. Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways. They are the
two practices both always in full blast. Yet you must take advice of
the one school as if there was no other. In respect to religion and the
healing art, all nations are still in a state of barbarism. In the most
civilized countries the priest is still but a Powwow, and the physician
a Great Medicine. Consider the deference which is everywhere paid to a
doctor’s opinion. Nothing more strikingly betrays the credulity of
mankind than medicine. Quackery is a thing universal, and universally
successful. In this case it becomes literally true that no imposition
is too great for the credulity of men. Priests and physicians should
never look one another in the face. They have no common ground, nor is
there any to mediate between them. When the one comes, the other goes.
They could not come together without laughter, or a significant
silence, for the one’s profession is a satire on the other’s, and
either’s success would be the other’s failure. It is wonderful that the
physician should ever die, and that the priest should ever live. Why is
it that the priest is never called to consult with the physician? Is it
because men believe practically that matter is independent of spirit.
But what is quackery? It is commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of
a man by addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician who
shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, to man. Now he
falls between two souls.
After passing through the locks, we had poled ourselves through the
canal here, about half a mile in length, to the boatable part of the
river. Above Amoskeag the river spreads out into a lake reaching a mile
or two without a bend. There were many canal-boats here bound up to
Hooksett, about eight miles, and as they were going up empty with a
fair wind, one boatman offered to take us in tow if we would wait. But
when we came alongside, we found that they meant to take us on board,
since otherwise we should clog their motions too much; but as our boat
was too heavy to be lifted aboard, we pursued our way up the stream, as
before, while the boatmen were at their dinner, and came to anchor at
length under some alders on the opposite shore, where we could take our
lunch. Though far on one side, every sound was wafted over to us from
the opposite bank, and from the harbor of the canal, and we could see
everything that passed. By and by came several canal-boats, at
intervals of a quarter of a mile, standing up to Hooksett with a light
breeze, and one by one disappeared round a point above. With their
broad sails set, they moved slowly up the stream in the sluggish and
fitful breeze, like one-winged antediluvian birds, and as if impelled
by some mysterious counter-current. It was a grand motion, so slow and
stately, this “standing out,” as the phrase is, expressing the gradual
and steady progress of a vessel, as if it were by mere rectitude and
disposition, without shuffling. Their sails, which stood so still, were
like chips cast into the current of the air to show which way it set.
At length the boat which we had spoken came along, keeping the middle
of the stream, and when within speaking distance the steersman called
out ironically to say, that if we would come alongside now he would
take us in tow; but not heeding his taunt, we still loitered in the
shade till we had finished our lunch, and when the last boat had
disappeared round the point with flapping sail, for the breeze had now
sunk to a zephyr, with our own sails set, and plying our oars, we shot
rapidly up the stream in pursuit, and as we glided close alongside,
while they were vainly invoking Æolus to their aid, we returned their
compliment by proposing, if they would throw us a rope, to “take them
in tow,” to which these Merrimack sailors had no suitable answer ready.
Thus we gradually overtook and passed each boat in succession until we
had the river to ourselves again.
Our course this afternoon was between Manchester and Goffstown.
——————
While we float here, far from that tributary stream on whose banks our
Friends and kindred dwell, our thoughts, like the stars, come out of
their horizon still; for there circulates a finer blood than Lavoisier
has discovered the laws of,—the blood, not of kindred merely, but of
kindness, whose pulse still beats at any distance and forever.
True kindness is a pure divine affinity,
Not founded upon human consanguinity.
It is a spirit, not a blood relation,
Superior to family and station.
After years of vain familiarity, some distant gesture or unconscious
behavior, which we remember, speaks to us with more emphasis than the
wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes made aware of a kindness long
passed, and realize that there have been times when our Friends’
thoughts of us were of so pure and lofty a character that they passed
over us like the winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as
what we were, but as what we aspired to be. There has just reached us,
it may be, the nobleness of some such silent behavior, not to be
forgotten, not to be remembered, and we shudder to think how it fell on
us cold, though in some true but tardy hour we endeavor to wipe off
these scores.
In my experience, persons, when they are made the subject of
conversation, though with a Friend, are commonly the most prosaic and
trivial of facts. The universe seems bankrupt as soon as we begin to
discuss the character of individuals. Our discourse all runs to
slander, and our limits grow narrower as we advance. How is it that we
are impelled to treat our old Friends so ill when we obtain new ones?
The housekeeper says, I never had any new crockery in my life but I
began to break the old. I say, let us speak of mushrooms and forest
trees rather. Yet we can sometimes afford to remember them in private.
Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy,
Whose features all were cast in Virtue’s mould,
As one she had designed for Beauty’s toy,
But after manned him for her own strong-hold.
On every side he open was as day,
That you might see no lack of strength within,
For walls and ports do only serve alway
For a pretence to feebleness and sin.
Say not that Cæsar was victorious,
With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame,
In other sense this youth was glorious,
Himself a kingdom wheresoe’er he came.
No strength went out to get him victory,
When all was income of its own accord;
For where he went none other was to see,
But all were parcel of their noble lord.
He forayed like the subtile haze of summer,
That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our eyes,
And revolutions works without a murmur,
Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies.
So was I taken unawares by this,
I quite forgot my homage to confess;
Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is,
I might have loved him had I loved him less.
Each moment as we nearer drew to each,
A stern respect withheld us farther yet,
So that we seemed beyond each other’s reach,
And less acquainted than when first we met.
We two were one while we did sympathize,
So could we not the simplest bargain drive;
And what avails it now that we are wise,
If absence doth this doubleness contrive?
Eternity may not the chance repeat,
But I must tread my single way alone,
In sad remembrance that we once did meet,
And know that bliss irrevocably gone.
The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing,
For elegy has other subject none;
Each strain of music in my ears shall ring
Knell of departure from that other one.
Make haste and celebrate my tragedy;
With fitting strain resound ye woods and fields;
Sorrow is dearer in such case to me
Than all the joys other occasion yields.
—————
Is’t then too late the damage to repair?
Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft
The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare,
But in my hands the wheat and kernel left.
If I but love that virtue which he is,
Though it be scented in the morning air,
Still shall we be truest acquaintances,
Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare.
Friendship is evanescent in every man’s experience, and remembered like
heat lightning in past summers. Fair and flitting like a summer
cloud;—there is always some vapor in the air, no matter how long the
drought; there are even April showers. Surely from time to time, for
its vestiges never depart, it floats through our atmosphere. It takes
place, like vegetation in so many materials, because there is such a
law, but always without permanent form, though ancient and familiar as
the sun and moon, and as sure to come again. The heart is forever
inexperienced. They silently gather as by magic, these never failing,
never quite deceiving visions, like the bright and fleecy clouds in the
calmest and clearest days. The Friend is some fair floating isle of
palms eluding the mariner in Pacific seas. Many are the dangers to be
encountered, equinoctial gales and coral reefs, ere he may sail before
the constant trades. But who would not sail through mutiny and storm,
even over Atlantic waves, to reach the fabulous retreating shores of
some continent man? The imagination still clings to the faintest
tradition of