FAR, far up, in the bosom of New Hampshire's granite hills, the Saco has
its birth. As the mountain rill gathers strength it takes
“Through Bartlett's vales its tuneful way,
Or hides in Conway's fragrant brakes
Retreating from the glare of day.”
Now it leaves the mountains and flows through “green Fryeburg's woods
and farms.” In the course of its frequent turns and twists and bends, it
meets with many another stream, and sends it, fuller and stronger, along
its rejoicing way. When it has journeyed more than a hundred miles and
is nearing the ocean, it greets the Great Ossipee River and accepts its
crystal tribute. Then, in its turn, the Little Ossipee joins forces,
and the river, now a splendid stream, flows onward to Bonny Eagle, to
Moderation and to Salmon Falls, where it dashes over the dam like a
young Niagara and hurtles, in a foamy torrent, through the ragged defile
cut between lofty banks of solid rock.
Widening out placidly for a moment's rest in the sunny reaches near
Pleasant Point, it gathers itself for a new plunge at Union Falls, after
which it speedily merges itself in the bay and is fresh water no more.
At one of the falls on the Saco, the two little hamlets of Edgewood and
Riverboro nestle together at the bridge and make one village. The stream
is a wonder of beauty just here; a mirror of placid loveliness above
the dam, a tawny, roaring wonder at the fall, and a mad, white-flecked
torrent as it dashes on its way to the ocean.
The river has seen strange sights in its time, though the history of
these two tiny villages is quite unknown to the great world outside.
They have been born, waxed strong, and fallen almost to decay while
Saco Water has tumbled over the rocks and spent itself in its impetuous
journey to the sea.
It remembers the yellow-moccasined Sokokis as they issued from the
Indian Cellar and carried their birchen canoes along the wooded shore.
It was in those years that the silver-skinned salmon leaped in its
crystal depths; the otter and the beaver crept with sleek wet skins
upon its shore; and the brown deer came down to quench his thirst at its
brink while at twilight the stealthy forms of bear and panther and wolf
were mirrored in its glassy surface.
Time sped; men chained the river's turbulent forces and ordered it
to grind at the mill. Then houses and barns appeared along its banks,
bridges were built, orchards planted, forests changed into farms,
white-painted meetinghouses gleamed through the trees and distant bells
rang from their steeples on quiet Sunday mornings.
All at once myriads of great hewn logs vexed its downward course,
slender logs linked together in long rafts, and huge logs drifting down
singly or in pairs. Men appeared, running hither and thither like ants,
and going through mysterious operations the reason for which the river
could never guess: but the mill-wheels turned, the great saws buzzed,
the smoke from tavern chimneys rose in the air, and the rattle and
clatter of stage-coaches resounded along the road.
Now children paddled with bare feet in the river's sandy coves and
shallows, and lovers sat on its alder-shaded banks and exchanged their
vows just where the shuffling bear was wont to come down and drink.
The Saco could remember the “cold year,” when there was a black frost
every month of the twelve, and though almost all the corn along its
shores shrivelled on the stalk, there were two farms where the vapor
from the river saved the crops, and all the seed for the next season
came from the favored spot, to be known as “Egypt” from that day
henceforward.
Strange, complex things now began to happen, and the river played its
own part in some of these, for there were disastrous freshets, the
sudden breaking-up of great jams of logs, and the drowning of men who
were engulfed in the dark whirlpool below the rapids.
Caravans, with menageries of wild beasts, crossed the bridge now every
year. An infuriated elephant lifted the side of the old Edgewood Tavern
barn, and the wild laughter of the roistering rum-drinkers who were
tantalizing the animals floated down to the river's edge. The roar of
a lion, tearing and chewing the arm of one of the bystanders, and the
cheers of the throng when a plucky captain of the local militia thrust
a stake down the beast's throat,--these sounds displaced the former
war-whoop of the Indians and the ring of the axe in the virgin forests
along the shores.
There were days, and moonlight nights, too, when strange sights and
sounds of quite another nature could have been noted by the river as it
flowed under the bridge that united the two little villages.
Issuing from the door of the Riverboro Town House, and winding down
the hill, through the long row of teams and carriages that lined the
roadside, came a procession of singing men and singing women. Convinced
of sin, but entranced with promised pardon; spiritually intoxicated by
the glowing eloquence of the latter-day prophet they were worshipping,
the band of “Cochranites” marched down the dusty road and across the
bridge, dancing, swaying, waving handkerchiefs, and shouting hosannas.
God watched, and listened, knowing that there would be other prophets,
true and false, in the days to come, and other processions following
them; and the river watched and listened too, as it hurried on towards
the sea with its story of the present that was sometime to be the
history of the past.
When Jacob Cochrane was leading his overwrought, ecstatic band across
the river, Waitstill Baxter, then a child, was watching the strange,
noisy company from the window of a little brick dwelling on the top of
the Town-House Hill.
Her stepmother stood beside her with a young baby in her arms, but when
she saw what held the gaze of the child she drew her away, saying: “We
mustn't look, Waitstill; your father don't like it!”
“Who was the big man at the head, mother?”
“His name is Jacob Cochrane, but you mustn't think or talk about him; he
is very wicked.”
“He doesn't look any wickeder than the others,” said the child. “Who was
the man that fell down in the road, mother, and the woman that knelt and
prayed over him? Why did he fall, and why did she pray, mother?”
“That was Master Aaron Boynton, the schoolmaster, and his wife. He only
made believe to fall down, as the Cochranites do; the way they carry on
is a disgrace to the village, and that's the reason your father won't
let us look at them.”
“I played with a nice boy over to Boynton's,” mused the child.
“That was Ivory, their only child. He is a good little fellow, but his
mother and father will spoil him with their crazy ways.”
“I hope nothing will happen to him, for I love him,” said the child
gravely. “He showed me a humming-bird's nest, the first ever I saw, and
the littlest!”
“Don't talk about loving him,” chided the woman. “If your father should
hear you, he'd send you to bed without your porridge.”
“Father couldn't hear me, for I never speak when he's at home,” said
grave little Waitstill. “And I'm used to going to bed without my
porridge.”