The Merrimack River: its source and its tributaries. Embracing a history of manufactures, and of the towns along its course; their geography, topography, and products, with a description of the magnificent natural scenery about its upper waters./ By J. W. Meader.

THE [ERRLI.ACK RIVER;
her self-sacrificing devotion, - all this may not be strange, for was
she not a barbarian and a pagan?
The tribes of the Merrimack valley, consisting of the Winnipe saukees, Pennacooks, Souhegans, Nashuas, Wamesits, and Agawams,
of which the Pennacooks were the acknowledged head, were united
in a powerful offensive and defensive confederacy, to which belonged,
in addition to those named, other Indians, both in New Hampshire
and Maine. All of these were undoubtedly entitled to indulge in
fishing, under Indian regulations, in any or all the waters of the ter ritory of the Pennacook nation.'Vith hooks made of bone, dip-nets,
spears, and other rude devices, it was prosecuted from necessity, but
generally on a small scale and with indifferent success, except at the
ahquedaukenash, where the unfailing supply and the assembling of
the representatives of all the tribes made this a festival of great note
and consequence among the Indians.
The permanent ahquedauken at the foot of Lake Winnipesaukee
was of substantial construction, portions of it remaining long after
most of the emblems and monuments of aboriginal occupation had
gone to that oblivion to which the doomed projectors were ultimately
consigned; but though the Indian is gone, and the "stopping-place"
is gone, and the salmon and shad are gone, the name still remains,
and the fishli-weir of the native, far away in the heart of an unknown
wilderness, is now familiar throughout the land as "The Weirs," a
crowded thoroughfare on the route of travel to the mountains, at the
foot of the lake. IIow changed the scene! Where the red man
grubbed for a few stalks of stinted corn, the ploughshare, bright
with use, turns up the teeming soil; the rude fish-weir has given
way to skilful artificial arrangements for taking the water from the
lake at will; the frail canoe has given place to the palatial steamboat, and the primitive and picturesque costume of a bearskin tied
about the waist became unbecoming and disappeared before the resistless march of fashion; and elegant fabrics from the Eastern World,
with length and breadth enough to gratify the most ardent admirer
of extravagant proportions, mark the difference between the economical and scanty provisions of mother nature and the productions
of art and skill. In brief, the change of proprietors has wrought a
change in all else, and it may be truly said that countless ages rolled
away, and left it still a howling wilderness, while the lapse of two hlun
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