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 T IERILEI'ACK PIVEP;
miiculous frustration of the Pequaukets, or the merciless cruelties
of Chocorua, Paugus, and their compeers, to the more recent comers,
or knee-high youngsters around the cheerful log fire, who with
glistening eyes, and their hearts in their throats, imagine that every
sound betokens the approach of these monsters, every sigh of the
night-wind is a war-whoop that the neighbor who steps in to "look
at the paper a moment," or to " borrow a tallow-dip," is an Indian
in disguise; that one is secreted behind each tree; that the outside
door is a sally-port through which he momentarily expects to see
the plumed and painted braves rush in pell-mell, and involuntarily
feels for his scalp.
About twenty miles from Conway, by the course of the river, on
the Swift River interval, there is a settlement of some dozen productive and valuable farms, producing lumber, cattle, hay, cereals,
potatoes, etc., but no corn, the seasons being too short. One of the
farmers said they never had more than two months in the year with-'
out frost, rarely ever miore than one. These people, if they require
such luxuries, must travel twenty miles over an indictable road, for
the doctor, the post-offiie, the grocery. or the church, notwithlstanding which they are as moral, intelligent, healthy, arid well-fed, as
more fortunate people. From this settlement, by the road, it is fifty
miles to the Willey House in the White Mountain Notch, three
miles south of or below the Crawford House, while an indescribably
beautiful and pleasant imarch of less than ten miles, by a blazed or
slpottedcl line of trees, through a portion of hart's and Sawyer's locations, toilsome and tiresome of course to those unaccustomed to forest
and mountain tramps, brings one to the same point; while, turning
in the other direction, a tramp of some seven miles across the Sandwich range, by no means a difficult undertaking, and Tamworth is
reached, the distance by the road being a round fifty miles.
From the summit of old Chocorua, a splendid view is obtained.
A number of villages, like clusters of bird-cages ranged upon
a green lawn, are distinctly seen. Mountains, huddled together in
inextricable confusion, resembling gigantic tumbles and winrows of
hay in an extensive meadow, many lakes and ponds, and several
rivers are seen through stretches of intervals and forest, like silver
threads in an emerald cloth, while the great forests of the deciduous
and the perennial in every direction stretch away interminabl]y into
a.Ot