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.

ITS SOURCE AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.
" Far down the mountain's crumbling side,
Full half the mountain from on high
Came sinking, like the snows that slide
From the great Alps about July.
" And with it went the lordly ash,
And with it went the kingly pine,
Cedar and oak, amid the crash,
Dropped down like clippings of the vine.
" Two rivers rushed,- the one that broke
His wonted bounds and drowned the land,
And one that streamed with d(lust and smoke, A flood of earth, and stones, and sand.
"Then for a time the vale was dry,
The soil had swallowed up the wave;
Till one star looking from the sky,
A signal to the tempest gave.
" The clouds withdrew, the storm was o'er,
Bright Aldebaran burned again;
The buried river rose once more
And foamed along his gravelly glen.
" At morn the men of Conway felt
Some dreadful thing had chanced that night,
And some by Breton woods who dwelt
Observed the mountain's altered height.
"Old Crawford and the Fabyan lad
Came down from Ammonoosuc then,
And passed the Notch- oh! strange and sad
It was to see the ravaged glen.
"But having toiled for miles, in doubt,
With many a risk of limb and neck,
They saw, and hailed with joyful shout,
The Willey House amid the wreck.
"That avalanche of stones and sand,
Remembering mercy in its wrath,
Had parted, and on either hand
Pursued the rain of its path.
"And there, upon its pleasant slope,
The cottage, like a sunny isle
That wakes the shipwrecked seaman's hope,
Amid the horror seemed to smile.
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