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 A.ND ITS TRIBUTARIES.
the old Bay State on the south, presenting a view, in extent and
variety, unequalled.
Long years before the white man set foot upon the soil of New
Hampshire, the red man had an unwritten history of all this mountain region, founded on his superstitious veneration for all that is
sublime, beautiful, or grand in nature. The whole mountain region
of northern New Hampshire he called by the general name of Agiochocook. They had a tradition that a deluge destroyed all the
people, except one Powow,- the traditional Noah of the red man,
and his squaw, who, fleeing before the rising waters, finally saved
themselves upon these heights, which were inaccessible to the floods,
and finally repeopled the earth.
These awful summits they regarded with superstitious veneration. The red man believed that a powerful genius presided on their
overhanging cliffs, and by their waterfalls. IHis imagination peopled
them with invisible beings. He saw the Great Spirit in the clouds
gathered around their tops; he heard his voice, speaking in the
revels of the storm, and calling aloud in the thunders that leaped
from cliff to cliff, and rumbled in the hollows of the mountains.
"A god resided in the stars, the lakes, and the recesses of the
grottos. He saw him in the clouds, and heard him in the winds --
frowning in the wintry blast- breathing in the zephyrs of spring
-smiling in the first blush of morning, and the last hue of twilight
that lingers above the pines in the western sky.
a Influenced by fear, the Indians never ascended the White Mountains. They supposed the invisib'le inhabitants would resent any
intrusion into their sacred precincts.
"But the emotions of the white man were very different. He,.
especially if he is a Yankee,'wants to know;' and more than two
hundred years ago he explored these solitudes, and his report, though
different from the tradition of the Indians, was quite as exaggerated.
But the Indian is known no more among these wild, romantic scenes;
the fearless and enthusiastic explorer of the early time has, also,
long since gone, and his reports, largely drawn from imagination,
conjecture and fancy, have long since, like the tradition of the red
man, been dispelled by a better knowledge of the region, by the light
of facts and science; and though the fleecy vapors still whirl about
these awful peaks, and the winds moan like uneasy spirits from
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