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 MIERBIMACK RIVER;
or perhaps may be called an enlargement of that river. It is noted
for the high character of its schools, for its general thrift, for its
mechanical and manufacturing resources, and for its natural curios
ities.
One of these is a gulf broad and deep, extending nearly a mile
through hard, rocky earth. It is thirty-ei,ght feet deep, and varies
from eighty to one hundred feet in width, the walls corresponding
so accurately as to present the appearance of having been rent asunder
by some convulsion of nature. A cavern is also pointed out, extend ing, horizontally some twenty-five or thirty feet into thie earth, and
is as likely a receptacle for Kidd's treasure or rattlesnakes as many
others mentioned.
Near the head of Little Bay, on the Winnipesaukee, are the almost
obliterated remains of an old fortress. It was evidently constructed
by the Indians, and is a very ancient affair; relics of the aboriginal
garrison have often been found in the vicinity.
It was believed that this was an important post on the great thoroughfare on the line of the trail from the Pennacook Confederacy
along the lower Merrimack to Lake Winnipesaukee, branching eastward to the Pequauket country and the Amarisco,ggin, and westward
by the head-waters of the Merrimack and the Connecticut to the St.
Francis.
At the time the Sanborns and others came here to settle, the walls
of this fortification were four or five feet high, and large forest-trees
mere growing within the enclosure, which gives to the ruins an air
of antiquity. Pottery, tobacco, pipes, warlike and agricultural
implements are among the trophies obtained by the ploughshare and
the curiosity-seeker. This fortification is described as having consisted of six walls, one extending along the river and across a point
of land into the bay, and the others at right angles, connected by a
circular wall in the rear. Who shall say what terrible sieges this
'Malakoff of the wilderness has stood, what bombardments of arrows,
what terrific attacks by water of some primitive Drake with his fleet
of birch canoes, what heroic sorties with the death-dealing war-club
and tomahawk,. or the unconditional surrender, and the torture!
Gone, all gone, the barbarian actors in these rude conflicts, and
records written in the sand or on the forest-tree, swept into the deep
and wide grave of oblivion together, the few scanty records preserved
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