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 SO URCE A.VD ITS TP,IBUTARIES.
row and tomahawk were really efficient in supplying food, the longer
range and more deadly musket, sending forth its lightning and thunder, cutting down the chief, the brave, the squaw, and the pappoose
indiscriminately, carried terror and.dismay through their decimated
and demoralized ranks. His villages being unprotected became an
easy prey to the irresistible pale-face, and were plundered and
burned without pity, and his only safety was to place a respectful
distance between his habitation and his enemy.
Of the many voyagers to the Western or New WAorld, as it was
called., Columbus appears to have been the most unfortunate, as well
as first and greatest. With a genius towering above all navigators
and explorers who had hitherto been renowned and rewarded, and
whichl was almost beyond the comprehension of princes, and an ambition lofty, unconquerable, irrepressible, and commendable, he bent his
great mind and untiring energies to the task of securing, organizing,
and fitting out an expedition which has, by universal consent, placed
his namfne in the highest niche reserved for the mighty travellers of
the sea in the temple of fame. Having prosecuted the most successful experiment ever attempted, and brought the problem of a Western World to a positive solution, and added at the same time its
boundless area and fabulous wealth of undeveloped resources to the
possessions of his ungrateful sovereign, he was permitted to languish
in obscurity, and died broken-hearted in his fifty-ninth year. His
patroness and only reliable friend, Isabella, having preceded him to
the tomb, his compeers and rivals, actuated by a spirit of unworthy
and ungenerous selfishness, which seems to have been connived at, or
at least not restrained, by the king, stripped him as far as they could
of the merit and the advantages resulting from the most magnificent
achievement which human genius had ever devised and brought to
successful issue. Thus Columbus proved to be no exception to the
general rule, that great discoverers and inventors, the very few who
possess originality of mind and genius, fail to realize the benefits of
their achievements, which are usually secured by seedy and needy
adventurers,- soldiers of fortune, whose shrewdness and enterprise
is of that discreditable character which manages to appropriate the
products of other greater and better minds.
However, though Columfnbus was shorn of the immediate fruits of
his great enterprise by unbecoming envy, jealousy, malice, treachery,
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