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.
hay, corn, and common vegetable products. The town was granted
by the MAasonian proprietors, under the name of " Number Six,'" to
James and Robert Wallace and others, in 1752. The first house,
constructed of logs, was erected in 1761 by James Peters, who was
the original settler. It was incorporated in 1768, receiving its present name from John IHenniker, Esq., a London merchant, who was
a friend of Governor Wentworth and a member of Parliament.
The Contoocook River, which in its course through several towns
is so winding or crooked that it is said to "run more than three
times its length," passes through the centre of the town. Besides
machine shops there are mills where several kinds of woollen fabrics
are produced. Craney Hill is the highest elevation of land in the
town. On the summit of this hill is a large boulder, some fifteen
feet in diameter, an undoubted deposit of the ancient glacial drift,
released from its icy embrace by contact with the obtrusive crown of
this hill, at the time the earth was being evolved from a submarine
condition, by an application of the principle of hydrostatic engineering power which has never since been equalled. This boulder is so
poised, that, only for its having been riven (supposed by lightning)
and divided into two nearly equal parts, half a dozen men could
move it from its present position, and it could not stop until it had
rolled a distance of more than three miles. There are il the country several cases of the transplanting of hill-tops and mountainpeaks,* and the subject is attracting much attention from scientific
met, as the "Testimony of the Rocks" is reg,arded as incontrovertible. The Conltoocook Valley Railroad, extending from Hillsboro' to
Concord, passes through Henniker, affording good facilities for freight
and travel.
Bradford, which is the northern boundary of Henniker, a little
* Prof. Gunning delivered a lecture in Hartford, Conn., recently, onr the last glacial period,
during which he stated that he had seen in Stamford, Vt., a mountain of granite as peculiar
as that of Superior, but of different type. The crystals were foliated. Science can find that
granite at home only in Stamford. The mountain is a truncated cone. The top has been
clipped off. North of the mountain there was not a single boulder of foliated granite.
South of the mountain there were multitudes of such boulders. Perched on the very top of
Hoosac Mountain the tourist may see a boulder about seventy feet in circumference and fifteen
feet high. If he looks at the boulder, then at the mountain, he will see that the boulder
has no kinship with the mountain. The boulder is that same Stamford granite, - a Vermont "carpet-bagger" ensconced on one of the highest peaks of Massachusetts. The tourist
may look south-westward over Deerfield Valley, thirteen hundred feet deep, and see far in
the distance the outlines of Stamford Mountain, from whose top that boulder was torn.
163