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 TRIBUTA'RIES.
The Insane Asylum is a fine builaing, properly arranged in apartments suitable to the sexes, and to the degrees of insanity which
afflict the unfortunate patients. The best of medical aid and experience, careful nursing, and attention to comfort are provided as
well for incurables as for those whose cases are of a more hopeful
character; and it is pleasant to know that when reason is dethroned
by some unusual or extraordinary mental strain, the state of intellectual chaos may not be perpetual or hopeless, but is often permanently cured by the treatment received at this institution.
The common schools of Concord bear a favorable reputation; the
school-houses are commodious, and some of them costly structures.
The facilities for a thorough education in the common and some of
the higher branches are excellent. For many years past the whole
State of New Ilampshire has been waking up to the importance of
providing the most liberal facilities for common-school education.
Concord, where the representative men of the State annually assemble, and display the talent and learning which are so generally diffused,
has, perhaps, been more thoroughly aroused by this circumstance,
and has sought to place her common-school system on a high and
progressive basis. The schools are graded, as in most large towns,
for greater convenience and efficiency in the process of instruction,
which ranges from the elementary principles to the higher branches
of Engclish education.
The prosperity of Concord has, undoubtedly, been much increased
anal its growth accelerated by the completion of many railroad lines
which centre here, and the population is estimated at sixteen thousand.
The Concord Railroad was open for travel September 1st, 1842;
the MAlerrimack and Connecticut River Railroad was open for travel
September 20th, 1849; the Northern Railroad in 1846. The Boston,
Concord, and Montreal Railroad was opened May 10th, 1848, al though the line through was not completed until five years after.
There is also the Contoocook Valley, the Concord and Claremont, and
the Concord and Portsmouth. The enterprise which has constructed
and ecquipped so many railroads could not fail to manifest itself as it
has in the rapid advancement of Concord, nor could these roads fail
each in its way to add steadily to the wealth, business, and prosperity
of the city.
The immense travel over these roads, the frequent assembling
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