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 M,ERRIMA Cf RIVE;
fifty acres of common in proper quantities through the city, instead
of locating the whole in one body in some inconvenient corner; the
care, attention, and cost which have been devoted to the planting of
ornamental shade-trees, adorning and beautifying the streets and
squares,- one of the most agreeable and comfortable features of the
town, to its people, as it is one of the most attractive to strangers;
the proper equality in size of building sites; the remarkable absence
of the alternation of stores and dwellings seen in many cities; the
respectful and convenient distance maintained between the building
front and the street line,- these and many other noticeable features
are certainly not an exhibition of uniformity of taste and means, nor
are they, either, the result of accident. Industry, study, skill,
science, genius, in competent hands and under intelligent direction,
has devised and accomplished all this. In the year 1838, Mr. E.
A. Straw, then a youth of eighteen, having just left school and engaged as civil engineer in the construction of the Nashua and Lowell
Railroad, was sent by Mr. Boyden, consulting engineer of the
Amoskeag Company, to supply the place of Mr. T. J. Carter, the
regular engineer of that company, who was sick, and whose services
were needed at that time. Mr. Straw arrived on the 4th of July
of the year named, and immediately entered uponi the active duties
of the position, expecting to remain but a week or so. IIis engag,ement consequently antedates the erection of mills, and, indeed, the
commencement of all improvements, beyond the initiatory steps, in
the city of Manchester, and he may be said not only to be contemporaneous with, but the agent of, all these improvements. When
llr. Straw came to Manchester there was but one principal thoroughfare, running diagonally from north-west to south-east, from Amoskeag village across the old bridge and the plain to the centre of the
town. Along this road there were some half-a-dozen houses, among
them the Kidder house near the river; another on the site of the
residence of AWilliam G. Perry, Esq.; one between these two near the
track of the Concord Railroad; and a few others. The dwelling on
what was then known as the " Young Farm," now known as the
"pest-house," having been built in 1834, appeared, externally,
much the same as now. Among the first duties devolving on Mlr.
Straw in the line of his profession was to lay out, according to the
plan, for reclamation and putting into market, the lands of the com
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