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.
the Land and WVater Power Company. Mr. Silas Tyler followed the
Merrimack many years as pilot, and was connected with the Middlesex
Canal for twenty years, being for seven years captain of packet-boat
Gov. Sullivan, and at the opening of the Boston and Lowell Railroad
and the consequent abandonment of canal navigation, about 1835, of
course his connection with it terminated. Mr. Tyler was of opinion
that, with an enlargement of twenty feet in width and three in depth,
this canal could have successfully competed with the railroad, as one
horse could then haul sixty tons of freight from Lowell to Boston.
Mr. Ignatius Tyler has had an uninterrupted connection with the
Merrimack and canals from his youth to within a few years, and was
for a long time engaged in the lumber trade at Lowell, but for seven
or eight years past his operations have been confined to streams
whose sources are in the Provinces. When the steamboat enterprise
on the Merrimack was started by Messrs. Bradley, Stone, and others, he was captain of the fine little freight and passenger steamer
that plied between Lowell and Nashua, and for some years managed
an immense carrying trade, via the river and Middlesex Canal, between Concord and all Northern New HIampshire and Boston. He
was, like his brother, long connected with the Middlesex Canal, and
his employment on the river gave him a familiarity with all the canals around the falls above Lowell. In 1814, the first packet-boat
passed through the canal from Boston to Concord, N. II., and in
1819 the first steamboat from Boston reached Concord; and a boat
of thirty tons has even gone as far up as the foot of Webster's Falls,
in Franklin, the forks of the Merrimack.
A prominent feature of the business of Lowell has been its immense lumber trade. Previoiis to the construction of these canals,
the lumber coming down the river was landed and hauled around the
falls to the basin belown, which was done by the splendid ox-teams
of nei,ghboring farmers; conspicuous among these the old residents
do not forget those of Joel and Jonathan Spaulding. Beaver River
was also a convenient harbor, and in the season was filled with rafts
as far back as the " Navy Yard." Those going via canal to Boston
were also hauled by oxen, onde pair hauling as many as sixty shooks
of rafts. After the Pawtucket Canal was made, this method of
shipment around the falTs was dispensed with, but the lumber trade
was not, and for many years as many as ten million feet of lumber
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