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 SOURP CE AND ITS TRIBUTARIES.
worth of prosperity to a pound of adversity. He died in 1635, with
a firm reliance to the last moment, it appears, on the ultimate frui
tion of his cherished hopes.
In 1629, Passaconaway, a great chief, sold the territory extending
from the Piscataqua to the Merrimack River, and from the line of
Massachusetts territory thirty miles into the country, to Rev. John
Aheelwri,ght and his associates. The deed was signed by Passaconaway, the Sagamon of Pennacook; Runnawit, the Chief of Pawtucket; Wahangnonawit, the Chief of Squamscot; and Rowls, the
Chief of Newichewannock, and properly witnessed.
WVheelwright was a very pious and able man, residing at Braintree, in Massachusetts. Endowed with a generous liberality he
resolved to overthrow the priestly despotism over the mind and break
the strong shackles which bound men to the sway of bigotry. Imbued with this spirit and determination, he presently encountered
insurmountable obstacles.
"Forefaither' s-dlay " orators (of the spread-eagle genus) -those
interested and disinterested, informed, misinformed, and uninformed,
sometimes the wise, and oftentimes the otherwise- magnanimously
declare that the Puritans, moved by the genuine spirit of religious
toleration, fled from homes endeared to them by the associations of
a lifetime and sought the wilds of America, there to establish on an
enduring basis the great fundamental principle of freedom which
they so much loved and had sacrificed so much to maintain, - the
printiple of religious toleration.
The opinion seems to have obtained that the Puritans, pained and
disgusted with the blind spirit of intolerance of religious differences
in the Old WVorld, sought the New, where, with the power in their
own hands, the corner-stone of the new government should be freedom of conscience, and this immutable principle thus preserved, the
Christian millennium should come in America, where the lions of
the established church and the lambs of dissenting faith should lie
down together, and only the little child of Truth should lead them.
This view of their disposition, judoging by a careful and unbiased
examination of theorecords and history of the Puritans, would seem
to be entirely erroneous. It really appears that, instead of being
deprived of the privilege of conscientious worship, they left the old
country rather because they could not persuade or restrain their fel
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