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.

TIIE MIERlI]ASA CI~ WIIT7ER;
Walford, but she did not speak; she repeated her visit about a week
after, and did as before, but said nothing."
Eliza Barton testified that she "saw Susannah Trimmings at the
time she was ill, and her face was colored and spotted with several
colors; she told the deponent the story, who replied, that it was
nothing but fantasy; her eyes looked as if they had been scald."
John Puddington, the next witness, made oath that "three years
since Good-wife Walford came to his mother's; she said that her own
husband called her an old witch; and when she came to her cattle, her
own husband would bid her begone, for she did overlook the cattle,
which is as much as to say in our country bewitching."
With respect to the character of the testimony that is given in this
case, it is believed to be in sense and pertinence above the average of
evidence given in those cases where persons were convicted of the
atrocious crime of wvitchcraft. Although no person suffered the
extreme penalty of the law in New Hampshire for it, still this
dismal episode in her history would arrest the attention of its student,
and furnish a most gloomy repast, only that the same era in the
history of a sister State exhibits a catalogue of judicial crimes which
totally eclipses the comparatively mild form of this nondescript malady
in Portsmouth and neighboring, settlements.
In many places, Topsfield, Andover, and especially Salem, in
Massachusetts, the virulence of this disease threatened to combine the
dire results of those unwelcome triple guests, war, pestilence, and
famine. Accusations were hurled against the youthful, the harmless,
and the unsuspecting; indictment and arraignment followed close
upon their track with the activity of a well-trained hound, and to be
accused was synonymous with conviction. As in the case of every
popular heresy, reason was deaf, and justice was deaf as well as blind.
No cross-examination and no defence were permitted; the bulwarks'of
justice and protection seemed to have been carried away by the
violence of the popular tempest.
Ministers of the gospel precipitated the weight of their character
and influence into the seething caldron of unparalleled madness.
Judges on the bench permitted and united in the jeers, taunts,
epithets, and clamor of the spectators against the defenceless prisoner,
instead of restraining them. In some instances, the prisoner, appalled
by the terrible character of the charge preferred, knowing the power
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