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 SO UPCE AND ITS T.IBUTAPTIES.
freighted with health and the fragrance of the forests, to seek recreation, comfort, and sport in these grandly fuirnished apartments in
the great temple of nature, to feast on trout and mountain grouse,
concluding the day's enjoyment with a sweet and pleasant meerschaum, is a luxury fit for a king, or any other man.
As the shades of night approach, and the lengthening shadows
give admonition that the sun is sinking fast behind the western
hills, and night and darkness creep slowly on, one reflects that he
is almost helpless in this great wildwood, surrounded by fierce
beasts and an impenetrable gloom, and a kind of pleasant or not
disagreea)ble loneliness steals over the feelings. The city - whlere,
in gilded palaces and gorgeous costume vice reigns triumphant now;
the interminable lines of brilliant gas-li,ghts, where the struggle and
turmoil for the almi,ghty dollar is now progressing; where the rush
for the bulletins and the news is so furious; where all the elements,
good and bad, of the human character are wrought to the highest
pitch and strainied to the utmost tension for good or for evil,- in
this regard almost a neutrality, - comes rushing in a blaze of artificial glory to the view, and the mind involuntarily recoils, and the
feeling is, " I am safer here than there, and better, socially,
morally, and physically." The blazing camp-fire now throws out its
lurid glare, and the countless trunks of giant trees, stretching into
the darkness beyond the farthest scintilla of illumination, seem
columns in the giant's causeway of this wilderness, or pendent
stalactites in this mammoth cave of overarching foliage. Cries of
wild beasts are heard about the neighborhood, attracted hither, no
doubt, by the glaring fire, or the flavor of savory cooking; but they
are not dangerous, the most serious consequences of their proximity
being the electric shock experienced at their terrifying cries, the
wild bound of the heart, and then its pause, the awful terror that
thrills the soul, and the apparently intoxicated reeling of the trees.
Only a few years since a wildcat was killed near Thornton, which
was fierce and powerful.
The party around the camp-fire received a visit from one of the
buff, bobtailed species, whose Weight was estimated at between thirty
and forty pounds; and less than ten years ago, one of the monster
brutes of this great wilderness, which had strayed away from his
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