There Is A
Naturalness, An Unpretending And Cold Life In This Traveller, As
In A Canadian Winter, What Life Was
Preserved through low
temperatures and frontier dangers by furs within a stout heart.
He has truth and moderation worthy of
The father of history,
which belong only to an intimate experience, and he does not
defer too much to literature. The unlearned traveller may quote
his single line from the poets with as good right as the scholar.
He too may speak of the stars, for he sees them shoot perhaps
when the astronomer does not. The good sense of this author is
very conspicuous. He is a traveller who does not exaggerate, but
writes for the information of his readers, for science, and for
history. His story is told with as much good faith and
directness as if it were a report to his brother traders, or the
Directors of the Hudson Bay Company, and is fitly dedicated to
Sir Joseph Banks. It reads like the argument to a great poem on
the primitive state of the country and its inhabitants, and the
reader imagines what in each case, with the invocation of the
Muse, might be sung, and leaves off with suspended interest, as
if the full account were to follow. In what school was this
fur-trader educated? He seems to travel the immense snowy
country with such purpose only as the reader who accompanies him,
and to the latter's imagination, it is, as it were, momentarily
created to be the scene of his adventures. What is most
interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for
the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it
furnishes; not the _annals_ of the country, but the natural
facts, or _perennials_, which are ever without date. When out of
history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates
like withered leaves.
The Souhegan, or _Crooked_ River, as some translate it, comes in
from the west about a mile and a half above Thornton's Ferry.
Babboosuck Brook empties into it near its mouth. There are said
to be some of the finest water privileges in the country still
unimproved on the former stream, at a short distance from the
Merrimack. One spring morning, March 22, in the year 1677, an
incident occurred on the banks of the river here, which is
interesting to us as a slight memorial of an interview between
two ancient tribes of men, one of which is now extinct, while the
other, though it is still represented by a miserable remnant, has
long since disappeared from its ancient hunting-grounds. A
Mr. James Parker, at "Mr. Hinchmanne's farme ner Meremack," wrote
thus "to the Honred Governer and Council at Bostown, _Hast, Post
Hast":_ -
"Sagamore Wanalancet come this morning to informe me, and then
went to Mr. Tyng's to informe him, that his son being on ye
other sid of Meremack river over against Souhegan upon the 22
day of this instant, about tene of the clock in the morning, he
discovered 15 Indians on this sid the river, which he soposed
to be Mohokes by ther spech.
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