The Pinnacle Is A Small Wooded Hill Which Rises Very Abruptly To
The Height Of About Two Hundred Feet, Near The Shore At Hooksett
Falls.
As Uncannunuc Mountain is perhaps the best point from
which to view the valley of the Merrimack, so this hill affords
the best view of the river itself.
I have sat upon its summit, a
precipitous rock only a few rods long, in fairer weather, when
the sun was setting and filling the river valley with a flood of
light. You can see up and down the Merrimack several miles each
way. The broad and straight river, full of light and life, with
its sparkling and foaming falls, the islet which divides the
stream, the village of Hooksett on the shore almost directly
under your feet, so near that you can converse with its
inhabitants or throw a stone into its yards, the woodland lake at
its western base, and the mountains in the north and northeast,
make a scene of rare beauty and completeness, which the traveller
should take pains to behold.
We were hospitably entertained in Concord, New Hampshire, which
we persisted in calling _New_ Concord, as we had been wont, to
distinguish it from our native town, from which we had been told
that it was named and in part originally settled. This would
have been the proper place to conclude our voyage, uniting
Concord with Concord by these meandering rivers, but our boat was
moored some miles below its port.
The richness of the intervals at Penacook, now Concord, New
Hampshire, had been observed by explorers, and, according to the
historian of Haverhill, in the
"year 1726, considerable progress was made in the settlement,
and a road was cut through the wilderness from Haverhill to
Penacook. In the fall of 1727, the first family, that of
Captain Ebenezer Eastman, moved into the place. His team was
driven by Jacob Shute, who was by birth a Frenchman, and he is
said to have been the first person who drove a team through the
wilderness. Soon after, says tradition, one Ayer, a lad of 18,
drove a team consisting of ten yoke of oxen to Penacook, swam
the river, and ploughed a portion of the interval. He is
supposed to have been the first person who ploughed land in
that place. After he had completed his work, he started on his
return at sunrise, drowned a yoke of oxen while recrossing the
river, and arrived at Haverhill about midnight. The crank of
the first saw-mill was manufactured in Haverhill, and carried
to Penacook on a horse."
But we found that the frontiers were not this way any longer.
This generation has come into the world fatally late for some
enterprises. Go where we will on the _surface_ of things, men
have been there before us. We cannot now have the pleasure of
erecting the _last_ house; that was long ago set up in the
suburbs of Astoria City, and our boundaries have literally been
run to the South Sea, according to the old patents.
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