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.
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