Amoskeag, Or Namaskeak, Is Said
To Mean "Great Fishing-Place." It Was Hereabouts That The Sachem
Wannalancet Resided.
Tradition says that his tribe, when at war
with the Mohawks, concealed their provisions in the cavities of
the rocks in the upper part of these falls.
The Indians, who hid
their provisions in these holes, and affirmed "that God had cut
them out for that purpose," understood their origin and use
better than the Royal Society, who in their Transactions, in the
last century, speaking of these very holes, declare that "they
seem plainly to be artificial." Similar "pot-holes" may be seen
at the Stone Flume on this river, on the Ottaway, at Bellows'
Falls on the Connecticut, and in the limestone rock at Shelburne
Falls on Deerfield River in Massachusetts, and more or less
generally about all falls. Perhaps the most remarkable curiosity
of this kind in New England is the well-known Basin on the
Pemigewasset, one of the head-waters of this river, twenty by
thirty feet in extent and proportionably deep, with a smooth and
rounded brim, and filled with a cold, pellucid, and greenish
water. At Amoskeag the river is divided into many separate
torrents and trickling rills by the rocks, and its volume is so
much reduced by the drain of the canals that it does not fill its
bed. There are many pot-holes here on a rocky island which the
river washes over in high freshets. As at Shelburne Falls, where
I first observed them, they are from one foot to four or five in
diameter, and as many in depth, perfectly round and regular, with
smooth and gracefully curved brims, like goblets.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 260 of 422
Words from 72219 to 72499
of 116321
