But A Good Book Will Never Have Been Forestalled, But The
Topic Itself Will In One Sense Be New, And Its Author, By
Consulting With Nature, Will Consult Not Only With Those Who Have
Gone Before, But With Those Who May Come After.
There is always
room and occasion enough for a true book on any subject; as there
is room for more light the brightest day and more rays will not
interfere with the first.
We thus worked our way up this river, gradually adjusting our
thoughts to novelties, beholding from its placid bosom a new
nature and new works of men, and, as it were with increasing
confidence, finding nature still habitable, genial, and
propitious to us; not following any beaten path, but the windings
of the river, as ever the nearest way for us. Fortunately we had
no business in this country. The Concord had rarely been a
river, or _rivus_, but barely _fluvius_, or between _fluvius_ and
_lacus_. This Merrimack was neither _rivus_ nor _fluvius_ nor
_lacus_, but rather _amnis_ here, a gently swelling and stately
rolling flood approaching the sea. We could even sympathize with
its buoyant tide, going to seek its fortune in the ocean, and,
anticipating the time when "being received within the plain of
its freer water," it should "beat the shores for banks," -
"campoque recepta
Liberioris aquae, pro ripis litora pulsant."
At length we doubled a low shrubby islet, called Rabbit Island,
subjected alternately to the sun and to the waves, as desolate as
if it lay some leagues within the icy sea, and found ourselves in
a narrower part of the river, near the sheds and yards for
picking the stone known as the Chelmsford granite, which is
quarried in Westford and the neighboring towns. We passed
Wicasuck Island, which contains seventy acres or more, on our
right, between Chelmsford and Tyngsborough. This was a favorite
residence of the Indians. According to the History of Dunstable,
"About 1663, the eldest son of Passaconaway [Chief of the
Penacooks] was thrown into jail for a debt of (pounds)45, due to John
Tinker, by one of his tribe, and which he had promised verbally
should be paid. To relieve him from his imprisonment, his
brother Wannalancet and others, who owned Wicasuck Island, sold
it and paid the debt." It was, however, restored to the Indians
by the General Court in 1665. After the departure of the Indians
in 1683, it was granted to Jonathan Tyng in payment for his
services to the colony, in maintaining a garrison at his house.
Tyng's house stood not far from Wicasuck Falls. Gookin, who, in
his Epistle Dedicatory to Robert Boyle, apologizes for presenting
his "matter clothed in a wilderness dress," says that on the
breaking out of Philip's war in 1675, there were taken up by the
Christian Indians and the English in Marlborough, and sent to
Cambridge, seven "Indians belonging to Narragansett, Long Island,
and Pequod, who had all been at work about seven weeks with one
Mr. Jonathan Tyng, of Dunstable, upon Merrimack River; and,
hearing of the war, they reckoned with their master, and getting
their wages, conveyed themselves away without his privity, and,
being afraid, marched secretly through the woods, designing to go
to their own country." However, they were released soon after.
Such were the hired men in those days. Tyng was the first
permanent settler of Dunstable, which then embraced what is now
Tyngsborough and many other towns. In the winter of 1675, in
Philip's war, every other settler left the town, but "he," says
the historian of Dunstable, "fortified his house; and, although
`obliged to send to Boston for his food,' sat himself down in the
midst of his savage enemies, alone, in the wilderness, to defend
his home. Deeming his position an important one for the defence
of the frontiers, in February, 1676, he petitioned the Colony for
aid, "humbly showing, as his petition runs, that, as he lived "in
the uppermost house on Merrimac river, lying open to ye enemy,
yet being so seated that it is, as it were, a watch-house to the
neighboring towns, "he could render important service to his
country if only he had some assistance," there being, "he said,"
never an inhabitant left in the town but myself." Wherefore he
requests that their "Honors would be pleased to order him _three
or four men_ to help garrison his said house," which they did.
But methinks that such a garrison would be weakened by the
addition of a man.
"Make bandog thy scout watch to bark at a thief,
Make courage for life, to be capitain chief;
Make trap-door thy bulwark, make bell to begin,
Make gunstone and arrow show who is within."
Thus he earned the title of first permanent settler. In 1694 a
law was passed "that every settler who deserted a town for fear
of the Indians should forfeit all his rights therein." But now,
at any rate, as I have frequently observed, a man may desert the
fertile frontier territories of truth and justice, which are the
State's best lands, for fear of far more insignificant foes,
without forfeiting any of his civil rights therein. Nay,
townships are granted to deserters, and the General Court, as I
am sometimes inclined to regard it, is but a deserters' camp
itself.
As we rowed along near the shore of Wicasuck Island, which was
then covered with wood, in order to avoid the current, two men,
who looked as if they had just run out of Lowell, where they had
been waylaid by the Sabbath, meaning to go to Nashua, and who now
found themselves in the strange, natural, uncultivated, and
unsettled part of the globe which intervenes, full of walls and
barriers, a rough and uncivil place to them, seeing our boat
moving so smoothly up the stream, called out from the high bank
above our heads to know if we would take them as passengers, as
if this were the street they had missed; that they might sit and
chat and drive away the time, and so at last find themselves in
Nashua.
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