The MERRIMACK, Or Sturgeon River, Is Formed
By The Confluence Of The Pemigewasset, Which Rises Near The Notch
Of The
White Mountains, and the Winnipiseogee, which drains the
lake of the same name, signifying "The Smile of the Great
Spirit.
" From their junction it runs south seventy-eight miles to
Massachusetts, and thence east thirty-five miles to the sea. I
have traced its stream from where it bubbles out of the rocks of
the White Mountains above the clouds, to where it is lost amid
the salt billows of the ocean on Plum Island beach. At first it
comes on murmuring to itself by the base of stately and retired
mountains, through moist primitive woods whose juices it
receives, where the bear still drinks it, and the cabins of
settlers are far between, and there are few to cross its stream;
enjoying in solitude its cascades still unknown to fame; by long
ranges of mountains of Sandwich and of Squam, slumbering like
tumuli of Titans, with the peaks of Moosehillock, the Haystack,
and Kearsarge reflected in its waters; where the maple and the
raspberry, those lovers of the hills, flourish amid temperate
dews; - flowing long and full of meaning, but untranslatable as
its name Pemigewasset, by many a pastured Pelion and Ossa, where
unnamed muses haunt, tended by Oreads, Dryads, Naiads, and
receiving the tribute of many an untasted Hippocrene. There are
earth, air, fire, and water, - very well, this is water, and down
it comes.
Such water do the gods distil,
And pour down every hill
For their New England men;
A draught of this wild nectar bring,
And I'll not taste the spring
Of Helicon again.
Falling all the way, and yet not discouraged by the lowest fall.
By the law of its birth never to become stagnant, for it has come
out of the clouds, and down the sides of precipices worn in the
flood, through beaver-dams broke loose, not splitting but
splicing and mending itself, until it found a breathing-place in
this low land. There is no danger now that the sun will steal it
back to heaven again before it reach the sea, for it has a
warrant even to recover its own dews into its bosom again with
interest at every eve.
It was already the water of Squam and Newfound Lake and
Winnipiseogee, and White Mountain snow dissolved, on which we
were floating, and Smith's and Baker's and Mad Rivers, and Nashua
and Souhegan and Piscataquoag, and Suncook and Soucook and
Contoocook, mingled in incalculable proportions, still fluid,
yellowish, restless all, with an ancient, ineradicable
inclination to the sea.
So it flows on down by Lowell and Haverhill, at which last place
it first suffers a sea change, and a few masts betray the
vicinity of the ocean. Between the towns of Amesbury and Newbury
it is a broad commercial river, from a third to half a mile in
width, no longer skirted with yellow and crumbling banks, but
backed by high green hills and pastures, with frequent white
beaches on which the fishermen draw up their nets.
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