I Have Passed
Down This Portion Of The River In A Steamboat, And It Was A
Pleasant Sight To Watch From Its Deck The Fishermen Dragging
Their Seines On The Distant Shore, As In Pictures Of A Foreign
Strand.
At intervals you may meet with a schooner laden with
lumber, standing up to Haverhill, or else lying at
Anchor or
aground, waiting for wind or tide; until, at last, you glide
under the famous Chain Bridge, and are landed at Newburyport.
Thus she who at first was "poore of waters, naked of renowne,"
having received so many fair tributaries, as was said of the
Forth,
"Doth grow the greater still, the further downe;
Till that abounding both in power and fame,
She long doth strive to give the sea her name";
or if not her name, in this case, at least the impulse of her
stream. From the steeples of Newburyport you may review this
river stretching far up into the country, with many a white sail
glancing over it like an inland sea, and behold, as one wrote who
was born on its head-waters, "Down out at its mouth, the dark
inky main blending with the blue above. Plum Island, its sand
ridges scolloping along the horizon like the sea-serpent, and the
distant outline broken by many a tall ship, leaning, _still_,
against the sky."
Rising at an equal height with the Connecticut, the Merrimack
reaches the sea by a course only half as long, and hence has no
leisure to form broad and fertile meadows, like the former, but
is hurried along rapids, and down numerous falls, without long
delay. The banks are generally steep and high, with a narrow
interval reaching back to the hills, which is only rarely or
partially overflown at present, and is much valued by the
farmers. Between Chelmsford and Concord, in New Hampshire, it
varies from twenty to seventy-five rods in width. It is probably
wider than it was formerly, in many places, owing to the trees
having been cut down, and the consequent wasting away of its
banks. The influence of the Pawtucket Dam is felt as far up as
Cromwell's Falls, and many think that the banks are being abraded
and the river filled up again by this cause. Like all our
rivers, it is liable to freshets, and the Pemigewasset has been
known to rise twenty-five feet in a few hours. It is navigable
for vessels of burden about twenty miles; for canal-boats, by
means of locks, as far as Concord in New Hampshire, about
seventy-five miles from its mouth; and for smaller boats to
Plymouth, one hundred and thirteen miles. A small steamboat once
plied between Lowell and Nashua, before the railroad was built,
and one now runs from Newburyport to Haverhill.
Unfitted to some extent for the purposes of commerce by the
sand-bar at its mouth, see how this river was devoted from the
first to the service of manufactures.
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