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. Their origin
is apparent to the most careless observer. A stone which the
current has washed down, meeting with obstacles, revolves as on a
pivot where it lies, gradually sinking in the course of centuries
deeper and deeper into the rock, and in new freshets receiving
the aid of fresh stones, which are drawn into this trap and
doomed to revolve there for an indefinite period, doing
Sisyphus-like penance for stony sins, until they either wear out,
or wear through the bottom of their prison, or else are released
by some revolution of nature. There lie the stones of various
sizes, from a pebble to a foot or two in diameter, some of which
have rested from their labor only since the spring, and some
higher up which have lain still and dry for ages, - we noticed
some here at least sixteen feet above the present level of the
water, - while others are still revolving, and enjoy no respite at
any season. In one instance, at Shelburne Falls, they have worn
quite through the rock, so that a portion of the river leaks
through in anticipation of the fall. Some of these pot-holes at
Amoskeag, in a very hard brown-stone, had an oblong, cylindrical
stone of the same material loosely fitting them. One, as much as
fifteen feet deep and seven or eight in diameter, which was worn
quite through to the water, had a huge rock of the same material,
smooth but of irregular form, lodged in it. Everywhere there
were the rudiments or the wrecks of a dimple in the rock; the
rocky shells of whirlpools. As if by force of example and
sympathy after so many lessons, the rocks, the hardest material,
had been endeavoring to whirl or flow into the forms of the most
fluid. The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel
tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their
leisure with a liberal allowance of time.
Not only have some of these basins been forming for countless
ages, but others exist which must have been completed in a former
geological period. In deepening the Pawtucket Canal, in 1822,
the workmen came to ledges with pot-holes in them, where probably
was once the bed of the river, and there are some, we are told,
in the town of Canaan in this State, with the stones still in
them, on the height of land between the Merrimack and
Connecticut, and nearly a thousand feet above these rivers,
proving that the mountains and the rivers have changed places.
There lie the stones which completed their revolutions perhaps
before thoughts began to revolve in the brain of man. The
periods of Hindoo and Chinese history, though they reach back to
the time when the race of mortals is confounded with the race of
gods, are as nothing compared with the periods which these stones
have inscribed. That which commenced a rock when time was young,
shall conclude a pebble in the unequal contest. With such
expense of time and natural forces are our very paving-stones
produced. They teach us lessons, these dumb workers; verily
there are "sermons in stones, and books in the running streams."
In these very holes the Indians hid their provisions; but now
there is no bread, but only its old neighbor stones at the
bottom. Who knows how many races they have served thus? By as
simple a law, some accidental by-law, perchance, our system
itself was made ready for its inhabitants.
These, and such as these, must be our antiquities, for lack of
human vestiges. The monuments of heroes and the temples of the
gods which may once have stood on the banks of this river are
now, at any rate, returned to dust and primitive soil. The
murmur of unchronicled nations has died away along these shores,
and once more Lowell and Manchester are on the trail of the
Indian.
The fact that Romans once inhabited her reflects no little
dignity on Nature herself; that from some particular hill the
Roman once looked out on the sea. She need not be ashamed of the
vestiges of her children. How gladly the antiquary informs us
that their vessels penetrated into this frith, or up that river
of some remote isle! Their military monuments still remain on
the hills and under the sod of the valleys. The oft-repeated
Roman story is written in still legible characters in every
quarter of the Old World, and but to-day, perchance, a new coin
is dug up whose inscription repeats and confirms their fame.
Some "_Judaea Capta_" with a woman mourning under a palm-tree,
with silent argument and demonstration confirms the pages of
history.
"Rome living was the world's sole ornament;
And dead is now the world's sole monument.
. . . . .
With her own weight down pressed now she lies,
And by her heaps her hugeness testifies."
If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are not a
fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still upon the
walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks made by the
shields taken from the enemy in the Persian war, which were
suspended there.
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