A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers · Chapter 4 (6/7)

Salmon Brook, whose name is said to be a translation from the Indian, was a favorite haunt of the aborigines. Here, too, the first white settlers of Nashua planted, and some dents in the earth where their houses stood and the wrecks of ancient apple-trees are still visible. About one mile up this stream stood the house of old John Lovewell, who was an ensign in the army of Oliver Cromwell, and the father of “famous Captain Lovewell.” He settled here before 1690, and died about 1754, at the age of one hundred and twenty years. He is thought to have been engaged in the famous Narragansett swamp fight, which took place in 1675, before he came here. The Indians are said to have spared him in succeeding wars on account of his kindness to them. Even in 1700 he was so old and gray-headed that his scalp was worth nothing, since the French Governor offered no bounty for such. I have stood in the dent of his cellar on the bank of the brook, and talked there with one whose grandfather had, whose father might have, talked with Lovewell. Here also he had a mill in his old age, and kept a small store. He was remembered by some who were recently living, as a hale old man who drove the boys out of his orchard with his cane. Consider the triumphs of the mortal man, and what poor trophies it would have to show, to wit:⁠—He cobbled shoes without glasses at a hundred, and cut a handsome swath at a hundred and five! Lovewell’s house is said to have been the first which Mrs. Dustan reached on her escape from the Indians. Here probably the hero of Pequawket was born and bred. Close by may be seen the cellar and the gravestone of Joseph Hassell, who, as is elsewhere recorded, with his wife Anna, and son Benjamin, and Mary Marks, “were slain by our Indian enemies on September 2nd, [1691,] in the evening.” As Gookin observed on a previous occasion, “The Indian rod upon the English backs had not yet done God’s errand.” Salmon Brook near its mouth is still a solitary stream, meandering through woods and meadows, while the then uninhabited mouth of the Nashua now resounds with the din of a manufacturing town.

A stream from Otternic Pond in Hudson comes in just above Salmon Brook, on the opposite side. There was a good view of Uncannunuc, the most conspicuous mountain in these parts, from the bank here, seen rising over the west end of the bridge above. We soon after passed the village of Nashua, on the river of the same name, where there is a covered bridge over the Merrimack. The Nashua, which is one of the largest tributaries, flows from Wachusett Mountain, through Lancaster, Groton, and other towns, where it has formed well-known elm-shaded meadows, but near its mouth it is obstructed by falls and factories, and did not tempt us to explore it.

Far away from here, in Lancaster, with another companion, I have crossed the broad valley of the Nashua, over which we had so long looked westward from the Concord hills without seeing it to the blue mountains in the horizon. So many streams, so many meadows and woods and quiet dwellings of men had lain concealed between us and those Delectable Mountains;⁠—from yonder hill on the road to Tyngsborough you may get a good view of them. There where it seemed uninterrupted forest to our youthful eyes, between two neighboring pines in the horizon, lay the valley of the Nashua, and this very stream was even then winding at its bottom, and then, as now, it was here silently mingling its waters with the Merrimack. The clouds which floated over its meadows and were born there, seen far in the west, gilded by the rays of the setting sun, had adorned a thousand evening skies for us. But as it were, by a turf wall this valley was concealed, and in our journey to those hills it was first gradually revealed to us. Summer and winter our eyes had rested on the dim outline of the mountains, to which distance and indistinctness lent a grandeur not their own, so that they served to interpret all the allusions of poets and travellers. Standing on the Concord Cliffs we thus spoke our mind to them:⁠—

With frontier strength ye stand your ground,

With grand content ye circle round,

Tumultuous silence for all sound,

Ye distant nursery of rills,

Monadnock and the Peterborough Hills;⁠—

Firm argument that never stirs,

Outcircling the philosophers⁠—

Like some vast fleet,

Sailing through rain and sleet,

Through winter’s cold and summer’s heat;

Still holding on upon your high emprise,

Until ye find a shore amid the skies;

Not skulking close to land,

With cargo contraband,

For they who sent a venture out by ye

Have set the Sun to see

Their honesty.

Ships of the line, each one,

Ye westward run,

Convoying clouds,

Which cluster in your shrouds,

Always before the gale,

Under a press of sail,

With weight of metal all untold⁠—

I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here,

Immeasurable depth of hold,

And breadth of beam, and length of running gear

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure

In your novel western leisure;

So cool your brows and freshly blue,

As Time had naught for ye to do;

For ye lie at your length,

An unappropriated strength,

Unhewn primeval timber,

For knees so stiff, for masts so limber;

The stock of which new earths are made,

One day to be our western trade,

Fit for the stanchions of a world

Which through the seas of space is hurled.

While we enjoy a lingering ray,

Ye still o’ertop the western day,

Reposing yonder on God’s croft

Like solid stacks of hay;

So bold a line as ne’er was writ

On any page by human wit;

The forest glows as if

An enemy’s campfires shone

Along the horizon,

Or the day’s funeral pyre

Were lighted there;

Edged with silver and with gold,

The clouds hang o’er in damask fold,

And with such depth of amber light

The west is dight,

Where still a few rays slant,

That even Heaven seems extravagant.

Watatic Hill

Lies on the horizon’s sill

Like a child’s toy left overnight,

And other duds to left and right,

On the earth’s edge, mountains and trees

Stand as they were on air graven,

Or as the vessels in a haven

Await the morning breeze.

I fancy even

Through your defiles windeth the way to heaven;

And yonder still, in spite of history’s page,

Linger the golden and the silver age;

Upon the laboring gale

The news of future centuries is brought,

And of new dynasties of thought,

From your remotest vale.

But special I remember thee,

Wachusett, who like me

Standest alone without society.

Thy far blue eye,

A remnant of the sky,

Seen through the clearing or the gorge,

Or from the windows of the forge,

Doth leaven all it passes by.

Nothing is true

But stands ’tween me and you,

Thou western pioneer,

Who know’st not shame nor fear,

By venturous spirit driven

Under the eaves of heaven;

And canst expand thee there,

And breathe enough of air?

Even beyond the West

Thou migratest,

Into unclouded tracts,

Without a pilgrim’s axe,

Cleaving thy road on high

With thy well-tempered brow,

And mak’st thyself a clearing in the sky.

Upholding heaven, holding down earth,

Thy pastime from thy birth;

Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other,

May I approve myself thy worthy brother!

At length, like Rasselas and other inhabitants of happy valleys, we had resolved to scale the blue wall which bounded the western horizon, though not without misgivings that thereafter no visible fairyland would exist for us. But it would be long to tell of our adventures, and we have no time this afternoon, transporting ourselves in imagination up this hazy Nashua valley, to go over again that pilgrimage. We have since made many similar excursions to the principal mountains of New England and New York, and even far in the wilderness, and have passed a night on the summit of many of them. And now, when we look again westward from our native hills, Wachusett and Monadnock have retreated once more among the blue and fabulous mountains in the horizon, though our eyes rest on the very rocks on both of them, where we have pitched our tent for a night, and boiled our hasty-pudding amid the clouds.

As late as 1724 there was no house on the north side of the Nashua, but only scattered wigwams and grisly forests between this frontier and Canada. In September of that year, two men who were engaged in making turpentine on that side, for such were the first enterprises in the wilderness, were taken captive and carried to Canada by a party of thirty Indians. Ten of the inhabitants of Dunstable, going to look for them, found the hoops of their barrel cut, and the turpentine spread on the ground. I have been told by an inhabitant of Tyngsborough, who had the story from his ancestors, that one of these captives, when the Indians were about to upset his barrel of turpentine, seized a pine knot and flourishing it, swore so resolutely that he would kill the first who touched it, that they refrained, and when at length he returned from Canada he found it still standing. Perhaps there was more than one barrel. However this may have been, the scouts knew by marks on the trees, made with coal mixed with grease, that the men were not killed, but taken prisoners. One of the company, named Farwell, perceiving that the turpentine had not done spreading, concluded that the Indians had been gone but a short time, and they accordingly went in instant pursuit. Contrary to the advice of Farwell, following directly on their trail up the Merrimack, they fell into an ambuscade near Thornton’s Ferry, in the present town of Merrimack, and nine were killed, only one, Farwell, escaping after a vigorous pursuit. The men of Dunstable went out and picked up their bodies, and carried them all down to Dunstable and buried them. It is almost word for word as in the Robin Hood ballad:⁠—

They carried these foresters into fair Nottingham,

As many there did know,

They digged them graves in their churchyard,

And they buried them all a-row.

Nottingham is only the other side of the river, and they were not exactly all a-row. You may read in the churchyard at Dunstable, under the “Memento Mori,” and the name of one of them, how they “departed this life,” and

This man with seven more that lies in

this grave was slew all in a day by

the Indians.

The stones of some others of the company stand around the common grave with their separate inscriptions. Eight were buried here, but nine were killed, according to the best authorities.

Gentle river, gentle river,

Lo, thy streams are stained with gore,

Many a brave and noble captain

Floats along thy willowed shore.

All beside thy limpid waters,

All beside thy sands so bright,

Indian Chiefs and Christian warriors

Joined in fierce and mortal fight.

It is related in the History of Dunstable, that on the return of Farwell the Indians were engaged by a fresh party which they compelled to retreat, and pursued as far as the Nashua, where they fought across the stream at its mouth. After the departure of the Indians, the figure of an Indian’s head was found carved by them on a large tree by the shore, which circumstance has given its name to this part of the village of Nashville⁠—the “Indian Head.” “It was observed by some judicious,” says Gookin, referring to Philip’s war, “that at the beginning of the war the English soldiers made a nothing of the Indians, and many spake words to this effect: that one Englishman was sufficient to chase ten Indians; many reckoned it was no other but Veni, vidi, vici.” But we may conclude that the judicious would by this time have made a different observation.

Farwell appears to have been the only one who had studied his profession, and understood the business of hunting Indians. He lived to fight another day, for the next year he was Lovewell’s lieutenant at Pequawket, but that time, as we have related, he left his bones in the wilderness. His name still reminds us of twilight days and forest scouts on Indian trails, with an uneasy scalp;⁠—an indispensable hero to New England. As the more recent poet of Lovewell’s fight has sung, halting a little but bravely still:⁠—

Then did the crimson streams that flowed

Seem like the waters of the brook,

That brightly shine, that loudly dash,

Far down the cliffs of Agiochook.

These battles sound incredible to us. I think that posterity will doubt if such things ever were; if our bold ancestors who settled this land were not struggling rather with the forest shadows, and not with a copper-colored race of men. They were vapors, fever and ague of the unsettled woods. Now, only a few arrowheads are turned up by the plough. In the Pelasgic, the Etruscan, or the British story, there is nothing so shadowy and unreal.

It is a wild and antiquated looking graveyard, overgrown with bushes, on the high road, about a quarter of a mile from and overlooking the Merrimack, with a deserted mill-stream bounding it on one side, where lie the earthly remains of the ancient inhabitants of Dunstable. We passed it three or four miles below here. You may read there the names of Lovewell, Farwell, and many others whose families were distinguished in Indian warfare. We noticed there two large masses of granite more than a foot thick and rudely squared, lying flat on the ground over the remains of the first pastor and his wife.

It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere under stones⁠—

“Strata jacent passim suo quæque sub” lapide⁠—

corpora, we might say, if the measure allowed. When the stone is a slight one, it does not oppress the spirits of the traveller to meditate by it; but these did seem a little heathenish to us; and so are all large monuments over men’s bodies, from the pyramids down. A monument should at least be “star-y-pointing,” to indicate whither the spirit is gone, and not prostrate, like the body it has deserted. There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen. But why these stones, so upright and emphatic, like exclamation-points? What was there so remarkable that lived? Why should the monument be so much more enduring than the fame which it is designed to perpetuate⁠—a stone to a bone? “Here lies,”⁠—“Here lies”;⁠—why do they not sometimes write: There rises? Is it a monument to the body only that is intended? “Having reached the term of his natural life”;⁠—would it not be truer to say: Having reached the term of his unnatural life? The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth. If any character is given, it should be as severely true as the decision of the three judges below, and not the partial testimony of friends. Friends and contemporaries should supply only the name and date, and leave it to posterity to write the epitaph.

Here lies an honest man,

Rear-Admiral Van.

Faith, then ye have

Two in one grave,

For in his favor,

Here too lies the Engraver.

Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true. But they only are the true epitaphs which Old Mortality retouches.