The yellow and
tepid river may float his scow, and cheer his eye with its
reflections and its ripples, but the boatman quenches his thirst
at this small rill alone. It is this purer and cooler element
that chiefly sustains his life. The race will long survive that
is thus discreet.
Our course this morning lay between the territories of Merrimack,
on the west, and Litchfield, once called Brenton's Farm, on the
east, which townships were anciently the Indian Naticook.
Brenton was a fur-trader among the Indians, and these lands were
granted to him in 1656. The latter township contains about five
hundred inhabitants, of whom, however, we saw none, and but few
of their dwellings. Being on the river, whose banks are always
high and generally conceal the few houses, the country appeared
much more wild and primitive than to the traveller on the
neighboring roads. The river is by far the most attractive
highway, and those boatmen who have spent twenty or twenty-five
years on it must have had a much fairer, more wild, and memorable
experience than the dusty and jarring one of the teamster who has
driven, during the same time, on the roads which run parallel
with the stream.
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