"
According to the Gazetteer, the descent of Amoskeag Falls, which
are the most considerable in the Merrimack, is fifty-four feet in
half a mile. We locked ourselves through here with much ado,
surmounting the successive watery steps of this river's staircase
in the midst of a crowd of villagers, jumping into the canal to
their amusement, to save our boat from upsetting, and consuming
much river-water in our service. Amoskeag, or Namaskeak, is said
to mean "great fishing-place." It was hereabouts that the Sachem
Wannalancet resided. Tradition says that his tribe, when at war
with the Mohawks, concealed their provisions in the cavities of
the rocks in the upper part of these falls. The Indians, who hid
their provisions in these holes, and affirmed "that God had cut
them out for that purpose," understood their origin and use
better than the Royal Society, who in their Transactions, in the
last century, speaking of these very holes, declare that "they
seem plainly to be artificial." Similar "pot-holes" may be seen
at the Stone Flume on this river, on the Ottaway, at Bellows'
Falls on the Connecticut, and in the limestone rock at Shelburne
Falls on Deerfield River in Massachusetts, and more or less
generally about all falls.
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