The spot is now plainly marked by a notch in the bark. But as no
one else remembered the river to have risen so high as this, the
engineer disregarded this statement, and I learn that there has
since been a freshet which rose within nine inches of the rails
at Biscuit Brook, and such a freshet as that of 1785 would have
covered the railroad two feet deep.
The revolutions of nature tell as fine tales, and make as
interesting revelations, on this river's banks, as on the
Euphrates or the Nile. This apple-tree, which stands within a
few rods of the river, is called "Elisha's apple-tree," from a
friendly Indian, who was anciently in the service of Jonathan
Tyng, and, with one other man, was killed here by his own race in
one of the Indian wars,--the particulars of which affair were
told us on the spot. He was buried close by, no one knew exactly
where, but in the flood of 1785, so great a weight of water
standing over the grave, caused the earth to settle where it had
once been disturbed, and when the flood went down, a sunken spot,
exactly of the form and size of the grave, revealed its locality;
but this was now lost again, and no future flood can detect it;
yet, no doubt, Nature will know how to point it out in due time,
if it be necessary, by methods yet more searching and unexpected.
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