of Nature, crossed the bed of the
river, a lakelike placidity above contrasting with the foam and murmur
of the falls below. And this was all which modern improvements had left
of "the great Patucket Falls" of the olden time. The wild river had
been tamed; the spirit of the falls, whose hoarse voice the Indian once
heard in the dashing of the great water down the rocks, had become the
slave of the arch conjurer, Art; and, like a shorn and blinded giant,
was grinding in the prison-house of his taskmaster.

One would like to know how this spot must have seemed to the "twenty
goodlie persons from Concord and Woburn" who first visited it in 1652,
as, worn with fatigue, and wet from the passage of the sluggish Concord,
"where ford there was none," they wound their slow way through the
forest, following the growing murmur of the falls, until at length the
broad, swift river stretched before them, its white spray flashing in
the sun. What cared these sturdy old Puritans for the wild beauty of
the landscape thus revealed before them? I think I see them standing
there in the golden light of a closing October day, with their sombre
brown doublets and slouched hats, and their heavy matchlocks,--such men
as Ireton fronted death with on the battle-field of Naseby, or those who
stalked with Cromwell over the broken wall of Drogheda, smiting, "in the
name of the Lord," old and young, "both maid, and little children."
Methinks I see the sunset light flooding the river valley, the western
hills stretching to the horizon, overhung with trees gorgeous and
glowing with the tints of autumn,--a mighty flower-garden, blossoming
under the spell of the enchanter, Frost; the rushing river, with its
graceful water-curves and white foam; and a steady murmur, low, deep
voices of water, the softest, sweetest sound of Nature, blends with the
sigh of the south wind in the pine-tops. But these hard-featured saints
of the New Canaan "care for none of these things." The stout hearts
which beat under their leathern doublets are proof against the sweet
influences of Nature. They see only "a great and howling wilderness,
where be many Indians, but where fish may be taken, and where be meadows
for ye subsistence of cattle," and which, on the whole, "is a
comfortable place to accommodate a company of God's people upon, who
may, with God's blessing, do good in that place for both church and
state." (Vide petition to the General Court, 1653.)

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