The Merrimack, most serviceable of
rivers, begins its course a mile or two off, formed by the union of
two mountain torrents. Among those hills, high up, sometimes near the
summits, lakes are found, broad, deep, and still; and down the sides
run innumerable rills, which form those noisy brooks that rush along
the bottom of the hills, where now the roads wind along, shaded by the
mountain, and enlivened by the music of the waters. Among these hills
there are, here and there, expanses of level country large enough for
a farm, with the addition of some fields upon the easier acclivities
and woodlands higher up. There was one field of a hundred acres upon
Captain Webster's mountain farm so level that a lamb could be seen on
any part of it from the windows of the house. Every tourist knows that
region now,--that wide, billowy expanse of dark mountains and vivid
green fields, dotted with white farm-houses, and streaked with silvery
streams. It was rougher, seventy years ago, secluded, hardly
accessible, the streams unbridged, the roads of primitive formation;
but the worst of the rough work had been done there, and the
production of superior human beings had become possible, before the
Webster boys were born.
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