'Twixt the swells of land,
Of its calm and silvery track
Rolled the tranquil Merrimack."


The Indian's feeling about "These bare hills, this conquered river," was
not strange. But to us it naturally occurs that we are more likely to
wake up with our scalps on our heads, instead of sleeping our last
sleep, while they dangle at a red man's girdle. Yet the very state of
warfare that at that time existed between the races showed that in the
settlers themselves was an element of savagery not yet eliminated. For
in all this fierce strife of the tomahawk and the gun, the Quaker
ancestors of the poet Whittier who met the Indians, armed only with
kindness and the high courage of their peaceful convictions, were
treated by the red men as friends and superiors. In the raids of general
devastation they were unmolested. Their descendant has a natural right
to express the pathos of the Indian's lot.

There is a fine exhibition of human nature in the records of the first
settlement of Amesbury. The place was called "Salisbury new-town" until
1669, and was merely an offshoot of the latter, though much larger in
extent than it is today, for now it is only about six miles by three.
Then it reached up into what is now Newton, N.H. But why should not the
people of those days have been generous as to the size of townships, for
as to land, they had the continent before them where to choose?

But in regard to the human nature. The settlers of Salisbury went at
first only beyond the salt marshes, their town being what is now East
Salisbury. The forests beyond had a threatening look, and were much
too near. It was determined, therefore, to drive them back by having