CONCORD RIVER.

"Beneath low hills, in the broad interval
Through which at will our Indian rivulet
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw,
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies,
Here, in pine houses, built of new-fallen trees,
Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell."

^Emerson^.


The Musketaquid, or Grass-ground River, though probably as old as
the Nile or Euphrates, did not begin to have a place in civilized
history, until the fame of its grassy meadows and its fish
attracted settlers out of England in 1635, when it received the
other but kindred name of ^Concord^ from the first plantation on
its banks, which appears to have been commenced in a spirit of
peace and harmony. It will be Grass-ground River as long as grass
grows and water runs here; it will be Concord River only while
men lead peaceable lives on its banks. To an extinct race it was
grass-ground, where they hunted and fished, and it is still
perennial grass-ground to Concord farmers, who own the Great
Meadows, and get the hay from year to year. "One branch of it,"
according to the historian of Concord, for I love to quote so
good authority, "rises in the south part of Hopkinton, and
another from a pond and a large cedar-swamp in Westborough," and
flowing between Hopkinton and Southborough, through Framingham,