It was already the water of Squam and Newfound Lake and
Winnipiseogee, and White Mountain snow dissolved, on which we
were floating, and Smith's and Baker's and Mad Rivers, and Nashua
and Souhegan and Piscataquoag, and Suncook and Soucook and
Contoocook, mingled in incalculable proportions, still fluid,
yellowish, restless all, with an ancient, ineradicable
inclination to the sea.

So it flows on down by Lowell and Haverhill, at which last place
it first suffers a sea change, and a few masts betray the
vicinity of the ocean. Between the towns of Amesbury and Newbury
it is a broad commercial river, from a third to half a mile in
width, no longer skirted with yellow and crumbling banks, but
backed by high green hills and pastures, with frequent white
beaches on which the fishermen draw up their nets. I have passed
down this portion of the river in a steamboat, and it was a
pleasant sight to watch from its deck the fishermen dragging
their seines on the distant shore, as in pictures of a foreign
strand. At intervals you may meet with a schooner laden with
lumber, standing up to Haverhill, or else lying at anchor or
aground, waiting for wind or tide; until, at last, you glide
under the famous Chain Bridge, and are landed at Newburyport.
Thus she who at first was "poore of waters, naked of renowne,"
having received so many fair tributaries, as was said of the
Forth,

"Doth grow the greater still, the further downe;
Till that abounding both in power and fame,
She long doth strive to give the sea her name";