USA > Connecticut > The Connecticut River and the valley of the Connecticut, three hundred and fifty miles from mountain to sea; historical and descriptive > Part 27
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" Now I have seen in scientific vision an apterous bird some twelve or fifteen feet high - very large flocks of them, - walking over its muddy surface followed by many others of an analogous character, but of smaller size. Next comes a biped animal, a bird, perhaps, with a foot and heel nearly two feet long. Then a host of lesser bipeds, formed on the same general type; and among them several quadrupeds with disproportioned feet, yet many of them stilted high, while others are crawling along the surface with sprawl- ing limbs. Next succeeds the huge Polemarch, leading along a tribe of lesser followers, with heels of great length, and armed with spurs. But the greatest wonder of all comes in the shape of a biped batra- chian with feet twenty inches long. We have heard of the Laby- rinthodon of Europe, -a frog as large as an ox, but his feet were
At the Head of the Massachusetts Reach-Northfield; the Dwight L. Moody Institutions on the Left Bank. .
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only six or eight inches long, - a mere pigmy compared with the Otozoum of New England. Behind them there trips along, on unequal feet, a group of small lizards and Salamandridæ, with trifid or quadtrifid feet. Beyond, half seen amid the darkness, there move along animals so strange that they can hardly be brought within the types of existing organizations. Strange indeed is the menagerie of remote sandstone days; and the privilege of gazing upon it, and of bringing into view one lost form after another, has been an ample recompense for my efforts though they should be rewarded by no other fruit."
" No doubt," afterward remarked the later New England geologist, Professor Charles W. Hitchcock, Dr. Hitchcock's son, in his Geology of New Hampshire, the wonderful birds who left these marks " built their nests among the jungles of New Hampshire, from whence they emerged in search of food."
The nineteenth basin extends from the Miller's River junction in Gill to the conical peak of Mount Toby, or Mattawampe, in Sunderland, east side, in which the inte- rior range reappears at its first crossing of the River. At the beginning of this reach of only eight or ten miles the River's course is sharply turned to the northwest. Thus it runs for about a mile between picturesque banks. Then bending westerly it flows in that direction for two miles, through a "horse race " and " the narrows," Gill lying on the north and the town of Montague on the south. In the narrows it turns again abruptly northward. After a mile or so in rapids it plunges over a rocky precipice at Turner's Falls. Then making a great semi-circle, or bow, of three miles in extent, it resumes its southward way, and so approaches the basin's end. Along this roving course numerous terraces appear on either side, some of consider- able extent. Greenfield on its hills lies on the north and west of the great bow. At the upper bend Falls River,
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coursing down the side of Greenfield from the north, enters the stream. Next south of Greenfield beautiful Deerfield lies, back of a deep strip of meadow extending the town's full length, while the symmetrical stretch of Deerfield Mountains continues the interior range from the Gill and Greenfield ridges. At the town's north end Deerfield River empties into our stream, having come down from the Green Mountains and the Berkshire Hills through its own rich valley, bringing along with it Green River from Greenfield, which it receives near its mouth. At the south end, or in South Deerfield, the bluff Sugarloaf peaks, in which the Deerfield chain culminates, stand out boldly, with Mount Toby looming high on the opposite side of the River.
In the twentieth basin the Valley widens, and here the striking characteristics of the terraces are their width. Along the plains and over the rising banks spread on either side the historic towns of Hadley and Hatfield; Amherst back of Hadley, and Northampton, the "Meadow City," fair seats of colleges. Opposite Northampton, in South Hadley, the River circling through the splendid gorge be- tween, Mount Holyoke lifts its graceful front. Here the interior range makes its second crossing, and attains its highest elevation in Mount Tom, on the Northampton side, eleven hundred and twenty feet above the sea. Thence the slopes of this range, called in this part the Holyoke range, trend southward with the River's course to the lower Massachusetts line. At Northampton, Mill River, a pretty feature of the rural city, joins the stream.
The twenty-first is the longest of all the basins, its ex- tent being fifty-three miles through the remainder of Massachusetts and across Connecticut state to Middletown, with a varying width of from three to ten miles. In the Massachusetts part the River has an average width of
The Straits-Below Middletown.
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twelve hundred feet, and expands to the greatest breadth before the Connecticut state line is met. All along this reach the terrace system is finely developed, although the terraces do not average high. The highest reach is the gorge terrace south of Mount Holyoke, two hundred and ninety-eight feet above the sea. Below Mount Holyoke South Hadley Falls break the River's course. On the west side lies the busy mill city of Holyoke, with its remark- able hydraulic works. On the east side again, below South Hadley, Chicopee, also a city of mills, occupies the River's banks. Just above the city the Chicopee River with its branches, - bringing the waters of Swift, Ware and Qua- boag rivers from the eastward, - contributes to our stream by several mouths. Next below, the city of Springfield rises on a succession of terraces. Here another Mill River enters the stream, on its downward course furnishing water-power for the United States arsenal, and passing through lower portions of the city. On the opposite bank is West Springfield, with the Agawam or Westfield River, flowing down from the Berkshires, emptying into our river by two mouths. Next appear the rural towns of Agawam on the west, and Longmeadow on the east, both extending to the Connecticut State line. From either side several picturesque brooks drop into the River along the way. The most important of these, Pecowsic and Longmeadow Brooks, enter respectively at the north and the south parts of Longmeadow township.
At Springfield the River has descended to a point only forty feet above the sea-level. Here and from Holyoke above it has become of sufficient depth to float vessels of considerable size. At Longmeadow it has its greatest width, for a mile or more expanding to twenty-one hund- red feet from bank to bank.
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Crossing the Connecticut State line the Enfield Dam is soon reached. Thence the course is through the Enfield Rapids for five and a quarter miles, over a rocky bed, in parts between bluff banks, to Windsor Locks. Part way down King's Island, its west side a rock bluff, divides the channel. Opposite Windsor Locks, on the east side, is Warehouse Point, the landmark of earliest colonial times, which happily has retained its old name. Below Windsor Locks lies "ancient Windsor," now in three towns on either side of the River. At East Windsor the Scantic River joins our stream; at South Windsor, Stoughton's Brook and Podunk River; and at Old Windsor, the Tunxis, or Farmington River, the latter, the principal tributary in this state, having its rise on the east slope of the Green Mountains, and approaching its mouth through the Talcott range, part of the Valley's west bounding sum- mits in this region. Over the plains and hills next below old Windsor spreads the " Charter City " of Hartford, with the tall yellow dome of the State Capitol high above the mass of roofs, glistening in the sun. Here Park River, the "Little River" of earlier days, contributes to the stream. Opposite, on the east side, lies East Hartford, connected by a bridge with the parent city.
In the reach, ten miles in length, from the foot of En- field Rapids to Hartford, the River has run with slight curvatures directly south, averaging fifteen hundred feet in width, through intervals from a third of a mile to a mile wide, which are overflowed in seasons of freshets. Below Hartford the course becomes more irregular. Here the changes in the River's bed, constantly going on through the wearing of the alluvial banks on the bends, are especially marked. Along by old Wethersfield the River is said now to flow diagonally across the bed it had two centuries ago,
Looking toward The Straits.
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through the shifting of the clay and sand forming its banks from one part of a bend to another; an island of more than a mile in length that then divided the channel having completely disappeared in the process. In another section, six miles below Hartford, the same authority (Charles L. Burdette in the Memorial History of Hartford County) states that in a quite recent period, within twelve years of his writing (1885), the River was moved its whole width to the eastward. Between Old Wethersfield and Glaston- bury, on the east side, great bends are now made in the crooked course. At South Glastonbury Roaring Brook drops into the stream. From the south end of Wethers- field the course resumes the southward direction and con- tinues between fertile intervals close backed by hills, alongside the towns of Rocky Hill and Cromwell on the west, and Portland, with its quarries, on the east. Then another sharp turn is made, and the stream swings with a long sweep southwestward to Middletown, receiving in this generous bend another tributary, Sabethe River, from the west.
The last basin, from Middletown to the Sound, extends, by the River's winding way, about thirty-eight miles. At Middletown the River is half a mile in width, winding yet in " delightful prospects," as Timothy Dwight found it. Below Middletown the primary mountains again close in, making a deep ravine through which, with occasional small openings of meadows, the River courses, eastward, south, and southwestward, to its finish. From the bend in which Middletown lies the run is directly east for about five miles. In this reach the River makes the " Straits," a narrow pass through high ranges, of about a mile in length, in which the stream is contracted to a breadth in places of but forty rods. Below, at Middle Haddam, a sharp turn is taken
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southward. So the course continues for about three and a half miles, when another bend is made eastward, between Haddam on one side and East Haddam on the other. At East Haddam, Salmon River, the last tributary of note, enters from the hills in a little cataract. From East Had- dam the course takes a generally southeastward direction, with numerous windings, to the Sound. Along the way, in the upper parts between hilly banks sloping downward to the River, old towns of historic flavor are passed on either side. Between Essex and Old Lyme the channel broadens perceptibly ; and again at the mouth by Old Saybrook.
The entrance to the Sound is marked picturesquely as well as practically by a dazzling white lighthouse on Say- brook Point, and another at the end of a jetty from the same west side.
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The Promontory-Above Saybrook.
XXV
Along the Upper Valley
The Romantic Region about the Connecticut Lakes-Pioneer Upper Settle- ments- Story of a Forest State of the Eighteen-Twenties and Thirties - At the Valley's Head - Upper Coos Towns - Old Trail from Canada to Maine -The Country of the Fifteen Miles Falls - Lower Coos Towns - About the Great and Little Ox-Bows - Dartmouth College and its Sur- roundings - Between White River Junction and Old "Number 4" - Historic Towns of the Lower Reaches to the Massachusetts Line.
F ROM the " witness monument " on the elevated plateau of the "Great Divide " that marks the boundary be- tween the United States and Canada, all the territory lying between the New Hampshire-Maine line on the east, marked by Mount Carmel (3,700 feet) lifting a shapely head, and the New Hampshire-Canada line on the west, made by Hall's Stream, and extending southerly to the first great bend of the Connecticut, constitutes the township of Pittsburg, a generous area of three hundred and sixty square miles. Sections of considerable size are splendid woodland, a par- adise of hunter and sportsman, not yet all spoiled by the wide-sweeping operations of the lumbering concerns which control large tracts of it. Streams and ponds abound enticing to the fisherman and angler. In the settled parts are roomy farms, while about the Connecticut lakes are favorite summer camping places. The lower lake is the chief of the popular resorts with the pleasant inn of Metal- lak Lodge on the north shore. The lovely intervals on the River's sides begin with the Valley about two miles below the lower lake, and thence their green breadths continue for some five miles as the stream flows. Again below
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Beecher's Falls in Canaan, on the Vermont-Canada bound, and West Stewartstown opposite, they sweep luxuriantly.
For the leisurely explorer of the country of the River's headwaters, West Stewartstown station is the proper stop- ping-place on the railroad which comes up the River banks along the New Hampshire side. Here the rural Pittsburg stage is in waiting to cover the remaining eighteen miles to Connecticut Lake. But the ideal way to make this part of the journey is behind a pair of those gay little Morgan horses which Vermonters breed so successfully. And with such a team the start should be made from the Canaan house in Canaan, a friendly inn with a sportsman- like flavor, on the terrace above the bridge from West Stewartstown.
Pittsburg was the original " Indian Stream Territory" which has a record as an independent republic as late as the eighteen-thirties. The region was a magnificent Indian hunting-ground and lay unexplored till 1787, when a party of Canadian surveyors penetrated it. Shortly after it was drawn into the limits of New Hampshire by a survey of 1789. Then two former Rangers journeyed up to it from the Lower Coos on a prospecting trip. They came upon the broad intervals at the mouth of Indian Stream late in September when the bordering woods in autumn ripeness were flaming with gorgeous hues, and were enraptured. After a month of hunting and trapping in the game-filled forests, they returned bearing rich spoil and flattering reports. The next summer, joined by a few others, they came up again to attempt a settlement; and "pitches" were made on the meadows. As winter approached, how- ever, all went back to the Lower Coös. Thereafter only hunting parties roamed the country till about 1796, when
House Boat
A Logmen's Houseboat.
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the permanent settlement was promoted by other Valley- townsmen who had obtained a deed of the whole territory from a local Indian chief - an up-country King Philip.
At that time the region was in dispute, and many regarded it as a sort of terra incognita wholly outside of the jurisdiction of either New Hampshire or Canada. In the wake of the permanent settlers came troubled debtors and persons of easy morals who sought the remote district untrammeled by awkward laws as an asylum from pressing creditors or from punishment for crime. But the settlers themselves were of worthy stock, They cleared large farms up the River's sides and on the north of Connecticut Lake; built comfortable homes ; and reared great families. Despite the mixed character of the community, affairs moved tranquilly for the first thirty years without any fixed system of local government, a mild form of vigilance committee law sufficing for the treatment of flagrant offences against the common peace. Then disorganizing features developed and the need of a local government of some sort for mutual protection became apparent ; and accordingly, in the spring of 1829, the independent state was set up as " The United Inhabitants of the Indian Stream Territory." It was a unique political establish- ment, one of the smallest and most democratic in history. The " Centre School-House " was sufficient for the assembly of all the people at its inauguration. At the outset the "United Inhabitants " asserted their independence of both the United States and Great Britain. The frame of gov- ernment comprehended three departments, representative, executive, and judicial. The representative department comprised the entire voting population, each member directly representing his own interests. The executive department was termed the " supreme council," and con-
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sisted of five persons, to be chosen annually. The judicial department was composed of justices of the peace elected by the people in their municipal capacity. The supreme council constituted a court of last appeal. Trial by jury was provided, the jury to consist of six persons. A code of laws was adopted at the first meeting of the legislative branch. A military company of forty men was formed for protection against "foreign invasion " and domestic violence.
This forest state with its novel government continued in fair working order for about five years. Then it fell to pieces. With no jail it could only resort to punishment by fine or by banishment. It lost the power to enforce the execution of its laws. Finally " treason crept in " and its destruction was complete. This was in 1835. Chaos followed. The people divided into two opposing parties, one invoking the protection of New Hampshire, the other of Canada. New Hampshire assumed a quasi jurisdiction over the territory by sending officers into it to serve pro- cesses issued by her courts. The Canada party resisted them. The sheriff of Coos County came up and appointed a resident deputy sheriff. At the same time he gave assur- ances of the protection of New Hampshire to all who were loyal to her, warning all others of the " consequences of treasonable acts." Shortly after a county magistrate of Lower Canada appeared with promises of the protection of Great Britain to all favoring Canadian jurisdiction, and with the added advice to the Canada party to resist the " encroachments " of the New Hampshire authorities. Sev- eral of the Canada party fortified their houses and armed themselves. Soon the gage was thrown down and war opened.
It was a short and decisive campaign of a single fight.
Breaking up a Log Jam.
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On a certain crisp October morning the New Hampshire deputy sheriff awoke to find his house surrounded by a company of armed men from Canada headed by a Canadian sheriff, together with a band of the local Canada party. The deputy was seized on a Canadian warrant and hurried off on foot toward Canada. News of the capture was quickly spread to the River towns below. By noon a hundred or more mounted men had collected from the lower border towns, Clarksville, Stewartstown, Canaan, and Colebrook, variously armed with implements of war- fare ranging from murderous farm tools to the regulation weapons of the militia. Immediately the improvised army started in hot pursuit. The invaders were overhauled a mile beyond the Canada line, and there fought. The skirmish, in which a few were hurt but none was killed, ended with the rescue of the prisoner and the inglorious rout of his captors. The rescued deputy was brought back to the safe haven of the country store at Canaan, and then the " army " quietly melted away. Subsequently the militia of the border towns were called to the assistance of the Coos County sheriff, but no further outbreak occurred. Peace came with the final establishment of the jurisdiction of New Hampshire. The more aggressive of the Canada party moved over the border, and those who remained accepted the situation philosophically. In 1840 the "Indian Stream Territory" disappeared from the map, and Pitts- burg, with sixty ratable polls, took its place. The town of to-day has a permanent population of less than seven hundred.
Now lumbering and agriculture are the principal indus- tries of this pleasant region. The Connecticut lakes and the three west-side waterways, - Perry's, Indian, and Hall's Streams, - are the chief reservoirs for the masses
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of logs harvested west of the lakes which go down in the annual " drives " to the various paper and lumber mills below along the River's length into the Massachusetts Reach. Millions of feet of lumber are driven down each year, and logging gangs of hundreds of hardy men work in the woods in winter and on the drives in the spring.
Clarksville, next below Pittsburg, on the River's first great bend, occupies the extensive "Dartmouth College Grant," made to the college by the New Hampshire Leg- islature in 1789. Its fertile river-side lands and fringing forests lay unbroken, except by a single settler, till as late as 1820, when two or three Dartmouth students ventured a speculation with a purchase of ten thousand acres of the grant. When the settlement was incorporated, in the fifties, it took the name of Benjamin Clark, the college men's leader, a direct descendant from the Plymouth Clarks of the "Mayflower." It is a community now of a few hundred inhabitants, given to agriculture and lumbering.
Stewartstown and Canaan are closely related, not only by the bridge which has long connected them, but histor- ically and socially. The pioneer settlers of both were from the same towns down the Valley, and neighborly interests were maintained from the start. The grantees, however, were of different stock. Stewartstown and the two east- side townships next below, Colebrook and Columbia, were originally grants made by Governor John Wentworth, in 1770, to a company of Englishmen composed of Sir John Colebrook, Sir James Cockburn, and John Stewarts of London, and John Nelson, of New Grenada ; Canaan, with her neighbors Leamington and Bloomfield (first Mine- head), were earlier granted by Governor Benning Went- worth, to New Englanders. Stewartstown was named for Mr. Stewarts; Colebrook was given Sir John's name;
Junction of the Ammonoosuc, Wells River, and the Connecticut-Woodsville, New Hampshire Side.
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and Columbia was Cockburn Town till 1811, for Sir James. The honor of having some of their names thus perpetuated was all that the English patentees got out of these grants. None of the lot was settled till several years after the Revolution. They are pleasant towns now, cultivating fertile farms, excellent dairies, and some manufactures ; and with outlying parts rich in attractions to the sports- man. Canaan is most interesting as a place of great fine stock-farms. All cultivate the "summer resort " trade, and cultivate it handsomely.
As the Valley proceeds below Stewartstown and Canaan on its luxurious way down between the two states, Ver- mont's Monadnock in Leamington and Bowback in Strat- ford, flanked by the more eastward cones of Stratford's Percy Peaks, enrich the landscape. To Bowback is added the distinction of being the highest mountain in all the Valley immediately adjoining the River, except Ascutney ninety miles farther down.
Stratford, with Brunswick and Maidstone, opposite, marks the northern extremity of the rich Coos region as the pioneers knew it. Thence it sweeps down the Valley in unbroken beauty through its stretch of a hundred miles. That part between these north towns and the Fifteen-Miles Falls is now, as then, in the nomenclature of the Valley, the Upper Coos; the reach from the head of these singing rapids to Lebanon and Hartford next below the seat of Dartmouth, is still the Lower Coos. Wells River Junction is the gateway for the traveller to the Upper section, and White River Junction to the Lower portions of this lovely mountain-hedged " Garden of New England."
Of the Upper Coos, Stratford, Northumberland, and
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Maidstone were the outposts of the Valley in the Revolu- tion. At Stratford was the foremost of the three outer forts, the other two being at Northumberland. Through Maidstone passed the old Indian Trail from the Canada camps of the St. Francis tribes to the Penobscots in Maine, which was still used in the Revolution. This trail enter- ing the Valley by the Nulhegan River and meeting the Connecticut at Brunswick, came down through the settled part of Maidstone, and here taking the River struck the opposite bank at Northumberland, whence the Upper Ammonoosuc was followed to the eastward. Parts of this old trail and bits of the landmarks of the Revolution are yet indicated to the interested visitor by local antiqua- rians. Stratford was settled principally from the Con- necticut Stratford on Long Island Sound, and given that town's name a year or two before the Revolution. Maid- stone and Brunswick were also grants to Connecticut men, but were eventually settled from Massachusetts. They are small rural communities with pleasant villages. Northum- berland is the oldest of this group, dating from 1762. Some of their scenery is wild, and all is beautiful. Those on the New Hampshire side are lumber manufacturing places. All invite an increasing summer population.
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