150 



©lie Jarmcr's jlTontli lg iHsttor- 



which will break down with aii ordinary show- 

 7r and wind, and form a nidus for the seeds and 

 rapid maturity of parasite plants. btudy tne 

 80 and lear.r how^o dissolve flmt, and form 

 with it a covering to the stems of your wlieat 

 and other grain. , , ,,,„ 



Study the soil and understand the true value 

 of alumina, iron, lime, potash, magnesia, sul- 

 phur, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, ^^yS<-^l""^ 

 hydrogen. These are the ingredients hat Piov- 

 idence has ordained to form the bodies of all 

 that live whether vegetable or animal. 



CONCORD, N. H., OCTOBER 31, 1847. 



THE " NORTHERN RAILROAD' IN NEW- 

 HAMPSHIRE. 

 A Trip to the Summit. 



Having been a third time disappointed on an 

 invitation of the superintending agent of the 

 Northern Railroad, to go with others and look 

 upon this greatest improvement as yet effected 

 within the limits of the Granite State, the gentle- 

 man, vvith an undeserved polite attention, on the 

 first Monday of September, invited the editor of 

 the Visitor to a special view of the road now al- 

 most finished for the passage of cars nearly or 

 quite to the foot of the gigantic ledge, which has 

 been blown out within the last eighteen months 

 at the summit, about forty-seven miles, as the 

 devious course of the valleys rendered necessary 

 the building of this road. 



Hitherto we bad presented some account of 

 this road the first eighteen miles, directly upon 

 or near to the margin of the Merrimack river to 

 Franklin. To that place, since the first of Janu- 

 ary last, the trains of merchandise and passage 

 cars have continued constantly to ply, presenting 

 such a result as to the profit and prospect of bu- 

 siness, as has constantly kept the price at and 

 above its cost and nominal value, and enabling 

 the stock to make a dividend not below six per 

 cent, per annum from its commencement. In 

 the difficult way presented on this river bank the 

 first eighteen miles above, it would rather aston- 

 ish us that Mr. Adams, the experienced engineer, 

 bad made not a single mistake of magnitude. 

 The substantial character which has been given 

 to this road, first when it leaves the village of 

 Concord, passing over what was the Horseshoe 

 Pond and morass— then touching and scaling 

 down a hill of great dejitb, which might have 

 been a ledge, but which turned out precisely to 

 bo that kind of clay and gravel wanted for the 

 filling in— near by encountering and crossing 

 over that perilous point of the river, called Far- 

 iinm's eddy, now iiresenting through that a 

 barricade bank for the road, substantial as the 

 safest dry land— then further on, after arrest- 

 ing and Bhorlening the channel of Long Pond 

 brook, passing upon, over its whole length, and 

 ofT of Sewall's island, with substantial embank- 

 ments at either end, with only one simple water 

 Bluiceto pass on and ufT, and turning and short- 

 ening the channel of the whole Merrimack rive 



further on, after surmounting in the distance 



of a mile or bo the slight inclinalion of about 

 twelve feet over Sewall's lulls, again boldly cut- 

 ting otr and turning tho Merrimack into u chan- 

 nel, lessening nearly one mile the leiiglh of the 

 river around Goodwin's point, opposite which 

 the force of tho stream had been undoniiining 

 and breaking off acre after acre of horizontal 



clay and sand deposites— going over the Rolfe 

 intervales, and finally within the limits of the 

 town, the Dustin island at the moulh of the 

 Contoocook, a stream forty and fifty miles in the 

 south-west, as large as the main or parent stem, 

 an equal distance north from the same point. 

 The seven or eight miles of the railroad track 

 within the limits of Concord seemed to present 

 great obstacles, all of which, without exaggera- 

 tion, have been encountered with greater success 

 than the most sanguine expectation of its friends. 

 Indeed, now the road is built, to appearance now 

 there seems to be nothing of the insecurity which 

 we had anticipated, either at the Farnum eddy 

 or the mouths of the Contoocook. In this town 

 the new way even to the oldest inhabiatant is 

 novelty which could not fail to surprise him : 

 most of the distance a rich alluvian bottom, now 

 wide and now narrow, in a continued level, su- 

 persedes the various rise and fall of miles upon 

 the travelled roads on either side through the 

 town : we see in a few minutes what hundreds 

 of persons who have been born and died in the 

 town perhaps had never seen. Very near nine 

 miles over both the Concord and the Northern 

 roads is the great way of travel from south to 

 north, through the capital and centre of the State. 

 As into a tunnel both from above and below 

 comes this great travel, which is destined, with- 

 in the next five years, to extend to the Canadas 

 and the great West. The local business and 

 travel from northern New-Hampshire and Ver- 

 mont, which must mainly pass through the tun- 

 nel of this central point, are but a small fraction 

 of the business after the immense trains of mer- 

 chandise and produce going both ways from the 

 western world shall be under way. 



Leaving Concord, at the north line of which 

 the busy village of Fishersville, with its ten thou- 

 sand spindles, and its stone factories from one to 

 three hundred feet in extent, has grown up as if 

 within the last few months— a place large enough 

 to supply business for a respectable depot— the 

 Northern road pursues its way through the whole 

 extent of Boscawen with more quiet and less 

 abruptness of prospect. In all this way, nothing 

 of the business villages is seen from the road : 

 these communicate at the nearest and most con- 

 venient points with local stations, with prepara- 

 tions to receive and let oft" passengers and mer- 

 chandise. Two of these stations are in Bos- 

 cawen— one of them against the plains village, 

 and the other near the Gerrish farms, ujion the 

 river farther north. 



Touching Franklin, the same easy access for 

 the road is found up the river in that town. At 

 the great turn of intervale, constituting the Bur. 

 leigh, Webster and Noyes farms, the road short- 

 ens off the distance by cutting the two larger 

 farms nearly in two, leaving the houses which 

 were the birth-places of the Websters and the 

 Hadducks, separated by the track from the an- 

 cient burial ground where repose the ashes of 

 their anoeslors. A mile or more below Frank- 

 lin, and between the two villages, the rise in the 

 road to bo encountered in the first gorge after 

 leaving the river commences. In the first five 

 miles, here is the greatest inequality of tho road 

 eastward of the summit : tho ease and rapidity 

 with whicli it is encountered, seem to make the 

 whole comparatively trilling to what is cnconu- 

 lored on other roads. The depot station at 

 Franklin rising upon the side hill stands almost 

 directly over, but in full view of the thickest 

 part of the village. At this point lately has been 

 commenced ui>on the same clevnlioii the Bristol j 



railroad, continuing the Pemigewasset or main 

 river way still further up a dozen miles. The 

 Northern road itself takes the gorge of a fine 

 mill stream, which finds its way through a beau- 

 tiful lake about a mile tiom the river, called 

 Chance pond : to this pond another stream com- 

 ing out of another pond at the centre of Ando- 

 ver, finds a way three miles more for the rail- 

 road. To equalize the rise, no where exceeding 

 fifty feet to the mile, hard hills were perforated, 

 and deep gullied vallies filled in : on the way 

 some of the substances, not designated exactly 

 as rock, could be perforated only by generous 

 charges of gunpowder. The valley of old Au- 

 dover, through which no extensively travelled 

 road had ever passed, and in which many of the 

 respectable and intelligent citizens, first of old 

 Hillsborough and afterwards of Merrimack, had 

 heen born and spent their days of infancy and 

 manhood, now for the first time opens to the 

 view of many a traveller who had heard about, 

 but never before seen it ; leaving, the more fre- 

 quented and beautiful heights of Salisbury, all 

 that part of which upon the river constituting 

 the larger portion of Franklin, to be deprived of 

 the almost exclusive monopoly of travel which 

 she had many years enjoyed. Andover, for some 

 ten miles east and west, includes the valley 

 which separates Kearsarge and its eastern spurs 

 on the south-west from the Ragged mounte.u in 

 the north-east. Leaving Andover centre the 

 Northern road keeps the track near and alter- 

 nating on either side of the Blackwater stream, 

 which of itself is a branch of the Contoocook : 

 the road preserves very nearly a level here for 

 the distance of ten miles, touching a corner of 

 Wilmot before it reaches Danbury, where it sur- 

 mounts a ridge at the rise of about ene hundred 

 feet, dividing Smith's river on the north from 

 Blackwater river on the south. The soil in (he 

 upper part of the Blackwater has been left ex- 

 tremely hard by the action of the waters which 

 in times before the flood forced through and 

 washed out this gorge. Although of compara- 

 tively slight elevation, the flinty hardness of the 

 .•ock of felspar, mica or slate, would seem to defy 

 all but the [lerseveiance of the Irish laborers, 

 who fail not at any time to make the due (iio- 

 gress, aided by the many directions of ingenious 

 Yankee contrivances. Upon the valley which 

 strikes around the west point of Ragged mouu- 

 tain, there seemed to be nolhinsr of sand foi- ex- 

 cavation or fillings in a considerable distance: 

 hard gravel, conglomerate of round washed peb- 

 bles, small rocks and large rocks, were the mate- 

 rial to be worked here Ibr making of the road 

 From Andover centre we have first light, pine 

 plain-afterwards, harder soil growing into rocks 

 and rocky hard pan exclusively, as you advance. 

 There are three stations in West-Andover— the 

 first a few rods out of the village, at the west 

 meeting-houso-the second, a very considerable 

 depot at the point of confluence of that branch 

 of the Blackwater coming down at the north- 

 west foot of Kearsarge, where a village has al-^ 

 ready commenced near the cottago residence of 

 tho necromancer Potter, celebrated and well 

 known thirty years ago in all parts of the country 

 for sli-'hl of hand, and his feats and agility : tho 

 honcs^of this man of color, who had a noble 

 heart and u character more elevated than might 

 be expected fiom his profession, if not from the 

 tiiulure of his skin, wiih those of his deceased 

 wife, repose only a few feet distant, marked each 

 by a white marble slab, from the rnihoad track : 

 the third Andovor depot, further on, is wheio the 



