&l)c .farmer's ittcmtl)ln llisitov. 



165 



tuied annually into about one hundred and fifty 

 tons of wrought iron. It is too far in the interior 

 here over the roads for transport sncli as liave 

 existed to manufacture more iron at Franconia 

 tlian could be sold in the vicinity round anil 

 further in the interior.. Good cord wood used 

 ut the works sells for one dollar the cord, and 

 the price of charcoal there has been no more 

 than three and four cents the bushel. The value 

 of both wood and coal would at ouce be doubled 

 when this neighborhood shall be tapped by u 

 railway loading directly to the seaboard. 



The mowing land of Lisbon is of that kind 

 producing large annual crops of hay twenty 

 years in succession without turning over with 

 the plough. Among the improvements pointed 

 out to us were the fields of Air. Prescolt Young 

 of that town, where he had mown from two to 

 three tons of hay to the acre without the appli- 

 cation of any of the common manures. He had 

 brought the laud to this state from the condition 

 of worn-down sterility by the use of plaster un- 

 der the plough and clover: his course was plant- 

 ing one year— oats and clover the second- 

 wheat the third, succeeded by herdsgrass and 

 clover mixed with sowing of plaster. Ground 

 plaster applied on almost any growth has a 

 greater and more immediate effect upon the 

 Connecticut valley land than upon the lands 

 eastward of the ridge. Our friend at Lisbon 

 pointed us to a field of potatoes of bis own upon 

 u side-hill nearly a hundred rods distant in which 

 a part of the rows were left without the •plaster, 

 the supply being exhausted. In the drought of 

 last summer the rows destitute of plaster showed 

 the soil as nearly naked, while the plastered 

 rows covered the ground entirely with green 

 from the vines. This was one of the most strik- 

 ing effects of plaster we had ever seen: from 

 the great strength of the soil upon the Lisbon 

 hills, only the stimulant of mineral manures is 

 ueeded to ensure a crop. 



Passing on the way over the Sugar Hill of 

 Lisbon, we came to the (arm of the father and 

 son, Messrs. David and Ward Priest: the son 

 lives in a new house apart from the father, con- 

 structed of granite, fit for the residence of an 

 European wealthy noble. They have a hundred 

 head of neat cattle beside horses and many 

 sheep: thirty fitt cattle, as a part of the profits of 

 this farm, are turned off annually. There is a 

 route for u railroad connecting with the Concord 

 and Montreal railroad leading nearly through 

 the centre of Lisbon by way of Landaff, which 

 is said to be equally as feasible as the route di- 

 rectly up the main branch of the Ammonusuck. 

 Either of these routes would probably cut off 

 much of the distance and many difficult points 

 which might be encountered if the road pursued 

 the bank of the Connecticut directly in the bend 

 westward around the fifteen miles falls. 



Looking over the valley in which commences 

 n stream running out of ponds discharging their 

 waters into the Ammonusuck, is that part of 

 Landaff called the Tuttle hill, with land of much 

 the same richness as that of the Lisbon bills. 

 Among the fine farms is that of Rider Brown- 

 son, a freewill Baptist preacher, well known 

 twenty years ago as one of the sentinels in the 

 New Hampshire legislature: besides the income 

 of his farm the Elder enjoys, as the profits of his 

 industry in working it, the income of some half 

 a dozen thousand dollars loaned at lawful in- 

 terest. 



Coming from the hills into the Ammonusuck 

 valley, arc the intervale farms in Lisbon of the 



two Youugs, fathers to Han and Life Young, 

 who were many years since known as public 

 men in our State. Dan Young was a minister 

 of the Methodist Episcopal order — a man of en- 

 terprise alike as a divine, politician or farmer. 

 He vacated a beautiful farm on the Connecticut 

 river bank in Piermnnt, which was afterwards 

 bought and sold by his brother Life Young. Dan 

 Young, since he left, has been of that enterpris- 

 ing class who have built up the great West. At 

 Portsmouth on the Ohio fie has set on foot and 

 conducted extensive iron works, where be has 

 encountered the vicissitudes of fortune, and we 

 believe is not as rich and independent as be 

 might have been if be had remained to enjoy 

 the competence which he already possessed in 

 the Granite State: his fine family of daughters, 

 their mother of a Northfield descent in our own 

 neighborhood, are said to do honor in Ohio to 

 the State from which he emigrated. From two 

 such farms as those cleared by the father and 

 uncle of Dan Young — one hundred acres inter- 

 vale upon a single level including with the rich 

 upland five hundred and more acres each — the 

 descendants of the Young name should not per- 

 haps have been too early tempted. 



In advance of the opening of the Montreal 

 railroad to Meredith Bridge village in August 

 last, the editor of the Visitor in bis own jog-trot 

 mode of travel, struck the route of the railway 

 at that place, and thence pursued his course by 

 the Wear's village between the Winnipissiogee 

 bays and lake, in sight of the excavating hills 

 stricken off and valleys filled, along which the 

 track 6f the road is now about completed. The 

 first eighteen miles out of Concord this road is 

 probably the cheapest that has ever been con- 

 structed in this country: over the upper level 

 from the Merrimack it is for many miles straight 

 as an arrow. Its course is across the river at the 

 point of the Federal Bridge, and from thence 

 some six miles in Concord, through the width of 

 Canterbury and the length of Northfield. A 

 farmer whose property has been greatly increased 

 by this road, says the town of Canterbury might 

 have built this road and given its use to the pub- 

 lic without being poorer for it. 



From Sanhornton Bridge this road pursues 

 the Winnipissiogee branch about ten miles, pass- 

 ing by the great bay which divides Sanhornton 

 and Meredith, to the flourishing village at Mere- 

 dith Bridge, comprising portions of Meredith 

 and Gilford — thence to the Lake Village two 

 miles above, opening the road to the business of 

 all the fine farming towns which surround the 

 lake. The first business done on this road much 

 exceeds the anticipations of its most sanguine 

 friends: an impetus is at once given to all the 

 villages towards which the railroad is lengthen- 

 ing out and extending its arm. Among the no- 

 vel articles produced on the way, we might name 

 a small establishment which turns out forty and 

 fifty bushels of shoe-pegs per day at Meredith — 

 a paper establishment at Ilolderuess vt hich sends 

 to the seaboard many tons of rye and oat straw- 

 turned into wrapping paper and bandbox board 

 — thousands of dollars worth of goat's and 

 sheep's leather made anil manufactured into 

 gloves and mittens in Plymouth. Of the new 

 business created among us equally important to 

 that of the great manufacturing corporations and 

 more directly conducive 10 the welfare of the 

 whole community, two gentlemen on Boscawen 

 plain manufacture and send away by railroad, 



shoes at the rate of seventy-five thousand dol- 

 lars worth in a year. 



The shoe and leather business, which pervades 

 most of the lower towns of Massachusetts, 

 reaches its way into New Hampshire almost be- 

 fore the people are aware of it. The tanning of 

 leather is to become a great business. The new 

 railroads north are bringing down hemlock bark 

 as an article which will give great profit after 

 paying the transport one and two hundred miles. 

 While writing this article we see the freight cars 

 passing, thirty, forty and fifty of which go along 

 with n single engine, several of them in succes- 

 sion loaded with hemlock bark: on inquiry we 

 find this article bears the price of ten dollars the 

 cord. By an unaccountable — unjustifiable ar- 

 rangement, as we think, requiring legislative in- 

 terference—wood for fuel from Concord to Bos- 

 ton is charged for freight between three and four 

 dollars the cord, while tanners' hemlock bark 

 pays only one dollar seventy-five cents. The 

 high price is kept up ou the freight of wood to 

 enable the railroad to furnish their fuel at a 

 cheaper rate. The owners of woodlands through 

 the State are interested to prevent such a mono- 

 poly by asking that the legislature shall make 

 the freight equal. 



The Concord and Montreal railroad the next 

 year will double its distance to Rumney on the 

 way to Connecticut river: this road, built and 

 owned by the enterprise and perseverance main- 

 ly of the people interested along the route — un- 

 generously opposed by some men who own and 

 control a road supposed to come in competition 

 with it — will cost in its structure little more than 

 one half what has been expended on an equal 

 length of most of the New England roads which 

 have preceded it. To this road will be tributary 

 the country bordering the Winnipissiogee valley 

 across the easterly half of the centre of New 

 Hampshire: on its way north the main road 

 must bring in a great share of the Connecticut 

 river business at the north. To get at his lum- 

 ber in the wilderness region among the moun- 

 tains, Mr. Norcross has expended thirty thousand 

 dollars in improving the Pemigewassett and 

 Merrimack so that timber logs may be turned 

 and floated down nearly from the sources at the 

 head of the main branch. When the Montreal 

 railroad shall be completed to Plymouth, taking 

 the Baker river branch where that divides from 

 the Pemigewassett — a less sum of money than 

 that already expended by Mr. N. would excavate 

 a railroad all the way up the Pemigewassett to 

 the line between Woodstock and Lincoln, where 

 another and the principal branch of the same 

 stream comes from the mountains. Up this val- 

 ley the quantities of standing trees upon many 

 thousand acres of accessible land could not easily 

 be counted or estimated. Here is a place either 

 for extensive tanneries or for procuring tanners' 

 bark to supply tanneries near the seaboard. The 

 addition of value to the timber and standing 

 trees which have hitherto been regarded as use- 

 less, would pay the expense of a railway, cheap 

 as that from Concord to Sanhornton, over the 

 distance of twenty miles out of Plymouth in that 

 direction. 



Interested deeply in the anticipation of the 

 value to be added to the free soil of New Hamp- 

 shire by means of opening new communications 

 and easy transport in various directions, we took 

 pains going north in August to look into the by- 

 places where we had not before been. In going 

 that way after leaving the track of the railway 

 directly leading to Plymouth, we took our course 



