THE FARM OF THE FIRST MINISTER. 15 



irresistible. If, as is sometimes the case, its waters are freighted 

 by ice or logs, the injury to lands, bridges, and buildings near 

 its banks is liable to be serious. Turbid as the yellow Tiber of 

 old Rome, it buries its intervals from sight and strews them 

 with sand, logs, and miscellaneous debris. 



The Merrimack freshets, like those of other rivers, vary 

 much in magnitude and results. The river usually rises from 

 its previous level for some twenty-four to thirty-six hours after 

 a flood-producing rain. When its waters begin to fall, a north- 

 west wind arises and accompanies their subsidence. This 

 pushes the current, accelerated to a speed of some four miles an 

 hour or more, against the leeward bank and so undermines it 

 that strips of land, varying in width from one to thirty feet, 

 fall into the stream and are lost. The southerly course of both 

 river and winds cause its erosions to be generally made upon 

 the southerly bank. 



The thread of the stream almost always hugs the abraded 

 shore, and the line of its withdrawal on one side indicates to 

 some degree the width of its encroachment on the other. In 

 other words, the loss of land by a proprietor on one shore indi- 

 cates the gain of his neighbor on the opposite one. This 

 transfer is without consideration, but so long as it is gradual the 

 law does not interfere. 



Almost every year until 1870, the successive proprietors of 

 the First Minister's Farm had more or less land thus taken from 

 them and transferred to their neighbors on the opposite bank 

 of the river. One of these used to show his unclean teeth and 

 note with a covetous eye the yearly increment to his farm. 



The freshets of the Merrimack vary greatly in height from 

 one year to another. A tradition somewhat vague speaks of a 

 very high one in 17S4. Authentic records exist of many of the 

 abnormal ones occurring since 1S18, a period of seventy-seven 

 years. 1 



East Concord bridge was carried off on the 5th day of April, 

 1819; again on the 12th of February, 1824, and still again, to- 

 gether with the Free bridge, on the 8th of January, 1841, 

 when at one time the river rose four feet in thirty minutes at 



1 See Benjamin Kimball's Journal, Appendix P. 



