236 Account of a Stoj^m in New Hampshire. 



T. renewed his labor ; but soon it was heard to cry in the direc- 

 tion of the wind. Such as could run, ran in search of it, and 

 soon found it lying safe upon the ground beneath a sleigh bottom, 

 ten or fifteen rods from where the house had stood. The news- 

 paper says one hundred rods, but this is incorrect. When the 

 wind came, the sleigh was in the barn, six or eight rods north 

 or northwesterly from the house. The two last mentioned 

 houses were one story, well built, and well furnished dweUings. 

 Their materials were not merely separated, but broken, splinter- 

 ed, reduced to kindhng wood, and scattered like the chaff of the 

 summer thrashing floors. It was the same with furniture, beds, 

 bedding, bureaus, chairs, tables, and the like. A loom was, to 

 appearance, carried whole about forty rods, and then dashed in 

 pieces. The width of the desolation here was about twenty or 

 twenty five rods. On the higher grounds over which it passed 

 it was forty, fifty, or sixty rods. The deeper the valley, the nar- 

 rower and more violent was the current. From the last men- 

 tioned neighborhood it passed on to the east part of Warner, but 

 met with no other dwelling houses, and did but little damage, 

 except to fences and forests. The appearance of the ground 

 where it passed, was as if a mighty torrent had swept over it, up 

 hill as well as down. Near the boundary, between Warner and 

 Boscawen, the desolation ceased. It was taken up from the 

 earth, but spruce floor boards, which were taken from New Lon- 

 don, were borne upon its bosom and dropped in the Shaker vil- 

 lage in Canterbury, a distance of about thirty miles. In follow- 

 ing its track in Kearsarge gore, I came to a considerable stream 

 of water, across which had been a bridge, covered with large 

 oak logs, split in the middle, instead of planks. These half logs 

 were scattered in every direction, some carried, I should think, 

 ten rods in the direction from which the wind came, — others 

 sixty rods in the direction it went, and others were dropped near 

 the margin at the right and left. You will see by this, they 

 were carried along by the whirl of the wind until they reached 

 the circumference, and then fell to the ground. 



Hundreds of people came from a distance of ten or twenty 

 miles to view the scene of desolation. There were men of sound 

 judgment from Concord, who gave it as their opinion, that it 

 would have thrown down the massy walls of the State prison. 



