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Long before the Revolution opened, there thus existed in New England a fringe of pioneer settlements such as Vassalboro and Durham on the Androscoggin and the Kennebec, Concord and Hinsdale on the Merrimac and the Connecticut, Pittsfield and Great Barrington on the Housatonic which formed a newer New England, less lettered and scriptural than the old, where class distinctions were little known, where contact with the Indian and the wilderness had added a secular ruthlessness and ingenuity to the harsh Puritan temper, and where the individual, freed from an effective "village moral police," learned in the rough school of nature a new kind of conformity unknown to the ancient Hebrew code.
The whole Androscoggin River gathers up its strength and plunges through a gorge, a gateway in the solid rock is regular, as upright, as if man had brought in the whole force of his geometry and gunpowder to the admeasurement and excavation, plunges, conscious of imprisonment and the insult to its slighted majesty, plunges with fierce protest and frenzy of rage, breaks against a grim, unyielding rock to dash itself into a thousand whirling waves; then rushes on to be again imprisoned between the pillars of another gorge, only less regular, not less inexorable, than the first; then, leaping and surging, it beats against its banks, and is hurled wrathfully back in jets of spray and wreaths of foam; or, soothed into gentler mood by the soft touch of mosses on the brown old rocks, it leaps lightly up their dripping sides, and trickles back from the green, wet, overhanging spray, and so, all passion sobbed away, it babbles down to its bed of Lincoln green, where Robin Hood and Maid Marian wait under the oaken boughs.
The day agreed on, by the trappers, for starting on their expedition into the unbroken wilds around and beyond the upper lakes to the extreme reservoirs of the lordly Androscoggin, had at length arrived.
Around you stand Mount Hayes, so named in honor of a worthy housekeeper; the Imp, sobriquet of a winsome and roguish little girl, who once made the house gay; the Pilot range, because they pilot the Androscoggin down to the sea, says one to whom I never appeal in vain for facts or reasons; Mount Madison, lifting his shining head beyond an opening niched for him in the woods of a high hill-top by Mr.
Elsewhere, elsewhere, elsewhere, beyond the sky-line, under larger stars, where men ride jesting and women smile. Names alluring to the American he repeated Shenandoah, Santa Ynez, the Little Big Horn, Baton Rouge, the Great Smokies, Rappahannock, Arizona, Cheyenne, Monongahela, Androscoggin; cañon and bayou; sycamore and mesquite; Broadway and El Camino Real.... He hurled along into Plato.
The moose bounded clear over him, and again went splashing through the Little Androscoggin to the other side, where it turned as before, shaking its antlers and rending the brush with them. Nathaniel had caught hold of a bush, and thus saved himself from going fully into the swift current. Jonathan helped him get out, and the two young fellows stared at each other.
So widespread was the uprising that during the autumn, a desultory warfare was carried on as far north as Falmouth, Brunswick, and Casco Bay, where at least fifty Englishmen were slain by members of the Saco and Androscoggin tribes. As yet the Narragansetts, bravest of all the southern New England Indians, whose chief was Canonchet, son of the murdered Miantonomo, had taken no part in the war.
He played cards for small stakes, being a member of the Androscoggin Loo Club, and he took his part in the convivial drinking of the set where he made one, winning the repute of possessing a strong head.
Bridge himself was undertaking a grandly unpractical project about this time: nothing less than an attempt to dam the Androscoggin, a river liable to devastating floods; and in this enterprise he was obliged to trust to a class of men who were much more uncertain in their ways and methods than those with whom Hawthorne dealt.
It was a very important place for trade, being equally accessible by canoes to all the Indians on the Androscoggin, Kennebec, and Sheepscot. Captain Davis was the general agent for the proprietors upon this island. The Indians in all this region were daily becoming more cold and sullen.
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