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When the rail-cars came thundering through his lake country, Wordsworth attempted to exorcise them by a sonnet; and, were I not a very decided Yankee, I might possibly follow his example, and utter in this connection my protest against the desecration of Patucket Falls, and battle with objurgatory stanzas these dams and mills, as Balmawapple shot off his horse-pistol at Stirling Castle.

The rough-wooded slopes of Dracut, overlooking the falls of the river; Fort Hill, across the Concord, where the red man made his last stand, and where may still be seen the trench which he dug around his rude fortress; the beautiful woodlands on the Lowell and Tewksbury shores of the Concord; the cemetery; the Patucket Falls, all within the reach of a moderate walk, offer at this season their latest and loveliest attractions.

When he got back to Patucket, he told his dream to his grandmother, who was greatly rejoiced, and went about from wigwam to wigwam, telling the tribe that Chepian had appeared to her grandson. So they had a great feast and dance, and he was thenceforth looked upon as a Powah.

The Indians, however, found a friend in the apostle Eliot, who presented a petition in their behalf that the lands lying around the Patucket and Wamesit Falls should be appropriated exclusively for their benefit and use. The Court granted the petition of the whites, with the exception of the tract in the angle of the two rivers on which the Patuckets were settled.

Higher up, the arches of the bridge spanned the quick, troubled water; and, higher still, the dam, so irregular in its outline as to seem less a work of Art than of Nature, crossed the bed of the river, a lakelike placidity above contrasting with the foam and murmur of the falls below. And this was all which modern improvements had left of "the great Patucket Falls" of the olden time.

MANY years ago I read, in some old chronicle of the early history of New England, a paragraph which has ever since haunted my memory, calling up romantic associations of wild Nature and wilder man: "The Sachem Wonolanset, who lived by the Groat Falls of Patucket, on the Merrimac." It was with this passage in my mind that I visited for the first time the Rapids of the Merrimac, above Lowell.

Higher up, the arches of the bridge spanned the quick, troubled water; and, higher still, the dam, so irregular in its outline as to seem less a work of Art than of Nature, crossed the bed of the river, a lakelike placidity above contrasting with the foam and murmur of the falls below. And this was all which modern improvements had left of "the great Patucket Falls" of the olden time.

When he got back to Patucket, he told his dream to his grandmother, who was greatly rejoiced, and went about from wigwam to wigwam, telling the tribe that Chepian had appeared to her grandson. So they had a great feast and dance, and he was thenceforth looked upon as a Powah.

The rough-wooded slopes of Dracut, overlooking the falls of the river; Fort Hill, across the Concord, where the red man made his last stand, and where may still be seen the trench which he dug around his rude fortress; the beautiful woodlands on the Lowell and Tewksbury shores of the Concord; the cemetery; the Patucket Falls, all within the reach of a moderate walk, offer at this season their latest and loveliest attractions.

MANY years ago I read, in some old chronicle of the early history of New England, a paragraph which has ever since haunted my memory, calling up romantic associations of wild Nature and wilder man: "The Sachem Wonolanset, who lived by the Groat Falls of Patucket, on the Merrimac." It was with this passage in my mind that I visited for the first time the Rapids of the Merrimac, above Lowell.