Page:A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers.djvu/72

66 like a lake among the hills. All through the Concord, Bedford, and Billerica meadows, we had heard no murmur from its stream, except where some tributary runnel tumbled in,—

But now at length we heard this staid and primitive river rushing to her fall, like any rill. We here left its channel, just above the Billerica Falls, and entered the canal, which runs, or rather is conducted, six miles through the woods to the Merrimack at Middlesex, and as we did not care to loiter in this part of our voyage, while one ran along the tow-path drawing the boat by a cord, the other kept it off the shore with a pole, so that we accomplished the whole distance in little more than an hour. This canal, which is the oldest in the country, and has even an antique look beside the more modern-railroads, is fed by the Concord, so that we were still floating on its familiar waters. It is so much water which the river lets for the advantage of commerce. There appeared some want of harmony in its scenery, since it was not of equal date with the woods and meadows through which it is led, nd [sic] we missed the conciliatory influence of time on land and water; but in the lapse of ages, Nature will recover and indemnify