Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/402

 366 THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

been gone above one or two days at most ; and so they returned to the rest of the men arain about twelve of the clock, and then we returned and marched down the river to Stark's river, and there camped. This afternoon it rained hard, but we were forced to travel for v/ant of provisions. This interval is ex- ceedingly large, and the further up the larger.

From this record of Capt. Powers, we must believe that Stark did once en- counter the Indians upon this river, for being himself the leader of the expedi- tion of which Powers was in command, it is presumable and highly probable, that the Captain made his record upon June 30th, from the statements on the spot, of the actor, John Stark himself, and that in consultation, they gave to the stream, in commemoration of the hero and the events of which, himself was principal, the name it at present bears with the surname combined ; but time, with its changes, has lopped off the Stark, and retained the John. Like the dog in the fable, whose severed tail continued to wag around its old accus- tomed resorts, while its owner was long since buried among the sands.

When the pioneers of civilization first struck this north country, they found the upper, as well the lower Coos along the Connecticut intervals, all ready for the plow of the husbandman. When or how these river-borders and broad meadows were disforested, or if they ever bore one of those primitive crops of nature's own unaided planting, whose waving branches and lofty coronals were su^ept by the winds of the centuries, the time-buried records of the earth alone may tell, for the memory of man knoweth it not. So in 1763, when Capt. David Page with his followers came up from below, along the trail of the Indians and the track of the river, he found that which in the division of the lower Cous lands he failed to secure, a plantation only v/aiting to be planted.

Cherishing a love for the old town and its associations, "still to memory dear," these emigrants from the ancient Massachusetts town of Lancaster and vicinity, brought with them its name and attached it to the new and first settle- ment above Haverhill and Newbury, Vermont, which were settled the preced- ing year, and these constituted the earliest occupied lands in the "Great Valley" north of Charlestown, then called by its old military designation "No. 4." Many of the original owners, following the Indian claimants, and some of the early settlers obtained their knowledge of these Coos lands while passing through them in pursuit of, or fleeing from their combined enemy, the French and Indians ; and they came into possession of them by grant from Gov. Wentworth, in return for valuable services rendered tlie State against these opponents of English advancement and colonization.

Among these were many members of Stark's and Rogers's companies of scouts and rangers. After the destruction of the Indian village and tribe of St. Francis, by the intrepid Rogers and his men in 1759, they started on their return by way of Lake Memphremagog. For the better procuring of food, of which there was short allowance, and for surer safety in flight, at the south end of the lake they scattered, each man or party for himself, with directions to rendezvous at the mouth of the Ammonoosuc ; meaning, says Belknap, "at the upper Cohos on the Connecticut river;" and also adds, "many found their way to Number Four, after having suffered much by hunger and fiitigue. Others perished in the woods, and their bones were found near Connecticut river by the people who after several years began plantations at upper Cohos."

In the sending of instructions to Gen. Amherst, by ?\Laj. Rogers, after he had concluded upon the forced necessity of returning from this expedition by way of Connecticut river, and in the carrying out of those directions, there was evident misunderstanding, arising from the then not generally known fact, that there were two sections known as Cohos in the same "great valley," and into each, at the head of their respective intervals, came an .Ammonoosuc river,

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