This Is My Carnac, Whose Unmeasured Dome
Shelters The Measuring Art And Measurer's Home.
Behold These Flowers, Let Us Be
Up with time,
Not dreaming of three thousand years ago,
Erect ourselves and let those columns lie,
Not stoop to
Raise a foil against the sky.
Where is the spirit of that time but in
This present day, perchance the present line?
Three thousand years ago are not agone,
They are still lingering in this summer morn,
And Memnon's Mother sprightly greets us now,
Wearing her youthful radiance on her brow.
If Carnac's columns still stand on the plain,
To enjoy our opportunities they remain.
In these parts dwelt the famous Sachem Pasaconaway, who was seen
by Gookin "at Pawtucket, when he was about one hundred and twenty
years old." He was reputed a wise man and a powwow, and
restrained his people from going to war with the English. They
believed "that he could make water burn, rocks move, and trees
dance, and metamorphose himself into a flaming man; that in
winter he could raise a green leaf out of the ashes of a dry one,
and produce a living snake from the skin of a dead one, and many
similar miracles." In 1660, according to Gookin, at a great feast
and dance, he made his farewell speech to his people, in which he
said, that as he was not likely to see them met together again,
he would leave them this word of advice, to take heed how they
quarrelled with their English neighbors, for though they might do
them much mischief at first, it would prove the means of their
own destruction. He himself, he said, had been as much an enemy
to the English at their first coming as any, and had used all his
arts to destroy them, or at least to prevent their settlement,
but could by no means effect it. Gookin thought that he
"possibly might have such a kind of spirit upon him as was upon
Balaam, who in xxiii. Numbers, 23, said `Surely, there is no
enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination
against Israel.'" His son Wannalancet carefully followed his
advice, and when Philip's War broke out, he withdrew his
followers to Penacook, now Concord in New Hampshire, from the
scene of the war. On his return afterwards, he visited the
minister of Chelmsford, and, as is stated in the history of that
town, "wished to know whether Chelmsford had suffered much during
the war; and being informed that it had not, and that God should
be thanked for it, Wannalancet replied, `Me next.'"
Manchester was the residence of John Stark, a hero of two wars,
and survivor of a third, and at his death the last but one of the
American generals of the Revolution. He was born in the
adjoining town of Londonderry, then Nutfield, in 1728. As early
as 1752, he was taken prisoner by the Indians while hunting in
the wilderness near Baker's River; he performed notable service
as a captain of rangers in the French war; commanded a regiment
of the New Hampshire militia at the battle of Bunker Hill; and
fought and won the battle of Bennington in 1777.
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