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.  He was past service in the last war, and died here in 1822, at the age of 94.  His monument stands upon the second bank of the river, about a mile and a half above the falls, and commands a prospect several miles up and down the Merrimack.  It suggested how much more impressive in the landscape is the tomb of a hero than the dwellings of the inglorious living.  Who is most dead,—­a hero by whose monument you stand, or his descendants of whom you have never heard?

The graves of Pasaconaway and Wannalancet are marked by no monument on the bank of their native river.

Every town which we passed, if we may believe the Gazetteer, had been the residence of some great man.  But though we knocked at many doors, and even made particular inquiries, we could not find that there were any now living.  Under the head of Litchfield we read:—­

“The Hon. Wyseman Clagett closed his life in this town.”  According to another, “He was a classical scholar, a good lawyer, a wit, and a poet.”  We saw his old gray house just below Great Nesenkeag Brook.—­Under the head of Merrimack:  “Hon. Mathew Thornton, one of the signers of the Declaration of American Independence, resided many years in this town.”  His house too we saw from the river.—­“Dr. Jonathan Gove, a man distinguished for his urbanity, his talents and professional skill, resided in this town [Goffstown].  He was one of the oldest practitioners of medicine in the county.  He was