This river too was at length discovered by the white man, “trending up into the land,” he knew not how far, possibly an inlet to the South Sea.  Its valley, as far as the Winnipiseogee, was first surveyed in 1652.  The first settlers of Massachusetts supposed that the Connecticut, in one part of its course, ran northwest, “so near the great lake as the Indians do pass their canoes into it over land.”  From which lake and the “hideous swamps” about it, as they supposed, came all the beaver that was traded between Virginia and Canada,—­and the Potomac was thought to come out of or from very near it.  Afterward the Connecticut came so near the course of the Merrimack that, with a little pains, they expected to divert the current of the trade into the latter river, and its profits from their Dutch neighbors into their own pockets.

Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on its banks.  It has a swift current, and, in this part of its course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively few fishes.  We looked down into its yellow water with the more curiosity, who were accustomed to the Nile-like blackness of the former river.  Shad and alewives are taken here in their season, but salmon, though at one time more numerous than shad, are now more rare.  Bass, also, are taken occasionally; but locks and dams have proved more or less destructive to the fisheries.  The shad make their appearance early in May, at the same time with the blossoms of the pyrus, one of the most conspicuous early flowers, which is for this reason called the shad-blossom.  An insect called the shad-fly also appears at the same time, covering the houses and fences.  We are told that “their greatest run is when the apple-trees are in full blossom.  The old shad return in August; the young, three or four inches long, in September.  These are very fond of flies.”  A rather picturesque and luxurious mode of fishing was formerly practised on the Connecticut, at Bellows Falls, where a large rock divides the stream.  “On the steep sides of the island rock,” says Belknap, “hang several arm-chairs, fastened to ladders, and secured by a counterpoise, in which fishermen sit to catch salmon and shad with dipping nets.”  The remains of Indian weirs, made of large stones, are still to be seen in the Winnipiseogee, one of the head-waters of this river.

It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be reminded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun; and again, of the fry which in still greater numbers wend their way downward to the sea.  “And is it not pretty sport,” wrote Captain John Smith, who was on this coast as early as 1614, “to pull up twopence, sixpence, and twelvepence, as fast as you can haul and veer a line?”—­“And what sport doth yield a more pleasing content, and less hurt or charge, than angling with a hook, and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea.”