A farmer returning to the next town felt the earth shaking under
his wagon, and looked behind him just in time to see a piece of the road
disappear into a pool of black water. The natives thought it had gone
down to China for they were all summer filling the place up, and the
expense was not less than that of a new district school-house.
The Indian name of the river was Muskataquid, and there was formerly an
Indian encampment on the site of the old Ripley manse and battleground.
A great quantity of arrow-heads of flint, jasper and quartz have been
found in the neighboring fields, and Emerson used sometimes to bring his
visitors to search for them. The Ripley family had a fine collection of
Indian relics, and it is almost pathetic to think of the pains and labor
the aborigines must have expended in manufacturing those household and
warlike implements,--the arrows especially being often so soon lost
again.
It is likely that they chose this situation for its sunny exposure, and
as a favorable landing for their canoes, rather than from a decided
feeling for landscape beauty. No doubt they had their battles and
invasions, and perhaps repulsed their enemies from the same ground where
the British line was afterwards formed.
What one wonders at, in regard to the Concord fight, is that the English
commander should have drawn off his men after the first volley and so
slight a loss.
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