in the Negative, was reconsidered and read at this meeting and put to vote & Passed in the Effermative."

This tract of eighty acres lay upon the brook flowing from little Massabesic into the lake. At the same time it was voted that Mr. John Calfe have liberty to build a fulling mill at Massabeecek brook between the two ponds agreeable to his own proposals.*

At the same meeting it was voted that Mr. John Calfe have liberty to build a fulling mill at Massabeecek brook, between the two ponds, agreeable to his own proposals. The mill was accordingly built, and was said for a long time to have been the only fulling mill within a hundred miles. It is among the writer's remembrances of a country store that customers had to wait for a consignment of full cloth. Twenty-four years later Robert Calfe, son of the above, was granted by vote of the proprietors the right to build a sawmill on the "supposed" privilege granted to his father. For nearly a hundred years these mills appear to have answered all demands, until the nail factory was started by Folsom, and in 1835 two brothers, Jay T. and Flag T. Underhill, built a shop for the manufacture of edge tools. For about thirty years the Underhills, with various additions and changes in the firm, conducted a prosperous business until 1865, when the property was sold to Mr. George C. Griffin, and the edge tool business ceased in Auburn. Deacon William Leatch, as the name is spelled in the old records, came to Chester as early as 1742 and settled on lot number seventy-four, second part, second division, which is the Emery farm. He will be remembered from his alleged connection with the popular origin of the name Massabesic. His name also appears on the muster roll of Capt. Joseph Dearborn's company, Colonel Wyman's regiment, in the campaign against Canada in 1776.

In addition to the places described as taverns earliest in be

* In the spelling of this name is there not some probable attempt to imitate the Indian pronunciation of the name, as in Bell Massapeseag"?

ginning and longest in occupation, are many others in which refreshments of various kinds are kept, but which hardly have a name in history as taverns. There are also numerous cottages occupied in summer by lessees, or used by families most of the season. The house at Kimball's point, built by Weeks and Currier at an early date, has been occupied for many summers by the veteran ex-chief of the fire department, who has added to the original lot purchased of Severance, and maintains a beautiful grove of maple and oak between the highway and the lake shore. From this point the view is particularly pleasing by day and equally fine by night, when the lights of the cottagers around many miles of shore are reflected in a hundred placid gleams from the Indian mirror, the great water. On the whole the story of Lake Massabesic may be said to have been singularly peaceful. The white settlers were mostly men of thrift and industrious habits, and the aborigines, if any were seen as late as 1720, do not appear to have been particularly blood-thirsty. Mr. Griffin, the local antiquarian, indeed relates a story of murder in which a French officer is mixed up with an unhappy Indian bride, who suffers death in consequence. It is undoubtedly true, however, that one Leret Smith and his brother-in-law, John Carr, a youth of eighteen years, was captured while building brush fence by a party of Indians. They were carried three days' march northward into the wilderness, and made their escape, returning unharmed to Chester. The scene of this capture is said to have been on Mount Misery, an elevation between the two ponds or wings of the lake.

As another instance of the unreliable nature of the evidence to be had of these early affairs it may be noticed that Charles Bell, in his history of Chester, on the authority of Deacon Smith of New Boston, a grandson of Lieutenant Smith, who was captured, and who told the story to Rev. Mr. Kellog of that town, says that the Indian party making the capture was led by Capt. Joe English. As the story of Joe English and his

devotion to the white settlers is tolerably well known, there is evidently a mistake somewhere.

Our Massabesic is a beautiful lake, even though it has no charm like the older lakes of the world, and is not sung by bards so many or so great, yet it has come to fill a mission more divine, if cleanliness be next to godliness, and health of more

THE WILLOWS, ON THE PARKER ESTATE.

importance than wealth. It may be regarded as nothing less than a Providential gift that a body of water so chemically pure and so easy of access is found within reach of a growing population, whose wants in this direction began to be manifest as early as 1844. The story in this regard has been well told by Dr. Maurice Clark in his history of Manchester, and need not be repeated here. It may be said, however, that the matter of a pure water supply had been thoroughly discussed from 1844 to 1871. The city was then authorized to construct water works, at an expense not exceeding six hundred thou

sand dollars. The work was undertaken July, 1872, and water

was conveyed to the city July 4, 1874. In this story there remains to be struck a note of sadness. Like all things beautiful or sublime in Nature, there lurks somewhere death to him who woos too closely. The adventurous swimmer, the careless canoeist, the daring skater, have year by year gone down to death beneath those peaceful waves, and such will doubtless continue to be the case until it is possible to exercise stricter watch over the lake and its habitués. I am told, however, by experienced observers, that the number of lives lost here has been much less than in most resorts of the kind.