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��KEARSARGE MOUNTAIN.
��KEARSARGE MOUNTAIN.
��FROM HARRIMAN'S HISTORY OF WARNER.*
��The late Dr. Bouton called Kearsarge " the peerless mountain " of Merrimack county. It is closely identified with Warner. It lifts its head 2943 feet above the sea level. It has no immedi- ate competitor. To the traveller on the Northern railroad it presents a bold and striking outline. It is a prominent landmark within a circle whose diame- ter is one hundred miles.
A controversy in relation to the ori- gin of the name of this mountain sprang up a few years ago. Somebody set afloat the absurd story that an English hunter, by the name of Hezekiah Sar- gent, came, some time previous to 1750, and made his home somewhere on this mountain, anck hence its name ; that, furthermore, the said Hezekiah died about the year 1800, and was bur- ied — but, as in the case of Moses, "no man knoweth. of his sepulchre unto this day. "
It is a sufficient answer to this, to say that no such man ever lived on Kear- sarge mountain, on the top or on either side of it. The story is a fabrication. The best authority for it, so far as the writer knows, is a visionary, crazed man (now dead), who, in his last will and testament, bequeathed to his daughter four hedgehogs, when she should catch them on his mountain ledge !
Two hundred years before the ridic-
- This work, recently issued, is 'em-
braced in a handsome octavo volume of 581 pages, finely printed, substantially bound, and embellished l^y a map of the town and twenty-three portraits of dis- tinguished citizens or natives of the town, several of which are steel engravings. To the production of this work General Walter Harriman, a distinguished son of the old town of which he writes, has de- voted much care and labor, and has given the public one of the most systematic. comprehensive and thoroughly interest-
- town histories yet produced.
��ulous tale is told of this Hezekiah Cur- rier Sargent, the mountain bore the name of Kearsarge, in some of -its vari- ations ; and a hundred and seventy-five years before this remarkable character is placed on the mountain at all, or is ever heard of anywhere, even in tradition, Kearsarge was known by its present name. This hero of the wild hunting- grounds puts in an appearance too late.
The name unquestionably comes from the Indians, who sojourned at its base, who roamed over its steep declivities, or who saw it from afar. It is not easy to convey, by the use of English letters, the precise sounds of the unlettered wild men of the forest. The thing is impossible, and, in attempting it, we have the orthography of the name in almost an unlimited number of forms. The still further difficulty may be no- ticed, that, even among the Indians themselves, the pronunciation of the word varied as much as the orthogra- phy of it has varied among white men.
In 1652, Gov. Endicott's exploration of the Merrimack river to Lake Winni- pesaukee was executed. The Endicott rock, at the outlet of the lake, was then marked. A plan was made of this sur- vey, and the proof is at hand that this plan must have been made before 1670. It is thus endorsed : " Plat of Mere- mack river from ye See up to Wenepe- seoce Pond, also the Corses from Dun- stable to Penny — cook.
Jn° Gardner. "
Kearsarge mountain is on this plan, and the name is spelled Carsaga.
Capt. Samuel Willard, of Lancaster, Mass., the prince of Indian rangers, saw this mountain from the top of Mo- nadnock, July 31, 1725, and called it Cusagec mountain.
On the margin of the ancient plan of Boscawen, which was granted by Massa-
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