pasture fenced for its use. But the idea that the highway was public property still led some men to think that they were not trespassing on the rights of others by turning their cows through the barnyard bars and dogging them down the road, and when this practice became unbearable to the neighbors whose expost ulations failed to bring reforin, the pound was resorted to as a lesson in law. It has also been used as an instrument of revenge. A man would find an animal belonging to some neighbor with whom he was not on friendly terms browsing in his field or running in the road, and would drive the animal to the pound if it was several miles farther away than the home of the owner. I have known a man to lead a horse two miles out of his way to get to the pound without going past the house of the owner, when the pound was four miles away and the men lived less than half a mile apart.

A pound-keeper was among the officers annually elected by the town, and his duty was to supply impounded animals with food and water, advertise them if not called for within a certain time, and get his pay from the owner of the stock when it was taken away. Another officer closely connected with the pound keeper was the " field driver," and his duty, and sometimes privilege, was to drive to pound animals found trespassing or in anyway troubling the settlers. As this was a minor posi tion with little work and no pay, it was unually filled by nomi nation, and the young men in town who had been married since the last election were honored with this mark of the respect and confidence of their fellow citizens, sometimes twenty or more being chosen at a single meeting.

In my native town, in Maine, an article which appeared in the warrant, regularly for many years, was: "To see if the town will allow loose cattle to run at large all or any part of the year." This was usually passed over without action, and at last some one discovered and announced that men were not obliged to fence their fields, and that when cattle were turned into the highway, without a keeper, they were, in effect, turned into

their neighbor's cornfield, and that the town had no authority to legalize such action. Soon after this the field-drivers were discontinued, and it was voted that every barnyard in town should be a pound and every man who had a barnyard was appointed pound keeper and authorized to confine stray animals and collect pay for the same from their owners. This ended the pound business in that town.

By a somewhat hurried examination of the two histories of Manchester (Potter's and Clarke's), I find that they agree on one point that in 1800 the town voted to build a pound at the south end of the church at the Center. Clarke's says this was used till 1830, but says nothing about its successor as being located or built. Speaking of the Stevens farm, which is a part of what is now the city farm, it says : "On the old farm is an unused pesthouse and a pound." And here arises a question which I have been unable to solve, for it continues: "A new pesthouse was built of brick in 1874 upon the old farm near the Mammoth road." Where is or was that brick pesthouse?

Potter's history relates that the pound to be built in 1800 at the south end of the church, was to be seven feet high, with square posts, and rails of pine or cedar heart wood.

While both agree that this pound served until 1830, Potter's speaks of the vote to build another, under the transactions of 1840, so there are ten years that we do not know whether a pound was maintained or not.

The ruins of the structure now under consideration are on land owned by the city and in what is a part of Derryfield Park, so there would be no outlay for purchasing the site, it being in the park and near the road which is most used in going to the Weston Observatory. It is in a prominent place and would be an object of interest to visitors who would seek information as to its origin and use, and, standing on that spot, with the clatter of electric cars and the bustle of a city all about them, could realize more fully than in any other way that here, where they see all these modern conveniences and signs of activity

under electric lights the supply for which is brought on a simple wire, was once a wilderness, and in the last century the farmers worked in their fields with the flint lock musket leaning against a stump, for protection rather than pleasure, and cattle roamed at large and took their chances among the wild and savage beasts. That right here, on this spot, the scenes of frontier life have been enacted in real earnest and have passed into the history which we read without fully realizing that it is more authentic than the tales of fiction.

For these reasons and under existing conditions I hold that it would be wise and proper for this association to take some steps to induce the city to perpetuate this relic, and restore or permit the association to restore as far the remaining material will allow, the walls which have fallen, so as to show a design of something more than a pile of rocks, and lead to questions and answers which will keep alive the knowledge that we still have one link which connects us with the dim and distant past.

The people of the present seem to be seeking to make their own mark, and change everything that passes through their hands to make it conform with the present idea of symmetry or beauty, or style which too often lacks both of the other features named. We expend large sums in removing rocks and exterminating native shrubs, and as much more constructing "rockwork" and planting foreign shrubs which would disgrace any native hedgerow, and, after all this outlay to destroy natural objects for the sake of imitating them, the imitation is a failure and the change is no improvement.

save it from the Let the willows

Therefore let us claim this one spot and present epidemic of change and destruction. and wild cherry trees grow inside if they will; but have the outer walls exposed to view to show that there was system in the "madness" which preserved it.

Sketch of Dunbarton, N. H.

BY ELLA MILLS.

Dunbarton is a town "set upon a hill which cannot be hid.” The highest point of land is on the farm of Benjamin Lord, north of the Center, and is 779 feet above the sea level. From that spot, and from many other places nearly as high, the views of hills and mountains are beautiful and grand beyond description.

The twin Uncanoonucs are near neighbors on the south, Monadnock, farther off on the south-west, and Kearsarge twenty miles to the north west. On the northern horizon are seen Mount Washington and other peaks of the White Mountains.

The longest hill in town is the mile-long Mills hill, and midway on its slope live descendants of Thomas Mills, one of the first settlers. Among other hills are Duncano wett, Hammond, Tenney, Grapevine, Harris, Legache, and Prospect Hills.

No rivers run through the town, but there are numerous brooks where trout fishing is pursued with more or less success.

No body of water is large enough to be called a lake, but Gorham Pond is a beautiful sheet of water and on its banks picnics are held. Stark's and Kimball's Ponds have furnished water power for mills, the latter, owned by Willie F. Paige, is still in use. Long Pond, in the south part of the town, was the scene of a tragedy in 1879, when Moses Merrill, an officer at the State Industrial School, Manchester, was drowned in an ineffectual attempt to save an inmate of that institution.

One portion of the south part of the town is called Skeeterburo, another Mountalona, so named by James Rogers, one of the first settlers, from the place in Ireland from whence he

came.1 East of the Center is Guinea, so called because some negroes once lived there. The village of North Dunbarton is also called Page's Corner; and not far away to the eastward is a hill known as Onestack, because one large stack of hay stood there for many years. A brook bears the same name.

Those who know Dunbarton only in the present can hardly realize that 1450 people ever lived there at one time, but that was the census in 1820. The first census, taken 1767, was 271. In 1840 it was 1067; in 1890, only 523. The last census gave about 575.

The first settlement was made in 17402 by James Rogers and Joseph Putney on the land known as the "Great Meadows, now owned by James M. Bailey. They were driven away by the Indians for a time. A stone now marks the spot where stood the only apple tree spared by the Indians. Probably the first boy born in town belonged to one of these families. James Rogers was shot by Ebenezer Ayer, who mistook him in the dark for a bear, as he wore a bearskin coat. He was the father of Major Robert Rogers, celebrated as the leader of the rauger corps of the French and Indian wars.

Hogg, and Thomas Mills Sarah, daughter of Thom

About 1751 William Stinson, John settled in the west part of the town. as Mills, was the first girl born in town. Her birthplace was a log cabin on the farm now owned by John C. and George F. Mills.

For fourteen years the town was called Starkstown in honor of Archibald Stark, one of the first land owners (though not a resident), and father of General John Stark. In 1765 the town was incorporated, and was named, with a slight change,

1. The early writers generally credited James Rogers with being of ScotchIrish nativity, owing to the fact that he was confused with another person of the same name, who lived in Londonderry. (See Drummond's “James Rogers of Dunbarton and James Rogers of Londonderry.") The Dunbarton Rogers was undoubtedly of English |irth, in which case the term "Mountalona," or "Montelony," must have had some other derivation than that commonly ascribed to it. - EDITOR.

2. Probably 1739. and the Rogers family at least came from Massachusetts. This with the Putney or Pudney famity seem to have been located in the winter of 1839-1840.- EDITOR.