I have often passed the spot where he sleeps. The green grass waves in silence over his grave, and now the plow of the husbandman turns the greensward at his side, where once the forest trees majestically waved over his rude bier.
The following instance of the remarkable escape of a river-driver was related by one who witnessed the affair. I think it happened on the Androscoggin. Among the crew there and then engaged was a young man who prided himself upon his fearlessness of danger; and, to maintain the character he thus arrogated to himself, would unnecessarily encounter perils which the prudent would shun. His frequent boastings rendered his society not a little unpleasant, at times, to the less pretending; and although this dislike was not so great as to lead them to rejoice in seeing him suffer, yet an event which might be likely to cool his courage would not have been unwelcome to the crew. On one occasion he ventured upon a jam of logs just above a rolling dam, over which the spring freshets poured one vast sheet of water, plunging several feet perpendicularly into a boiling cauldron. The jam started so suddenly that he was precipitated with the logs over this fearful place, where not only the fall and under-tow threatened instant death, but the peril was imminent of being crushed by the tumbling logs. No one really expected to see him come out alive, but, to our surprise, he came up like a porpoise, and swam for the shore; but the swift current swept him down, and carried him under a jam of logs which formed below the dam. From previous exertion and exhaustion, we thought this must finish the poor fellow, and we really began to forget his faults, and call to remembrance whatever of virtue he had manifested. Soon a dark object was seen to rise to the surface immediately below the jam. It was our hero, who, elevating his head and striking forward with his arms, swam with a buoyant stroke to a small island just below, where he landed in safety, having sustained no injury, and without having experienced any abatement of his former daring. Seemingly there was not one chance in a thousand for the life of a man making such a fearful voyage. This circumstance brings to mind a poetical sentiment I have somewhere read on the ways of Providence in the disposal of human life:
"An earthquake may be bid to spare
The man that's strangled by a hair."
Men often lose their lives where we have least reason to expect it, and are as often spared, perhaps, where we see no grounds of hope for them. Thus physicians may sometimes be censured as unskillful when they lose a patient, while in fact God has fixed the bounds of mortal life; or be praised for skill when their success is but apparent, while to the Creator's purposes alone are we to look and give credit for such deliverances.
River-drivers usually eat four times a day—at least this practice obtains on the Penobscot—viz.: at five and ten o'clock A.M., and at two and eight P.M. After the two o'clock meal, when the drive on the main river is under successful headway, the camp-ground is forsaken, the tent struck, and the wangun is run as far down river as it is thought the drive will reach by night, where arrangements are made, as usual, for the crew, by the cook and "cookee," as his assistant is called. It may happen that the drive does not progress according to the calculations of the cook, and a short row down river is necessary to reach the wangun.
Between the mouth of the Piscataquis and Oldtown, a distance of twenty or twenty-five miles, are numerous beautiful islands, some of them large, and generally covered with a heavy growth of hard-wood, among which the Elm abounds. When the logs arrive at this point, many of the encampments are fixed upon these islands. As the sun sinks behind the western hills, the lengthened shadows of the beautiful island forests shoot across the mirrored river, casting a deep shade, which soon disappears amid the denser curtain of an advanced evening, with which they blend. The roar of rushing waters is over, and the current glides smoothly on. No sound is heard but the echo of the merry boatmen's laugh, and of voices here and there on the river, with now and then the shred of a song, and the creaking and plashing of oars. While thus passing down, as the boats turn a sudden bend in the river, a dozen lights gleam from the islands, throwing their lengthened scintillations over the water. Now the question goes round, "Which is our light?" "There's one on the east side!" "Yes, and there's another on Sugar Island!" "And there's one on Hemlock!" says a third. "Why the d—l hadn't they gone to Bangor, and done with it?" "Wangun No. 1, ahoy!" shouts the helmsman, a little exasperated with fatigue and hunger. Now, while all the rest of the cooks remain silent, No. 1 cook responds in turn. Another calls out the name of their particular log-mark: "Blaze Belt, ahoy!" "Where in thunder are you?" "Blaze Belt, this way, this way!" comes echoing from Hemlock Island, and away the Blaze Belt bateau rows with its merry-making crew. Thus each crew, in turn, is finally conducted to its respective camp-fire.
The prospect of a release from the arduous labors on the drive at this point of progress raises the thermometer of feeling, which imparts a right merry interest to every thing. Like sailors "homeward bound," after a three or nine months' cruise, and within one day's sail of port, relaxation and pastimes only are thought and talked of.
The mine of song and story is opened, and the rarest specimens of match songs and "stretched" stories are coined and made current by the members of the different crews. The "smartest team," "chopper," "barker," "the largest tree," "the biggest log," "the greatest day's work," bear or moose story, the merits of crews, teamsters, "bosses," cooks, and swampers, falls and rapids, streams and rivers, all, all come up as themes of converse, song, and story. There is less hurrying in the morning now than in the former part of the driving; let the water rise or fall, it is all the same thing at this point, for the driver has reached the ample channel of the river, where neither falls or rapids occur. A day, and the work is consummated—'tis done! The crews are disbanded: they disperse, some to their homes and farms; some to idleness and recreation; some to hire in the mills to saw the logs thus run; others to take rafts of boards to the head of tide navigation, where hundreds of vessels are in waiting to distribute the precious results of the lumberman's toil to the thousand ports of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, where the sound of saws, planes, and hammers of a million house-wrights, cabinet-makers, carpenters, coopers, and jobbers make the air vocal with the music of cheerful labor, giving bread to the millions, wealth to thousands, and comfort and convenience to all.
For this branch of human industry we set up a claim, in point of rank, not yet awarded to it by the world. We claim for it greater prominence as a source of wealth—greater respect on the ground of the talent and skill concentrated by the prime operators—greater deference for it as a business—for the endurance, energy, and courage of the thousands of hardy freemen who engage in it, and greater interest from the amount of substantial romance and adventure in the "Life among the Loggers."