Forest Life and Forest Trees: comprising winter camp-life among the loggers, and wild-wood adventure. / with Descriptions of lumbering operations on the various / rivers of Maine and New Brunswick

by John S. Springer

"I must mention another circumstance to give you a just idea of our situation. There is a narrow spot in the river, about a mile below the city, at High Head, in which is a shoal, and from which the greatest danger of a jam always arises, and it was this that caused the principal inundation.

"The next incident occurred at midnight, when the bells were rung to announce the giving way of the ice. It was a fearful sound and scene. The streets were thronged with men, women, and children, who rushed abroad to witness the approach of the icy avalanche. At length it came rushing on with a power that a thousand locomotives in a body could not vie with; but it was veiled from the eye by the darkness of a hazy night, and the ear only could trace its progress by the sounds of crashing buildings, lumber, and whatever it encountered in its path-way, except the glimpses that could be caught of it by the light of hundreds of torches and lanterns that threw their glare upon the misty atmosphere. The jam passed on, and a portion of it pressed through the weakest portion of the great bridge, and thus, joining the ice below the bridge, pressed it down to the narrows at High Head. Meanwhile the destruction was in progress on the Kenduskeag, which poured down its tributary ice, sweeping mills, bridges, shops, and other buildings, with masses of logs and lumber, to add to the common wreck.

"At that moment, the anxiety and suspense were fearful whether the jam would force its way through the narrows, or there stop and pour back a flood of waters upon the city; for it was from the rise of the water consequent upon such a jam that the great destruction was to be apprehended. But the suspense was soon over. A cry was heard from the dense mass of citizens who crowded the streets on the flat, 'The river is flowing back!' and so sudden was the revulsion, that it required the utmost speed to escape the rising waters. It seemed but a moment before the entire flat was deluged; and many men did not escape from their stores before the water was up to their waists. Had you witnessed the scene, occurring as it did in the midst of a dark and hazy night, and had you heard the rushing of the waters and the crash of the ruins, and seen the multitudes retreating in a mass from the returning flood, illumined only by the glare of torches and lanterns, and listened to the shouts and cries that escaped from them to give the alarm to those beyond, you would not be surprised at my being reminded of the host of Pharaoh as they fled and sent up their cry from the Red Sea, as it returned upon them in its strength.

"But the ruinous consequences were, providentially, the loss of property rather than life. The whole business portion of the city was inundated; and so entirely beyond all reasonable estimate was the rise of the waters, that a very large proportion of all the stocks of goods in the stores were flooded. Precautions had been taken, in the lower part of the city, to remove goods from the first to the second story, and yet many who did so had the floors of the second story burst up, and their goods let down into the waters below; while in the higher portions, where the goods were piled up on and about the counters, the waters rose above them, and involved them in a common destruction. Others, who did not remove their goods, suffered a total loss of them.

"Thus far, however, the devastation was confined to the least valuable part of the wealth of the city. The lumber on the wharves constitutes the larger portion of the available property of the city; and here a kind Providence has spared the devoted city, and by one of those singular methods by which a present evil, which seems to be the greatest that could be inflicted, is the means of averting a greater one; for it was the occurrence of the jam which, while it inundated the stores, appeared to be the means of saving the lumber. The pressure of the ice against the wharves and lumber was so great as to wedge it in with immense strength, and formed a sort of wall outside the wharves, from which the jam, when it started, separated and passed out, leaving the lumber safe, though injured.

"After the ice stopped, things remained in this situation during the next day, which was Sunday—the saddest and most serious Sunday, probably, ever passed in Bangor. Few, however, could spend the day in worship. All that could labor were employed, while the flood kept rising, in rescuing what property could be saved from the waters, and in taking poor families from their windows in boats.

"The closing scene of this dreadful disaster occurred on Sunday evening, beginning at about seven o'clock. The alarm was again rung through the streets that the jam had given way. The citizens again rushed abroad to witness what they knew must be one of the most sublime and awful scenes of nature, and also to learn the full extent of their calamity. Few, however, were able to catch a sight of the breaking up of the jam, which, for magnitude, it is certain, has not occurred on this river for more than one hundred years. The whole river was like a boiling cauldron, with masses of ice upheaved as by a volcano. But soon the darkness shrouded the scene in part. The ear, however, could hear the roaring of the waters and the crash of buildings, bridges, and lumber, and the eye could trace the mammoth ice-jam of four miles long, which passed on majestically, but with lightning rapidity, bearing the contents of both rivers on its bosom. The noble covered bridge of the Penobscot, two bridges of the Kenduskeag, and the two long ranges of saw-mills, besides other mills, houses, shops, logs, and lumber enough to build up a considerable village. The new market floated over the lower bridge across the Kenduskeag, a part of which remains, and, most happily, landed at a point of the wharves, where it sunk, and formed the nucleus of a sort of boom, which stopped the masses of floating lumber in the Kenduskeag, and protected thousands of dollars' worth of lumber on the wharves below.

"So suddenly and so rapidly was all this enacted, that it seems impossible to believe it to have occurred without loss of life. Yet such appears to be the happy result. Rumor, indeed, consigned many to a watery grave, who were most unexpectedly preserved. There were, for instance, twenty or thirty men on one of the bridges when it gave way, some of whom jumped into the water to save themselves, but none were lost. A raft passed down the Kenduskeag with three or four boys upon it, and they were seen floating into the vortex of the jam, but the raft passed near enough to a store for them to leap from it to a platform, and thus they saved their lives. A boat also was crossing the river when the jam started, and the river was rushing in a torrent, but they also got safe to land. Many such hazards occurred, but without the loss of a single life.

"I have thus given you a very hasty and unstudied narrative of this severe calamity, as I have gathered it before any account has been published. I have no time or space for reflections. There are, no doubt, many wise and good designs to be accomplished by such an event, which will readily suggest themselves to every Christian mind. The present state of our churches before this, I think, was highly promising, and the presence of God's Holy Spirit manifest. I most earnestly pray that a serious, practical, and real reformation may ensue.

"The individual losses are very great. Some have lost their all, and many from five to fifty thousand dollars each; yet the aggregate will be swelled, by a first estimate, far beyond its real amount. From what I have already seen, I think there is no reason whatever for the friends of Bangor abroad to entertain any distrust respecting its recovery and progressive prosperity. Such a buoyant and elastic spirit I never saw in man, as is apparent to-day, at the very moment when men usually most despond. There is no such thing as depression. Despair is a word which the active and laborious merchants of this city do not know the definition of; and as soon as time can enable man to restore the city to its former prosperity, it will be done. My prayer is that its future prosperity may be tempered by a more sanctified spirit—that the hand of God may be more recognized—the institutions of religion more generally sustained—the uncertainty and vanity of worldly possessions more deeply realized, and that this singularly appropriate antidote to a bold and Heaven-daring intemperance may dilute, if not wash it entirely away.