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

Taking leave of the beautiful Kennebeck, the flourishing villages which skirt its borders, and its rich, productive farms, spreading east and west, our attention is next arrested by the serpentine Androscoggin, with its vast water power.

"From Merry-meeting Bay, into which it empties, to Lewiston Falls, it formerly went by the name of Peyepscook or Pyepscook, which means crooked, like a diving snake," strikingly expressive of the zigzag course of the stream, and the numerous pitches in its channel, giving it the appearance, or at least suggesting the idea, of the movements of a diving eel.

The length of this river is set down at two hundred and fifty miles, though the distance, in a direct line from the point where it takes its rise to its mouth, does not probably exceed one hundred miles. It is this circumstance which gives it an opportunity to drain a large territory, and, though less numerously attended with tributary streams than either the Kennebeck or Penobscot, it is said to discharge more water during the year than either of the latter rivers.

To glance at the map and institute a comparison between the Penobscot and Androscoggin, the former sixty miles longer, with its hundreds of lakes, numerous branches and tributaries, ramifying nearly one third the area of the entire state, in the regions of ice and snow, mountains and wildernesses, then survey the Androscoggin, with comparatively few tributaries or lakes, and the thing seems incredible that the latter annually pours into the Atlantic more water than the former; yet actual surveys, made by the late Colonel Baldwin, J. A. Beard, Esq., and others, have demonstrated this result with mathematical certainty. In time of freshets, in the spring and fall, doubtless the Penobscot disgorges more water; but during the summer and winter months the waters of the Androscoggin exceed in quantity.

The country through which this river flows, "from Brunswick," a few miles from its junction with the Kennebeck, "to Dixfield, sixty miles distant, is not remarkable in its features; but from the latter place to Umbagog Lake," the grand reservoir of the Androscoggin, "and from Phillips, in Franklin county, westward, up the Megalloway River," the extreme north tributary of the Androscoggin, "some thirty or forty miles, the country is said to be wonderful for its mountains."

Respecting the water power and privileges on this river, Colonel A. J. Stone, to whom I am chiefly under obligations for the facts involved in this part of my work, says, "I doubt whether there is a state in the Union that can show so many as we can on the Androscoggin and its tributaries."

Rumford Falls, Androscoggin River.

"There are now three or four water-falls at Rumford, on this river, while anciently there must have been others of greater magnitude, for deep holes are seen worn high up on the rocky banks, where the waters never ran in modern times. Now the whole descent is divided into two principal and two minor falls, the first two being from six to ten feet, the middle seventy feet perpendicular, and the fourth twenty feet, while the whole pitch is estimated at one hundred and eighty feet. It is the middle fall, however, that will attract the attention of the traveler, for there the torrent of water pouring down with the noise of thunder, and dashing itself into foam as it chafes the rocky walls, produces an effect full of grandeur."—Geological Reports.

"In the distance of half a mile on the river, at this place (Brunswick), we have forty-one feet fall (three dams across the river), consequently the water may be used in this distance three times." "By a survey made by the late Colonel Baldwin, the capacity of the Androscoggin is sufficient for carrying two hundred thousand spindles." Numerous privileges of the same capacity are of frequent occurrence. All that is requisite to make this river the seat of the most extensive factory operations in the world is capital, and from the superior water power here presented, it is fair to presume that the attention of capitalists may ultimately lead to investments in manufacturing on a magnificent scale.