At Livermore some incipient movements are making for the erection of factories by a company. At Brunswick, a cotton factory, with four thousand six hundred spindles, is already in operation.
In relation to the lumbering business on this river, the chief object of attention in noticing this and the rivers already alluded to, there are "from two to three million feet of lumber run down, and about the same amount is purchased (in the log) on the Kennebeck, and taken up through Merry-meeting Bay, and manufactured at Brunswick yearly."
"Five millions are manufactured into boards, and about one million into clap-boards and shingles, &c. About one half of the five millions manufactured into boards are shipped to Boston, Mass., Providence and Fall River, R.I., and to the West Indies. The remaining half are manufactured here into sugar-box shooks for the Havana market."
The mean or average price which lumber bears per M. here is $14.30. The "resources for lumber on this river are very limited. The principal dealers are about leaving the business, though lumber, in small quantities, will probably be run for twenty or thirty years."
Logs are driven about one hundred and fifty miles, this being the longest drive. Others are hauled on to the river within forty miles of Brunswick.
From the causes alluded to, the Androscoggin is not much affected with drought, nor so seriously by freshets as most rivers, the mills being protected by ledges. "The river is very crooked, and when we have an ice freshet, it is piled up in large quantities in the bends of the river, in some instances for five or six miles. Such was the case nine years since—also last spring; but the damage to our mills in these two ice freshets was but trifling."
View of Umbagog Lake—source of the Androscoggin.
Umbagog Lake, from which the Androscoggin takes its rise, from the construction of its shores, acts as a regulator upon the height of the water. When the Megalloway rises, it flows into the Androscoggin, and raises its waters, so that they run back into the lake for the distance of two miles, having the appearance of a river running back to its source. The Androscoggin rises from the western side of the lake, and here is a sluggish stream, with low, grassy banks five feet high, covered with scattering swamp Maple-trees. "The Megalloway River is extremely serpentine and wild in its course, winding its way amid high mountains, while its banks are composed of sandy loam, covered thickly with Maple-trees."