172 RIVER LIFE. 



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 sur- 

 face immediately below the jam. It was our hero, who, eleva- 

 ting 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 experi- 

 enced 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 he bid to spare 

 The mail 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 suc- 

 cess is but apparent, while to the Creator's purposes alone are we 

 to look and give credit for such deliverances. 



Biver-drivers usually eat four times a day — at least this prac- 

 tice 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 



