RIVER LIFE. 217 



ever, 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 Sun- 

 day 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, howev- 

 er, could hear the roaring of the waters and the crash of build- 

 ings, 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 bo- 

 som. 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 masSQi 

 of Boating Lumber in the Kenduskeag, and protected thousands of 



dollars' worth of lumber on the wharves below. 



M So suddenly and so rapidly was all this enacted, that it se- U 

 impossible to believe it to have occurred without loss of Life. Vet 

 BUOh appear! to be the happy result. Humor, indeed, consigned 

 many to a watery grave, who were most unexpectedly preserved. 

 There were, for instance, twenty or thirty men on one of the 



K 



