234 RIVER LIFE. 



" 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 hund- 

 red 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, ramify- 

 ing 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 dis- 

 gorges 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 Bruns- 

 wick," a few miles from its junction with the Kennebeck, " to Dix- 

 field, 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, west- 

 ward, up the Megalloway River," the extreme north tributary 



