242 RIVER LIFE. 



red and sixty looms, whether for cotton or wool I am unin- 

 formed. 



Table. 

 Number of saws manufacturing for market, 14. 

 " " lath and shingle machines, do., 12. 

 Amount of long lumber . . . . 2,100,000, at $12. 00 = $25,200. 

 Number of thousand shingles 1,500,000, at 2.50= 3,750. 

 laths . . 1,200,000, at 1.12= 1,344. 

 Total $30,294! 



Though this is comparatively a small lumber operation, still, 

 provided the truth has been approximated in the estimates made, 

 this done annually amounts to no mean revenue, and affords em- 

 ployment to not a few persons, supplying bread for many mouths, 

 and enriching those who conduct the business. While such oper- 

 ations build up many beautiful villages along the romantic banks 

 of those fine streams and rivers where falls occur, they also give 

 an impulse to the farming interests of the country contiguous, and 

 serve as so many little hearts in the great system, whose pulsa- 

 tions vibrate with general intelligence, education, and improved 

 manners throughout the interior. 



For the principal facts involved in the view given of the Pre- 

 sumpscot and its lumbering interests, I am mainly indebted to 

 the kindness of E. Clarke, M.D., of Portland, Maine. 



The next considerable river is Saco, which rises among the 

 White Mountains of New Hampshire, at the notch near where 

 the Ammonoosuc River takes its rise. The Saco, from its source 

 to the Atlantic Ocean, into which it empties, is about one hund- 

 red and forty miles in length, its current rapid, and waters clear. 

 In common with many other rivers, some portion of it is exceed- 

 ingly crooked. Within the single town of Fryeburg its serpentine 

 windings are said to be thirty-six miles, making in this meander- 

 ing only four miles on a direct line. Fine intervale lands abound 

 in this vicinity, and also in Brownfield. 



