Starting the Logs, 285 



self a pretty village, are the saw-mills and ponds of the 

 hospitable Judge Lincoln and other persons. The creek 

 that conveys the logs to these ponds, and which bears the 

 name of the village, is interrupted in its course by man]) 

 rapids and narrow embanked gorges. One of the latter 

 is situated about half a mile above the mill-dam, and is so 

 rocky and rugged in the bottom and sides as to preclude 

 the possibility of the trees passing along it at low water, 

 while, as I conceived, it would have given no slight labor 

 to an army of woodsmen or millers to move the thousands 

 of large logs that had accumulated in it. They lay piled in 

 confused heaps to a great height along an extent of sev- 

 eral hundred yards, and were in some places so close as to 

 have formed a kind of dam. Above the gorge there is a 

 large natural reservoir, in which the headwaters of the 

 creek settle, while only a small portion of these ripple 

 through the gorge below, during the latter weeks of sum- 

 mer and in early autumn, when their streams are at the 

 lowest. At the neck of this basin the lumberers raised a 

 temporary barrier with the refuse of their sawn logs. The 

 boards were planted nearly upright, and supported at 

 their tops by a strong tree extended from side to side 

 of the creek, which might there be about forty feet in 

 breadth. It was prevented from giving way under the 

 pressure of the rising waters by having strong abutments 

 of wood laid against its centre, while the ends of these 

 abutments were secured by wedges, which could be 

 knocked off when necessary. The temporary dam was 

 now finished. Little or no water escaped through the 

 barrier, and that in the creek above it rose in the course 

 of three weeks to its top, which was about ten feet high, 

 forming a sheet that extended upwards fully a mile from 

 the dam. My family were invited early one morning to 

 go and witness the extraordinary effect which would be 

 produced by the breaking down of the barrier, and we all 



