PEPACTON: A SUMMER 



adelphia. In some places the speed is. very great, 

 almost equaling that of an express train. The pas- 

 sage of such places as Cochecton Falls and " Foul 

 Rift" is attended with no little danger. The raft 

 is guided by two immense oars, one before and one 

 behind. I frequently saw these huge implements in 

 the drift-wood along shore, suggesting some colossal 

 race of men. The raftsmen have names of their 

 own. From the upper Delaware, where I had set 

 in, small rafts are run down which they call " colts." 

 They come frisking down at a lively pace. At Han- 

 cock they usually couple two rafts together, when I 

 suppose they have a span of colts ; or do two colta 

 make one horse ? Some parts of the framework of 

 the raft they call "grubs;" much depends upon 

 these grubs. The lumbermen were and are a hardy, 

 virile race. The Hon. Charles Knapp, of Deposit, 

 now eighty-three years of age, but with the look and 

 step of a man of sixty, told me he had stood nearly 

 all one December day in the water to his waist, re- 

 constructing his raft, which had gone to pieces on 

 the head of an island. Mr. Knapp had passed the 

 first half oij his life in Colchester and Hancock, and, 

 although no sportsman, had once taken part in a 

 great bear hunt there. The bear was an enormous 

 one, and was hard pressed by a gang of men and 

 dogs. Their muskets and assaults upon the beast 

 with clubs had made no impression. Mr. Knapp 

 saw where the bear was combg, and he thought he 

 would show them how easy it was to dispatch a bear 



