RIVER LIFE. 171 



bracing liis feet against his companion, he gave a sudden and 

 powerful kick, which disengaged him. Then rising to the sur- 

 face, after this most painful act, to which he was impelled from 

 dire necessity, he struck for the shore, and barely reached it in 

 time to save himself from the sad fate that awaited his unfortu- 

 nate associate, who, poor fellow, still clinging with a death-grasp 

 to the shred of garment which was rent from his companion in 

 the struggle, was carried over the falls, and then, passing under a 

 jam of logs, floated down the river several miles, where his body 

 was found, and interred on the banks of the Penobscot. 



I have often passed the spot where he sleeps. The green grass 

 waves in silence over his grave, and now the plow of the hus- 

 bandman turns the greensward at his side, where once the forest 

 trees majestically waved over his rude bier. 



The following instance of the remarkable escape of a river- 

 driver was related by one who witnessed the afiair. I think it 

 happened on the Androscoggin. Among the crew there and 

 then engaged was a young man who prided himself upon his 

 fearlessness of danger ; and, to maintain the character he thus 

 arrogated to himself, would unnecessarily encounter perils which 

 the prudent would shun. His frequent boastings rendered his 

 society not a little unpleasant, at times, to the less pretending ; 

 and although this dislike was not so great as to lead them to re- 

 joice in seeing him suller, yet an event which might be hkely to 

 cool his courage would not have been unwelcome to the crew. 

 On one occasion he ventured upon a jam of logs just above a 

 rolling dam, over which the spring freshets poured one vast sheet 

 of water, plunging several feet perpendicularly into a boiling caul- 

 dron. The jam started so suddenly that he was precipitated with 

 the logs over this fearful place, where not only the fall and un- 

 dcr-tow threatened instant death, but the peril M'as imminent 

 of being crushed by the tumbling logs. No one really expocte4 

 to see him come out alive, but, to our surprise, he came up like a 



