48 
THE MAINE WOODS. 
knives, where it had rubbed on the rocks, to save fric¬ 
tion. 
To avoid the difficulties of the portage, our men deter¬ 
mined to u warp up ” the Passamagamet Falls; so while 
the rest walked over the portage with the baggage, I re¬ 
mained in the batteau, to assist in warping up. We 
were soon in the midst of the rapids, which were more 
swift and tumultuous than any we had poled up, and had 
turned to the side of the stream for the purpose of warp¬ 
ing, when the boatmen, who felt some pride in their skill, 
and were ambitious to do something more than usual, for 
my benefit, as I surmised, took one more view of the 
rapids, or rather the falls; and, in answer to our ques¬ 
tion, whether we couldn’t get up there, the other an¬ 
swered that he guessed he’d try it. So we pushed again 
into the midst of the stream, and began to struggle with 
the current. I sat in the middle of the boat to trim it, 
moving slightly to the right or left as it grazed a rock. 
With an uncertain and wavering motion we wound and 
bolted our way up, until the bow was actually raised two 
feet above the stern at the steepest pitch; and then, when 
everything depended upon his exertions, the bowman’s 
pole snapped in two; but before he had time to take the 
spare one, which I reached him, he had saved himself 
with the fragment upon a rock; and so we got up by a 
hair’s breadth; and Uncle George exclaimed that that 
was never done before, and he had not tried it if he had 
not known whom he had got in the bow, nor he in the 
bow, if he had not known him in the stern. At this 
place there was a regular portage cut through the woods, 
and our boatmen had never known a batteau to ascend 
the falls. As near as I can remember, there was a per¬ 
pendicular fall here, at the worst place of the whole 
