KTAADN. 
3 
such clothing and articles as were indispensable, and my 
companion carried his gun. 
Within a dozen miles of Bangor we passed through 
the villages of Stillwater and Oldtown, built at the falls 
of the Penobscot, which furnish the principal power by 
which the Maine woods are converted into lumber. The 
mills are built directly over and across the river. Here 
is a close jam, a hard rub, at all seasons ; and then the 
once green tree, long since white, I need not say as 
the driven snow, but as a driven log, becomes lumber 
merely. Here your inch, your two and your three inch 
stuff begin to be, and Mr. Sawyer marks off those spaces 
which decide the destiny of so many prostrate forests. 
Through this steel riddle, more or less coarse, is the 
arrowy Maine forest, from Ktaadn and Chesuncook, and 
the head-waters of the St. John, relentlessly sifted, till it 
comes out boards, clapboards, laths, and shingles such 
as the wind can take, still perchance to be slit and slit 
again, till men get a size that will suit. Think how stood 
the white-pine tree on the shore of Chesuncook, its 
branches soughing with the four winds, and every indi¬ 
vidual needle trembling in the sunlight, — think how it 
stands with it now, — sold, perchance, to the New Eng¬ 
land Friction-Match Company! There were in 1837, 
as I read, two hundred and fifty saw-mills on the Penob¬ 
scot and its tributaries above Bangor, the greater part of 
them in this immediate neighborhood, and they sawed 
two hundred millions of feet of boards annually. To 
this is to be added the lumber of the Kennebec, Andros¬ 
coggin, Saco, Passamaquoddy, and other streams. No 
wonder that we hear so often of vessels which are be¬ 
calmed off our coast, being surrounded a week at a time 
by floating lumber from the Maine woods. The mission 
