LITMIR.BIZ

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being badly bruised. I remember also an adventure with a bear. My parents had gone to church, leaving me at home, greatly against my will. I attempted to follow, but missed the road and wandered off into a wood, perhaps three miles away. When my parents returned they were much alarmed, and parties immediately went in pursuit. When I knew I was lost I set up a vigorous screaming, which had the effect of attracting attention from two very different parties. The first was a huge bear in quest of food, and doubtless delighted at the prospect before him. The second was one of the rescuing parties in quest of the lost boy. Both simultaneously approached the screaming youngster and Bruin fought stubbornly for his prey, but was vanquished by the clubs of my rescuers, and I was carried home in triumph. I do not clearly recall all the incidents of this scene, and, strangely enough, do not remember seeing the bear. Perhaps the terror of being lost drove out every other impression. An excuse for the narration of this apparently trifling incident may be found in the fact that but for the prompt arrival of the rescuing party, this history would never have been written.

      When I was ten years of age my parents removed to Bloomfield, Maine. While in Tamworth I had excellent opportunities of attending school, which I improved to the utmost. After leaving Tamworth my school privileges were well nigh ended, as I never received from that time more than six months' schooling. My father followed lumbering on the Kennebec river. During the first winter in Maine, he took me to the logging camp as camp boy. During the second winter he hired me to Matthew and Lewis Dunbar as a cook for their wood camp. I cooked for six men and received five dollars a month. I was used very kindly by the Dunbars, but that winter in the woods seemed a long, long winter. The only book in camp was the Bible. There were, however, newspapers and playing cards. In the spring my father used the fifteen dollars received for my three months' work to purchase a cow. I served the Dunbars the third winter, as cook, for six dollars a month, and worked the ensuing summer on farms at about twenty-five cents per day. During the fourth winter I worked for the Dunbars and Timothy Snow at seven dollars per month, and the summer following worked on a farm for Benjamin Cayford at seven dollars. Cayford was a merciless tyrant, and sometimes compelled his men to work in the field till nine o'clock at night. These details of wages paid and work done, uninteresting in themselves, serve to show the value of a boy's work (I was not yet fifteen) and what was expected of the average boy, for mine was no exceptional case nor was my father more exacting than others in his station in life. He was in poor health, and had a large family of boys. We were eight in number, and of these I was one of the most robust and able to assist in the support of the family.

      This year I persuaded my father to sell me my time, which amounted to five years, which he reluctantly did, accepting two hundred and fifty dollars as an equivalent. It was my ambition to go West. Horace Greeley had not uttered the talismanic words, "Go West, young man," but I believed that by going West I would be better able to advance my own interests and assist my parents. My father signed the necessary paper relinquishing my time, which was printed in the Skowhegan Clarion. From this time until I was nineteen years old I worked on the river and on farms, worked continuously and beyond my strength. I worked another summer for Cayford, but have no pleasant recollections of him, for on his farm I was sadly overworked, being often called to work before sunrise and kept at work after sunset. I worked two winters cooking in the woods for Capt. Asa Steward, of Bloomfield, one of the best men I ever served, a kind hearted, honest Christian. He gave me good counsel and good wages besides. In the fall of 1835 I went into the woods to work for Capt. Eb. Snow, of Madison. Like Cayford, he was a merciless tyrant and abusive to his men. I left his camp before my engagement closed, not being able to endure his abuse longer. This is the only time in which I failed to keep a labor engagement. I finished the winter with Capt. Asa Steward, but my eyes became so inflamed from the smoke of the camp that I was obliged to abandon cooking.

      During this winter occurred an incident that came near having a serious and even fatal termination. There were three of us, Simeon Goodrich, Jimmie Able and myself, who went down the Kennebec to the Forks, a distance of twelve miles from camp. A deep, damp snow had fallen the night previous, and through this snow, reaching above our knees, we trudged wearily till Able gave out. We carried him a short distance, but becoming exhausted ourselves, laid him down in the snow. To remain with him would be to imperil the lives of all; by hurrying on we might be able to send a party to bring him in. We carefully made for him a bed of fir boughs and placed loose garments over him and under him, and as he was sick, weak and faint, gave him a draught of liquid opodeldoc, and leaving the bottle with him, hurried on. We traveled the last mile through an opening. Snow drifted deeply. We dragged our bodies through the drifts in the direction of a glimmering light, which proved to be Sturgis' hotel, which we reached at 11 o'clock p. m. A team was sent back immediately for the lost Able by a road of which we knew nothing. The rescuing party met him trudging along with all his baggage. The opodeldoc had revived him, and he had traveled a full mile when he met the rescuing party. At two o'clock the team returned bringing the lost wayfarer.

      Another adventure terminated more disastrously than this. In the spring of 1835 I was employed in taking logs across Moosehead lake. The logs were in booms, and were moved by a capstan and rope. This was before the days of steamboats, and the moving of the booms was no light task. On this occasion a gale of wind struck us and drifted us across the lake. We threw out an anchor, hoping to check the course of the boom and swing it into Cowan's bay. In one of our throws the anchor tripped, or caught fast, and suddenly tightened the line. Our whole crew were in an instant hurled headlong. Some were thrown into the water. One man (Butler) had his ribs broken. All were more or less injured. The capstan went overboard. The old boom swung on and on, and, passing Spencer's bay, broke and went to pieces on the shore. The logs were with great difficulty regathered, but were finally brought to the outlet of the lake July 4th, the last raft of the season.

      After river driving in the spring of 1835, I went to the Penobscot river and found employment at twenty dollars a month at East Great Works, building a dam. John Mills, our superintendent, was a good man. There was a lyceum here, the first I ever attended. In December I returned to the Kennebec, and in the spring of 1836 went to Dead river to drive, but an attack of the measles and general ill health, with symptoms of pulmonary derangement, compelled me to abandon the work. I had lived nine years on the Kennebec, years of hard labor and exertion beyond my strength, and in that time had earned enough to pay my father two hundred and fifty dollars. I had been able to purchase a small library, and had two hundred dollars in cash to defray my expenses to the West.

      Reminiscences. – He that leaves the home of his youth for a strange land carries with him memories, pleasant to recall, of scenes and incidents, the influence of which he feels to the latest hour of life. There are some things he can not forget. They may not be an essential part of his own life history, but still they have found a place in his mind and seem a part of himself, and he recurs to them again and again with ever increasing delight. There are other things, may be, not so pleasant to dwell upon, which still have a place in his memory and may be profitably recalled. No one who has ever lived in Maine can forget its dark pine forests, its rugged hills, its rushing streams, cold and clear as crystal, its broad lakes, the abundant game of its forests and the fish in its waters. The Minnesota and Wisconsin pioneers, who with the author of this book claim Maine as an early home, will not object to the insertion in this chapter of a few of these reminiscences.

      Moosehead Lake. – My first visit to Moosehead lake was in the early winter of 1834. At that time it was still in the wilderness, only two settlers having found their way to its shores. We were going with a six ox team to a camp on the Brasua and our road led us across the frozen lake. Emerging from a beech and maple grove on the margin near Haskell's, our sled plunged downward, and in a moment we found ourselves on the gray ice of the lake, with a wonderful panorama spread out before us. The distant islands and the shores, hilly and mountainous, stood out plainly between the winter sky and the ice covered lake. The mirage added its finishing touches to the picture, increasing the brightness and apparent size of distant objects, or lending them brilliant hues, the whole scene sparkling in the frosty sunlit air, making a vision of beauty that could not fade. On we trudged over the ice, the sled creaking, the ice emitting a roaring sound, not unlike the discharge of a park of artillery, sounds produced by the expansion of the ice. We trudged on past islands and craggy, rock-bound shores, passed Burnt Jacket, Squaw and Moxey mountains in the east, Lily and Spencer bays at the southeast, Misery and other mountains in the west, while far away

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