of arrow-heads on the shore, and one broken stone
chisel, which were greater novelties to the Indians than to me. After
this, on Old Fort Hill, at, the bend of the Penobscot, three miles
above Bangor, looking for the site of an Indian town which some think
stood thereabouts, I found more arrow-heads, and two little dark and
crumbling fragments of Indian earthenware, in the ashes of their
fires. The Indians on the Island appeared to live quite happily and
to be well treated by the inhabitants of Oldtown.
We visited Veazie's mills, just below the Island, where were sixteen
sets of saws,--some gang saws, sixteen in a gang, not to mention
circular saws. On one side, they were hauling the logs up an
inclined plane by water-power; on the other, passing out the boards,
planks, and sawed timber, and forming them into rafts. The trees were
literally drawn and quartered there. In forming the rafts, they use
the lower three feet of hard-wood saplings, which have a crooked and
knobbed butt-end, for bolts, passing them up through holes bored in
the corners and sides of the rafts, and keying them. In another
apartment they were making fence-slats, such as stand all over New
England, out of odds and ends,--and it may be that I saw where the
picket-fence behind which I dwell at home came from. I was surprised
to find a boy collecting the long edgings of boards as fast as cut
off, and thrusting them down a hopper, where they were _ground
up_ beneath the mill, that they might be out of the way; otherwise
they accumulate in vast piles by the side of the building, increasing
the danger from fire, or, floating off, they obstruct the river. This
was not only a saw-mill, but a grist-mill, then. The inhabitants of
Oldtown, Stillwater, and Bangor cannot suffer for want of
kindling-stuff, surely. Some get their living exclusively by picking
up the drift-wood and selling it by the cord in the winter. In one
place I saw where an Irishman, who keeps a team and a man for the
purpose, had covered the shore for a long distance with regular piles,
and I was told that he had sold twelve hundred dollars' worth in a
year. Another, who lived by the shore, told me that he got all the
material of his out-buildings and fences from the river; and in that
neighborhood I perceived that this refuse wood was frequently used
instead of sand to fill hollows with, being apparently cheaper than
dirt.
I got my first clear view of Katadn, on this excursion, from a
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