The river-bank boys pick up, as easily as they breathe, knowledge as
miscellaneous as the drift piled on the shores. They know all the shoals
and principal eddies, without the aid of buoys. They know the ways and
seasons of the different fish. They learn to recognize the owner's marks
on the logs, and they know the times and ways of all the humbler as well
as the larger river craft, the scows and smacks, and the "gundalows"
which spend mysterious month after month hauled up among the sedges at
the mouths of the streams. Their own row-boats are heavy, square at both
ends, and clumsy to row, but as I have said, they are out in them in the
spring before the floating ice is out of the river, rescuing logs and
fragments of lumber from between the ice-cakes.
There is a good deal to the business of picking up logs. The price for
returning "strays" to the right owners is ten cents a log (the rate
increasing as you go down stream), and a good many can be towed at once
by a small boat. The price per log rises to twenty-five cents, near the
sea. In times of high freshet, the up-river booms often break, and then
there is a tremendous to-do at the mouth of the river: men, women, and
children, all who can handle or half-handle a dory, are at work at
log-rescuing. Incoming ships have found the surface of the ocean brown
with logs at these times, and have a great work to get through them.
Logs that have lost their marks are called "scalawags," and these are
sold for the benefit of the log-driving company. Hollow-hearted _pine_
logs are known by the curious term "concussy," or "conquassy." To show
the immense change in the prices of lumber, the best pine lumber, which
in 1870 was worth ten dollars a thousand feet, is now one hundred
dollars a thousand.
Now and then a boy takes to the river so strongly that he makes his life
work out of its teachings. The captains and engineers of most of our
river and harbor steamers, and of bigger craft, too, began life as
riverbank boys. Some of them take to fishing in earnest, some become
lumbermen, or go into the Coast-Survey service, or the Rivers and
Harbors; and the winter work on the ice leads to an interesting life for
a good many others. Once in a while one of these boys goes far from
home. We have had word of one and another, serving as pilot or engineer
in Japanese, Brazilian, and East Indian waters.
The three Tucker brothers, Joel, Reuel, and Amos, three finely-built
men, all worked up to be registered pilots. Joel, the eldest, was pilot
of an ocean-going steamer all his life. He grew very stout, and had a
fine nautical presence, in blue cloth and brass buttons. Reuel was lazy.
He never went higher than small raft-towing tugs, and he often gave up
his work and loafed about, fishing. He was the man who swam five miles
down river, and stopped then because he was bored, not because he was
tired. Amos, the finest of them, a gallant looking fellow, with very
bright blue eyes, was a pilot for a good many years, and then a foreman
in the ice business. He was a man of such shining kindness that he was
always up to the handle in work in the heart of his town, as selectman,
honorary and volunteer overseer of the poor, and helper-out in general.
In a case of all-night nursing, in a poor family, where a man's strength
was needed, Amos was on hand, rubbing his eyes, but watchful and ready.
Once, when a neighbor's wife had to be taken to the Insane Hospital,
Amos undertook the sad task, and his gentleness made it just bearable.
Parents looked to him for help in the care of a bad or unruly boy.
Then there were the Tracys, who ran--and still run--a queer little ferry
at Jonestown, "according to seasons." When the ice begins to break up
they row the passengers across, somehow, in a heavy flat-boat, between
the ice cakes. Their regular boat, in which they embark wagons and even
a motor, is a large scow pulled across by a chain, with a sail to help
when the wind serves. The Tracys' ferry is, I think, unique for one
regulation; man and wife go as one fare.
Some of the river bank people are mere squatters. _The_ squatter, as we
called him, _par excellence_, pulled the logs and bits for his dwelling
actually out of the river, as a muskrat collects bits of drift for his
house. He was a Frenchman, and such a house as he built! Part tar-paper,
part bark, part clay bank, the rest logs, barrel-staves, and a few
railroad sleepers. But there he lived, on a tiny level plot under the
railroad bank, so near the river that each spring freshet threatened
entire destruction. He made or acquired a boat that matched his house,
and presently he brought not only his wife and children, but two
brothers and an old mother to live with him. The women contrived some
tiny garden patches on the slopes of the river bank, and with the rich
silt of the stream these throve wonderfully. The men fished, and
"odd-jobbed" about.
Then came the Great Freshet. Dear me! shall we ever forget it? We woke
one March night to hear every bell in town ringing, while a long ominous
whistle repeated the terrifying signal of the freshet alarm.
There was a confusion of sounds from the river, wild crashings and
grindings and thunders, as the ice broke up in its full strength, with a
noise almost like cannon.
The water rose and rose. By daybreak it was up to the shop-counters in
the street, and people paddled in and out of the shops in canoes,
rescuing their goods. The ice-cakes were piled ten feet high on our
unfortunate railroad. Then a great holding-boom broke, a mile up river.
A twenty-foot wall of logs swept round the bend, and the watchers on the
roofs and raised platforms saw it splinter and carry out the Town Bridge
as if it had been kindlings.
Sheds and boat-houses and wharfing were whirled past all day in the
tumble of ice cakes. Like other people in danger, the Squatter carried
out his gipsy household goods, and moved up town with his family; all
but the old French mother. She would not be moved, but sat in the middle
of the road on a backless chair, watching her dwelling. She could have
done nothing to save it, but nothing could tear her away. The rain
poured all that day and the next. Some one lent her a big broken
umbrella, and there she sat. I could think of nothing but a forlorn old
eaves swallow, watching the place where her mud dwelling was being torn
off.
By some miracle of the eddy, however, the house stayed intact; but soon
after they all moved away, to safer, and, I believe, more comfortable
quarters.
The Lamont family lived a mile north of the Town. They had a ramshackle
house and barn, in a bit of open meadow by the mouth of one of the
brooks. You might say of the Lamonts that they were so steeped in river
mud that every bone of them was lazy and easy and slack. There were the
father and mother, and seven children. They were as unkempt and ragged
as could be, but they always seemed cheerful and smiling, and the
younger children were fat as little dumplings. The three eldest were
shambling young men; they and the father seemed perfectly content with a
little fishing and odd-jobbing, and now and then one of them took a turn
as deck-hand or stevedore, or--as a last resort--as farm-hand. The girls
and the mother dug and sold dandelion greens, dock, and thoroughwort and
other old-fashioned simples.
None of them had ever gone to school a day beyond the time required by
law, and they kept the truant officer busy at that; then all of a sudden
the youngest and fattest Lamont, whose incongruous name was Hernaldo,
appeared at the High School. He was an imperturbable child, and quite
dull, but he worked with a cheerful slow patience. He only held on for a
year, but no one had imagined he could keep on for so long, and he did
not do badly.
The elders died before the younger children were quite grown, and the
family scattered; one night, after it had been empty a year or two, the
ramshackle house burned, leaving the barn standing.
One morning about ten years afterwards a radiant being appeared at the
High School, a fat young man in frock coat and tall hat, who came
forward and shook hands effusively. It was Hernaldo Lamont! He was now
_chef_, it appeared, at one of the great California hotels through the
winters, and in Vancouver in summer, at a very large salary. A pretty
girl, charmingly dressed, whom he introduced as his wife, waited
modestly at the door.
His clothes were quite wonderful. He was shining with soap and with
fashion, and so full of warmth and of pleasure. He brought out colored
photographs of his two fat little children, told of his staff and his
patrons, beamed upon everyone, and showed his pretty wife all about our
plain High School, admiring and reverent. I think that if it had been
Oxford he could not have been prouder, and indeed Oxford could never be
to the average student a place of higher achievement than High School to
a Lamont!
He was so simple and kindly that I believe he would have taken his wife
to the Lamont shanty as happily. The Lamont barn is still standing,
grown up with tall nettles and dandelions. A farmer uses it for his
extra hay, mowed in the low rich patches of river meadow. Tramps sleep
in the hay, and quantities of barn-swallows flash in and out of the
empty windows.
Long ago our River was one of the great salmon streams of the country.
In my great grandfather's time agreements between apprentices and
servants, and their employers, held the stipulation that the employees
should not have to eat salmon _above five times in the week_; and the
fish were used for fertilizing the fields. There are none now at all,
and the sturgeon fishing, which in my father's boyhood used to make
summer nights on the River a time of torchlit adventure, is over too,
though still late on a summer afternoon you may see now and then a
silver flash, and hear a crash, as the huge creature jumps; and only
last week two sturgeon of over eight hundred pounds weight each were
brought in right near the Town Bridge. They were caught by two
hard-working lads, and brought them a little fortune, for they were sold
in New York for over $250.
Not even the flight of the birds from the south, unbelievable in wonder
as this is, is more miraculous than the run of the fish, from the vast
spaces of ocean up all our fresh-water streams for hundreds of miles.
Their bright thousands find their way unerringly, up into the heart of
the country. No one knows whence they come, and save for an occasional
straggler, no one has ever taken salmon or shad or ale-wife in deep
water. We know their passage up-stream, but no one knows when they take
their way down again.
The smelts run up, when winter is still at its height. They are caught
through holes in the ice. The men build huts of boards or of boughs,
each round his own smelt hole. They build a fire on the ice, or have a
kerosene lantern or lamp, and fish thus all day in fair comfort. They
catch smelts by thousands, so that our town's people, who can eat them
not two hours out of the water, are spoiled for the smelts which are
called fresh in cities. Tom-cod come up a little ahead of the smelts.
Soon after the ice goes out, while the water is still very rapid and
turgid, the alewives run up, and they are as good eating as smelts,
though too full of bones. They are smoked slightly, but not salted.
About this time, too, the smaller boys begin catching yellow-perch at
the mouths of the brooks. These, and tom-cod, are not thought worth
putting on the market, but they are crisp little fish, and a string of
them, thirteen for twelve cents, makes a good supper.[2]
Suckers also come with the opening of the brooks. The discovery has been
made lately, that these fish, which New Englanders despise (quite
wrongly, for if well cooked they are firm and good), are prized by the
Jewish population of some of the bigger cities, and bring a good price.
A ton and a half of suckers were shipped from our river this season.
Our royal fish are the shad, which arrive in the middle of May, when the
woods are all blossoming. The May river is full of their great silvery
squadrons. They are caught at night, in drift nets, by hundreds. Most of
them are shipped away, but our Town must and does eat as many as
possible. One family, who know what they like, practically abjure all
other solid food for the shad season!
Of all our fish, eels are the most mysterious; for they go _down_ river
to the ocean (out of the fresh water streams and lakes) to spawn,
instead of coming up. No one knows what mysterious depths they
penetrate, but it is said that baby eels are found in one and two
thousand fathoms of water. By midsummer they are about six inches long,
and are running home up the brooks. They wriggle up waterfalls and scale
the sheer faces of dams. They stay three or four years in their inland
home, growing to full size, and in September, the fat grown-up eels run
down the streams again, to spawn in the sea. This is the time when they
are caught at dams and in mill streams, and shipped to the big cities in
quantities. Our biggest paper mill, not long ago, was shut down entirely
because of the eels, which got in through the flumes by hundreds, and
stopped the water wheels.
The taking of the Acushticook eels is now a regular industry, and this
came about rather sadly. Stephen Mitchell, the millwright of the
Acushticook paper mill, was a fine man, with a turn for inventing. His
ideas were sound and a good many of his mechanical devices turned out
excellently. He became interested in explosives, and worked for a long
time at a new method for capping torpedoes. He had been warned time and
again, and such an intelligent man must have realized perfectly the
danger of work with explosive materials, but one day an accident
happened. There was an explosion which took not only both hands, but his
eyes.
I think everyone in the town felt sickened by the accident, and by the
prospect of helpless invalidism ahead of a fine active man. But Stephen,
as soon as his wounds healed, began looking for something to do.
The Acushticook eels had always been fished for in a desultory fashion,
and Stephen cast about for a way to make the fishing amount to more. The
mill owners did all in their power to help him. They gladly gave him the
sole right of the use of the stream, and helped him in building his dam.
He had also a grant from the Legislature. He hired good workers, and for
many years he and his wife, who was a master hand, lived happily and
successfully on their fishery. Sometimes two tons of eels were shipped
in the course of the autumn.
Stephen always was cheerful. He could see enough difference between
light and darkness to find his way about town, and he was so quick to
recognize voices that you forgot his blindness. He kept among people a
great deal, and was an animated talker at town gatherings. He was an
opinionated man, but a fine and upright one. After his death his widow
kept on with the fishery, and she still runs it with profit.
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[2] Both tom-cod and perch are now shipped to the cities in quantities.