Beadle's Dime Novels No. 142: The Sagamore of Saco — page 74: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

73 THM BAGAMORH oF BACco. nary limits, for seeing her reel and sink to the earth from ex- haustion, and féaring she might not reach her destination, he snared a rabbit in her pathway, and left cooked beans and corn slightly concealed under a boughs, as if stored for the use © of a hunter or trapper. These he saturated with the juice of a well-known narcotic, sure that a long and refreshing slumber would ensue. Nor was he disa nted. Acashee eagerly availed herself of the hidden viands, and slept long and well, to go onward when she awoke with renewed vigor. Arrived at the Androscoggin village, the duty of the scout was incomplete till he should learn the destination of the war-party evidently making preparations for a march. As the chiefs of the Androscoggins sat around the council-fire that night, and listened to the story of the woman—the silence undistur save by the heavy roar of the falls, now pour- ig in one continuous thunder-roar, and now suspended as a lack of the freightage of water—a pause like a human breat —and then bursting into its never-ending diapason of sublime melody—there might have been seen, prone upon the ground, a lithe, slender form, and a keen ear, that lost not a word of all their plans, and a pair of bright eyes exulting in the know]- edge he had gained of all the movements designed. hen Acashee left the council, she did not retire to the wig- wams that were offered her, but waving her hand, forbidding the women to follow, she descended th tanks of the river to the foot of the falls, known to the Indians by the name of Pejipscot, and in our day as Lewiston Falls. We must pause briefly and describe this most beautiful region —beautifal in our day even, notwithstanding the majestic falls have been subjected to the uses of the mill and factory. The river Androscoggin is a wild, coquettish nymph, now moving in stately a amid embowering trees, and now bending into abrupt and startling curves, and anon plunging over headland rocks in one vast sheet, to sport again amid soft savannas and placid bays, once the mooring-place of Indian canoes when the tribes were bent upon some deadly enterprise. In our day these warm und fertile slopes give place to culti- her so grateful tothe spin, and’ that primitive blast of hor | so gre to the spirit, and that ve of ho winding itself into a thounatid echoes, the signal for the ingath. ering of a household. . Cliffs, crowned with fir, overhung the waters; hills rising hundreds of feet cast their dense shadows quite across the stream ; and even in our day, the slim canoe of the Indian may be seen poised below, while some stern relict of the tribes sits motionless therein, and — upward to the ancient sites of his people, and recalis the day when, above the Falls of Pejipscot, % populous village sent up its council-smoke day and night, ~ . Connmiclooolks. conn