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Updated: July 14, 2025
New England gives honest measure on the finger-posts along her highways. At Piraway Ferry no two of the raftsmen and lumbermen, ignorant or educated, would give the same distance, either upon the lengths of surveyed roads or unmeasured rivers. "It is one hundred and sixty-five miles by river from Piraway Ferry to Conwayborough," said one who had travelled the route for years.
They knew well enough that the raftsmen were all down at the village laying in stores or having a spree, but still that was no excuse for their conducting this thing in an unpiratical way. They shoved off, presently, Tom in command, Huck at the after oar and Joe at the forward.
Billy Brackett had experienced considerable difficulty in finding this raft, and was greatly disappointed that his search in this direction should prove fruitless. The raftsmen had never heard of Major Caspar, nor of Winn Caspar, his son. They were lumbermen from far up on the Wisconsin River, and were taking this raft to New Orleans as a speculation.
Lore-ley, combing her yellow locks against the night-cloud, beheld old Gottlieb's rafts endlessly stealing on the moonlight through the iron pass she peoples above St. Goar. A wailful host were the wives of his raftsmen widowed there by her watery music!
The raft is guided by two immense oars, one before and one behind. I frequently saw these huge implements in the driftwood alongshore, suggesting some colossal race of men. The raftsmen have names of their own. From the upper Delaware, where I had set in, small rafts are run down which they call "colts." They come frisking down at a lively pace.
They had been notified of my approach at Trader's Hill by a courier sent from Dutton across the woods, and these men, whose knowledge of wood-craft is wonderful, had timed my movements so correctly that they had arrived just in time to meet me at this point. The two raftsmen rubbed the canoe all over with their hands, and expressed delight at its beautiful finish in their own peculiar vernacular.
But the mysterious light proved to be only a lantern in the hand of an old woman who had been to fetch a doctor, so she summoned up fresh courage, though she told herself that here near the lumber yards she might easily encounter raftsmen and guards watching the logs and planks piled on the banks of the river, fishermen, and sailors.
On wide, moist, melancholy meadows, scant-leaved trees, like weeping willows, their branches drooping in the mirror of an idly flowing stream, barges loaded with turf passing by, a floating bridge propelled by Japanese raftsmen, the water blue in the evening twilight, a great, pale moon, veiled by pale, bloody tints, rising above the distant edge of the melancholy plain.
John Ward, walking wearily home from a long visit to a sick woman, came, as he crossed the lumber-yards, upon a group of raftsmen; they had not heard his approach, and were talking loudly, with frequent bursts of drunken laughter.
It is the same wish to preserve his home that makes a peasant go to the city to earn his living while he leaves his family in the country to take care of the house. The peasant is, besides, entirely engrossed with the difficulties of existence. Necessity often urges him to desperate acts.... Some, who are almost starving, ingratiate themselves with the raftsmen.
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