"But the ruinous consequences were, providentially, the loss of property rather than life. The whole business portion of the city was inundated; and so entirely beyond all reasonable estimate was the rise of the waters, that a very large proportion of all the stocks of goods in the stores were flooded. Precautions had been taken, in the lower part of the city, to remove goods from the first to the second story, and yet many who did so had the floors of the second story burst up, and their goods let down into the waters below; while in the higher portions, where the goods were piled up on and about the counters, the waters rose above them, and involved them in a common destruction. Others, who did not remove their goods, suffered a total loss of them. "Thus far, however, the devastation was confined to the least valuable part of the wealth of the city. The lumber on the wharves constitutes the larger portion of the available property of the city; and here a kind Providence has spared the devoted city, and by one of those singular methods by which a present evil, which seems to be the greatest that could be inflicted, is the means of averting a greater one; for it was the occurrence of the jam which, while it inundated the stores, appeared to be the means of saving the lumber. The pressure of the ice against the wharves and lumber was so great as to wedge it in with immense strength, and formed a sort of wall outside the wharves, from which the jam, when it started, separated and passed out, leaving the lumber safe, though injured. "After the ice stopped, things remained in this situation during the next day, which was Sunday--the saddest and most serious Sunday, probably, ever passed in Bangor. Few, however, could spend the day in worship. All that could labor were employed, while the flood kept rising, in rescuing what property could be saved from the waters, and in taking poor families from their windows in boats.