"The closing scene of this dreadful disaster occurred on Sunday evening, beginning at about seven o'clock. The alarm was again rung through the streets that the jam had given way. The citizens again rushed abroad to witness what they knew must be one of the most sublime and awful scenes of nature, and also to learn the full extent of their calamity. Few, however, were able to catch a sight of the breaking up of the jam, which, for magnitude, it is certain, has not occurred on this river for more than one hundred years. The whole river was like a boiling cauldron, with masses of ice upheaved as by a volcano. But soon the darkness shrouded the scene in part. The ear, however, could hear the roaring of the waters and the crash of buildings, bridges, and lumber, and the eye could trace the mammoth ice-jam of four miles long, which passed on majestically, but with lightning rapidity, bearing the contents of both rivers on its bosom. The noble covered bridge of the Penobscot, two bridges of the Kenduskeag, and the two long ranges of saw-mills, besides other mills, houses, shops, logs, and lumber enough to build up a considerable village. The new market floated over the lower bridge across the Kenduskeag, a part of which remains, and, most happily, landed at a point of the wharves, where it sunk, and formed the nucleus of a sort of boom, which stopped the masses of floating lumber in the Kenduskeag, and protected thousands of dollars' worth of lumber on the wharves below. "So suddenly and so rapidly was all this enacted, that it seems impossible to believe it to have occurred without loss of life. Yet such appears to be the happy result. Rumor, indeed, consigned many to a watery grave, who were most unexpectedly preserved. There were, for instance, twenty or thirty men on one of the bridges when it gave way, some of whom jumped into the water to save themselves, but none were lost. A raft passed down the Kenduskeag with three or four boys upon it, and they were seen floating into the vortex of the jam, but the raft passed near enough to a store for them to leap from it to a platform, and thus they saved their lives. A boat also was crossing the river when the jam started, and the river was rushing in a torrent, but they also got safe to land. Many such hazards occurred, but without the loss of a single life.