AN EXCITING ADVENTURE.

The flatboat was done in about a month, and Lincoln and his friends
prepared to leave Sangamon. Before he started, however, he was the
hero of an adventure so thrilling that he won new laurels in the
community. Mr. Roll, who was a witness to the whole exciting scene,
tells the story as follows:

"It was the spring following the winter of the deep snow.[A] Walter
Carman, John Seamon, myself, and at times others of the Carman boys,
had helped Abe in building the boat, and when he had finished we went
to work to make a dug-out, or canoe, to be used as a small boat with
the flat. We found a suitable log about an eighth of a mile up the
river, and with our axes went to work under Lincoln's direction. The
river was very high, fairly 'booming.' After the dug-out was ready to
launch we took it to the edge of the water, and made ready to 'let her
go,' when Walter Carman and John Seamon jumped in as the boat struck
the water, each one anxious to be the first to get a ride. As they
shot out from the shore they found they were unable to make any
headway against the strong current. Carman had the paddle, and Seamon
was in the stern of the boat. Lincoln shouted to them to 'head
upstream' and 'work back to shore,' but they found themselves
powerless against the stream. At last they began to pull for the wreck
of an old flatboat, the first ever built on the Sangamon, which had
sunk and gone to pieces, leaving one of the stanchions sticking above
the water. Just as they reached it Seamon made a grab, and caught hold
of the stanchion, when the canoe capsized, leaving Seamon clinging to
the old timber, and throwing Carman into the stream. It carried him
down with the speed of a mill-race, Lincoln raised his voice above the