No one at the Seminary these days has ever heard the "Chronicle of the Katahdin Drive," our lead article for this issue. It was first presented as a talk before the Rhetorical Society in Bangor on April 12, 1858, by then student, John Smith Sewall, who graduated later that same year. He was a member of the party which embarked from Bangor to the northern wilderness where it assaulted Maine's highest mountain--a time long before such a trip could be made in a single day. Sewall's account is replete with the eloquence one would expect of his time, yet it makes for a good read today, particularly for any familiar with the territory.

John S. Sewall graduated from Bowdoin College in 1850. He joined Commodore Perry on the expedition to Japan in 1853-4, a story told in Sewall's The Logbook of the Captain's Clerk. Following his experience at Bangor Seminary, he was ordained to the church in Wenham, Massachusetts. In 1864, he served as Chaplain to the 8^th Massachusetts regiment in the Civil War. Later, he served on the faculty at Bowdoin College and from 1875 to 1903, was Professor of Homiletics at Bangor Seminary-a varied and adventurous career.

We are indebted to Tom O'Donnell, Assistant Librarian of Bangor Seminary's Portland Center, for undertaking the editorial work on the essay, for locating the sources of Sewall's literary allusions, and for putting this issue of the Bulletin together. He received assistance with the reviews from Mark Richardson, Krista Gary, Happy Copley, and John Mark Koerber.

Clifton G. Davis
Librarian