The only thing that I can add here is that we tend to forget about water turbines many of which were about 45 horse power and could be driven with an 8 foot head of water. The horsepower increased with the head of water depth, but generally speaking the 8 foot head was a good rule of thumb, and was easily obtainable in this area, on side creeks entering the St Lawrence river water shed. These turbines started to appear about 1850 in this area and improvements were rapidly put in place.
They were pretty well located as a stationary power plant, not portable so to speak as a steam engine was
There was ample power here to drive a circular saw of say 5 to 6 foot diameter at a decent cutting speed. this speed of course was dependant on the size of the log being cut.
In my book it was hard to beat the steady power of water or steam, water being the cheapest of the two when available.
In mills the speed was steadied by the use of large flywheels that stored and delivered power as needed, acting like a governor so to speak.
