f I LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. % \ Chap. ...F JL.C ' Shelf . ._» UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, i PICTURESQUE MAINE. IF/ TH DESCRIPTIONS BY M. F. SWEETSER. 1Y)RTI..\XT1 : C II I S II C) L AI K R () T II 1-: R S. CopvRir.iiT, iSSo, nv iiuori J. ciiisnoLM. Electrotyped and Friiited by Rand, Avery, &^ Co., Boston. " If thflu art luorn and hard beset With sorrows, that thou wou/dst forget, If thou wouldst read a lesson that will keep Thy heart from fainting, and thy soul from sleep, Go to the 'woods and hills! No tears Dim the sweet look that Nature wearsT Longfellow. " What is most striking in the Maine wilderness is the eontinuousness of the forest, with feiver open inten'als or glades than you had imagined. Except the fe7v burnt-lands, the narrow internals on the rivers, the bare tops of the high mountains, and the lakes and streams, the forest is uninterrupted. It is even more grim and wild than you had anticipated, — a damp and intricate wilderness, in the spring everywhere wet and miry. The aspect of the count)y, indeed, is universally stern and savage, excepting the distant views of the forest from hills, and the lake pros- pects, ivhich are mild and civilizing in a degree. The lakes are something which you are unprepared for : they lie up so high exposed to the light, and the forest is diminished to a fine fringe on their edges, with here and there a blue mountain, like amethyst jewels set around sofne jewel of the first water, — so anterior, so supe- rior, to all the changes that are to take place on their shores, even notv civil and refined, and fair as they can ever be. These are not the artificial forests of an English king, — a royal preserve merely. Here prevail no forest laics but those of nature. The aborigines have never been dispossessed, nor ?iature disforested. . . . What a place to live, and what a place to die and be buried in .' There, certainly, men would live forever, and laugh at death and the grave." Thoreau. " TJic rich, warm, red blood, is the iriiimph of the Sea ; hy if she has aiiiviated and an/ied with mightiest strength her giants, so miicJi mii^htier than mightiest giants of the earth. She has made that element, and she can re-make you, poor, pale, drooping flower. She abounds, superabounds, in that rich, red blood : in her children it so abounds that thex give it forth to every wind. . . . And she has also, what you have not, a superabundant strength. Her breathing gives I know not 7vhat of inspiring excitement, of what we may call physical heroism. With all her violence, the great goierating elonent inspires us with the same fiery vivacity, the same wild love, with which she lierself palpitates.'^ M. Jules Michelet. " Nowhei-e fairer, sweeter, i-arer, Does the golden-locked fruit-bearer llirough his painted woodlands stray, Than where hillside oaks and beeches Overlook the long, blue reaches. Silver coves and pebbled beaches. And green isles of Casco Bay ; Notvhei-e day, for delay. With a tenderer look beseeches, 'Let me 7i>ith my chaj-med earth stay.' On the grain-lands of the mainlands Stands the serried corn, like train-bands. Plume and pennon rustling gay ; Out at sea, the islands wooded. Silver bii'ches, golden-hooded. Set with maples, cnmson-blooded. White sea-foam and sand-hills gray, Stretch away, far away, Dim and dreamy, over-brooded By the hazy autumn day.'' Whittier. CONTENTS. Introductory. — Picturesque Maine Portland ...... Old Orchard Beach poothbay . . . Augusta ..... Water VI LLE ..... I^ANGOR ...... Mount Desert . . Schooner Head .... Ctre.ai' Head ..... The Ovens .... Moosehead Lake .... Lewiston ..... Winthrop Pond .... The Rangeley Lakes . p'.ar.mixgtox ..... r.^ngelev l.^ke .... Kenneh.ago L.ake .... CupsuFiic Lake .... Lake Mooselucmaguntic . 'I'm: Tpper 13am Lake Wei.okenebacook Lake IMolevchunka.munk 15 21 23 27 29 32 35 41 42 42 46 53 55 57 58 60 61 61 62 62 64 6:; LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Portland. Old Orchard Beach. Old Orchard House. , Samoset House, Mouse Island, Boothbay. Augusta. Waterville. Bangor. Bangor House. Mount Desert — General View. Grand Central Hotel, Mount Desert. Schooner Head, Mount Desert. Great Head, INIount Desert. The Ovens, Mount Desert. . The Foot of Moosehead Lake. Mount Kineo, from Birch Point. Rii'OGENUs P\vlls, looking east. Moxie P\\lls. Lewjston. Winthrop Pond. ' p^armington. Crosev's Camp, Rangelev Lake. Kennebago Lake, Rangit.i.v Laki:. AziscoHOS and Observatory Mountains, Rangelev Lake PICTURESQUE MAINE. AINE, the Pine-Tree State, covers an area of about thirty- two thousand square miles, nearly half of the soil of New England ; and is equal in size to Scotland or Ireland, or to Belgium and Holland combined. It is more than double the size of Greece, and one-seventh as large as Texas. A tenth of this area is occupied by inland lakes, the reser- voirs of the great rivers ; and nearly two-thirds is still primeval forest, from whose timber scores of cities are yet to be built throughout the Atlantic States. It is in this noble wilderness, large enough to ingulf States and principalities, that the abounding natural attractions abide which draw myriads of visitors each returning season. The population of Maine is not far from six hundred thousand souls, dwelling by the rivers, in the belt between the ocean and the forest, and subsisting mainly by commerce and manufactures. Swarming from this northern hive, li-ke their Gothic ancestors, scores of thousands of enter- prising pioneers have migrated to the far West, to found new realms in the silent heart of the continent ; or have spread through the elder Atlantic States, where their energy and determination are everywhere conspicuous. There are a few manufacturing cities, like Lewiston and Biddeford, prolific in cotton cloths and other useful wares ; a few decadent ship-building towns, slowly fading into the reposeful and mildly reproach- ful aspect of the elder Tuscan cities ; a hundred obscure ports, sacred to schooners and fishing-craft ; and nian\' ([uict little river-towns, alongside the broad bright streams from the wilderness. Back of these, and on the highlands between, are extensive areas devoted to farming, where dwin- dling settlements pursue the most ancient of human avocations. 9 lo Picturesque Maine. But the predominant interest of Maine is maritime, in the coasting- trade and the fishing-fleet ; and the line of the shore, whose sinuosities extend for twenty-five hundred miles (in a direct distance of less than three hundred miles), affords facilities for fisheries only second in magni- tude to those of Massachusetts. Every Norwegian hamlet and farm- neighborhood possesses its ship ; every Nova-Scotian cove has its name emblazoned on some far-sailing vessel ; and almost every family on the Maine coast owns some part of a trim little schooner or brig, familiar with the coast from Labrador to the Carolinas, and has a kinsman in her crew. The fibre of the Vikings is in the make-up of these men ; and they still merit the glowing eulogy of Burke: " Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice, and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits, — whilst we are looking for them beneath the Arctic Circle, — ,we hear that they have pierced into the opposite regions of polar cold ; that they are at the antipodes, and' engaged under the frozen scri)cnt of the South." Nine hundred years ago the Norsemen, sailing far southward from brumal Iceland, came upon this coast, on their adventurous way to the vineyards of Narragansett. The Crusades were then far in the future ; and Charlemagne had been dead hardly more than a hundred years. Nearly four centuries ago, and before the Reformation, the fishermen of Biscay began to frequent the bays of Maine ; and the Cabots sailed these narrow seas, sighting the vast littoral solitudes. A hundred years later, Gosnold and Bring explored the coast, and De Monts and Champlain took possession in the name of France, raising the Bourbon lilies and the cross at various points. Soon English colonies dotted the silent coast, — Popham's Anglicans at the mouth of the Kennebec, Vines's traders at Saco, Gorges at York; and the great contest began which ever attends the settlement of Anglo- Saxons in barbarian land."?, from Plymouth to the Yellowstone. P^or nearly eighty years, long and bitter Indian wars ensued, by which the colonists suffered decimation, and most of their towns were destroyed. The savages received aid and direction in their attacks from French offi- cers and armaments, and for three generations the settlements were in a state of siege. Appalling massacres ensued, at Arrowsic, Black Point, Casco, and Dover; and terrible retributions followed, until the aborigines were finally driven back through the wilderness to the St. Lawrence Val- PicHiresque Maine. ii ley. A few hundred were suffered to remain, and their descendants still dwell on the Penobscot islands and by Passamaquoddy Bay. One of the most intelligent of the old pioneers told Thoreau that the lumbermen still found, here and there in the remotest forests, tall oaken crosses, which were set up by the first Roman-Catholic missionaries, journeying from Quebec to evangelize the wild tribes of interior Maine. These lonely symbols of faith must be the oldest monuments of Euro- pean civilization in the State, for the dauntless " black-robed chiefs " established missions here not far from i6iO. Along the margin of the sea, on high promontories or surf-beaten islands, are remnants of for- gotten fortresses and villages, Norse, French, Dutch, or P^nglish, min- gled with mementos of an older civilization, whose source the antiquaries cannot even conjecture. One by one the ancient royal grants of land east of the Piscataqua were bought up by Massachusetts, or fell to her by default, until at last the Bay Province governed the entire domain, from the. year 1686 until 1820, when the District of Maine was elevated to the rank of a State, the twenty-third in the order of seniority of American Commonwealths, and (except Florida) the youngest of the Atlantic States. Since that time, in spite of its great contributions to the Western exodus, the population of Maine has more than doubled. Between i860 and 1870 there was a marked decrease in the number of inhabitants, owing in part to the civil war, and in part to Western emigration; but between 1870 and 1880 there was a notable increase in the population, and also in the valuation of the State, which is nearly a quarter of a billion dollars. The fantastic folk-lore of the Acadians has invested the eastern prov- inces and the lower St. Lawrence with a wild and legendary charm ; and the masterly conceptions of the urban poets and historians of Massachu- setts have made the lower Atlantic coasts of New England, from Nan- tucket to the Shoals, a classic strand. The scenery of the shores of Maine has not been thus endued with the imperishable charm of romance, and its countless legends and politic episodes of history still await the touch of refined and patriotic genius. Here and there the sweet music of minstrelsy lingers along the coast, where Whittier attuned his melo- dies to the wild sea-breeze at Harpswell Neck or Castine Point, or to the sighing of the pines of Xorridgewock ; or where Longfellow's plaintive threnody for his lost ycnith still haunts the bright reaches of Portland 12 Picturesque Maine. harbor and town. Nor should we forget the delicate and subtle charac- terization of a Maine hamlet and the social canonization of a Maine dam- sel, as recorded by Howclls in his "Lady of the Aroostook;" or the exquisite sweetness of "The Peail of Orr's Island," wherein Mrs. Stovve portrays, with rare skill and insight, the life of the dwellers on Casco Bay, infused with quiet but intense passion, and filled with the spirit of the sea. No better handbook can be found, for the sentimental traveller to the eastward than that which portrays the character and surroundings of the little Orr's Island community, so like to 'hundreds of others be- tween Cape Ncddick and Lubec. The libellous Knowles sent word to the London clubs, many years ago, that the climate of Nova Scotia consisted of nine months of winter, and three months of fog; and, as late as the Jacksonian epoch, it was generally believed that Maine enjoyed six months of winter, and six months of fog. There are fogs, sometimes,' on this coast, which for solidity and endurance can fairly rival any that ever enwrapped the land of Scott and Bruce ; but they surely banish the dog-days, which are not found beyond Monhegan. Da Costa exults, strangely enough, in saying, " At Mount Desert we have an opportunity of studying every variety of foggy display." They yet tell of th(^ old captain, who drove his jack-knife into a fog-bank while dropping down Penobscot Bay, and, on his return from a three-years' voyage in the Pacific, found it still sticking in the same place. But, happily, the Gulf-Stream exhalations are only occasional visitors on this serene coast. The average annual temperature is 432°, varying from 102° to 30° below zero, with sixty-four rainy days, and thirty snowy days, in a year. The summers are usually temperate and mild, and afford admirable days for travelling, especially in the yachts on the blue sea, or the canoes on the upper rivers. Yet Maine was for many decades a terra incognita among pleasure-trav- ellers. In his work on American scenery, published at London forty years ago, N. P. Willis naively wrote that "Very much the same sort of incredu-' lity with which one reads a traveller's account of the deliciousness of the Russian winter comes over him when it is proposed to him to admire any thing so near the cradle of the east wind as Penobscot River." Lowell, in 1854, spoke of Maine as the "mystery of the Orient ;" and Thoreau regarded it chiefly as the guardian of a wilderness more interesting than any other this side of the great prairies. Ten years ago, however, so ripe Picturesque Maine. 13 a scholar and so experienced a traveller as Mr. Da Costa ventured to speak thus : "We hear much of the coast-scenery of Cornwall, the Isle of Wight, and the Mediterranean ; hut still we do not fear to place in com- parison the varied and romantic beauties of the coast of Maine. The entire seaboard is fretted and fringed in the most remarkable manner, forming a long-drawn labyrinth of capes, bays, headlands, and isles. The mingling of lanil and water is indeed admirable. Here a cape, clad in pine greenery, extends out into the sea, coquettishly encircling a great field of blue waves ; there a bold headland, with its outlying drongs, meets and buffets the billows with catapultic force ; here the bright fiood runs merrily up into the land, the hills stepping dowm to its borders, mirroring their outlines, as in a glass ; there a hundred isles are sown, like sparkling emeralds, in the summer sea." As the more adventurous of our summer-tourists began to weary of the artificial attractions of Saratoga and Newport, they went farther afield, and discovered this land of the mountain, the forest, and the fiood, with its rich endowment of natural charms and untrodden solitudes. New routes were established to facilitate their wanderings ; and great hotels arose on many a frowning headland, and by many a highland lake. The hopeless wilderness became a park, a preserve of game ; the iron-bound coast was visited by fleets of dainty yachts. Like Nice, like Venice, the ancient maritime towns, from which the sceptre of commercial power had been wrung, became the pleasaunces of thousands of travellers from more prosperous regions ; and the revenues which no longer came by the way of the sea were freely given in virtue of the salubrity of the northern air. Rarely is the luxury of travelling so efificiently aided by the appliances of modern art as it now is within the borders of Maine, where the most comfortable means of access are prepared for all notable points. Three first-class railroads connect Portland with the great cities to the south- ward, and two others give api)roach to the White Mountains and Canada. The Maine Central Railway covers the inhabited part of the State with a net-work of well-cf)nstructed lines, centring at Portland and Bangor, with branches and tributary routes reaching out in every direction, — to P^irmington, close to the Rangeley Lakes ; Skowhegan, amid the beau- ties of the Upper Kennebec ; Dexter, in the region of Moosehead Lake ; Hath, the ]ioint of departure for a score of fascinating marine excursions, including Boothba\-, Peinacpiid, and Mount Desert ; and J^-lfast, at the 14 - Picturesque Maine. head of the picturesque Penobscot Bay. This great corporation, stretching its Briarean arms from Portland harbor to the Penobscot, and into the northern forest and along the maritime peninsulas, is managed with Eng- lish precision and order and American enterprise and intelligence, so that the public convenience is the law of the road, and the word "accident" is eliminated from the vocabulary. President George E. B. Jackson super- vises this complicated system of routes, and guards its financial security; Superintendent Payson Tucker is the vigilant executive officer, insuring safety and convenience on all the lines ; and Mr. F. E. Boothby is the general ticket-agent, ever forming new combinations of routes, and devis- ing new attractions for travellers. Eastward from Bangor the European and North-American Railway leads across the wilderness to near the State line, from whence the St. John and Maine Railway extends to the political and commercial capitals of New Brunswick ; and other lines diverge from Bangor also towards Moosehead Lake, and down the Penobscot to Bucks- port. Between the ports and islands along the coast, and upon the inland lakes, scores of steamboats ply throughout the summer, bearing thousands of pilgrims of pleasure to beaches and fishing-grounds, where the air is perfumed by the exhalations of the forests, or charged with the invigorat- inir coolness of the sea. PORTLAND. ^HE chief city of Maine, with its forty thousand inhabit- ants, its varied manufactures, and its large and increasing" oceanic and inland commerce, arose from a little trading- post planted (in 1632) on the Indian domain of Machi- gonne, which was leased to the traders by Gorges, the royal grantee of Maine, for two thousand years, and, as the deed ran, "from now and forever henceforth to be called or known by the name of Stoguvnnory By 1675 the town was at the height of pros- perity, when the first Indian war began, and thirty-four inhabitants were killed or captured here in a single day; wherefore, when the humiliating peace of Casco was signed, the harassed burghers erected a defensive work called Fort Loyal on the present site of the Grand-Trunk station. Thirteen years later, when the village had six hundred inhabitants, the second Indian war broke out, and a fleet bearing the veteran Major Church and a large force of Massachusetts volunteers arrived the day before the town was assailed by four hundred Indian warriors. After a long and bloody battle between the volunteers and the savages, just back of the Cove, the latter gave way and abandoned the field. The next year a force of five hundred "half-Frenchified Indians and half-Indianized French " (as Cotton Mather relates) beleaguered the town, nearly exter- minated a sortying company on Munjoy Hill, and formally besieged Fort Loyal, which was forced to surrender five days later, after all the houses had been burnt, and most of the garrison wounded. The site of Portland remained desolate and solitary from this disastrous day until after the peace of Utrecht, nearly twenty-five years later, when it was rebuilt by disbanded soldiers from the adjacent forts. In 1746 new i6 Picturesque Maine. attacks were made by the red foresters, and the warlike citizens fortified their streets, erected a battery on the site of Fort Gorges to repel the Duke d'Anville's French Armada, and sent fifty soldiers to the siege of Louisburg. The town now bore the name of Falmouth, and had a large trade in fish and lumber and West-India goods, besides being one of the main depots of masts for the British Navy. There were about two thou- sand inhabitants here, of good rebel blood and martial ancestry, on that fair October morning of 1775, when Capt. Mowatt entered the harbor with five British naval vessels, and gave the people two hours to leave the doomed town. For eight hours the men-of-war poured balls and bombs upon Falmouth, and boat-loads of marines landed and fired the buildings, until three-fourths of the place was destroyed, and hundreds of families were homeless. After this annihilation by artillery, Falmouth became a nest of privateers and a military post, under the command of Gen. Frye, the founder of Fryeburg. For many a century thereafter peace dwelt on these shores, and industry was highly rewarded. On the night of July 4, 1866, however, a fire broke out in the business-quarter of the city, which burned fiercely for sixteen hours, destroying every thing in the most densely built district, and involving a loss of ten million dollars. But this phoenix of cities has once more risen from the ashes, with fairer pro- portions and more stately buildings, and is bravely adorning herself for the next episode in her history. A peninsula, composed of two graceful hills and a high valley between, fronting on the neighboring ocean and the lovely labyrinths of Casco Bay, terraced by long and broken lines of houses, and crowned by groups of symmetrical spires and domes, flanked by broad and high-placed park- ways which look on the mountains and the sea, fringed by the masts of commercial fleets, — such is Portland, the Forest City, the metropolis of Maine, the winter-port of Canada. On the one side are wide and em- bowered streets, bordered by double lines of venerable trees and still more venerable mansions ; on the other, solidly built mercantile streets, with curving blocks of brick, stone, and iron, in that light and airy American architecture which Ruskin so fiercely condemns. An ethereal white-marble building, with Corinthian colonnades, like a temple of the age of Pericles, serves as the post-office ; and a graceful structure of granite, seated by the water-side, gives royal shelter to the collectors of customs for this northern Tyre. The city fathers meet in a stately build- Portland. 1 7 ing of Nova-Scotia stone, lai'gcr than the Guild Hall of Londf)n, and made thus spacious not without the hope (now dispelled) that it might hecome the Capitol of Maine. This monument of civic pride cost nearly two-thirds of a million ; and is supplemented by many other municipal luxuries, such as the aqueduct from Lake Sebago, seventeen miles dis- tant, with the purest lake-water in the world ; and the great railroad through the White-Mountain Notch, for whose construction the city advanced its credit for a formidable amount. Another distinction which Portland enjoys over other cities of her size is that she has no college, although well provided with museums and libraries, and various literary and fraternal associations. The numerous churches culminate in the large and all-including Romanist Cathedral, and, by oblique succession, in the snug and aristocratic Anglican Cathedral. Next to the palace erected many years ago for his residence by Com- modore Preble, the hero of the Tripoli wars, and now used as the Preble House, stands a building which will probably be looked upon with more interest, fifty years from now, than any other in the Poorest City, for within its walls long dwelt Henry W. Longfellow, who was born, in the year 1807, in the ancient house now standing at the corner of Fore and Hancock Streets. After that august name, how little appear the other illustrious Portlanders, the naval heroes of the Preble family ; or Neal Dow, the crotchety reformer; or exceedingly quaint old John Neal ; or Bishop Southgate, of Constantinople, z';^/'rt'7-/z'^//i' infideliiivi ; or " P^anny Fern ;" or e\"en the now obsolete N. P. Willis. Munjoy Hill derives its name from its first owner, a Mountjoy of Devonshire, and justifies its etymology to whoever ascends the queer okl tower on its summit, on a clear summer day, and looks out over the mag- nificent prospect which extends for scores of leagues on every side, and is made minutely definite by the aid of a swinging telescope. On one side is the entire range of the White Mountains, with their various peaks easily recognizable, and the dark outlines of their ravines quite distin- guishable ; and on the other side the dark blue ocean, the maritime suburbs, and the bewitching groups of islands which seem perpetually engaged in a dance of beauty on the waters of Casco ]^ay. Nearer at hand is the narrow harbor, with its three unformidable but picturesque forts, and the tall light-houses on the tip of Cape P'lizabeth. As a centre of excursions, no Atlantic city can equal this briglit and 1 8 Picturesque Maine. breezy queen of Casco Bay, with her numerous sea-lines, to New York, Boston, and St. John, and to Rockland, Bangor, Mount Desert, and the beautiful islands of Casco Bay and the harbor, dotted with summer-hotels and surrounded by the choicest marine scenery. On the landward side, railroads pass southward to a score of famous beaches, and north-west to the fairest villages of the White Mountains, Fryeburg and North Conway on the Saco, or Bethel and Gorham on the Androscoggin, or to the Arcadian beauties of Lake Sebago, only an hour from the city, through the ancient rural towns adjacent. Eastward and northward run the tracks and branches of the Maine Central Railway, leading to the Rangeley and Moosehead Lakes, the bays and beaches of Eastern Maine and Mount Desert, the ports on the sea, the cities on the great rivers, and the Maritime Provinces. No city, except Constantinople or Naples, has more beautiful marine suburbs, especially up Casco Bay, where the Thousand Lslands of the St. Lawrence are duplicated amid the nobler currents of the great ocean. So narrow are the straits, that they are often overshadowed by the maple and oak trees growing on the islands ; and again broader vistas are ter- minated by kaleidoscopic groups of boucjuet-like isles, spreading widely at the top from narrow and massive bases. A voyage up the bay, to classic Harpswell, either in yacht or steamer, is filled with the poetry of romantic scenery, and stimulates the imagination with a variety of the most pleas- ing pictures. Grand marine scenery is found also on Cushing's Island, in front of the city, and at Cape Elizabeth, near the famous Portland Light and the batteries which command the outer roads. There are nearly one hundred and fifty islands in the bay, with scores of fair peninsulas, and many a deep and sequestered cove, leading by sandy beaches to bright and grassy glades, whose only inhabitants are melodious birds, free from fatal intrusion, and singing the whole day long. The glory of the isles is in their luxuriant and varied foliage, which ri^ses from the water's Qi\^^ in mound-like swells of verdure, the perennial green of the pine and fir, the vivid tints of the oak and beech, and the graceful forms of the maples, which change in autumn into such brilliant scarlet that the islands seem to be breaking into flames. Among these extend the water-ways, delicious coverts under the trees, nooks between mimic continents, clear channels of sea-water insinuated into the fringed-out mainland, until the scene assumes the similitude of a rural Venice, whose Portland. 19 i;cnii are the weird herons who gave its name (in the Indian tongue) to the bay; and whose domes and towers are the bare hill-tops and rugged erags which overlook the ocean and the distant White Mountains. A little farther down the coast is Scarborough Beach, famous for its clams and game-birds, and entertaining the travelling world in several hotels and boarding-houses. Between Scarborough and Cape Elizabeth is Richmond Island, lying just off-shore, and covering two hundred acres of land. It was named probably for the Duke of Richmond, a member of the council of Plymouth, and received its first white settler in 1628, two years before Boston was founded ; but he and his companions were killed by the Indians, three years later, and their buildings were burned.' A stone pot of gold and silver coins and jewelry, which was buried at this time, was accidentally unearthed in 1855. It was a Massachusetts man-of-war that pounced on the hostile Indians, and gave them a condign punishment ; and the island was occupied by Plymouth (England) merchants as a trading-post, with numerous colonists, an Episcopal church, and a shipyard where the RicJiinond and other vessels were built. Beaver-skins, fish, and pipe- staves were exported in large fleets ; and cargoes of English supplies were returned, with merry-making ship-loads of Spanish and Madeira wine. Flemish and P'ayal ships also visited the port ; and many a well- laden vessel sailed thence direct to Spain. In 1676, the Saco Indians, under Mogg Megone, captured the island and a vessel in the harbor, with all on board ; and, the following year, the former maritime port had sunk so low that it was sold for ten pounds. Portland had drawn all its com- merce away. What Loch Katrine is to Glasgow, and St. Mary's Loch to Edinburgh, and the streams of the Sabine Hills to Rome, Lake Sebago is to Portland, the source whence artificially-built rivers flow downward for leagues, to gush forth in refreshment in the urban houses and streets. And Sebago is only less beautiful than Katrine, with its broad area of fourteen by eleven miles, its fair islands, and its environment of mountains. The gallant Macgregors surrounded Katrine with the glamour of legend, and Sir Walter Scott celebrated its charms in many a glowing stanza ; but the .\merican lake taught Nathaniel Hawthorne many a weird fancy, while the years of his youth were passing on its shores ; and the more melodi- ous harps of Longfellow and Whittier have sounded its praises in flowing numbers. If there is adwantage, it rests with Sebago. 20 Picturesque Maine. It is but little more than a half-hour by train from Portland to this highland lake ; and the steamer traverses its whole length, and then winds for two leagues through the deliciously labyrinthine and convoluted Songo River, emerging first into the Bay of Naples, and then into the Winder- mere-like expanse of Long Pond, where rural hamlets stud the long-drawn shores. To the northward, surrounded by many a notable mountain, is the birth-place of Artemus Ward, the prince of droll fellows ; and to the west, beyond busy Bridgton, swells the long rampart of Mount Pleasant, crowned by a large white hotel, and looking into the very heart of the White Mountains. Beyond Sebago Lake, the railioad passes across to the Saco River, which it follows up by the ancient Wadsworth mansion, where Longfellow passed so many of his boyhood's holidays, in the home of his mother's father; and then looks down on the white and glistening Great Falls of the Saco. Farther out is the lovely village of Fryeburg, near the ground where Lovewell's Rangers were all but annihilated by the Pequawket Indians, a century and a half ago, — '' What time the noble Lovewell came, With fifty men from Dunstable, The cruel Pequa'tt tribe to tame, With arms and bloodshed terrible." "The fairest town on the stream of the Saco" still remains in the same quiet provincial dignity which it enjoyed eighty years ago, when Daniel Webster taught its academy ; and the same huge old trees rise over the fair meadows, and nod in the breezes which come out of the adjacent defiles of the White Hills. Seventy miles from Portland, on the route to Canada, the Grand Trunk Railway, is the fine old village of Bethel, on the meadows of the upper Androscoggin, and near the picturesque highland scenery of the Grafton Notch. The route thither leads through several interest- ing and decadent towns of Western Maine, skirting Casco Bay, and passing the Indian-scourged fields of North Yarmouth, the ancient border-fortress of New Gloucester, the aVistocratic little county capital of Paris Hill, and the fair scenery of Bryant's Pond. Bethel has long been a favorite resort of visitors to the White Mountains, which fill all the western sky with their rugged domes and spires, and are richly contrasted by the emerald meadows about the village, and the tranquil blue stream of the Andros- cossrin. OLD-ORCHARD BEACH. lO^^SI^S^HE cities of Biddeford and Saco, near the mouth of the |v'^>^osto//iiais down their quiet valley, the first and last memorable event which occurred in 32 Picturesque Maine. all that region. This mysterious and terrible apparition of the wilderness startled Quebec, and would have caused a fatal panic in any but a British garrison. Amid the icy night of the last day of the year, Arnold's men and Montgomery's New-Yorkers made their forlorn assault on the massy walls of the Gibraltar of the North, and, in a few hours of ineffectual battle lost six hundred men and were driven off in rout. Those whom the perils of the wilderness had spared, the famine and the flood, fell in winrovvs under the artillery of the fortress, or wasted away in the prisons of a strange land. BANGOR. Where navigation ceases on the noble Penobscot River, sixty miles from the sea, and the great net-work of eastern railroad and stage routes converge to a focal point, the city of Bangor spreads over the crests and slopes of the hills, and controls a rural trade throughout an immense area, giving the means of comfortable subsistence to her twenty thousand sturdy Yankee citizens. The largest ships, bearing the flags of all the great maritime nations, anchor in the stream, and are laden with the lum- ber which floats down from the wilderness, and is sawed up in the mills which line the Penobscot for miles above. Billions of feet of lumber have been shipped from this river-port, to be converted to innumerable uses, noble or base, in the cities of the lower States, or along the coasts of Western Europe, competing with the woody products of Canada and Michigan and Norway. The pleasantest part of the city is on the bluffs south of the Kendus- keag, where many of the best private residences are placed. In this airy location stands the spacious Bangor House, the foremost hotel in the city, and the summer-rendezvous of thousands of tourists in Eastern Maine. From the hotel depart daily stages for Mount Desert, traversing a score of hamlets and villages, and reaching the famous island over a long cause- way. There are good fishing-grounds in the country about Bangor, which are explored by sportsmen from this comfortable base of supplies, — crafty fellows, indeed, who prefer the luxurious rooms of Landlord Beals to the leaky bark-camps of the lake-region. Bangor. 33 So fair is the situation of Bangor, and so pleasing the views from its hills, tliat the early inhabitants resolved that its name should be "Sun- bury," and so instructed llieir represcntatix'e, the Rev. Seth Noble, l^ut he was an admirer of the religious tune called " Bangor ; " and in some c|ueer way so mingled his hymnological preference with his political duty, that, when the speaker of the House called for the name of the new town to be incorporated, he answered "Bangor," and so it was recorded and remains. The affair looks very like a piece of ecclesiastical _y^//ri'.sv, — a bit of Puritan Jesuitry ; but the result was not altogether unhappy. The Bangor and Bucksport Railroad is the beginning, doubtless, of a grand route throughout Eastern Maine, to Machias and Eastport. At present, its track is less than twenty miles long, and extends down tlie east bank of the Penobscot, through the villages of Brewer and Orrington, to a terminus at Bucksport. This port, situated in a charmiiTgT)^tliversi- fied town, and devoted to ship-building and the deep-sea fisheries, was first settled by Col. Buck, one hundred and twenty years ago. Here the rail- road connects with steamboats for Boston, Portland, and Machias, and with stages for almost everywhere in the south-eastern counties. The defences of Bangor are many miles down the river, at East Pros- ]icct, near Bucksport, where the National Government has expended an i-normous sum in raising the walls an-d preparing the armament of Fort Knox, whose heavy batteries command' the river for a long distance. A few miles below is Fort Point, on which the I^ritish Parliament built a strong fortress in 1 759, to serve as a bulwark against the French fleet and the Indian bands. The surrounding country was settled by veteran sol- diers, whose descendants still occuj^y the land. The fortress was destroyed l)y the British frigate Canscan, in 1775, and a great summer-hotel now lifts its white front near the gray and venerable ruins. The fruitful valor and traditional success of the American nax'v have always failed it on this most beautiful section of the republican shores ; and it may safely be said that our fleets have met with more disasters and humiliations off the Maine coast than in any other waters. Pirates, Frenchmen, a ul l^ritons have in turn laid the maritime towns under contribution ; ami in 1724 a pro\'incial fleet was beaten, off Thomaston, 1)\' \essels manned even by Indians. In 1814, a powerful British sc|uadron from Halifax and the Bermudas took the fortifications of I'Zastport and Robbinslon, anil landed a thousand soKliers there, frt)m wher.ce they made 34 Plctitrcsqitc Maine. successful forays upon Thomastou and other points. A few weeks later, the ships-of-the-line Dragon, S/ciiscr, and Bidzvark ; the frigates Baccliantc and Tcncdos, just from the Mediterranean ; the sloops-of-war SylpJi, and Peniviau, and twelve other vessels, with three thousand soldiers, entered Castine harbor, and took the fort, afterwards crossing to Belfast, and then ascending the Penobscot. The United States cor- vette Adams was then being refitted at Hampden ; and hither the Dragon and other ships sailed with all possible speed. The captain of the Adams had placed her heavy guns in battery on the shore, and opened a tremendous fire upon the enemy ; but the local militia were routed by a gallant bayonet-charge of the British light infantry, and the sailors were forced to spike their guns, burn the corvette, and fiee to the woods. Then the fleet sailed to Bangor, and the infantry marched up along the river-bank, and occupied the town without resistance, levying a forced contribution on the citizens, plundering the houses, and burning fourteen vessels in the harbor. Castine was permanently garrisoned by more than two thousand British regulars, who erected a strong fortress with sixty guns on the hill, and assailed Frankfort, Machias, Camden, and other points in the vicinity, with impunity. Yet the pusillanimous militia- men of 1 8 14 were the ancestors of the magnificent Second Maine, the last regiment on the fatal field of Bull Run, and the same which fought at Fredericksburg under a whirlwind of fire, until one-third of its members were killed or wounded. MOUNT DESERT. HE eastern coast of Maine, from the Penobscot to Passama- quoddy Bay, is peculiarly rich in attractive ocean-scenery, combined in the most effective manner with high mountains and rugged islands, and with a succession of fiords which rival those on the wild coast of Norway. Every year in- creases the number of those who leave the heated cities of the lower coast, and spend a brief period amid these delightful scenes, where a refreshing coolness reigns during all the vernal season, and the iodated air gives fresh life to the jaded system. Among the scores of resorts between Castine and Eastport, Mount Desert is easily paramount ; and thousands of visitors enjoy its rare combinations of mountain and sea- shore scenery. From Bangor, daily stages and weekly steamboats depart for Mount Desert ; and from Portland, steamboats run eastward to the island in twelve hours. Many travellers prefer to go by rail to Rockland, avoiding a considerable sea-voyage, and board the Portland steamer when it touches there, or proceed by the new steamboat " Mount Desert," which rims to the island daily. It would be hard to find, this side of the /Egcan Sea and the Bos- phorus, a more charming sail than that which lies between Rockland and Mount Desert, over the bright waters of Penobscot Bay, and sheltered from the long swell of the ocean by breakwaters of islands. The tall mountains of Camden and the blue peaks of Mount Desert spring appar- ently from the distant waves, and myriads of islands diversify the \iew, some of them mere bits of rock and trees, where birds alone may dwell, and others so large as to sustain white hamlets of fishermen, with senti- J 6 Picturesque Maine. nel-spires answering the All's Well of the mainland church-towers, and slender masts rising from the sheltering coves. Over the blue waters the stanch little fishing-boats dance merrily, with their white sails filled by the fresh breezes, and their decks manned by the bronzed Vikings of New England's peaceful marine ; and gallant flotillas of dories rock on the waves, while their occupants pursue schools of fish, entangled among the islands. Farther outside are tall ships of Norway or of Britain, beating in to the river, to bear away cargoes of lumber from Bangor ; and broad and heavy sloops, the draymen of the sea, carrying hewn blocks of granite from the island-cliffs to build great edifices in the rich midland cities, or to furnish monolithic colonnades for the governmental palaces at Wash- ington. The aromatic fragrance of the forests blends with the bracing air of the ocean, and the distant sounds of the farm mingle with the melody of lapsing waves and the weird cries of sea-birds. At this point, America and the Atlantic sound a perpetual antiphonal, now sinking into a dulcet pianissimo, on days of calm, and now swelling into an appalling equinoc- tial roar, or blending into such a symphony as even Rubinstein could but feebly echo. The arrangement of the shores and islands and the breezy sea is almost rhythmic in its grace and symmetry, and has a charming kaleidoscopic effect as seen from the deck of the adv^ancing vessel. As the steamer traverses this salt-water Winnepesaukee, it skims through narrow straits between rugged and odorous islets ; or emerges upon lake- like expanses, with far-away views ; or shoots with arrowy speed past rocky and storm-beaten headlands, fringed with waving lines of surf; or approaches ciuaint and ancient maritime villages, off which the snug little fishing-craft tug at their anchors. The richest charms of legend and romance, the fascination of hist(M"ic reminiscence, linger along all these shores, and add the imperishable interest of human life and heroic deeds to this wealth of natural scenery. Three centuries have passed since the monkish geographers of Europe located hereabouts the mystic palaces of the great city of Norumbega, and bade men search here for the wealth of Prester John and the Moguls Many a gallant navigator sailed from the ports of England to explore these unknown shores ; and the Breton and Norman fleets sent their most intrepid captains to penetrate their mysteries. Gosnold, Weymouth, Popham, and the high-born Raleigh Gilbert, in succession "weyed an- chors and sett saile to goc for the river of Sagadahoc ; " and were rivalled Mount Deseit. 2)7 in their discoveries by Champlain, Ibcrvdlle, DcMonts, and many a sturdy French admiral. Their day seems as remote as the Crusades ; and their records, written in EHzabethan English or 1\\q patois of maritime Brittany, ire as diverting as the chronicles of the Heptarchy. After these pioneer-