ma^y J^^;.;; ! '■' ^ . ' ■ ■:- ■ ^^:^-/; ■: /:■■ , ?hf;f Wm-'>'- *•''•■■' 'V."., '■ .■••■'■ ' ■ ^>.i\ . - t'*5^!>f^/W'> *■•■■']'* --'^ ' ^' ■■' -J.. . . I . m'"-\. 1,' •' ' • . . >^'45Mv»r/y-V/^;>' •; .».-'■-( '-^l; •■!• •■;;■•►.■ mVri#4^avij'4v,*- •».,-■' ," 't ' ' '"> -I '■■ ■ ■■'>'■ ^■jVJ ..T KI'i' 1 *]'i~.N'l fi. 4 i *, f ■ • r fi . i. . ' , i* , Glass A H Book- - V ,IA *^ 5 2? PIGEON COVE, CAPE ANN. NOOKS AND COEI^EES OF THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. • By SAMUEL ADAMS DRAKE, AUTHOR OF ' OLD LANDMARKS OF BOSTON," " HISTORIC FIELDS AND MANSIONS OF MIDDLESEX," &o. -^ T r) n WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS, r, L^ NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. Entered according to Act of Congress, in tlie year 1875, by HARPER & BROTHERS, In the Office of tlie Librarian of Congress, at Washington. j::; 6 190/ Snscribcb bp permission, AND WITH SENTIMENTS OF HIGH RESPECT, TO HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW. ''Oil this line, if it takes all summer^ S. A. D. June, 1875. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. NEW ENGLAND OF THE ANCIENTS, Norumbega Kiver and City.— Early Discoverers, and Maps of New England.— Mode of taking Possession of new Countries.— Cruel Usage of Intruders by the English.— Penobscot Bay.— Character of first Emigrants to New England.— Is Friday unlucky? Page 17 CHAPTER n. MOUNT DESERT ISLAND. About Islands.— Champlain's Discovery.— Mount Desert Range.— Somesville, and the Neighbor- hood.— Colony of Madame De Guercheville.— Descent of Sir S. Argall.— Treasure-trove. — Shell-heaps.— South-west Harbor.— The natural Sea-wall.— Islands off Somes's Sound 27 CHAPTER HI. CHRISTMAS ON MOUNT DESERT. Excursion to Bar Harbor.— Green Mountain.— Eagle Lake.— Island Nomenclature.— Porcupine Islands.— Short Jaunts by the Shore.— Schooner Head. — Spouting Caves.— Sea Aquaria.— Audubon and Agassiz.— David Wasgatt Clark.— F. E. Church and the Artists.— Great Head. — Baye Fran9oise.— Mount Desert Rock.— Value of natural Sea-marks.— Newport Mount- ain, and the Way to Otter Creek.— The Islesmen.— North-east Harbor.— The Ovens.— The Gregoires.— Henrietta d'Orleans.— Yankee Curiosity ^0 CHAPTER IV. CASTINE. Pentagoet.— A Fog in Penobscot Bay.— Rockland.— The Muscongus Grant.— Colonial Society.— Generals Knox and Lincoln.— Camden Hills.— Belfost and the River Penobscot.— Brigadier's Island.— Disappearance of the Salmon. —Approach to Castine. — Fort George.— Penobscot Expedition.— Sir John Moore.— Capture of General Wadsworth.— His remarkable Escape.— Rochambeau's Proposal. — La Peyrouse ^^ CHAPTER V. ft CASTINE — contimied. Old Fort Pentagoet.— Stephen Grindle's WindfliU.- Cob-money.— The Pilgrims at Penobscot.— Isaac de Razilly.— D'Aulnny Charnisay.— La Tour.— Descent of Sedgwick and Leverett.— Capture of Pentagoet, and Imprisonment of Chambly.— Colbert.— Baron Castin.— The younger 10 CONTENTS. C:istin kidnnped. — Capucliins and Jesuits. — Intrigues of De Maintenon and Pere Lachaise. — Burial-ground of Castine. — About the Lobster. — Wbere is Down East? Page 73 CHAPTER VI. PEMAQUID POINT. New Harbor. — Wayside Manners. — British Repulse at New Harbor. — Porgee Factory. — Process of converting the Fish into Oil. — Habits of tlie Mackerel. — Weymoiitirs Visit to Pemaquid. — Champlain again. — Popham Colony. — Cotton Mather on new Settlements. — English vs. French Endurance. — L'Ordre de Bon Temps. — Samoset. — Fort Frederick. — Resume' of the P>nglish Settlement and Forts. — John Nelson. — Capture of Fort William Henry. — D'Iberville, the knowing One. — Colonel Dunbar at Pemaquid. — Shell-heaps of Damariscotta. — Disappear- ance of the native Oyster in New England 87 CHAPTER Vn. MONHEGAN ISLAND, Scenes on a Penobscot Steamer. — The Islanders. — Weymouth's Anchorage. — Monhegan de- scribed. — Combat between the Enterprise and Boxer, — Lieutenant Burrows 102 CHAPTER VIH. FEOM WELLS TO OLD YORK. Wells. — John Wheelwright. — George Burroughs. — On the Beach. — Shiftings of the Sands. — What they produce. — Ingenuity of the Crow. — The Beach as a High-road. — Popular Super- stitions. — Ogunquit. — Bald Head Cliif. — Wreck of the Isidore. — Kennebunkport. — Cape Ned- dock. — The Nubble.— Captains Gosnold and Pring. — Moon-light on the Beach 109 CHAPTER IX. AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY. Mount Agamenticus. — Basque Fishermen. — Sassafras. — The Long Sands. — Sea-weed and Shell- fish. — Foot -prints. — Old York Annals. — Sir Ferdinando Gorges.— York Meeting-house. — Handkerchief Moody. — Parson Moody. — David Sewall. — Old Jail. — Garrison Houses, Scot- land Parish 123 CHAPTER X. AT KITTERY POINT, MAINE. York Bridge. — Poor Sally Cutts. — Fort M'Clary. — Sir William Pepperell. — Louisburg and Fontenoy. — Gerrish's Island. — Francis Champernowne. — Islands belonging to Kittery. — John Langdon. — Jacob Sheaflfe. — Washington at Kittery 141 CHAPTER XI. THE ISLES OF SHOALS. De Monts sees them. — Smith's and Levett's Account. — Cod-fishery in the sixteenth Centuiy. — Sail down the Piscataqua. — The Isles. — Derivation of the Name. — Jeffrey's Ledge. — Star Island. — Little Meeting-house. — Character of the Islesmen. — Island Grave-yards. — Betty CONTENTS. 11 Moody's Hole. -Natural Gorges.-Under the Cliffs.-Death of Miss Underhili. -Story of her Life.— Boon Island.— Wreck of the Nottingham.— Yish and Fishermen Page 153 CHAPTER XII. THE ISLES OF SHOALS — COntVliCecl. Excursion to Smuttv Nose. -Piracy in New England Waters.-Blackbeard.-Thomas IMorton's B'lnishment.-Religious Liberty rs. License.- Custom of the May-pole.- Samuel Haley.- Spanish Wreck on Smutty Nose. -Graves of the Unknown. -Terrible Tragedy on the Island. -Appledore -Its ancient Settlement.-Smith's Cairn.-Duck Island. -Londoner's.-Thomas B. Laighton.-Mrs. Thaxter. -Light-houses in 1793.-White Islaud.-Story of a Wreck. 175 CHAPTER XIII. NEWCASTLE AND NEIGHBORHOOD. The Way to the Island.-The Pool. -Ancient Ships.-Old House. -Town Charter and Records. -Influence of the Navv-yard.-Eort Constitution. -Little Harbor. -Captain John Mason.- -The Wentworth House.-The Portraits. -The Governors Wentworth and their Wives.- , 196 Baron Steuben • CHAPTER XIV. SALEM VILLAGE, AND '92. The Witch-ground.-Antiquity of Witchcraft. -First Case in New England. -Curiosities of Witoh- craft. -Rebecca Nurse. -Beginning of Terrorism at Salem Village. -Humors of the Appari- tions.— General Putnam's Birthplace.— What may be seen in Danvers 208 CHAPTER XV. A ^YALK TO WITCH HILL. Salem in 1692.-Birthplace of Hawthorne.- Old Witch House.— William Stoughton, Governor.— Witch Hill— A Leaf from History "^ CHAPTER XVI. MAKBLEHEAD. The Rock of Marblehead.— The Harbor and Neck.— Chat with the Light-keeper.— Decline of the Fisheries.— Fishery in the olden Time.— Early Annals of Marblehead.— Walks about the Town.-Crooked Lanes and antique Houses.-The Water-side. -The Fishermen.-How the Town looked in the Past.— Plain-spoken Clergymen and lawless Parishioners.— Anecdotes.— Jeremiah Lee and his Mansion. -The Town-house. - Chief-justice Story. -St. Michael's Church.-Elbridge Genw.— The old Ironsides of the Sea.— General John Glover.— Flood Ireson's, Oakum Bay.-Fort Sewall.-Escape of the Constitution Frigate. -Duel of the Chesa- peake and Shannon.-0\d Burial-ground. -The Grave-digger.-Perils of the Fishery 228 CHAPTER XVII. PLYMOUTH. At the American Mecca.-Court Street. -Pilgrim Hall and Pilgrim Memorials.-Sargent's Pic- ture of the " Landing. "-Relics of the May^fiower.-Ynst Duel in New England.-Old Colony 12 CONTENTS. Seal. — The "Compact." — First Execution in Plj-moiith. — Old "Body of Laws." — Pilgvini Chronicles. — View from Burial Hill. — The Harbor. — Names of Plymouth. — Plymouth, En- gland. — Lord Nelson's Generosity. — Plymouth the temporary Choice of the Pilgrims. — The Indian Plague. — Indian Superstition. — Who was first at Plymoutli ? — De Monts and Cham- plain. — Champlain's Voyages in New England. — French Pilgrims make the first Landing. — Why the Natives were hostile to the Pilgrims of 1G20. — Confusion among old Writers about Plymouth. — Among the Tombstones of Burial Hill. — The Pilgrims' Church-fortress. — What a Dutchman saw here in 1627. — Military Procession to Meeting. — Ancient Church Customs. — Puritans, Separatists, and Brownists. — Flight and Political Ostracism of the Pilgrims. — Their form of Worship. — First Church of Salem. — Plymouth founded on a Principle Page 261 CHAPTER XVIII. PLYMOUTH, CLAEK's ISLAND, AND DUXBURY. Let us walk in Leyden Street. — The way Plymouth was built. — Governor Bradford's Corner.— Fragments of Family History. — How Marriage became a civil Act.— The Common-house. — John Oldham's Punishment. — The Allyne House. — James Otis and his Sister Mercy. — James Warren. — Cole's Hill, and its obliterated Graves. — Plymouth Rock. — True Date of the " Land- ing." — Christmas in Plymouth, and Bradford's Joke. — Pilgrim Toleration. — Samoset surprises Plymouth. — The Entry of Massasoit. — First American Congress. — To Clark's Island. — Wat- son's House. — Election Rock. — The Party of Discovery. — Duxbury. — Captains Hill and Miles Standish. — John Alden. — "Why don't you speak for yourself?" — Historical Iconoclasts. — Celebrities of Duxbury. — Winslow and Acadia. — Colonel Church. — The Dartmouth In- dians 2S3 CHAPTER XIX. PROVINCETOWN. Cape Cod a Terra incognita. — Appearance of its Surface. — Historical Fragments. — The Pilgrims' first Landing. — New England Washing-day. — De Poutrincourt's Fight with Natives. — Province- town described. — Cape Names. — Portuguese Colony. — Cod and Mackerel Fishery. — Cod-fish Aristocracy. — Matt Prior and Lent. — Beginning of Whaling. — Mad Montague. — The Desert. — Cranberry Culture. — The moving Sand-hills. — Disappearance of ancient Forests. — The Beach. — Race Point. — Huts of Refuge. — Ice Blockade of 1874-'75. — Wreck of the Giovanni. — Phys- ical Aspects of the Cape Shores. — Old Wreck at Orleans ' 304 CHAPTER XX. NANTUCKET. The old Voyagers again. — Derivation of the Name of Nantucket. — Sail from Wood's Hole to the Island. — Vine3'ard Sound. — Walks in Nantucket Streets. — Whales, Ships, and Whaling. — Nantucket in the Revolution. — Cruising for Whales. — The Camels. — Nantucket Sailors. — Loss of Ship Essex. — Town-crier. — Island History. — Quaker Sailors. — Thomas Mayhew. — Spermaceti. — Macy, Folger, Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin , 324: CHAPTER XXI. NANTUCKET — Continued. Taking Blackfish. — Blue-fishing at the Opening. — Walk to Coatue. — The Scallop-shell. — Struc ture of the Island. — Indian Legends. — Shepherd Life. — Absolutism of Indian Sagamores. — CONTENTS. 13 Wasting of the Shores of the Island.— Siasconset.— Nantucket Carts.— Fishing-stages.— The Great South Shoal.— Sankoty Light.— Surfside Page 343 CHAPTER XXII. NEWPORT OF AQCJIDNECK. General View of Newport. — Sail up the Harbor. — Commercial Decadence.— Street Rambles. — William Coddington. — Anne Hutchinson. — The Wantons. — Newport Artillery. — State-house Notes. Tristram Burgess. — Jewish Cemetery and Synagogue. — Judah Touro. — Redwood Li- brary.— The Old Stone Mill 35G CHAPTER XXIII. PICTURESQUE NEWPORT. The Cliff Walk.— Newport Cottages and Cottage Life.— Charlotte Cushman.— Fort Day and Fort Adams. —Bernard, the Engineer. — Dumplings Fort. —Canonicut. —Hessians. — Newport Drives.— The Beaches.— Purgatory.— Dean Berkeley 37:5 CHAPTER XXIV. THE FRENCH AT NEWPORT. Behavior of the Troops.— Monarchy aiding Democracy.— D'Estaing.—Jourdan.— French Camps. — Rochambeau, De Ternay, De Noailles.— Efforts of England to break the Alliance.— Fred- erick's Remark.— Malmesbury and Potemkin.— Lord North and Yorktown. —George IIL— Biron, Due de Lauzun.— Chastellux, De Castries, Viomenil, Lameth, Dumas, La Peyrouse, Berthier, and Deux-Ponts.— The Regiment Auvergne.— Lutour D'Auvergne.— French Diplo- macy ^^^ CHAPTER XXV. NEWPORT CEMETERIES. Rhode Island Cemetery.— Curious Inscriptions. — William Ellery.— Oliver Hazard Perry.— The Quakers.— George Fox.— Quaker Persecution.— Other Grave-yards.— Lee and the Rhode Isl- and Tories.— Coddington and Gorton.— John Coggeshall.— Trinity Church-yard.— Dr. Samuel Hopkins.— Gilbert Stuart 398 CHAPTER XXVI. TO MOUNT HOPE, AND BEYOND. Walk up the Island.— "Tonomy" Hill.- The Malbones.— Capture of General Prescott.— Talbot's Exploit. — Ancient Stages. — Windmills.— About Fish.— Lawton's Valley.— Battle of 1778. — Island History.— Mount Hope.— Philip's Death.— Dighton Rock.— Indian Antiquities.... 407 CHAPTER XXVII. NEW LONDON AND NORWICH. Entrance to the Thames. —Fisher's Island. —Block Island.— New London. —Light-ships and Light-houses.— Hempstead House.— Bishop Seabury.— Old Burial-ground.— New London Har- bor.— The little Ship-destroyer.— Groton and Monument.— Arnold.— British Attack on Groton. —Fort Griswold.— The Pequots.— John Mason.— Silas Deane.— Beaumarchais.— John Led- yard. — Decatur and Hardy.- Chieftain. — Norwich Town.- 14 CONTENTS. -Norwich City. — The Yantic picturesque. — Uncas, the Mohegan -Fine old Trees. — The Huntingtons Page 420 CHAPTER XXVIII. SAYBROOK. Old Saybrook. — Disappearance of the Yankee.— Old Girls. — Isaac Hull.— The Harts. — Connecti- cut River. — Old Fortress. — Dutch Courage. — The Filgrims' Experiences. — Cromwell, Hamp- den, and Pym. — Lady Eenwick. — George Fenwick. — Lion Gardiner. — Old Burial-ground. — Yale College.— The Shore, and the End 441 INDEX 451 _ AT-'--^i%\-y' LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Pigeon Cove, Cape Ann. FrHispicce. Map In Prrface. Head-piece IS Jacques Cartier 20 Captain John Smith 21 Pierre du Gnast, Sieur de Monts 23 Sir Humphrey Gilbert 24 Fac- simile of first Map en- graved in New Eughmd 25 Tail-piece 2C Mount Desert, from Blue Hill Bay 27 Map of Mount Desert Island . . 28 Samuel Champlaiu 29 Head of Somes's Sound 32 Echo Lake 33 Cliffs, Dog Mountain, Somes's Sound ' 37 The Stone Wall 3S Entrance to Somes's Sound ... 39 Professor Agassiz 40 View of Eagle Lake and the Sea from Green Mountain. . . 43 Cliffs on Bald Porcupine 14 Southerly End of Newport Mountain, near the Sand Beach 45 Cave of the Sea, Schooner Head 40 Cliffs at Schooner Head 47 Devil's Den and Schooner Head 48 Great Head 51 The Ovens, Saulsbury's Cove.. 55 Tail-piece 57 Castine, approaching from Islesboro 58 General Henry LLnox 61 General Benjamin Lincoln 62 Port Point 63 View from Fort George 66 Sir John Moore 67 Fort Griffith 68 Fort George 69 Tail-piece 72 Ruins of Fort Pentagoet 73 Pine-tree Shilling 75 Colbert 79 Lobster Pot 85 Tail-piece SO Old Port Frederick, Pemaquid Point S7 "The Land-breeze of Evening" 88 Cotton Mather 94 Ancient Pemaquid 95 PAGE Charlevoix 96 French Frigate, Seventeenth Century 9S Hutchinson 99 Monhegan Island 102 Thatcher's Island Light, and Fog-signals, Cape Ann 103 Graves of Barrows and Blythe, Portland 107 Tail-piece (Burrows's Medal) .. 108 Gorge, Bald Head Cliff 109 Old Wrecks on the Beach 112 The Morning Round 119 What the Sea can do 123 York Meeting-house 134 Jail at Old York 130 Pillory 137 Stocks 137 Old Garrison House 139 Tail-piece 140 Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from Kittery Bridge 141 Navy Yard, Kittery, Maine 142 Block-house and Fort, Kittery Point 144 Sir William Pepperell's House, Kittery Point 145 Sir William Pepperell 146 Kittery Point, Maine 148 Governor Langdon's Mansion, Portsmouth 150 Tail-piece 152 Whale's-back Light 153 Portsmouth and the Isles of Shoals (Map) 154 Shag and Mingo Rocks, Duck Island 158 Meeting-house, Star Island 163 The Graves, with Captain John Smith's Monument, Star Isl- and 105 Gorge, Star Island 109 Tail-piece 174 Cliffs, White Island 175 Blackboard, the Pirate 178 Smutty Nose 182 Haley Dock and Homestead... 183 Ledge of Rocks, Smutty Nose . ISO South-ea- ; These statements are supported by the testimony of ^''^ J;'-" ° j-^ .! "l. ■ 1 .„. ,v,.„ nfter the reor<»anizat on ot the troops in Canada, sc\ :::;:,;s1e e stt'li ir f otLFi;nce with a cargo of women of ordinary :::;uuli, umUthe direction of some old sta^emms^wh^^ " Mass. Archives, French Documents. Ibid. 26 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. three classes. The vestal virgins Avere heaped up (if I may so speak), one above another, in three different apartments, where the bridegrooms singled out their brides just as a butclier does ewes from among a flock of sheep. The sparks that wanted to be married made their addresses to the above- mentioned governesses, to whom they were obliged to give an account of their goods and estates before they were allowed to make their choice in the seraglio." After the selection was made, the marriage was concluded on the spot, in presence of a priest and a notary, the governor-general usually pre- senting the happy couple with some domestic animals with which to begin life anew. When the number of historical precedents is taken into account, the su- perstition long curi-ent among mariners with regard to setting sail on Fi-iday seems unaccountable. Columbus sailed from Spain on Friday, discovered land on Friday, and returned to Palos on Friday. Cabot discovered the American continent on Friday. Gosnold sailed from England on Friday, made land on Friday, and came to anchor on Friday at Exmouth. These coincidences might, it would seem, dispel, with American mariners at least, something of the dread with which a voyage begun on that day has long teen regarded. MOUNT DE ; :::, ! 1:l'M blue hill bay. CHAPTER 11. MOUNT DESERT ISLAND. "There, gloomily against the sky, The Dark Isles rear their summits high ; And Desert Rock, abrupt and bare, Lifts its gray turrets in the air." Whittier, TSLANDS possess, of themselves, a magnetism not vouchsafed to any spot -■- of the main-land. In cutting loose from the continent a feeling of freedom is at once experienced that comes spontaneously, and abides no longer than you remain an islander. You are conscious, in again setting foot on the main shore, of a change, which no analysis, however subtle, will settle altogether to your liking. Upon islands the majesty and power of the ocean come home to you, as in multiplying itself it pervades every fibre of your consciousness, gaining in vastness as you grow in knowledge of it. On islands it is always present — always roaring at your feet, or moaning at your back. Islands have had no little share in the world's doings. Corsica, Elba, and St. Helena are linked together by an unbroken historical chain. Honier and the isles of Greece, Capri and Tiberius loom in the twilight of antiquity. Thinking on Garibaldi or Victor Hugo, the mind instinctively lodges on Ca- prera or Guernsey. An island was the death of Philip II., and the ruin of Napoleon. In the New World, Santo Domingo, Cuba, and Newfoundland were first visited by Europeans. The islands of the New England coast have become beacons of her history. Mount Desert, Monhegan, and the Isles of Shoals, Clark's Island, Nantucket, The Vineyard, and Rhode Island have havens where the historian or antiqua- ry must put in before landing on broader ground. I might name a score of 28 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. Others of lesser note ; these are planets in our watery system. On this line many peaceful summer campaigns have been brought to a happy conclusion. Not a few have described the more genial aspects of Mount Desert. It has in fact given employment to many busy pens and famous pencils. I am not aware that its wintry guise has been portrayed on paper or on canvas. The very name is instinctively associated with an idea of desolateness : "The gray and thunder-smitten pile Wliich marks afar the Desert Isle." Champlain was no doubt impressed by the sight of its craggy summits, stripped of trees, basking their scarred and splintered steeps in a September sun. " I have called it," he says, " the Isle of Monts Deserts." In a little "/)«??acAe" of only seven- teen or eighteen tons burden, he had set out on the 2d of September, 1604, from St. Croix, to explore the coast of Xoruni- bega. Two natives accomjjanied him as guides. The same day, as they passed close to an island four or five leagues long, their bark struck a hardly sub- mero-cd rock, which tore a hole near the MAP OF MOUNT DESEKT ISLAND. MOUNT DESERT ISLAND. 29 Keel. They either sailed around the island, or explored it by land, as tlie strait between it and the main-land is described as being not more than a hundred paces in breadth. "The land," continues the French voyager, " is very high, intersect- ed by passes, ap- pearing from the sea like seven or eight mountains ranged near each other. The summits of the greater part of these are bare of trees, be- cause they are noth- ing but rocks." It was during this voy- age, and with equal pertinence, Cham- plain named Isle au Haat.' According to Pere Biard, the savages called the island of Mount Desert ^'Femetiq,''' " meaning," says M. I'Abbe Maurault, " that which is at the head." A crowned head it appears, seen on lanil or sea. It is curious to observe how the embouchure of the Penobscot is on either shore guarded by two such solitary ranges of mountains as the Camden and Mount Desert groups. They embrace about the same number of individual peaks, and approximate nearly enough in altitude. From Camden we may skirt tlie shores for a hundred and fifty miles to the west and south before meeting with another eminence; and then it is an isolated hill standing al- most niwn the line of division between Maine and New Hampshire that is encountered. On the shore of the main-land, west of Mount Desert, is Blue Hill, another lone mountain. Katahdin is still another astray, of grander proportions, it is true, but belonging to this family of lost mountains. Al- though they appear a continuous chain when massed by distance, the Mount SAMUEL CHAMPLAIN. 1 "Champlain's Voyages," edit. 1G13. Mount Desert was also made out by the Boston colo- nists of 1630. The reader is referred for materials cf xMouut Desert's history to Champlaiu, Char- levoix, Lescarbot, Biard, and Furchas, vol. iv. 30 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. Desert range is, in reality, broken into little family groups, as exhibited on the map. Another peculiarity of the Mount Desert chain is that the eastern summits are the highest, terminating generally in precipitous and inaccessible cliffs. I asked a village ancient his idea of the origin of these mountains, and re- ceived it in two words, "Hove up." The cluster numbers thirteen eminences, to which the title " Old Thirteen " may be more fitly applied than to any po- litical community of modern history. This assemblage of hills with lakes in their laps at once recalled the Adirondack region, with some needful deduc- tions for the height and nakedness of the former when compared with the greater altitudes and grand old forests of the wilderness of northern New York. Should any adventurous spirit, after reading these pages, wish to see the Desert Isle in all its rugged grandeur, he may do so at the cost of some tri- fling inconveniences that do not fall to the lot of the summer tourist. In this case, Bangor or Bucksport will be the point of departure for a journey of from thirty to forty miles by stage, I came to the island by steamboat from Bos- ton, which landed me at Bucksport; whence I made my way via Ellsworth to Somesville. After glancing at the map of the island, I chose Somesville as a central point for my excursions, because it lies at the head of the sound, that divides the island almost in two, is the point toward which all roads converge, and is about equally distant from the harbors or places of particular resort. In summer I should have adopted the same plan until I had fully explored the shores of the Sound, the mountains that are contiguous, and the western half of the island. In twenty-four hours the visitor may know by heart the names of the mountains, lakes, coves, and settlements, with the roads leading to them; he may thereafter establish himself as convenience or fancy shall dictate. At Somesville there is a comfortable hostel, but the larger summer hotels are at Bar Harbor and at South-west Harbor. The accentuation should not fall on the last, but on the first syllable of Desert, although the name is almost universally mispronounced in Maine, and notably so on the island itself Usually it is Mount Des«r^, toned into Desert by the casual population, who thus give it a curious significance. Mount Desert is one of the wardens of Penobscot Bay, interposing its bulk between the waters of Frenchman's Bay on the east and Blue Hill Bay on the west. A bridge unites it with the main-land in the town of Trenton, where the opposite shores approach within rifle-shot of each other. This point is locally known as the Narrows. When I crossed, the tide was press- ing against the wooden piers, in a way to quicken the pace, masses of newly- formed ice that had floated out of Frenchman's Bay with the morning's ebb. You get a glimpse of Mount Desert in sailing up Penobscot Bay, where its mountains appear foreshortened into two cloudy shapes that you would fail to know again. But the highest hills between Bucksport and Ellsworth MOUNT DESERT ISLAND. 31 display the whole range ; and from the latter place until the island is reached their snow-laced sides loomed grandly in the gray mists of a December day. In this condition of the atmosphere their outlines seemed more sharply cut than when thrown against a background of clear blue sky. I counted eight peaks, and then, on coming nearei-, others, that at lirst had blended with those higher and more distant ones, detached themselves. Green Mountain will be remembered as the highest of the chain. Beech and Dog mountains from their peculiarity of outline. A wider break between two hills indicates where the sea has driven the wedge called Somes's Sound into the side of the isle. "Western Mountain terminates tl\e range on the right ; Newport Mountain, Avith Bar Plarbor at its foot, is at the other extremity of the group. In ap- proaching from sea this order would appear reversed. The Somesville road is a nearly direct line drawn from the head of the Sound to the Narrows. Soon after passing the bridge, that to Bar Harbor diverged to the left. Crossing a strip of level land, we began the ascent of Town Hill through a dark growth of cedar, fir, and other evergreen trees. A little hamlet, where there is a post-office, crowns the summit of Town Hill. Not long after, the Sound opened into view one of those rare vistas that leave a picture for after remembrance. At first it seemed a lake shut in by the feet of two interlocking mountains, but the vessels that lay fast-moored in the ice w-ere plainly sea -going craft. Somesville lay beneath us, its little steeple pricking the frosty air. Cold, gray, and cheerless as th^r outward dress ap- peared, the mountains had more of impressiveness, now that they were cov- ered from base to summit with snow. They seemed really mountains and not hills, receiving an Alpine tone with their wintry vesture. After all, a winter landscape in New England is less gloomy than in the same zone of the Mississippi Valley, where, in the total absence of evergreen- trees, nothing but long reaches of naked forest rewards the eye, which roves in vain for some vantage-ground of relief Jutting points, well wooded with dark firs, or clumps of those trees standing by the roadside, were agreeable features in this connection. A brisk trot over the frozen road brought us to the end of the half-dozen miles that stretch between Somesville and the Narrows. The snow craunch- ed beneath the horses' feet as we glided through the village street ; in a mo- ment more the driver drew up with a flourish beside the door of an inn which bears for its ensign a name advantageously known in these latitudes. A rousing fire of birchen logs blazed on the open hearth. Above the mantel were cheap prints of the presidents, from Wasliington to Buchanan. I was made welcome, and thought of Shenstone when he says, " Whoe'er lias travel'd life's dull round, Wliate'er his fortunes may have been, Must sigh to think how oft he's found Life's warmest welcome at an inn." 32 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. HEAD OF SOMES S SOUND. An island fourteen miles long and a dozen broad, embracing a hundred square miles, and traversed from end to end by mountains, is to be approach- ed with respect. It excludes the idea of superficial observation. As the mountains bar the way to the southern shores, you must often make a long detour to reach a given point, or else commit yourself to the guidance of a deer- path, or the dry bed of some mountain torrent. In summer or in autumn, M'ith a little knowledge of woodcraft, a well-adjusted pocket-compass, and a stout staff, it is practicable to enter the hills, and make your way as the red Inmtsmen were of old accustomed to do; but in winter a guide would be in- dispensable, and you should have well-trained muscles to undertake it. The mountains have been ti'aversed again and again by fire, destroying not the Avood alone, but also the thin turf, the accumulations of years. The woods are full of the evidences of these fires in the charred remains of large trees that, after the passage of the flames, have been felled by tempests. At a distance of five miles the present growth resembles stubble; on a nearer approach it takes the appearance of underbrush ; and upon reaching the hills you find a young forest repairing the ravages made by fire, wind,« and the woodman's axe. "Fifty years ago," said JNIr. Somes, "those mountains were covered with a dark growth." Cedars, firs, hemlocks, and other evergreens, with a thick sprinkling of white-birch, and now and then a clump of beeches, make the principal base for the forest of the future on Mount Desert — pro- MOUNT DESERT ISLAND. 33 viJed always it is permitted to arrive at maturity. Hitherto tlie poverty or greed of the inhabitants has sacrificed every tree that was worth the hibor of felling. In the neighborhood of Saulsbury's Cove there are still to be seen, in inaccessible places, trees destined never to feel the axe's keen edge. Mine host of the village tavern, Daniel Somes, or "Old Uncle Daniel," as he is known far and near, is the grandson of the first settler of the name who emigrated from Gkuicester, Massachusetts, and "squatted" hei-e — "a vile phrase" — about 1760. Abraham Somes built on the little point of land in front of the tavern-door, from which a clump of shrubs may be seen growing near the spot. Other settlers came from Cape Cod, and were located at Hull's and other coves about the island. I asked my landlord if there were any family traditions relative to the short-lived settlement of the French, or traces of an occupation that might well have set his ancestors talking. He siiook his gray head in emphatic negative. Had I asked him for " Tam O'Shauter" or the "Brigs of Ayr," he would have given it to me stanza for stanza. There are few excursions to be made within a certain radius of Somesville that offer so much of variety and interest as that on the western side of the Sound, pursuing, with such wanderings as flmcy may suggest, the well-beat- en road to South-west Harbor. It is seven miles of hill and dale, lake and streain, with a succession of charming views constantly unfolding tliemselves before you. And here I may remark that the roads on the island are gener- ally good, and easily followed. The map may have so far introduced the island to the reader that he M'ill 34 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. be able to trace the route along the side of Robinson's Mountain, which is be- tween the road and the Sound, with two summits of nearly equal height, ris- ing- six hundred and forty and six hundred and eighty feet above it. At the right, in descending this road, is Echo Lake, a superb piece of water, having Beech Mountain at its foot. You stumble on it, as it were, unawares, and enjoy the surprise all the more for it. Broad-shouldered and deep-chested mountains wall in the reservoirs that have been filled by the snows melting from their sides. There are speckled trout to be taken in Echo Lake, as well as in the pond lying in Somesville. Of course the echo is to be tried, even if the mount gives back a saucy answer. Next below us is Dog Mountain. It has been shut out from view until you have uncovered it in passing by the lake. Dog Mountain's eastern and liigh- est crest is six hundred and eighty feet in the air. How much of resemblance it bears to a crouching mastiff depends in a great measure upon the imagina- tion of the beholder : Ham. "Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? Pol. "By tlie mass, and 'tis like a camel indeed. Ham. "Methinks it is like a weasel. Pol. "It is backed like a weasel. Ham. "Or like a whale? Pol. "Very like a whale." Between Dog and Brown's Mountain on its eastern shore the Sound has forced its way for six or seven miles up into the centre of the island. At the southern foot of Dog Mountain is Fernald's Cove and Point, the sup- posed scene of the attempted settlement by the colony of Madame the Mar- chioness De Guercheville. Mr. De Costa has christened Brown's Mount- ain with the name of Mansell, from Sir Robert Mansell, vice-admiral in the times of James L and Charles L Tlie whole island was once called after the knight, but there is a touch of retributive justice in recollecting that the English, in expelling the French, have in turn been expelled from its nomen- clature. Turning now to what Prescott calls "historicals" for enlightenment on the subject of the colonization of Mount Desert, it appears that upon the return of De Monts to France he gave his town of Port Royal to Jean de Poutrin- court, whose voyage in 1606 along the coast of New England will be noticed in future chapters. The projects of De Monts having been overthrown by in- trigue, and thi-ough jealousy of the exclusive rights conferred by his patent, Madame De Guercheville, a "very charitable and pious lady" of the court,' entered into negotiation with Poutrincourt for the founding of Jesuit missions among the savages. Finding that Poutrincourt claimed more than he could conveniently establish a right to, Madame treated directly with Du Guast, wlio * She \vas one of the queen's ladies of honor, and wife of the Duke of Rochefoucauld Liancourt. MOUNT DESEUT ISLAND. 3.5 ceded to her all the privileges derived by him from Henry IV. The king, in 1607, confirmed all except the grant of Port Royal, which was reserved to Poutrincourt. The memorable year of 1610 ended the career of Henry, in the Rue de la Ferronerie. In 1611 the fathers, Pere Biard and Enemond Masse, of the College d'Eu, came over to Port Royal with Biencourt, the youno-er Poutrincourt. Daring the next year an expedition under the au- spices of Madame De Guercheville was prepared to follow, and, after taking on board the two Jesuits already at Port Royal, was to proceed to make a definitive settlement somewhere in the Penobscot. The colonists numbered in all about thirty persons, including two other Jesuit fathers, named Jacques Quentin and Gilbert Du Thet.^ The expedition was under the command of La Saussaye. In numbers it was about equal to the colony of Gosnold. La Saussaye arrived at Port Royal, and after taking on board the fathers, Biard and Masse, continued his route. Ai-riving oflT Menan, the vessel was enveloped by an impenetrable fog, which beset them for two days and nights. Tlieir situation was one of imminent danger, from which, if the relation of the Pere Biard is to be believed, they were delivered by prayer. On the morn- ing of the third day the fog lifted, disclosing the island of Mount Desert to their joyful eyes. The pilot landed them in a harbor on the east side of the island, where they gave thanks to God and celebrated the mass. They named the place and harbor St. Sauveur. Singularly enough, it now fell out, as seven years later it happened to the Leyden Pilgrims, that the pilot refused to carry them to their actual destina- tion at Kadesquit,^ in Pentagoet River. He alleged that the voyage was completed. After much wrangling the afi:*air was adjusted by the appear- ance of friendly Indians, who conducted the fathers to their own place of habitation. Upon viewing the spot, the colonists determined they could not do better than to settle upon it. They accordingly set about making a lodg- ment." The place where the colony was established is obscured as much by the relation of Biard as by time itself The language of the narration is calcu- lated to mislead, as the place is spoken of as " being shut in by the large island of Mount Desert." The Jesuit had undoubtedly full opportunity of becom- ing familiar with the locality, and his account was written after the dissolu- tion of the plantation by Argall. There is little doubt they were inhabiting some part of the isle, as Champlain in general terms as>^erts. Meanwhile the orassy slope of Fernald's Point gains many pilgrims. The brave ecclesiastic, Du Thet, could not have a nobler monument than the stately cliffs graven by ^ Champlain : Mr. Shea says he was only a lay brother. ' This has a resemblance to Ivenduskeag, and was probably the present Bangor. ' Charlevoix savs the landing was on the north side of the island. 36 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. lightning and the storm wilh the liandwriting of tlie Omnipotent. The puny reverberations of Argall's broadsides were as nothing compared with the ar- tillery that has played upon these heights out of cloud battlements. Daring the summer of 1613, Samuel Argall, learning of the presence of the French, came upon them unawares, and in true buccaneer style. A very brief and unequal conflict ensued. Du Tiiet stood manfully by his gun, and fell, mortally wounded. Captain Flory and tiiree others also received wounds. Two were drowned. The French then surrendered. Argall's ship was called the Treasurer. Henri de Montmorency, Admiral of P^-ance, demanded justice of King James for the outrage, but I doubt that he ever received it. He alleged that, besides killing several of the colonists and transporting others as prisoners to Virginia, Argall had put the remain- der in a little skifl" and abandoned them to the mercy of the waves. Thus ended the fourth attempt to colonize New England. Argall, it is asserted, had the baseness to purloin the commission of La Saussaye, as it favored his project of plundering the French more at his ease, the two crowns of England and France being then at peace. He was af- terward knighted by King James, and became a member of the Council of Plymouth, and Deputy-governor of Virginia. During a second expedition to Acadia, he destroyed all traces of the colony of JNIadame De Guercheville. It is pretty evident he was a bold, bad man, as the more his character is scanned the less there appears in it to admire. Brother Du Thet, standing with smoking match beside his gun, was wor- thy the same pencil that has illustrated the defense of Saragossa. I marvel much the event has not been celebrated in verse. An enjoyable way of becoming acquainted with Somes's Sound is to take a wherry at Somesville and drift slowly down with the ebb, returning with the next flood. In some respects it is better than to be under sail, as a landing- is always easily made, and defiance may be bidden to head winds. One of the precipices of Dog Mountain, known as Eagle Cliif, has always attracted the attention of the artists, as well as of all lovers of the beautiful and sublime. There has been much search for treasure in the glens here- abouts, directed by spiritualistic conclaves. One too credulous islander, in his fruitless delving after the pirate Kidd's buried hoard, has squandered the gold 6f his own life, and is worn to a shadow. When some one asked Moll Pitcher, the celebrated fortune-teller of Lynn, to disclose tlie place where this same Kidd had secreted his wealth, promis- ing to give her half of what was recovered, tlie old witch exclaimed, "Fool ! if I knew, could I not have all myself?" Kidd's wealth must have been be- yond computation. Tliere is scarcely a headland or an island from Monlauk to Grand Menan which according to local tradition does not contain some portion of his spoil. Much interest is attached to the shell heaps found on Fernald's Point and MOUNT DESERT ISLAND. 37 1 ihlrtHiiin i/~* r at Sand Point opposite. Tlieie are also such banks at HiiU\ Cove and elsewhere. Indian implements are occasionally met with in these deposits. It is reasonably certain that some of them are of remote antiquit}. Williamson states that a hea\ \ growth of trees was found by the first settlers upon some ot the shell banks in this vicni- ity.' Associated with these relics of aboriginal occupation is the print in the rock ne.ii CromwelTs Cove, called the "Indian's Foot." It is in ap- pearance the impression of \i,V.-> FOKT GEORGE. 70 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. fled. General Wadsworth defended himself with S])artan bravery. Armed with a brace of pistols, a fusee, and a blunderbuss, he fought his assailants away from his windows and the door, through which they had followed the •retreating sentinel. In his shirt, witli his bayonet only, he disdained to yield for some time longer, until a shot disabled his left arm. Then, with five or six men lying wounded ai'ound him, the windows shattered, and the house on fire, Peleg Wadsworth Avas able to say, "I surrender." They took him, ex- hausted with his exertions and benumbed with cold, to the foil, where he was kept close prisoner. Some time after. Major Burton, who had served with the general, was also made prisoner, and lodged in the same room with him. Wadsworth applied for a parole. It was refused. Governor Hancock sent a cartel with an oflfer of exchange. It was denied. One daj' he was visited by Miss Fenno, who in five words gave him to know he was to be detained till the end of the war. Peleg Wadsworth then resolved to escape. The pi'isoners were confined in a room of the officers' quarters, the win- dow grated, the door provided with a sash, through which the sentinel, con- stantly on duty in the passage, could look into the room as he paced on his round. At either end of this passage was a door, opening upon the parade of the fort, .at which other sentinels were posted. At sunset the gates were closed, and the number of sentinels on the parapet increased. A ))icket was also stationed at the narrow isthmus connecting with the main-land. These were not all the difficulties in their way. Supposing them able to pass the sentinels in the passage and at the outer door of their quarters, they must then cross the open space and ascend tlie wall under the eye of the guards posted on the parapet. Admitting the summit of the rampart gained, the exterior wall was defended with strong pickets driven obliquely into the earthen wall of the fort. From this point was a sheer descent of twenty feet to the bottom of the ditch. Arrived here, the fugitives must ascend the coun- terscarp, and cross the chevaux-de-frise with which it was furnished. They were then without the fortress, with no possible means of gaining their free- dom except by water. To elude the j^icket at the Neck was not to be thought of. The prisoners' room was ceiled with pine boards. Upon some pretext they procured a gimlet of a servant, with which they perforated a board so as to make an aperture sufficiently large to admit the body of a man. The interstices were cut through with a penknife, leaving the corners intact until the moment for action should arrive. They then filled the holes with bread, and carefully removed the dust from the floor. This work liad to be exe- cuted while the sentinel traversed a distance equal to twice the depth of their own room. The prisoners paced their floor, keeping step with the sentry; and as soon as he had passed by, Barton, Avho was the taller, and could reach the ceiling, commenced work, while Wadsworth walked on. On the approach of the soldier Burton quickly rt^oined his companion. Three weeks were re- CASTING. 71 quired to execute this task. Each was pvovifled with a blanket and a strons: staff, sharpened at the end. For food tliey kept tlieir crusts and dried bits of their meat. They waited until one nijjjht when a violent thunder-storm swept over the peninsula. It became intensely dark. The rain fell in torrents upon the roof of the barracks. The moment for action had come. The prisoners undressed themselves as usual, and went to bed, observed by the sentinel. They then extinguished their candle, and quickly arose. Their plan was to gain the vacant space above their room, creeping along the joists until they reached the passage next beyond, which they knew to be unguarded. Thence they were to make their way to the north bastion, acting as circumstances might determine. Burton was the first to pass through the opening. He had advanced but a little way before he encountered a flock of fowls, whose roost he had in- vaded. Wadsworth listened with breathless anxiety to the cackling that apprised him for the first time of this new danger. At length it ceased with- out having attracted the attention of the guards, and the general with difti- culty ascended in his turn. He passed over the distance to tlie gallery un- noticed, and gained the outside by the door that Burton had left open. Feel- ing his way along the wall of the barracks to the western side, he made a bold push for the embankment, gaining the rampart by an oblique path. At this moment the door of the guard-house was flung open, and a voice ex- claimed, " Relief, turn out !" Fortunately the guard passed without seeing the fugitive. He reached the bastion agreed upon as a rendezvous, but Burton was not there. No time was to be lost. Securing his blanket to a picket, he lowered himself as far as it would permit, and dropped without accident into the ditch. From here he passed softly out by the water- course, and stood in the open air without the fort. It being low tide, the general waded the cove to the main-land, and made the best of his way up the river. In the morning he was rejoined by his companion, and both, after exertions that ex- acted all their fortitude, gained the opposite shore of the Penobscot in safety. Their evasion is like a romance of the Bastile in the day of Richelieu. The gallant old general removed to Falmouth, now Portland, One of his sons, an intrepid spirit, was killed by the explosion of a fire-shij) before Trip- oli, in which he was a volunteer. A daughter married Hon. Stephen Long- fellow, of Portland, father of the poet. When the corjys cVarmee of Rochambeau was at Newport, the Fiench general conceived the idea of sending an expedition to recapture Penob- scot, and solicited the consent of Washington to do so. The French oflicers much preferred acting on an independent line, but the proposal was wisely negatived by the commander in chief The man to whom Rochambeau ex- pected to intrust the naval operations was La Peyrouse, the distinguished but ill-fated navigator. Other earth-works besides those already mentioned may be traced. Two ^J2 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. small batteries that guarded the approaches on the side of the cove are dis- tinct. Some of these works were renovated during the reoccupation of Cas- tine by the British in 1812. Others seen on the shores of the harbor are of more recent date. A speaking reminder of by -gone strife is an old cannon, lying on the greensward under the walls of Fort George, of whose grim muzzle school- irirls were wont to make a post-office. There was poetry in the conceit. Never before had it been so delicately charged, though I have known a per- fumed billet-doux do more damage than this fellow, double-shotted and at point-blank, might effect. ECINS OF FORT PENTAGOET, CASTINE. CHAPTER V. CASTINE — continued. "Baron Castine of St. Castine Has left his chateau in the Pyrenees, And sailed across the westem seas." LOXGFELLOAV, T" CONFESS I would rather stand in presence of the Pyramids, or walk in -■- the streets of buried Pompeii, than assist at the unwrapping of many flesh- less bodies. No other medium than the material eye can grasp a fact with the same distinctness. It becomes rooted, and you may hang your legends or traditions on its branches. It is true there is a class who journey from Dan to Beersheba, finding all barren ; but the average American, though far from unappreciative, too often makes a business of his recreation, and devours in an hour what might be viewed with advantage in a week or a month. After this frank declaration, the reader will not expect me to hurry him through a place that contains so much of the crust of antiquity as Castine, and is linked in with the Old-world chronicles of a period of surpassing in- terest, both in history and romance. Very little of the fort of the Baron Castin and his predecessors, yet enough to reward the research of the stranger, is to be seen on the margin of the shore of the harbor, less than half a mile from the central portion of the town. The grass-grown ramparts have sunk too low to be distinguished from the water in passing, but are evident to a person standing on the ground it- self. Not many years will elapse before these indistinct traces are wholly obliterated.' The bank here is not much elevated above high-water mark, Avhile at the wharves it rises to a higher level, and is ascended by stairs. The old fort was ' In 1759 Governor Pownall took possession of the peninsula of Castine, and hoisted the En- glish flag on the fort. He found the settlement deserted and in ruins. — Gov. Fom'nall's Journal. 74 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. placed near the narrowest part of the harbor, with a firm pebbly beach before it. Small boats may land directly under the wrJls of the work at high tide, or lie protected by the curvature of the shore from the heavy seas rolling in from the outer harbor. The high hills over which we were rambling in the preceding chapter ward oif the northern winds. A portion of the ground covered by old Fort Pentagoet is now occupied by buildings, a barn standing within the circumvallation, and the dwelling of Mr. Webb between the shore and the road. A little stream of sweet water trickles along the south-west face of the work, and then loses itself among the pebbles of the beach. Fort Pentagoet, at its rendition by Sir Thomas Temple, in 1670, after the treaty of Breda, was a rectangular work with four bastions. The height of the curtains within was eight feet. On entering the fort a corps de garde^ twelve paces long and six broad, stood at the left, with a logis^ or quarter, on the opposite side of the entrance. On the left side were also two store-houses, each thirty-six paces long by twelve in breadth, covered with shingles. Un- derneath the store-houses was a cellar of about half their extent, in which a well had been sunk. Above the entrance was a turret, built of timber, plas- tered with clay, and furnished with a bell. At the right hand was a barrack of the same length and breadth as the store-houses, and built of stone. Sixty paces from the fort was a cabin of planks, in which the cattle were housed ; and at some distance farther was a garden in good condition, having fruit- trees. There were mounted on the ramparts six six-pounder and two four- pounder iron cannon, with two culverins. Six other pieces were lying, useless and dismounted, on the parapet. Overlooking the sea and detached from the fort was a platform, with two iron eight-pounders in position. The occupant of the nearest house told me an oven constructed of flat slate-stones was discovered in an angle of the work; also that shot had been picked up on the beach, and a tomahawk and stone pipe taken from the well. The whole ground has been explored with the divining-rod, as well within as without the fort, for treasure-trove; though little or nothing rewarded the search, except the discovery of a subterranean passage opening at the shore. These examinations were no doubt whetted by an extraordinary piece of good luck that befell farmer Stephen Grindle, while hauling wood from a rocky hill-side on the point at the second narrows of Bagaduce Kiver, about six miles from Castine peninsula. In 1840 this worthy husbandman saw a shin- ing object lying in the track of his oxen. He stooped and picked up a silver coin, as bright as if struck within a twelvemonth. On looking at the date, he found it to be two hundred years old. Farther search was rewarded by the discovery of several other pieces. A fall of snow interrupted the farmer's in- vestigations until the next spring, when, in or near an old trail leading across the point, frequented by the Indians from immemorial time, some seven hun- CASTINE. 75 dred coins of the nominal value of four hundred dollars were unearthed near the surface. All the pieces were of silver. The honest farmer kept his own counsel, using his treasure from time to time to pay his store bills in the town, dolhir ^^^ ^.^^^''''fT''-^ for dollar, accounting one of Master Hull's y^5'°!°^''N~^ f^^^^S^'-. pine-tree shillings at a shilling. The store- /\^#^^^^!T^\|p|fi['^ 5S'|^* keepers readily accepted the exchange at \^'^^W|'^%^}^lS.^m the farmer's valuation ; but the possession \Oit*'^'SC^>!/ "Sp^ff^^Si of such a priceless collection was soon betray- ^■~.°!,°.--^ '^%rc,w...»"''^ ed by its circulation abroad. pine-tree shilling. Dr. Joseph L. Stevens, the esteemed antiquary of Castine, of whom I had these particulars, exhibited to me a number of the coins. They would have made a numismatist's mouth water, French ecus, Poi'tuguese and Spanish pieces-of-eight, Bremen dollars, piasters, and cob-money,' clipped and battered, with illegible dates, but melodious ring, chinked in better fellowship than the sovereigns whose effigies they bore had lived in. A single gold coin, the only one found in the neighborhood of Castine, was picked up on the beach oppo- site the fort.* The theory of the presence of so large a sum on the spot where it was found is that when Castin was driven from the fort by Colonel Church, in 1704, these coins were left by some of his party in their retreat, where they remained undiscovered for more than a century and a quarter. Or it may have been the hoard of one of the two countrymen of Castin, who, he says, were living two miles from him in 1687. The detail of old Fort Pentagoet just given is believed to describe the place as it had existed since 1654, when captured by the colony forces of Mas- sachusetts. General Sedgwick then spoke of it as "a small foit, yet very strong, and a very well composed peese, with eight peese of ordnance, one ' "The cliimsy, shapeless coinage, both of gold and silver, called in Mexico mdquina de pnpa, lotey cms ("windmill and cross-money"), and in this country by the briefer aj^pellation of "cobs." These were of the lawful standards, or nearly so, but scarcely deserved the name of coin, being rather lumps of bullion flattened and impressed by a hammer, the edge presenting every variety of form except that of a circle, and affording ample scope for the practice of clipping : notwithstand- ing they are generally found, even to this day, within a few grains of lawful weight. They are generally about a century old, but some are dated as late as 1770. Tiiey are distinguished by a large cross, of which the four arms are equal in length, and loaded at the ends. The date general- ly omits the thousandth place; so that 736, for example, is to be read 1736. The letters PLVS VLTRA (phis ultra) are crowded in witiiout attention to order. These coins were formerly brought here in large quantities for recoinage, but have now become scarce." — William E. Dcj- BOis, United States Mint. I think the name of "cob " was applied to money earlier than the date given by Mr. Dubois. Its derivation is uncertain, but was probably either "lump," or from the Welsh, for "thump," i. e., struck money. ^ On an old map of unknown date Castin's houses are located here. Y6 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. brass, three murtherers, about eighteen barrels of powder, and eighteen men in garrison.'" It would require a volume to set forth i/i extenso the annals of these mounds, scarce lifted above the surface of the surrounding plateau. But to arouse the reader's curiosity without an endeavor to gratify it were indeed churlish. I submit, therefore, with the brevity, and I hope also the simplicity, that should characterize the historic style, the essence of the matter as it has dropped from my alembic. The reader is referred to what is already narrated of Norumbega for the earliest knowledge of the Penobscot by white men. The first vessel tliat as- cended the river was probably the bark of Du Guast, Sieur de Monts, in the year 1604. De Poutrincourt was there in the year 1606.'' No establishment appears to have been begun on the Bagaduce peninsula until our colonists of New Plymouth fixed upon it for the site of a trading- post, about 1629.^ Here they erected a house, defended, probably, after the fashion of the time, with palisades, loop-holed for musketry. Tiiey were, a long way from home, and had need to keep a wary eye abroad. Governor Bradford mentions that the house was robbed by some "Isle of Rhe gentle- men" in 1632. The Plymouth people kept possession until 1635, Avhen they were dispos- sessed by an expedition sent from La Have, in Acadia, commanded by the Chevalier Charles de Menou, or, as he is usually styled, D'Aulnay Charnisay. The chevalier's orders from Kazilly, who had then the general command in Canada, were to expel all the English as far as Pemaquid. Plymouth Colony endeavored to retake the place by force. A large ship for that day, the Hope, of Ipswich, England, Girling commander, was titled out, and attacked the post in such a disorderly, unskillful manner that Gir- ling expended his ammunition before having made the least impression. Standish, the redoubtable, was there in a small bark, fuming at the incompe- tency of the commander of the Hope, who had been hired to do the job for so much beaver if he succeeded, nothing if he failed. Standish, with the beaver, returned to Plymouth, after sending Girling a new supply of powder from Pemaquid; but no further effort is known to have been made to reduce the place. The Pilgrims then turned to their natural allies, the Puritans of the Bay; but, as Rochefoucauld cunningly says, there is something in the misfortunes ' Sedgwick's Letter, Historical Magazine, July, 1873, p. 38. ^ Williamson thinks the name of Cape Rosier a distinct reminder of Weymouth's voyage. ^ Though Hutchinson says "about 1G27," I think it an error, as Allerton, the promoter of the project, was in England in that year, as well as in 1026 and 1G28, as agent of the colony. Nor was the proposal brought forward until Sherley and Ilatherly, two of the adventurers, wrote to Gov- ernor Bradford, in 1629, that they had determined npon it in connection \vith Allerton, and in- vited Plymouth to join with them. CASTINE. 77 of onr friends that does not displease us. They got smooth speeches in plen- ty, but no help. It is curious to observe that at this time the two colonies combined were too weak to raise and equip a hundred soldiers on a sudden call. So the French remained in possession until 1654. An attempt was made by Plymouth Colony to liberate their men cap- tured at Penobscot. Isaac Allerton was sent to demand them of La Tour, who in haughty terms refused to deliver them up, saying all the country from Cape Sable to Cape Cod belonged to the king, his master, and if the English persisted in trading east of Peinaquid he would capture them. "Will monseigneur deign to show me his commission?" The chevalier laid his hand significantly on his sword-hilt. "This," said he, "is my commission." I have mentioned three Frenchmen : Sir Isaac de Kazilly, a soldier of the monastic order of Malta ; La Toui-, a heretic ; and D'Aulnay, a zealous papist. Kazilly's commission is dated at St. Germain en Laye, May 10th, 1632. He was to take possession of Port Royal, so named by De Monts, from its glorious harbor, and ceded to France under the treaty of 1629. This was the year after tlie taking of La Rochelle; so that we are now in the times of the great cardinal and his puissant adversary, Buckingham. The kniglit of Malta was so well pleased with Acadia that he craved permission of the grand master to remain in the country. He was recalled, with a reminder of the subjection exacted by that semi-tuilitary, semi-ecclesiastical body of its members. Hutchinson says he died soon after 1635. There is evidence he was alive in 1638. In 1638 Louis XIII. addressed the following letter to D'Aulnay : " You are my lieutenant-general in the country of the Etchemins, from the middle of the main-laud of Frenchman's Bay to the district of Canceaux. Tims you may not change any regulation in the establishment on the River St. John made by the said Sieur De la Tour, etc.'" Three years afterward the king sent his commands to La Tour to return to France immediately ; if he refused, D'Aulnay was ordered to seize his person. Whether the death of Louis, and also of his Eminence, at this time divert- ed the danger with which La Tour was threatened, is a matter of conjecture. D'Aulnay, however, had possessed himself, in 1643, of La Tour's fort, and the latter was a suppliant to the English at Boston for aid to displace his adver- sary. He obtained it, and recovered Jiis own again, but Avas unable to eject D'Aulnay from Penobscot. A second attempt, also unsuccessful, was made the following year. The treaty between Governor Endicott and La Tour in tins year was afterward ratified by the United Colonies. In 1645 D'Aulnay was in France, receiving the thanks of the king and queen-mother for his zeal in preserving Acadia from the treasonable designs « * "Archives of Massachusetts." 78 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. of La Tour. The next year a treaty of peace was concluded at Boston be- tween tlie English and D'Aulnay ; and in 1647, the king granted him letters patent of lieutenant-general from the St. Lawrence to Acadia. He died May 24th, 1650, from freezing, while out in the bay with his valet in a canoe. La Tour finished by marrying the widow of D'Aulnay, thus composing, and for- ever, his feud with the husband.' For some years quiet reigned in the peninsula, or until 1654, when an ex- pedition was fitted out by Massachusetts against Stuyvesant and the Dutch at Manhattan. Peace having been concluded before it was in readiness, the Puritans, with true thrift, launched their armament against the unsuspect- ing Mounseers of Penobscot. Althougli peace also existed between Cromwell and Louis, the expenditure of much money without some gain was not to be tliought of in the Bay. For a pretext, they had always the old grudge of prior right, going back to Elizabeth's patent of 1578 to Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Robert Sedgwick and John Leverett were two as marked men as could be found in New England. They sailed from Nantasket on the 4th of July, 1654, with three ships, a ketch, and two liundred soldiers of Old and New England. Port Royal, the fort on St. John's River, and Penobscot, were all captured. Afterward they served the Protector in England. Sedgwick was chosen by Cromwell to command his insubordinate and starving army at Ja- maica, and died, it is said, of a broken heart, from the weight of responsibility imposed on him. Altliough the King of France testified great displeasure because the forts in Acadia were not restored to him, Cromwell continued to hold them fast, nor were they given up until after the treaty of Breda, when Pentagoet, in 1669-'70, was delivered by Sir Thomas Temple to M. De Grand Fontaine, who, in 1673, turned over the command to M. De Chambly. On the 10th of August, 1674, M. De Chambly was assaulted by a buccaneer that had touched at Boston, where an English pilot, as M. De Frontenac says, was taken on board. An Englishman, who had been four days in the place in disguise, gave the pirates every assistance.^ They landed one hundred and ten men, and fell with fury on the little gari-isou of thirty badly armed and disaffected Frenchmen. After sustaining the onset for an hour, M. De Chambly fell, shot through the body. His ensign was also struck down, when the fort surrendered at discretion. The sea-robbers pillaged the fort, carried off the cannon, and conducted the Sieur De Chambly to Boston, along with M. De Marson, whom they took in the River St. John. Cliambly was put to ransom of a thousand beaver-skins. Colbert, then minister, expi-essed ' Aglate la Tour, granddaughter of the chevalier, sold the seigniory of Acadia to the crown for two thousand guineas. — Douglass. ' Mr. Sliea (Charlevoix) says this ^as John Rhoade, and the vessel the Flying Horse, Captain Jurriaen Aernouts, with a coininission from the Prince of Orange. CASTINE. 79 his surprise to Frontenac that the forts of Pentagoet and Gemisee had been taken and i)il]aged by a freebooter. Xo rupture then existed between the crowns of England and France. Another subject of Louis le Grand now raps with his sword-hilt for admis- sion to our galhmt com- pany of noble French gen- tlemen who have followed the lead of De Monts into the wilds of Acadia. Bar- on La Hontan, writing in 1683, says, "The Baron St. Castin, a gentleman of Oleron, in Bearne, having lived among the Abena- quis after the savage way for above twenty years, is so much respected by the savages that they look upon him as their tutelar god.^'_ Vincent, Baron St. Cas- tin, came to America with his regiment about 1665. He was ensign in the reg- iment Carignan, of which Henry de Chapelas was colonel. Chambly and ,'^-'^- Sorel, who were his com- |^^>i rades, have also left their |^ names impressed on the 1^ _ map of New France. The colbert. regiment was disbanded, the governor-general allowing each officer three or four leagues' extent of good land, with as much depth as they pleased. The officers, in turn, gave their soldiers as much ground as they wished upon pay- ment of a crown per arpent by way of fief.' Chambly we have seen in com- mand at Pentagoet in 16*73. Castin appears to liave plunged into the wilder- ness, making his abode with the fierce Abenaquis. The young Bearnese soon acquired a wonderful ascendency among them. He mastered their language, and received, after the savage's romantic lash- ion, the hand of a princess of the nation, the daughter of Madocawando, the implacable foe of the English, They made him their great chief, or leader, Estates are still convejed in St. Louis by the arpent. 80 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. and at his summons all the wavriovs of the Ahenaquis gathered around him. Exercising a regal power in his forest dominions, he no doubt felt every inch a chieftain. The French governors courted him ; the English feared and hated him. In 1696, with Iberville, he overran their stronghold at Pemaquid. He fought at Port Royal in 1706, and again in 1707, receiving a wound there. He was, says M. Denonville, of a daring and enterprising character, thirsting for distinction. In 1702 he proposed a descent on Boston, to be made in win- ter by a competent land and naval force. Magazines were to be formed at Piscataqua and Marblehead. It is known that some earlier passages of Castin's life in Acadia were not free from reproach. Denonville,' in recommending him to Louvois as the proper person to succeed M. Perrot at Port Royal (" si M. Perrot degoutait de son gouvernment"), admits he had been addicted in the past to riot and debaiichery ; "but," continues the viceroy, "I am assured that he is now quite reformed, and has very proper sentiments on the subject." Perrot, jeal- ous of Castin, put him in arrest for six weeks for some foolish aiFair among the Jilles of Port Royal. "For man is fire and woman is tow, And tlie Somebody comes and begins to blow," In 1686 Castin was at Pentagoet. The place must have fallen into sad neglect, for the Governor of Canada made its fortification and advantages tlie subject of a memoir to his Government. It became the rendezvous for proj- ects against New England. Quebec was not difficult of access by river and land to Castin's fleet Abenaquis. Port Royal was within supporting distance. The Indians interposed a barrier between English aggression and the French settlements. They were the weapon fi-eely used by all the French rulers un- til, from long service, it became blunted and unserviceable. They were then left to shift for themselves. Here Castin continued with his dusky wife and brethren, although he had inherited an income of five million livres while in Acadia, By degrees he had likewise amassed a fortune of two or three hundred thousand crowns "in good dry gold ;" but the only use he made of it was to buy presents for his fellow-savages, who, upon their return from the hunt, repaid him with usury in beaver-skins and peltries,^ In 1688 his trading-house was plundered by the English, It is said he died in America, but of this I have not the evi- dence, Vincent de Castin never changed his wife, as the Indian customs permit- ted, wishing, it is supposed, by his example to impress upon them the sanctity ' Denonville, who succeeded M. De la Bane as governor-general, was maitre de camp to the queen's dragoons. He was succeeded hy Frontenac. ^ Denonville's and La Hontan's letters. CASTINE. 81 of marriage as a part of the Christian religion. He liad several daughters, all of whom were well married to Frenchmen, and had good dowries ; one was captured by Colonel Church in 1704. He had also a son. In 1721, during wliat was known as Lovewell's war, in which Mather in- timates, with many nods and winks set down in print, the English were the aggressors, Castin the younger was kidnaped, and carried to Boston a pris- oner. His offense was in attending a council of the Abenaquis in his capacity of chief. He was brought before the council and interrogated. His mien was frank and fearless. In his uniform of a French officer, he stood with true Indian sang froid in the presence of men who he knew were able to deal heavy blows. "I am," said he, "an Abenaquis by my mother. All my life has been passed among the nation that has made me chief and commander over it. I could not be absent from a council where the interests of my brethren were to be discussed. The Governor of Canada sent me no orders. The dress I now wear is not a uniform, but one becoming my rank and birth as an officer in the troops of the most Christian king, my master." The young baron was placed in the custody of the sheriff of Middlesex. He was kej^t seven months a prisoner, and then released before his friends, the Abenaquis, could strike a blow for his- deliverance. This once formidable tribe was such no longer. In 1689 it scarcely numbered a hundred warriors. English policy had set a price uj^on the head of every hostile Indian. Castin, soon after his release, returned to the old family chateau among the Pyrenees. "The choir is singing tlie matin song; The doors of tl)e church are opened wide ; The people crowd, and press, and throng To see the bridegroom and the bride. They enter and pass along tlie nave ; They stand upon the farthest grave ; The bells are ringing soft and slow; The living above and the dead below Give their blessing on one and twain ; The warm wind blows from the hills of Spain, The birds are building, the leaves are green. The Baron Castine of St. Castine Hath come at last to his own again." According to the French historian, Charlevoix, the Capuchins had a hos- pice here in 1646, when visited by Pere Dreuillettes. I may not neglect these worthy fathers, whose disputes about sleeves and cowls, Voltaii'C says, were more than any among the philosophers. The shrewdness of these old monks in the choice of a location has been justified by the cities and towns sprung from the sites of their primitive missions. Here, as elsewhere, " — These black crows Had pitched by instinct on the fattest fallows." G 82 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. "I," said Napoleon, at St. Helena, "rendered all the burying-places inde- pendent of the priests, I hated friars" (/rati), "and was the annihilator of them and of their receptacles of crime, the monasteries, where every vice was practiced with impunity. A set of miscreants" (scelerati) "who in general are a dishonor to the human race. Of priests I would have always allowed a sufficient number, but no frati.''^ A Capuchin, says an old dictionary of 16*76, is a friar of St. Francis's order, wearing a cowl, or capouch, but no shirt nor breeches.* Opening our history at the epoch of the settlement of New France, and turning over page by page the period we have been reviewing, there is no more hideous chapter than the infernal cruelties of the Society of Jesus, Their agency in the terrible persecutions of the Huguenots is too well known to need repetition. St. Bartholomew, the broken pledge of the Edict of Nantes, the massacres of Vivarais, of Rouergue, and of Languedoc are among their monuments. The rigor with which infractions of the discipline of the order were pun- ished would be difficult to believe, if unsupported by trustworthy testimony. Francis Seldon, a young pupil of the Jesuit College at Paris, M-as imprisoned thirty-one years, seventeen of which were passed at St. Marguerite, and four- teen in the Bastile. His crime was a lampoon of two lines affixed to the col- lege door. A lettre de cachet from Louis XIV. consigned this poor lad of only sixteen to the Bastile in 1674, from which he only emerged in 1705, by the assignment of a ricli inheritance to the Society, impiously called, of Jesus, The siege of La Rochelle, and slaughter of the Huguenots, is believed to have been nothing more than a duel between Richelieu and Buckingham, for the favor of Anne of Austria. It was, however, in the name of religion that the population of France was decimated. Colbert, in endeavoring to stem the tide of persecution, fell in disgrace. Louvois seconded with devilish zeal the projects of the Jesuits, which had no other end than the total destruction of the reformed faith. In 1675 Pere Lachaise entered on his functions of father- confessor to the king. He was powerfully seconded by his society ; but they, fearing his Majesty might regard it as a pendant of St. Bartholomew, hesi- tated to press a decisive cottp cVetat against the Protestants. There was at the court of Louis the widow Scarron, become De Main- tenon, declared mistress of the king, who modestly aspired to replace Marie Tlierese of Austria upon the throne of France. To her the Jesuits address- ed themselves. It is believed the compact between the worthy contracting parties exacted no less of each than the advancement of their mutual proj- ects through the seductions of the courtesan, and the fears for his salvation the Jesuits were to ins|)ire in the mind of the king. Louis believed in the arguments of Madame De Maintenon, and signed the Edict of Nantes ; he ' Capuchin, a cowl or liood. CASTINE. 83 ceded to the threats or counsels of his confessor, and secretly espoused Ma- dame De Maintenon. The 25th October, 1685, the royal seal was, it is not doubted by her inspiration, appended to the barbarous edict, drawn up by the Pere Le Tellier, under the auspices of the Society of Jesus.' France had already lost a hundred thousand of her bravest and most skillful children. She was now to lose many more. Among the fugitives driven from the fatherland were many who fled, as the Pilgrims had done into Holland. Some sought the New World, and their descendants were such men as John Jay, Elias Boudiuot, James Bowdoin, and Peter Faneuil. Before the famous edict of 1685, the Huguenots had been forbidden to establish themselves either in Canada or Acadia. They were permitted to visit the ports for trade, but not to exercise their religion. The Jesuits took care that the edict was enforced in the French possessions. I have thought the oft-cited intolerance of the Puritans might be eflfectively contrasted with the diabolical zeal with which Catholic Christendom pursued the annihilation of the reformed religion. The Jesuits obtained at an early day a preponderating influence in Cana- da and in Acadia. It is believed the governor-generals had not such real power as the bishops of Quebec. At a later day, they were able well-nigh to paralyze Montcalm's defense of Quebec. The fathers of the order, with the crucifix held aloft, preached crusades against the English to the savages they were sent to convert. One of the fiercest Canabas chiefs related to an English divine that the friars told his people the blessed Virgin was a French lady, and that her son, Jesus Christ, had been killed by the English.^ One might say the gray hairs of old men and the blood -dabbled ringlets of in- nocent children were laid on the altars of their chapels. We can afibrd to smile at the forecast of Louis, when he says to M. De la Bari"fe in 1683, "I am persuaded, like you, that the discoveries of Sieur La Salle are altogether useless, and it is necessary, hereafter, to put a stop to such enterprises, which can have no other effect than to scatter the inhabit- ants by the hope of gain, and to diminish the supply of beaver." We still preserve in Louisiana the shadow of the sceptre of this monarch, whose needy successor at Versailles sold us, for fifteen millions, a territory that could pay the German subsidy with a year's harvest. Doubtless the little bell in the hospice turret, tolling for matins or vespers, was often heard by the fisher in the bay, as he rested on his oars and repeat- ed an ave,ov chanted the parting hymn of the Proven9al: "O, vierge! • O, Marie! Pour nioi priez Dieu ; Adien, adieu, patrie, Provence, adieu." ' Count Fronteuac was a relati\e of De jMainteiion. ^ Cotton iMather. 84 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. There is a pleasant ramble over the hill by the cemetery, with the same accompaniments ofgreen turf, limpid bay, and cool breezes everywhere. Inter- mitting pufts, ruffling the water here and there, fill the sails of coasting craft, while others lie becalmed within a few cable -lengths of them. Near the north-west corner of the ground I discovered vestiges of another small battery. Castine having assumed the functions of a town witliin a period compara- tively recent, her cemetery shows few interesting stones. The ancients of the little Acadian hamlet lie in forgotten graves ; no inoss-covered tablets for the antiquary to kneel beside, and trace the time-worn course of the chisel, are there. Numbers of graves are indicated only by the significant heaving of the turf In one part of tlie field is a large and rudely fashioned slate-stone standing at the head of a tumulus. A tablet with these lines is affixed: IN MEMORY OF CHARLES STEWART, The earliest occupant of this Mansion of the Dead, A Native of Scotland, And Tst Lieut. Comm. of his B. M. 74th Regt. of foot, or Argyle Highlanders. Who died in this Town, while it was in possession of the Enemy, March, A.D. 1783, And was interred beneath this stone, JEt about 40 yrs. This Tablet was inserted A.D. 1849. The tablet has a tale to tell. It runs that Stewart quarreled with a brother officer at the mess-table, and challenged him. Hearing of the intend- ed duel, the commanding officer reprimanded the hot-blooded Scotsman in such terms that, stung to the quick, he fell, Roman-like, on his own sword. Elsewhere I read the name of Captain Isaiah Skinner, who, as master of a packet plying to the opposite shore, " thirty thousand times braved the per- ils of our bay." While I was in Castine I paid a visit to the factory in which lobsters are canned for mariet. A literally "smashing" business was carrying on, but with an uncleanness that for many months impaired my predilection for this delicate crustacean. The lobsters are brought in small vessels from the low- er bay. They are then tossed, while living, into vats containing salt water boiling liot, where they receive a thorough steaming. They are next trans- ferred to long tables, and, after cooling, are opened. Only the flesh of the lai-ger claws and tail is used, the remainder being cast aside. The j-eserved portions are put into tin can, 5 that, after being tightly soldered, are subjected to a new steaming of five and a half hours to keep them fresh.' In order to arrrst the wholesale slaughter of the lobster, stringent laws Isle au Haut is particularly renowned for the size and quality of these fish. CASTINE. 85 liave been made in Maine and Massacliusetts. The fisliery is proliibitcd dur- ing certain months, and a fine is imposed for every tish exposed for sale of less than a certain growth. Of a heap containing some eight hundred lob- sters brought to the factory, not fifty were of thio size; a large proportion were not eight inches long. Frequent boiling in the same water, with the slovenly appearance of the operatives, male and female, would suggest a doubt whether plain Penobscot lobster is as toothsome as is supposed. The whole process was in marked contrast with the scrupulous neatness with which similar operations are elsewhere conducted; nor was there particular scrutiny as to whether the lobsters were already dead when received from the vessels. Wood, in the " New England Prospect," mentions that lobsters were so LOBSTER POT. plenty and little esteemed they were seldom eaten. They were fi'cquent- ly, he says, of twenty pounds' weight. The Indians used lobsters to bait their hooks, and ate them when they could not get bass. I have seen an ac- count of a lobster that weighed thirty-five pounds. Josselyn mentions that he saw one weighing twenty pounds, and that the Indians dried them for food as they did lampreys and oysters. The first-comers into New England waters were not more puzzled to find the ancient city of Nornmbega than I to reach the fabulous Down East of the moderns. In San Francisco the name is vaguely applied to the territory east of the Mississippi, though more frequently the rest of the republic is al- luded to as "The States." South of the obliterated Mason and Dixon's line, the region east of the Alleghanies and north of the Potomac is Down East, and no mistake about it. In New York you are as far as ever from this terra incognita. In Connecticut they shrug their shoulders and point you about north-north-east. Down East, say Massachusetts people, is just across our eastern border. Arrived on the Penobscot, I fancied myself there at last. 86 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. "Whither bound?" I asked of a fisherman, getting i;p his foresail before loosing from the wharf "Sir, to yon. Down East." The evident determination to shift the responsibility forbade further pur- suit of this fictitious land. Besides, Maine people are indisposed to accept without ciiallenge the name so universally applied to them of Down Eastei's. We do not say down to the North Pole, and we do say down South. Tlie higher latitude we make northwardly the farther down we get. Neverthe- less, disposed as I avow myself to present the case fairly, the people of Maine uniformly say "up to the westward," when speaking of Massachusetts. Of one thing I am persuaded — Down East is nowhere in New England. OLD FOKT FKEDEKICK, PEMAC^LIU POINT. CHAPTER VI. PEMAQUID POINT. "Love thou thy land, with love far-brought Fi'om out the storied Past, and used Within the Present, but transfused Thro' future time by power of thought." Tennyson. \ VERY small fraction of the people of New England, I venture to say, -^-^ know more of Pemaqnid than that such a place once existed somewhere within her limits ; yet it is scarcely possible to take up a book on New En- gland in which the name does not occur with a frequency that is of itself a spur to inquiry. If a few volumes be consulted, the materials for history be- come abundant. After accumulating for two hundred years, or more, what belongs to the imperishable things of earth, this old outpost of English pow- er has returned into second childhood, and become what it originally was, namely, a fishing-village. But those who delight in ferreting through the chinks and crannies of an out-of-the-way locality, will be repaid by starting from Damariscotta on a coastwise voyage of discovery. In traveling by railway from Portland, with your face to the rising sun, you catch occasional glimpses of the ocean, and you receive imperfect impressions of the estuaries that indent her "hundred- harbored " shores ; but from the window of a stage-coach journeying at six miles an hour the material and mental eye may receive and fix ideas more dis- tinct and enduring. I reached the little village of New Harbor, at Pemaquid Point, in time to see the sun crimson in setting, a cloudless sky, and an unruffled sea. Monhe- gan Island grew of a deep purple in the twilight shadows. The tower lamps were alight, and from neighboring islands other beacons twinkled pleasantly 88 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. 'THE LAND i'.Ki:i;zi; (IF i:\'i;mn( on the waters. Coasting vessels trimmed their sails to catch the land-breeze of evening. Then the moon arose. The little harbor beneath me contained a few small fishing-vessels at an- chor. One or two others were slow- ly working their way in. The cot- tages straggling by the shore were not numerous or noticeable. It was still some three miles to the light-house at the extremity of the point. At Bristol Mills I had ex- changed the stage for a beach-wagon. The driver was evidently a person of consequence liere, as he usually becomes in such isolated neighborhoods out of the beaten paths of travel. His loquacity was marvelous. He had either a message or a missive for every one he met ; and at the noise of our wheels house doors opened, and the noses and lips of youngsters were flat- tened in a whimsical manner against the window-panes. I observed that he invariably saluted the girls by their Christian names as they stood shyly peeping through half-opened doors ; adding the middle name to the baptismal whenever one might be claimed, as Olive Ann, Matilda Jane, or Hannah Ann. I should have called some of them plain Olive, or Matilda, or Hannah. The men answered to such names as Dominions, Jott, and 'Life (Eliphalet). Thus this brisk little fellow's passing was the great event over four miles of road. I should have gone directly to the old settlement on the other side of the Neck, now known as " The Factory ;" but here, for a wonder, were no hotels, and travelers are dependent upon private hospitality. " Do you think they will take me in over there ?" I queried, pointing to the old mansion on the site of Fort Frederick. The driver shook his head. "Are they quite full ?" "Solid," was his reply, given with an emphasis that conveyed the impres- sion of sardines in a box. So I was fain to rest Avith a fisherman turned store- keeper. The little rock-environed harbor on the side of Muscongus Bay is a mere roadstead, unfit for shipping in heavy easterly weather. This place, like many neighboring sea-coast hamlets, was busily engaged in the mackerel and men- haden fishery. The latter fish, usually called " porgee," is in demand at the PEMAQUID POINT. 89 factories along shore for its oil, and among Bank fishermen as bait. Some old cellars on the north side of New Harbor indicated the locale of a former gen- eration of fishermen. On this side, too, there existed, not many years ago, re- mains of a fortification of ancient date.* Shot, household utensils, etc., have been excavated there. There is also by the shore what was either the lair of wild beasts, or a place of concealment frequented by savages. Mr. M'Far- land, one of the oldest residents, mentioned that he had found an arrow-head in the den. Various coins and Indian implements, some of wliich I saw, have been turned up with the soil on this neck of land. The visitor will not leave New Harbor without hearing of sharp work done there in the war of 1812. The enemy's cruisers kept the coast in per- petual alarm by their marauding excursions in defenseless harbors. One day a British frigate hove to in the Bay, and in a short time a number of barges were seen to push off, fully manned, for the shore. The small militia guard then stationed in Old Fort Frederick was notified, and the residents of New Harbor prepared for action. As the leading British barge entered the harbor, it was hailed by an aged fislierman, who warned the officer in charge not to attempt to land. " If a single gun is fired," replied the Briton, "the town shall be destroyed." Not a single gun, but a deadly volley, answered the threat. The rocks were bristling with old queen's arms and ducking-guns, in the grasp of a score of resolute fellows. Every shot was well aimed. The barge drifted help- lessly out with the tide, and the captain of the frigate had a sony dispatch for the admiral at Halifax. Leaving New Harbor, I crossed a by-path that conducted to the factory road. Here and elsewhere I had listened to the story of the destruction of the menhaden, from the fishermen's point of view. They apprehend noth- ing less than the total disappearance of this fish at no distant day. " What are we poor fellows going to do when they catch up all the porgees?" asked one. The fishery, as conducted by the factories, is regarded by the fishermen proper as the introduction of improved machinery that dispenses Avith labor is looked upon by the operative. Although the oil factories purchase the catch that is brought in, the owners are considered intruders, and experi- ence many petty vexations. As men of capital, possessed of all needful ap- pliances for their business, they are really independent of the resident pop- ulation, to whom, on the other hand, they disburse money and give employ- ment. The question Avith which the political economist will have to deal is the expected extinction of the menhaden. I went through the factory at Pemaquid Point, and was persuaded the fish could not long support the drain upon them. The porgee begins to fre- ' This work is on an old map of tlie Kennebec patent. It was about twenty rods square, with a bastion. A house now stands in the space it formerly occupied. 90 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. quent these waters in June. The first -comers are lean, and will make only a gallon of oil to the barrel; those of September yield four gallons. A fleet of proi)eners, as well as sailing-craft of forty to fifty tons burden, are kept constantly employed. At Pemaquid harbor, the fish cargoes are transferred from the steamer to an elevated tank of the capacity of four thousand barrels. Underneath the tank a tram-way, conducting by an inclined plane to the second story of the factory, is laid upon the wharf. In the bottom of the tank is a trap-door that, upon being opened, quickly fills a car placed below. The fish are then taken into the factory and dumped into other tanks, containing each three car-loads, or about sixty barrels. Here steam is introduced, rapidly convert- ing the fish into unsavory chowder, or "mash," As many as a dozen of these vats were in constant use. The oil and water being drawn off into other vats, the product is obtained through the simplest of machinery, and the well- known principle tliat in an admixture with water oil will rise to the surfiice. The residuum from the first process is shoveled into perforated iron cylinders, by men standing up to their knees in the steaming mass. It is then sub- jected to hydraulic pressure, and, after the extraction of every drop of oil, is carefully housed, to be converted into phosphates. The water is 2->assed from tank to tank until completely free of oil. Nothing is lost. This factory had a capacity of three thousand barrels per day, though not of the largest class. Others were working day and night through the season, which continues for about three months. I walked afterward by the side of a seine two hundred fathoms in length, spread upon the grass in order to contract the meshes. One of them frequent- ly costs above a thousand dollars, and is sometimes destroyed at the first cast- ing by being caught on the ledges in shallow water. An old liand can easily tell the difference between a school of mackerel and one of menhaden. The former rush in a body on the top of the water, while the shoal of porgees merely ripples the surface, as is sometimes seen when a moving body of water impinges against a counter -current. The mackerel takes the hook, while the porgee and herring never do. The talk was more fishy here than in any place I have visited. Here they call a school, or shoal, "a pod of fish ;" " we sot round a pod" being a com- mon expression. The small vessels are called seiners. When they approach a school, the seine is carried out in boats, one end being attached to the ves- sel, except when a bad sea is running. I have seen the men standing up to the middle among the fish they were hauling in ; and they are sometimes obliged to abandon half their draught. The whole process of rendering menhaden into oil is less offensive to the olfactories than might be supposed. The works at Pemaquid Point are own- ed by Judson, Tarr, and Co., of Rockport, Massachusetts. As against the gen- erally received opinion that they were destroying fish faster than the losses PEMAQtfiD POINT. 91 could be repaired, the unusual abundance of mackerel the last year was cited. Mackerel, however, are not ground up at the rate of many thousand barrels per day. It is easy to conjecture that present profit is more looked to than future scarcity. The product of menhaden is chiefly used in the adulteration of linseed-oil. This fish is probably the same called by the French '•'•gaspa- rot^'' and found by them in great abundance on the coasts of Acadia. Some account of the habits of the mackerel, as given by veteran fisher- men, is of interest to such as esteem this valuable fish — and the number is legion — if not in explanation of the seemingly purposeless drifting of the mackerel fleet along shore, which is, nevertheless, guided by calculation. In early spring the old breeding fish come into the bays and rivers to spawn. They then return northward. These mackerel are not apt to take the hook, but are 'caught in weirs and seines, a practice tending to inevitable scarcity in the future. The j^arent fish come back, in September, to the local- ities where they have spawned, and, taking tlieir young in charge, proceed to the warmer waters west and south. Few if any mackerel spawn south of Cape Cod. By the time this migration occurs, the young fish have grown to six or seven inches in length, and are called "tinkers." They frequently take the bait with avidity, but are too small for market. When this school comes along, the fishermen prepare to follow, saying, " The mackerel are bound west, and we must work west with them."» These first -comers are usually fol- lowed by a second school of better size and quality. I have, often seen num- bers of young mackerel, of three to four inches in length, left in shallow pools upon the flats by the tide in midsummer. In the midst of a "biting school" no sport could be more exciting or sat- isfying. At such times the mackerel resemble famished wolves, snapping and crowding for the bait, rather than harmless fishes. This unexampled vo- racity makes them an easy prey, and they are taken as fast as the line can be thrown over. It not unfrequently happens that the school will either sink or suddenly refuse the bait, even while swarming about the sides of the vessels. This is vexatious, but there is no help for it. The fleet must lie idle until the capricious or overfed fish is hungry. Mackerel swim in deep water, and are brought to the surface by casting over quantities of ground bait. If they happen to be on the surface in a storm, at the first peal of thunder they will sink to the bottom. The move- ments of the fish in the water are like a gleam of light, and it dies hard when out of it. The mackerel was in great abundance when New England was first visited. In the confusion naturally incident to accounts of early discoveries on our coast of New England, it is pleasant to find one vantage-ground from which you can not be dislodged. In this respect Pemnquid stands almost alone. It has never been called by any other name. Possibly it may have embraced 92 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. either more or less of the surrounding territory or adjacent waters than at present; still there is eminent satisfaction in standing at Pemaquid on im- pregnable ground. In the minds of some old writers Pemaquid was unquestionably confound- ed with the Penobscot. There is a description of Pemaquid Kiver from the Hakluyt papers/ which makes it the easternmost river, one excepted^of Mavo- shen, manifestly a name erroneously applied, as the description is as far from coinciding with the true Pemaquid as is its location by Hakluyt. In this ac- count the Sagadahoc and town of Kennebec are also mentioned. Like many others, it is more curious than instructive. It also appears, to the student's dismay, that in some instances the discov- erers were apprehensive of drawing attention to any new-found port or har- bor, as it would render their monopoly of less value. The account of Wey- mouth's voyage by James Rosier omitted the latitude, doubtless Avith this object. His narrative, if not written to mislead, was confessedly not intend- ed to instruct. How is the historian to follow such a clue? Fortunately, after many puzzling and unsatisfactory conjectures, the account of William Strachey makes all clear, so far as Pemaquid is in question. Weymouth's first landfall was in 42°, and he coasted northward to 44°. Strachey speaks of "the isles and rivers, together with that little one of Pemaquid." Sir F. Gorges, in his " Brief Narration," mentions that " it pleased God " to bring Captain Weymouth, on his return in 1605, into the harbor of Plymoutli, where he, Sir Ferdinando, then commanded.^ Captain Weymouth, he contin- ues, had been dispatched by the Lord Arundel of Wardour in search of the North-west Passage, but falling short of his course, had happened into a river on the coast of America called Pemaquid. In the reprint of Sir F. Gorges's invaluable narrative^ the word Penobscot is j^laced after Pemaquid in brack- ets. It does not appear in the original. Pemaquid, then, becomes one of the pivotal points of New England dis- covery, as it subsequently was of her history. As the French had directed their early efforts toward the Penobscot, so the English had imbibed strong predilections for the Sagadahoc, or Kennebec. Weymouth and Pring had paved the way ; the Indians transported to England had been able to give an intelligible account of the country, the configuration of the coasts, the magnitude of the rivers, and power of the nations peopling the banks. The Kennebec was known to the French eai'lier than to the English, and by its jiroper name. Champlain's voyage in the autumn of 1604 extended, it is believed, as far as Monhegan, as he names an isle ten leagues from '"'' Quinehequi,^'' and says he went three or four leagues bej^ond it. Moreover, "Purchas," vol. iv., 1874. In 1G03 Gorges was deprived of the command, but had it restored to him the same year. "Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society," vol. vi., 3d series. PEMAQUID POINT. 93 he had coasted both shores of the Penobscot bay, penetrating at least as far as the Narrows, below Bucksport. lie calls the Camden hills Bedabedec, and says the Kennebec and Penobscot Indians were at enmity. De Monts followed Champlain in June, 1605, having sailed from St. Croix two days after Weymouth's departure from the coast for England. He was more than two months in exploring a hundred and twenty leagues of sea-coast, visiting and observing the Kennebec, of which a straightforward story is told. Even then the river was known as a thoroughfare to Canada.' The mouth of the Kennebec is interesting as the scene of the third at- tempt to obtain a foothold on New England's soil. This was the colony of Chief -justice Popham, which arrived oif Monhegan in August, 1607.'' This undertaking was intended to be permanent. There were two well-provided ships, and a hundred and twenty colonists.^ The leader of the enterprise, George Popham, was accompanied by Captain Raleigh Gilbert, nephew and namesake of Sir Walter Raleigh. A settlement was effected on Hunnewell's Point, at the mouth of the Ken- nebec. The winter was one of unexampled severity, and the new-comevs had been late in preparing for it. Encountering privations similar to those after- ward endured by the Plymouth settlers, they lost courage, and when news of the death of their patron, the chief-justice, reached them, were ready to abandon the project. Popham, having died in February, was succeeded by Gilbert, whose affairs recalling him to England, the whole colony deserted their settlement at Fort St. George in the spring of 160S. Popham was the first Encflish ma2:istrate in New Enafland. Mather attributes the failure of attempts to colonize the parts of New England north of Plymouth to their being founded upon the advancement of worldly interests. "A constant series of disasters has confounded them," avers the witch-hating old divine. One minister, he says, was exhorting the eastern settlers to be more religions, putting the case to them much in this way, when a voice from the congregation cried out, " Sir, you are mistaken ; you think you are preaching to the people of the Bay. Our main end was to catch fish." " Did you ever see Cotton Mather's ' History of New England ?' — one of the oddest books I ever perused, but deeply interesting." The question is put by Southey, and I repeat it, as, if you have not read Mather's " Magnalia Christi Americana," you have not seen the corner-stone of New England his- torical and ecclesiastical literature. Apropos of the immigration into New England, it was openly bruited in England that King Charles I. would have been glad if the thousands who went over were drowned in the sea. Between the years 1628 and 1635 the ' See Lescarbot, p. 497. '^ Strachey. Gorges says August 8th ; Smith, August lltli. ' A fly-boat, the Gift of God, George Popham ; Mary and John, of London, Ralcigli Gilbert. 94 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. exodus was very great, and gave the king much displeasure. No one was permitted to remove without the royal permission. Even young Harry Vane had to solicit the good offices of his father, Sir Harry, to obtain a pass. He was then out of favor at court and at home, through his Geneva no- tions about kneeling to receive the Sacrament, and other Puritan ideas, "Let him go," growls an old writer; "has not Sir Harry other sons but him?" The colony of Pophara began better than it end- ed. A fort, doubtless no more than a ])alisade with platforms for guns, was marked out. A trench was dug about it, and twelve pieces of ordnance were mounted. Within its protection fifty houses, besides a church and store- house, were built. The carpenters framed a" pryt- ty pynnace" of thirty tons, which they chris- tened the Virgi7iia. There is no earlier record of ship-building in Maine. The tenacity of the English character has become proverbial. Neverthe- less, the opinion is hazarded that no nation so ill accommodates itself to a new country. The English colonies of Virginia, New England, and Jamaica are striking examples of barrenness of resource when confronted with unforeseen privations. The Frenchman, on the contrary, possesses in an eminent degree the capacity to adapt himself to strange scenes and nnaccustomed modes of life. Every thing is made to contribute to his wants. Let the reader con- sult, if he will, the campaign of the Crimea, where thousands of English sol- diers gave way to hardships unknown in the French camps. The elastic gayety of the one is in contrast with the gloomy despondency of the other. The Popham colony abandoned a well-matured, ably-seconded design through dread of a New England winter and through homesickness. Clearly it was not of the stuff to found a State. The previous winter was passed by the French at their new settlement of COTTON MATHER. PEMAQUID POINT. 95 Port Royal, commenced within two years. The seasons of 1605 and of 1006 were extremely rigorous. The colony of De Monts went through the first in rude cabins, hastily constructed, on the island of St. Croix. The next autumn the settlement was transferred to Port Koyal. Winter found them domiciled in their new quarters under no better roofs than they had quitted. Though their leader, Du Guast, had left them, they were animated by an irre- pressible spirit of fun, altogether French. They made roads through the forest, or joined with the Indians in hunting-parties, managing these native Americans with an address that won their confidence and good help. I "-^1- "^ --'^^M^'Wifr^*'iiiirrL/' -''Wi ANCIENT PEMAQUID. Finally, at the suggestion of Champlain, in order to keep up an unflagging good-fellowship, and to render themselves free of all anxiety on the subject of provisions, the ever-famous "L'Ordre de Bon Temps" was inaugurated. It is deserving of remembrance along with the coterie of the Knights of the Round Table. Once in fifteen days each member of the order officiated as maitre cVhotel of De Poutrincourt's table. It was his care on that day that his comrades should be well and honorably entertained ; and although, as the old chronicler quaintly says, "our gourmands often reminded us that we were not in the Hue aux Ours at Paris, yet so well was the rule observed that we ordinarily made as good cheer as we should have known how to do in the Mae aux Ours, and at less cost." There was not a fellow of the order who, two days before his turn came, did not absent himself until he could return w-ith some delicacy to add to their ordinary fare. They had always fish or flesh at breakfast, and were never without one or both at the repasts of noon and evening. It became their great festival. The steward, or maitre (Vhotel, having caused all things to be made ready, marched with his napkin on his shoulder, his stafl" of ofiice in his hand, and the collar of the order, that wo are told was Avorth more than four French crowns, about his neck. Behind him Avalked the brothers of the order, each one bearing his plate. In the evening, after giving thanks to God, the host 96 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. of the day resigned the collar to his successor, each pledging the other in a glass of wine. On such occasions they had always twenty or thirty savages — men, wom- en, and children — looking on. To these they gave bread from the table ; but when, as was often the case, the sagamores — those fierce, intractable barba- rians — presented themselves, they were, says Lescarbot, " at table eating and drinkino- like us, and we right glad to see them, as, on the contrary, their ab- sence would' have made us sorry." At Pemaquid we enter the domain of Samoset, that chivalric New En- o-lander whom historians delight to honor. He was a sagamore without o-uile. Chronologically speaking, he should first appear at Plymouth, in the act of offering to those doubting Pilgrims tlie right hand of fellowship. He told them he was sagamore of Morattigon, distant from Plymouth " a daye's sayle with a great wind, and five dayes by land." In 1623 he ex- tended a kindly recep- tion to Christopher Lev- ett, to whom he proffered a friendship, to continue until the Great Spirit car- ried them to his wigwam. All the old writers speak well of Samoset, whom we call a savage,^ I next visited the lit- tle point of land on which are the ruins of old Fort Frederick. Little diffi- culty is experienced in retracing the exterior and interior lines of a fortress designed as the strongest bulwark of En- glish power in New En- gland. It was built upon a green slope, above a rocky shore, commanding the approach from the sea ; but was itself dominated by the heights of the western shore of John's River, a circumstance that did not escape the notice of D'Iberville in 1696. At the south-east angle of the Avork is a high rock. ' Samoset, in 1625, sold Pemaquid to John Brown. His sign-manual was a bended bow, with an arrow fitted to the string. The deed to Brown also fixes ths residence, at Pemaquid, of Abra- ham Shurt, agent of Elbridge and Aldworth, in the year 1626. PEMAQUID POINT. 97 overgrown with a tangle of climbing vines and shrnbs. This rock formed a ])art of the old magazine, and is now the conspicuous feature of the ruined fortress. A projecting spur of the opposite shore was called " the Barbican." The importance of Pemaquid as a check to French aggression was very great. It covered the approaches to the Kennebec, the Sheepscot, Damaris- cotta, and Pemaquid rivers. It was also, being at their doors, a standing men- ace against the Indian allies of the French, with a garrison ready to launch upon their villages, or intercept the advance of Avar parties towai'd the New England settlements. Its presence exasperated the Abenaquis, on whose ter- ritory it was, beyond measure : the French found them ever ready to second projects for its destruction. On the other hand, the remoteness of Pemaquid rendered it impracticable to relieve it when once invested by an enemy. Only a few feeble settlements skirted the sea-coast between it and Casco Bay, so the same causes combined to render it both weak and formidable. Old Pentagoet, which the reader knows for Castine, and Pemaquid, were the mailed hands of each nationality, always clenched ready to strike. The fort erected at Pemaquid in 1677, by Governor Andros, was a wooden redoubt mounting two guns, with an outwork having two bastions, in each of which were two great guns, and another at the gate.' This work was named Fort Charles. It was captured and destroyed by the Indians in 1689. Sir William Phips, under instructions from Whitehall, built a new fort at Pemaquid in 1692, which he called William Henry. Captains Wing and Ban- croft were the engineers, the work being completed by Captain March. ^ The English believed it impregnable. Mather, who says it was the finest that had been seen in those parts of America, has a significant allusion to the ar- chitect of a fortress in Poland whose eyes were put out lest he should build another such. From this vantage-ground the English, for the fifth time, ob- tained possession of Acadia. In the same year D'Iberville made a demonstration against it with two French frigates, but finding an English vessel anchored under the walls, aban- doned his design, to the chagrin of a large band of auxiliary warrioi-s who had assembled under Villebon, and who now vented their displeasure by stamping upon the ground. The reduction of Fort William Henry was part of a general scheme to ' "New York Colonial Documents," vol. iii., p. 25G. Some primitive defensive works had ex- isted as early as 1G30, rifled in 1032 by the freebooter, Dixy Bull. '^ It was of stone ; a quadrangle seven hundred and thirty-seven feet in compass witliout the outer walls, one hundred and eight feet square within the inner ones ; pierced with embrasures for twenty-eight cannons, and mounting fourteen, six being eighteen-pounders. The south wall front- ing the sea was twenty-two feet high, and six feet thick at the ports. The great flanker, or round tower, at the west end of the line was twenty-nine feet high. It stood about a score of rods from high-water mark. — Mather, vol. ii., p. 587. 7 08 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. FRENCH FRIGATE, SEVENTEENTH CENTURT. overrun and destroy the English settlements as ^^ far as the Piscataqua. The English were fore- warned, John Nelson, of Boston, whose biog- raphy is worth the writ- ing, was then a prisoner at Quebec. Madocawan- do was also there, in consultation with Count Frontenac. The Abe- naqui chief, dissatisfied with his presents, gave open expression of his diso-iist at the niG;o;ard- liness of his white ally. Nelson was well ac- quainted with the Indian tongue. lie cajoled the chief into talking of his projects, and as soon as they were in his possession acted like a man of decision. lie bribed two Frenchmen — Arnaud du Yignon and Fi-ancis Albert — to carry the intelli- gen(;e to Boston. On their return to Canada both were shot, and Nelson was sent to France, where he became for five years an inmate of the Bastile. The life of John Nelson contains all the requisites of romance. Although an Episcopalian, he put himself at the head of the revolution against the tyr- anny of Andros. As a prisoner, he risked his own life to acquaint his country- men with the dangers that menaced them; and it is said he was even carried to the place of execution along with his detected messengers. The French called him " le plus audacieux et le plus acharne," in the design of conquering Canada. Released from the Bastile on his parole, after visiting England he returned to France to fulfill its conditions, although forbidden to do so by King William. A man of address, courage, and high sense of honor was this John Nelson. In 1696, a second and more successful expedition was conducted against Pemaquid. In August, D'Iberville' and Bonaventure sailed with the royal order to attack and reduce it. They called at Pentagoet, receiving there a re-enforcement of two hundred Indians, who embarked in their canoes, led by St. Castin. On the 13th the expedition appeared before the place, and the next day it was invested. ' " D'Iberville, monseigneiir, est iin tres sage gar9on, entveprenant et qui scait ce qu'il fait."- M. Denonville. PEMAQUID POINT. 99 HUTCHINSON. Fort William Henry was then commanded by Captain Pascho Chubb, with a garrison of about a hundred men. Fifteen pieces of artillery were in posi- tion. The French expected an obstinate resistance, as the place was well able to withstand a siege. Chubb, on being summoned, returned a defiant answer. D'Iberville then began to erect his batteries. The account of Charlevoix states that the French got posses- sion of ten or twelve stone houses, forming a street leading from the village square to the fort. They then intrenched themselves, partly at the cellar- door of the house next the fort, and partly behind a rock on the sea-shore. A second demand made by St. Castin, accompa- nied by the threat that if the place were assault- ed the garrison might expect no quarter, de- cided the valiant Chubb, after a feeble and in- glorious defense, to surrender. The gates were opened to the besiegers. On finding an Indian in irons in the fortress, Castin's warriors began a massacre of the prisoners, which was arrested by their removal, at command of D'Iberville, to an island, where they were pro- tected by a strong guard from further violence. The name of William Henry has been synonymous with disaster to colonial strongholds. The massacre of 1757 at Lake George, forever infamous, obscures with blood the fair fame of Montcalm. The novelist Cooper, in making it the groundwork of his " Mohicans," has not overstated the horrors of the tragedy enacted by the placid St. Sacrament. Two days were occupied by the French in the destruction of Pemaquid fort. They then set sail for St. John's River, narrowly escaping capture by a fleet sent from Boston in pursuit. The French, who had before claimed to the Kennebec, subsequently established their boundary of Acadia at St. George's River. On the beach, below where the martello tower had stood, I discovered many fragments of bricks among the rock debris. Some of these were as larg^i as weve commonly used in the hearths of our most ancient houses. The arch by which the tower was perhaps supported remained nearly intact, though completely concealed by a thicket formed of interweaving shrubs. Some have conjectured it to have been a hiding-place of smugglers. Fra^'ments of shot and shell have likewise been picked up among the rubbish of the old fortress. Not far from the spot is a grave-yard, in which time and neglect have done their work. It has been attempted to show tliat a large and populous settlement ex- isted from a very early time at Pemaquid, with paved streets and some of LOFC 100 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. the belongings of a permanent population. Within a few years excavations have been made, exhibiting the remains of pavement of beach-pebble at some distance below the surface of the ground. It is not doubted that a small plantation was maintained here antecedent to the settlement in Massachusetts Bay, but it as certainly lacks confirmation that it had assumed either the proportions or outward appearance of a well and regularly built town at any time during the seventeenth century. If it were true, as Sullivan states, that in 1630 there were, exclusive of fishermen, eighty-four families about Sheepscot, Pemaquid, and St. George's, it also be- comes important to know by what means these settlements were depopulated previous to the Indian wars. The commissioners of Charles II., sent over in 1665, reported that upon the rivers Kennebec, Sheepscot, and Pemaquid were three plantations, the largest containing not more than thirty houses, inhabited, say they, " by the worst of men." The commissioners gave impartial testimony here, for they were trying to dispossess Massachusetts of the government she had assumed over Maine since 1652. They wrote further, that neither Kittery, York, Wells, Scarborough, nor Falmouth had more than thirty houses, and those mean ones. This was the entirety of the grand old Pine-tree State two centuries ago. Colonel Romer had recommended, about 1699, the fortifying anew of Pem- aquid, and the building of supporting works at the next point of land, and on John's Island. Nothing, however, appears to have been done until the ar- rival of Colonel David Dunbar, in 1730, to resume possession of the Sagada- hoc territory in the name of the crown. Dunbar repaired the old works, giving them the name of Fort Frederick. At Pemaquid Point he laid out the plan of a city which he divided into lots, inviting settlers to repopulate the country. Old grants and titles were con- sidered extinct. His possession at Pemaquid conflicting with the Muscougus patent was revoked through the efforts of Samuel Waldo. The garrison was replaced by Massachusetts troops, and the so-called Sagadahoc territory an- nexed to the County of York.' When in the neighborhood, the visitor will feel a desire to inspect the ex- tensive shell heaps of the Damariscotta, about a mile above the town of New- castle. They occur on a jutting point of land, in such masses as to resemble low chalk cliffs of guano deposits. The shells are of the oyster, now no long- er native in New England waters, but once abundant, as these and other re- mains testify. The highest point of the bank is twenty-five feet above the river. The deposits are rather more than a hundred rods in length, with a ■ As it is inconsistent with the purpose and limits of these chapters to give the detail of char- ters, patents, and titles by which Pemaquid has acquired much historical prominence, the reader may, in addition to authorities named in the text, consult Thornton's "Ancient Pemaquid, " vol. v. "Maine Historical Collections;" Johnston's "Bristol, Bremen, and Pemaquid;" Hough's "Pem- aquid Papers," etc. PEMAQUID POINT. 101 variable width of from eighty to a hundred rods. The shells lie in regidar layers, bleached by sun and weather. Among the many naturalists who have visited them may be named Dr. Charles T. Jackson/ and Professor Chad- bourne, of Bowdoin College. Some animal remains found among the shells were submitted to Agassiz, who concurred in the received opinion that the shells were heaped up by men. From point to point excavations have been made with the expectation of finding the Indian implements which have occasionally rewarded such inves- tigations. Williamson mentions a tradition that human skeletons had been discovered in these beds. The bones of animals and of birds have been found in them. Situated in the immediate vicinity of the shell deposits is a kiln for converting the shells into lime, which is produced of as good quality as that obtained from limestone rock. In walking along the beach at low tide, I had an excellent opportunity of surveying these remains. A considerable growth of trees had sprung from the soil collected above them, the roots of some having penetrated completely through the superincumbent shells to the earth beneath. From an observation of several cavities near the surface and in the sides of the oyster banks, the shells, in some instances, appear to have been subjected to fire. The entire stratum was in a state of decomposition that sufficiently at- tests the woi-k of years. Even those shells lying nearest the surface in most cases crumbled in ihe hands, while at a greater depth the closely- packed valves were little else than a heap of lime. The shell heaps are of common occurrence all along the coast. The read- er knows them for the feeding-places of the hordes preceding European civil- ization. Here they regaled themselves on a delicacy that disappeared when they vanished from the land. The Indians not only satisfied present hun- gei', but dried the oyster for winter consumption. Their summer camps M'ere pitched in the neighborhood of well-known oyster deposits, the squaws being occupied in gathering shell-fish, while the men were engaged in fishing or in hunting. Josselyn mentions the long-shelled oysters peculiar to these deposits. He notes them of nine inches in length from the "joint to the toe, that were to be cut in three pieces before they could be eaten." Wood professes to have seen them of a foot in length. I found many of the shells here of six inches in length. Winthrop alludes to the oyster banks of Mystic River, Massachu- setts, that impeded its navigation. During recent dredgings here oyster- shells of six to eight inches in length were frequently brought to the surface. The problem of the oyster's disappearance is yet to be solved.^ ' While making his geological survey of Maine. ^ Williamson mentions the heaps on the eastern bank, not so high as on the western, extend- ing back twenty rods from the river, and rendering the land useless. The shell heaps of Georgia and Florida are more extensive than any in New England. ^^t^s3^m^^^^\ MONHEGAN ISLAND. CHAPTER VII. MONHEGAN ISLAND. " From gray sea-fog, from icy drift, From peril and from pain, The liome-bound fisher greets tliy lights, Oh hundred-harbored Maine!" Whittier. ^T^HE most famous island you can find on the New England map is Monhe- •*- gau Island. To it the voyages of Weymouth, of Popham, and of Smith converge. The latter has put it down as one of the landmarks of our coast. Rosier calls it an excellent landfall. It is undoubtedly Monhegan that is seen on the oldest charts of New England. Champlain, with the same apt- ness and originality recognized in Mount Desert and Isle au Haut, names it La Tortue. Take from the shelf Bradford, Winthrop, Prince, or Hubbard, and you will find this island to figure conspicuously in their pages. Brad- ford says starving Plymouth was succored from Monhegan as early as 1622. The Boston colonists of 1630 were boai'ded when entering Salem by a Plym- outh man, going about his business at Pemaquid. English fishing ships hov- ered about the island for a dozen years before the Mayflov^er swung to her anchorage in the "ice-rimmed" bay. The embers of some camp-fire were al- ways smowldering there. Sailing once from Boston on a Penobscot steamboat, a few hours brought us up with Cape Ann. I asked the pilot for what land he now steered. " M'nhiggin." In returning, the boat came down through the Mussel Ridge Channel like a race-horse over a well-beaten course. We rounded Monhegan again, and then steered by the compass. Monhegan is still a landmark. A wintry passage is not always to be commended, especially when the MONHEGAN ISLAND. 103 Atlantic gets un- ruly. Leaving the Avliarf on one well- remembered occa- sion, we steamed down the bay in smooth water at fourteen miles an hour. All on board were in possession of their customa- ry equipoise. Soon the gong sounded a noisy summons to supper. "VVe descended. The cabin tables were quickly occupied by a merry com- pany of both sex- es. Tiiere was a clatter of plates and sharp click- ing of knives and forks ; waiters i-au hither and thither; tlie buzz of con- versation and rip- ple of suppressed laughter began to diffuse themselves with the good cheer, when, suddenly, the boat, mounting a sea, fell off into the trough with a measured movement that thrilled every victim of old Neptune to the marrow. It would be difficult to conceive a more instantaneous metamorphosis than that which now took place. Maidens who had been chatting or wickedly flirt- ing, laid down their knives and fork^ and turned pale as their napkins. Youths that were all smiles and attention to some adorable companion suddenly be- haved as if oblivious of her presence. Another plunge of the boat ! My vis- a-vis, an old gourmand, had intrenched himself behind a rampart of delicacies. He stops short inthe act of carving a fowl, and reels to the cabin stairs. Soon he has many followers. Wives are separated from husbands, the lover de- serts his mistress. A heavier sea lifts the bow, and goes rolling with gath- ered volume astern, accompanied by the crash of crockery and trembling of the chandeliers. That did the business. The commercial traveler who told THATCHEK S ISLAND LIGHT AND FOG SIGNALS, CAPE ANN. 104 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. me he was never sea-sick laid down the morsel he was in the act of convej^- ing to his mouth. He tried to look unconcerned as he staggered from tlie table, but it was a wretched failure. Two waiters, each bearing a well-laden tray, were sent sliding down the incline to the leeward side of the cabin, where, coming in crashing collision, they finally deposited their burdens in a berth in which some unfortunate was already reposing. All except a handful of well -seasoned voyagers sought the upper cabins, where they re- mained pale as statues, and as silent. The rows of deserted seats, unused plates, the joints sent away untouched, presented a melancholy evidence of the triumph of matter over mind. Early in the morning we made out Monhegan, as I have no doubt it was descried from the mast-head of the ArcJiangel, Weymouth's ship, two hun- dred and seventy years ago. The sea was shrouded in vapor, so that we saw the island long before the main-land was visible. Sea-faring people call it high land for this part of the world. Near the westward shore of the southern half of this remarkable island is a little islet, called Mananas, which forms the only harbor it can boast. Cap- tain Smith says, "Between Monahiggon and Monanis is a small harbour, where we rid." The entrance is considered practicable only from the south, though the captain of a coasting vessel pointed out where he had run his vessel through the ragged reefs that shelter the northern end, and saved it. It was a desperate strait, he said, and the by-standers shook their heads, in thinking on the peril of the attempt.* The inhabitants are hospitable, and many even well to do. Their harbor is providentially situated for vessels that are forced on the coast in heavy gales, and are able to reach its shelter. At such times exhausted mariners are sure of a kind reception, every house opening its doors to relieve their dis- tresses. Having all the requirements of snug harboring, excellent rock fishing, with room enough for extended rambling up and down, the island must one day become a i-esort as famous as the Isles of Shoals. At present there is a peculiar flavor of originality and freshness about the people, who are as yet free from the money-getting aptitudes of the recognized watering-place. George Weymouth made his anchorage under Monhegan on the 18th of May, 1605. "It appeared," says Rosier, "a mean high land, as we afterward found it, being an island of some six miles in compass, but, I hope, the most fortunate ever yet discovered. About twelve o'clock that day, we came to ' Monhegan lies nine miles south of the George's group, twelve south-east from Pemaquid, and nine west of Metinic. It contains upward of one thousand acres of land. According to William- son, it had, in 1832, about one hundred inhabitants, twelve or fourteen dwellings, and a school- house. The able-bodied men were engaged in the Bank fishery ; the elders and boys in tending the flocks and tilling the soil. At that time there was not an officer of any kind upon tlie island ; not even a justice of the peace. The people governed themselves according to local usage, and we're strangers to taxation. A light-house was built on the island in 1824. MONHEGAN ISLAND. 105 an anchor on the north side of this island, about a league from the shore. About two o'clock our captain Avith twelve men rowed in his ship-boat to the shore, where we made no long stay, but laded our boat with dry wood of old trees upon the shore si CLITF. CHAPTEK VIIL FEOil WELLS TO OLD TOEK. "A shipman was there, wonned far by west; For aught I wot, he was of Danemomh." Chaccek- OXE hot, slamberous morning in August I found myself in the town of Wells. I was traveling, as Xew England ought to be traversed by ev- ery young man of average health and active habits, on foot, and at leisure, along the beautiful road to Old York Xow Wells, as Victor Hugo says of a village in Brittany, is not a town, but a street, stretching for five or six miles along the shore, and everywhere commanding an extensive and un- broken ocean view. 110 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. The place itself, though bristling with history, has been stripped of its antiques, and is in appearance the counterpart of a score of neat, thrifty vil- lages of my acquaintance. I paused for a moment at the site of the Storer garrison, in which Captain Converse made so manful a defense when Fi-on- tenao, in 1692, let slip his French and Indians on bur border settlements.' Some fragments of the timbers of the garrison are preserved in the vicinitv, one of which I saw among the collections of a village antiquary. In the an- nals of Wells the names of John Wheelwright and of George Burroughs oc- cur, the former celebrated as the founder of Exeter, the latter a victim of the witchcraft horror of '92. John Wheelwright, the classmate and friend of Cromwell, fills a large space in the early history of the Bay Colony. A fugitive, like John Cotton, from the persecutions of Laud, he came to Boston in 1636, and became the pastor of a church at Braintree, then forming part of Boston. He was the brother-in-law of the famous Ann Hutchinson, who Avas near creating a revo- lution in Winthrop's government,'' and shared her Antinoraian opinions. For this he was banished, and became the founder of Exeter in 1638. In 1643, Massachusetts having claimed jurisdiction over that town. Wheelwright re- moved to Wells, where he remained two years. Becoming reconciled to the Massachusetts government, he removed to Hampton, was in England in 1657, returning to New England in 1660. He became pastor of the church in Salis- bury, and died there in 1679; but the place of his burial, Allen says, is not known. He was the oldest minister in tlie colony at the time of his death, and a man of pronounced character. The settlement of the island of Rhode Island occurred through the removal of William Coddington and others at the same time, and for the same reasons that caused the expulsion of Wheel- wright from Boston, as Roger Williams had been expelled from Salem seven years before. "Wheelwright's Deed" has been the subject of a long and animated con- troversy among antiquaries ; some, like Mr. Savage, pronouncing it a forgery because it is dated in 1629, the year before the settlement of Boston. This deed was a conveyance from the Indian sagamores to Wheelwright of the land on which stands the flourishing town of Exeter; and although copies of it have been recorded in several places, the original long ago disappeared. Cotton Mather, who saw it, testifies to its appearance of antiquity, and the advocates of its validity do not appear as yet to have the worst of the argu- ment.^ ' Colonel Storer kept up the stockades and one or more of the flankarts until after the j'ear 1760, as a memorial rather than a defense. '■^ This relationship is disputed by Mr. Joseph L. Chester, the eminent antiquary. Winthrop, it would seem, ought to have known ; Eliot and Allen repeat the authority, the latter giving the full name of Mary Hutchinson. ' Both sides have been ably presented by Dr. N. Bouton and Hon. Charles H. Bell. FROM WELLS TO OLD YORK. HI George Burroughs, who fell fighting agahist terrorism on Gallows Hill — a single spot may claim in New England the terrible distinction of this name — was, if tradition saj's truly, apprehended by officers of the Bloody Council at the church door, as he was leaving it after divine service. A little dark man, and an athlete, whose muscular strength was turned against him to fa- tal account. An Indian, at F'almouth, had held out a heavy fowling-piece at arms -length by simply thrusting his finger in at the muzzle. Poor Bur- roughs, who would not stand by and see an Englishman outdone by a red- skin, repeated the feat on the spot, and this was the most ruinous piece of evidence brought forth at his trial. A man could not be strong then, or the devil was in it. The road was good, and the way plain. As the shores are for some miles intersected by creeks intrenched behind sandy downs, the route follows a level shelf along the high land. There are pleasant strips of beach, where the sea breaks noiselessly when the wind is off shore, but where it comes thundering in when driven before a north-east gale. Now and then a vessel is embayed here in thick weather, or, failing to make due allowance for the strong drift to the westward, is set bodily on these sands, as the fishermen say, "all standing." While I was in the neighborhood no less than three came ashore within a few hours of each other. The first, a timber vessel, missing her course a little, went on the beach ; but at the next tide, by carry- ing an anchor into deep water and kedging, she was floated again. Another luckless craft struck on the rocks within half a mile of the first, and became a wreck, the crew owing their lives to a smooth sea. The third, a Bank fisherman, was left by the ebb high up on a dangerous reef, with a hole in her bottom. She was abandoned to the underwriters, and sold for a few dol- lars. To the surprise even of the knowing ones, the shrewd Yankee who bought her succeeded at low tide in getting some empty casks into her hold, and brought her into port. Notwithstanding these sands are hard and firm as a granite floor, they are subject to shiftings which at first appear almost unaccountable. Many years ^go, while sauntering along the beach, I came across the timbers of a strand- ed vessel. So deeply were they imbedded in the sand, that they had the ap- pearance rather of formidable rows of teeth belonging to some antique sea- monster than of the work of human hands. How long the wreck had lain there no one could say ; but at intervals it disappeared beneath the sands, to come to the surface again. I have often walked over the spot where it la}' buried out of sight; and yet, after the lapse of years, there it was again, like a grave that would not remain closed. A few years ago, an English vessel, the Clotilde, went ashore on Wells Beach, and remained there high and dry for nearly a year. She was deeply laden with railway iron, and, after being relieved of her cargo, was success- fully launched. During the time the ship lay on the beach, she became so 112 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. a OLD WRECKS ON THE BEACH. deeply buried in the sand that a person might walk on board without diffi- culty. Ways were built underneath her, and, after a terrible Avrenching, she was got afloat. Heavy objects, such as kegs of lead paint, and even i:)igs of iron, have been exposed by the action of the waves, after having, in some in- stances, been twenty years under the surface. I have picked up whole bricks, lost overboard from some coaster, that have come ashore with their edges smootlily rounded by the abrasion of the sand and sea. There is an authen- tic account of the re- appearance of a wrecked ship's caboose more than a hundred and seventy years after her loss on Cape Cod. After a heavy east- erly gale, the beach is always sprinkled with a fine, dark gravel, which disajD- pears again with a few days of ordinary weather. Besides being the inexhaustible resource of summer idlers, the beach has its practical aspects. The sand, fine, white, and " sharp," is not only used by builders — and there is no fear of exhausting the supply — but is hauled away by farmers along shore, and housed in their barns as bedding for cattle, or to mix with heavy soils. The sea-weed and kelp that comes ashore in such vast quantities after a heavy blow is carefully harvested, and goes to enrich the lands with its lime and salt. It formerly supplied the commercial demand for soda, and was gathered on the coasts of Ireland, Scotland, France, and Spain for the purpose. It is the varec of Brittany and Normandy, tlie blan- quette of Frontignan and Aigues-mortes, and the salicor of Narbonne. After being dried, it was I'educed to ashes in rude furnaces. Iodine is also the product of sea-weed. You may sometimes see at high-water mark winrows of Irish moss {carrageen) bleaching in the sun, though for my blanc-mange I give the preference to that cast up on the shingle, as more free from sand. This plant grows only on the farthest ledges. The pebble usually heaped above the line of sand, or in little coves among the ledges, is used for ballast, and for mending roads and garden-walks. Turning to the sandy waste that FROM WELLS TO OLD YORK. 113 skirts the beach, I seldom fail of finding the beach-pea, with its beautiful blos- soms of blue and purj)le. In spring the vine is edible, and has been long used for food by the poorer people. The beach is much frequented after a storm by crows in quest of a dinner alfresco. They haunt it as persistently as do the wreckers, and seldom tail of finding a stranded fish, a crab, or a mussel. They are the self-ap])ointed scavengers of the strand, removing much of the offal cast up by the sea. The 'crow is a crafty fellow, and knows a thing or two, as I have had reason to observe. The large sea-mussel is mucli affected by him, and when found is at once pounced upon. Taking it in his talons, the crow flies to the nearest ledge of rocks, and, calculating his distance with mathematical eye, lets his prize fall. Of course the mussel is dashed in pieces, and the crow proceeds to make a frugal meal. I have seen this operation frequently repeated, and liave as often scared tlie bird from his repast to convince myself of his suc- cess. His method of taking the clam is equally ingenious. He walks upon the clam-bank at low tide, and seizes upon the first unlucky head he finds pro- truding from the shell. Then ensues a series of laughable efforts on the crow's pan to rise with his prey, while the clam tries in vain to draw in its head. The crow, after many sharp tugs and much flapping of his wings, finall)^ se- cures the clam, and disposes of him as he would of a mussel. The Indians, whose chief dependence in summer was upon shell-fish, complained tliat the English swine watched the receding tide as their women were accustomed to do, feeding on the clams they turned up with their snouts. In the olden time the beach was the high-road over which the settlers traveled when, as Avas long the case, it was their only way of safety. It was often beset with danger; so much so that tradition says tlie mail from Ports- mouth to Wells was for seven years brought by a dog, the pouch being at- tached to his collar. This faithful messenger was at last killed by the sav- ages. ' For miles around this bay tlie long-abandoned King's Highway may be traced where it hugged the verge of the shore, climbing the roughest ledges, or crossing from one beach to another by a strip of shingle. Here and there an old cellar remains to identify its course and tell of the stern lives those pioneers led. When the tide is out, I also keep at low-water mark, scrambling over ledges, or delving among the crannies for specimens. It does not take long to fill your pockets with many-hued pebbles of quartz, jasper, or porphyry that, in going a few rods fai'ther, you are sure to reject for others more brill- iant. At full sea I walk along the shore, where, from between those envi- ous little stone walls, I can still survey the Unchanged. After all that has been printed since the "Tractatus Petri Hispani," it is a question whether there are not as many popular superstitions to-day among plain New England country-folk as at any time since the settlement of the 8 11 i THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. country. The belief in the virtue of a horseshoe is unabated. At York I 8aw one nailed to the end of a coaster's bowsprit. To spill salt, break a look- ing-glass, or dream of a white horse, are still regarded as of sinister augury. A tooth-i)ick made from a splinter of a tree that has been struck by lightning- is a sui-e preventive of the toothache. Exceeding all these, however, is the generally accepted superstition that has led to the practice of bathing on Saco Beach on the 26th of June in each year. On this day, it is religiously believed that the waters, like SUoatn of old, have miraculous power of healins* all diseases witli which humanity is afflicted. The j)eople flock to the beach from all llie country round, in every description of vehicle, to dip in the en- chanted tide. A similar belief existed with regard to a medicinal spring on the River Dee, in Scotland, called Januarich Wells, one author gravely assert- ing that so great was the faith in its efficacy that those afflicted with broken legs have gone there for restoration of the limb. I have found it always impracticable to argue with the pilgrims as to the grounds of their belief. They are ready to recount any number of wonder- ful cures at too great a distance for my investigation to reach, and may not, therefore, be gainsaid. It is a custom. All this time I was nearing Ogunquit, a little fishing village spliced to the outskirts of Wells, being itself within the limits of York. At my right I caught a glimpse of the green bulk of Mount Agamenticus, and on the oth- er hand, almost at my elbow, was the sea. So we marched on, as it were, arm in arm ; for I was beginning to feel pretty well acquainted with a companion that ke])t thus constantly at my side. This morning it was Prussian blue, which it ])resently put off for a warmer hue. There it lay, sunning itself, cool, silent, impenetrable, like a great blue turquoise on the bare bosom of Mother Earth, nor looking as if a little ruffling of its surface could put it in such a towering passion. My sachel always contains a luncheon, a book, and a telescopic drinking- cup. At noon, having left eight miles of road behind me, I sought the shel- ter of a tree by the roadside, and found my appetite by no means impaired by the jaunt. At such a time I read, like Rousseau, while eating, in default of a tete-a-tete. I alternately devour a page and a piece. While under my tree, a cow came to partake of the shade, of which there was enough for both of us. She gazed at me with a calm, but, as I conceived also, a puzzled look, ruminating meanwhile, or stretching out her head and snuffing the air within a foot of my hand. Perhaps she was wondering whether I had two stomachs, and a tail to brush off the flies. From the village of Ogunquit there are two roads, I chose the one which kept the shore, in order to take in my way Bald Head Cliff, a natural curios- ity well worth going some distance to see. The road so winds across the rocky waste on which the village is in part built that in some jjlaces you al- most double on your own footsteps. Occasionally a narrow lane issues from FROM WELLS TO OLD YORK. 115 among the ledges, tumbling rather than descending to some little cove, where you catch a glimpse of brovvn-i'oofed cottages and a fishing-boat or two, sniig- ly moored. The inhabitants say there is not enough soil in Ogunquit with which to repair the roads, a statement no one who tries it with a vehicle will be inclined to dispute. Literally the houses are built upon rocks, incrusted with yellow lichens in room of grass. Wherever a dip occurs through whicli a little patch of blue sea peeps out, a house is posted, and I saw a few care- fully-tended garden spots among hollows of the rock in which a handful of mould had accumulated. The wintry aspect is little short of desolatiDU : in storms, from its elevation and exposure, the place receives the full shock of the tempest, as you may see by the weather-stained appearance of the houses. A native directed me by a short cut "how to take another ox-bow out of the road," and in a few minutes I stood on the brow of the cliff. What a sight ! The eye spans twenty miles of sea horizon. Wells, with its white meeting-houses and shore hotels, was behind me. Far up in the bight of the bay Great Hill headland. Hart's and Gooch's beaches — the latter mere rib- bons of white sand — gleamed in the sunlight. Kennebunkport and its ship- yards lay beneath yonder smoky cloud, with Cape Porpoise Light beyond. There, below me, looking as if it had floated off from the main, was the barren rock called the Nubble, the farthest land in this direction, with Cape Neddock harbor in full view. All the rest was ocean. The mackerel fleet that I had seen all day — fifty sail, sixty, yes, and more — was off Boon Island, with their jibs down, the solitary gray shaft of the light -house standing grimly up among the white sails, a mile-stone of the sea. There are very few who would be able to approach the farthest edge of the precipice called the Pulpit, and bend over its sheer face without a quick- ening of the pulse. As in all these grand displays in which Nature puts forth her powers, you shrink in proportion as she exalts herself. For the time being, at least, the conceit is taken out of you, and you are thoroughly put down. Here is a perpendicular wall of rock ninety feet in height (as well as I could estimate it), and about a hundred and fifty in length, with a greater than Ni- agara raging at its foot — a rock buttress, with its foundations deeply root- ed in the earth, breasting off the Atlantic ; and the massy fragments lying splintered at its base, or heaved loosely about the summit, told of many a desperate wrestling-match, with a constant gain for the old athlete. The sea is gnawing its way into the coast slowly, but as surely as the cataract is approaching the lake; and the cliflf, though it may for a thousand years oppose this terrible battering, will at last, like some sea fortress, crumble before it. Underneath the cliflT is one 5f those curious basins hollowed out almost with the regularity of art, in which a vessel of large tonnage might be float- ed. On the farther side of this basin, the ledges, though jagged and wave- 116 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. worn, descend with regular incline, making a sort of platform. On the top of the cliif the rock debris and line of soil show unmistakably that in severe gales the sea leaps to this great height, drenching the summit with salt spray. At such a time the sea must be superb, though awful ; for I doubt if a human being could stand erect before such a storm. The exposed side of Bald Head Cliff faces south of east, and is the result of ages of wear and tear. The sea undermines it, assails it in front and from all sides. Here are dikes, as at Star Island, in which the trap-rock has given way to the continual pounding, thus affording a vantage-ground for the great lifting power of the waves. The strata of rock lie in perpendicular masses, welded together as if by fire, and injected with crystal quartz seams, knotted like veins in a Titan's forehead. Blocks of granite weighing many tons, honey-combed by the action of the water, are loosely piled Avhere the cliff overhangs the waves; and you may descend by regular steps to the verge of the abyss. The time to inspect this curiosity is at low tide, when, if there be sea enough, the waves come grandly in, whelming the shaggy rocks, down whose sides a hundred miniature cascades pour as the waters recede. Beneath the cliff the incoming tides have worn the trap-rock to glassy smoothness, rendering it difficult to walk about when tliey are wetted by the spray. From this stand-point it is apparent the wall that rises before you is the remaining side of one of those chasms which the sea has driven right into the heart of the crag. The other face is what lies scattered about on all sides in picturesque ruin. If the view from the summit was invigorating, the sit- uation below was far from inspiring. It needed all the cheerful light and warmth the afternoon sun could give to brighten up that bleak and rugged shore. The spot had for me a certain sombre fascination ; for it was here, more than thirty years ago, the Isidore, a brand-new vessel, and only a few hours from port, was lost with every soul on board. Often have I heard the tale of that winter's night from relatives of the ill-fated ship's crew; and as I stood here within their tomb, realizing the hopelessness of human effort when opposed to those merciless crags, I thought of Schiller's lines: " Oh many a bark to that breast grappled fast Has gone clown to the fearful and fatliomless grave; Again, crashed together the keel and the mast, To be seen tossed aloft in the glee of tlie wave I Like- the growth of a storm, ever louder and clearer, Grows the roar of the gulf rising nearer and nearer." Over there, where the smoke lies above the tree-tops, is Kennebunkport,' where they build as staunch vessels as float on any sea. The village and its sliip-yards lie along the banks of a little river, oi*, more properly speaking, an arm of the sea. It is a queer old place, or rather was, before it became trans- ' Once, and much better, Arundel, from the Earl of Arundel. FROM WELLS TO OLD YORK. 117 ]ated into a summer resort; but now silk jostles homespun, and for three months in the year it is invaded by an army of pleasure-seekers, who ransack its secret places, and after taking their fill of sea and shore, flee before the first frosts of autumn. The town then hibernates. The Isidore was built a few miles up river, where the stream is so narrow and crooked that you can scarce conceive how ships of any size could be suc- cessfully launched. At a point below the "Landing" the banks are so near together as to admit of a lock to retain the full tide when a launch took place. A big ship usually brings up in the soft ooze of the opposite bank, but is got oflTat the next flood by the help of a few yoke of oxen and a strong hawser. Besides its ship-building, Kennebunkport once boasted a considerable com- merce with the West Indies, and the foundations of many snug fortunes have been laid in rum and sugar. The decaying wharves and empty warehouses now tell their own story. I was one afternoon at the humble cottage of a less ancient, though more coherent, mariner than Coleridge's, who, after forty years battling with storms, was now laid up like an old hulk that will never more be fit for sea. Togeth- er we rehearsed the first and last voyage of the Isidore. " Thirty years ago come Thanksgiving," said Ben, in a voice pitched be- low his usual key, "the Isidore lay at the wharf with her topsails loose, wait- ing for a slant of wind to put to sea. She was named for the builder's daugh- ter, a miglity pretty gal, sir; but the boys didn't like the name because it sounded outlandish-like, and would have rather had an out-an'-out Yankee one any day of the week." " There is, then," I suggested, " something in a name at sea as well as ashore ?" "Lor' bless your dear soul, I've seen them barkeys as could almost ship a crew for nothing, they had such spanking, saucy names. Captain R was as good a sailor as ever stepped, but dretful profane. He was as brave as a lion, and had rescued the crew of an Englishman from certain death while drifting a helpless wreck before a gale. No boat could live in the sea that was running; but Captain R bore down for the sinking ship, and passed it so close that the crew saved themselves by jumping aboard of him. Seven or eiglit times he stood for that wreck, until all but one man were saved. He had the ill-luck afterward to get a cotton ship ashore at Thi'ee Acres, near where the Isidore was lost, and said, as I've heard, 'he hoped the next ves- sel that went ashore he should be under her keel.' He had his wish, most likely. " The Isidore was light, just on top of water, and never ought to have gone to sea in that plight ; but she had been a good wliile wind-bound, and" all hands began to be impatient to be ofl". Her crew, fifteen as likely lads as ever reefed a topsail, all belonged in the neighborhood. One of 'em didn't feel noways right about the v'y'ge, and couldn't make up his mind to go un- 118 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. til the ship was over the bar, when he had to be set aboard in a wherry. Another dreamed three nights running the same dream, and every blessed time he saw the Isidore strike on a lee shore with the sea a-tlying as high as the maintop. Every time he woke up in a cold sweat, with the cries of his shipmates ringing in his ears as plain as we hear the rote on Gooch's Beach this minute. So, when the Isidore set her colors and dropped down the river, Joe, though he had signed the articles and got the advance, took to the M'oods. Most every body thought it scandalous for the ship to unmoor, but Captain 11 said he would go to sea if he went to h — 1 the next minute. Dretful profane man, sir — dretful. "The weather warn't exactly foul weather, and the sea was smooth enough, but all the air there was was dead ahead, and it looked dirty to wind'ard. The ship slipped out through the piers, and stood off to the east- 'ard on the port tack. I recollect she was so nigh the shore that I could see who was at the wheel. She didn't work handy, for all the ropes were new and full of turns, and I knew they were having it lively aboard of her. Early in the afternoon it began to snow, first lightly, then thick and fast, and the wind began to freshen up considerable. The ship made one or two tacks to Avork out of the bay, but about four o'clock it closed in thick, and we lost her. " I saw the Nubble all night long, for the snow come in gusts ; but it blowed fresh from the no'th-east ; fresh^'' lie repeated, raising his eyes to mine and shaking his gray head by way of emphasis. "I was afeard the ship was in the bay, and couldn't sleep, but went to the door and looked out between whiles." It was, indeed, as I have heard, a dreadful night, and many a vigil w^as kept by wife, mother, and sweetheart. At day-break the snow lay heaped in drifts in the village streets and garden areas. It was not long before a mes- senger came riding in at full speed with the news that the shores of Ogun- quit were fringed with the wreck of a large vessel, and that not one of her crew was left to tell the tale. The word passed from house to house. Si- lence and gloom reigned within the snow-beleaguered village. It was supposed the ship struck about midnight, as the Ognnquit fisher- men heard in their cabins cries and groans at this hour above the noise of the tempest. They were powerless to aid ; no boat could have been launch- ed in that sea. If any lights were shown on board the ship, they were not seen ; neither were any guns heard. The ropes, stiffened with ice, would not run through the sheaves, which rendered the working of the ship difficult, if not impossible. No doubt the doomed vessel drove helplessly to her de- struction, the frozen sails hanging idly to the yards, while her exhausted crew miserably perished with the lights of their homes before their eyes. All the morning after the wreck the people along shore were searching amidst the tangled masses of drift and sea-wrack the storm had cast up for FROM WELLS TO OLD YORK. 119 THE MORNING KOUND. the remains of the crew. They were too much mangled for i*ecognition, ex- cept in a single instance. Captain G , a passenger, had by accident put on his red-flannel drawers the wrong side out the morning the Isidore sailed, observing to his wife that, as it was good luck, he M'ould not change them. One leg was found en- cased in the drawers. The mutilated frag- ments were brought to the village, and buried in a common, grave. Some of the old people at the Port declare to this day that on the night of the wreck they heard shrieks as plainly as ever issued from human throats; and you could not ar- gue it out of them, though the spot where the Isidore's anchors were found is ten miles away. As for Joe B , the runaway, he can not refrain from shedding tears when the Isidore is mentioned. " But, Ben, do you believe in dreams ?" I asked, with my hand on the latch. " B'leeve in dreams !" he repeated ; " why, Joe's a living man ; but where's his mates ?" Perha^^s they "Died as men should die, clinging round their lonely wreck, Their winding-sheet the sky, and their sepulchre tlie deck ; And the steersman held the helm till his breath Grew faint and fainter still ; There was one short fatal thrill, Then he sank into the chill Arms of Death." I turned away from the spot with the old sailor's words in mind : "A wicked place where she struck ; and the sea drove right on. A ragged place, sir — ragged." Leaving the cliff, I struck across the pastures to the road, making no far- ther halt except to gather a few huckleberries that grew on high bushes by the roadside. The fruit is large, either black or blue, with an agreeable though different flavor from any of the low -bushed varieties. The local name for the shrub is "bilberry." It frequently grows higher than a man's head, and a single one will often yield nearly a quart. 120 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. It was a year of plenty, and I had seen tlie pickers busy in the berry pastures as I passed by. The fruit, being for the time a sort of currency — not quite so hard, by-the-bye, as the musket-bullets of the colonists — is re- ceived in barter at the stores. Whole families en.gage in the harvest, making- fair wages, the annual yield exceeding in value that of the corn crop of the State. Maine grows her corn on the Western prairies, and pays for it with canned fish and berries. At the village store I saw a woman drive up with a bushel of huckle- berries, with which she bought enough calico for a gown, half a pound of tobacco, and some knickknacks for the children at home. Affixed in a con- spicuous place to the wall was the motto, " Quick sales and small profits." Half an hour was spent in beating the shop-keeper down a cent in the yard, and another quarter of an hour to induce him to " heave in," as she said, a spool of cotton. The man, after stoutly contesting the claim, finally yielded both points. " The woman," thought I, "evidently only half believes in your seductive motto." All along the road I had met women and children, going or returning, with pails or baskets. One man, evidently a fast picker, had filled the sleeves of his jacket with berries, after having first tied them at the wrists. Anoth- er, who vaulted over the stone wall at my side, when asked if he was going to try the huckleberries, replied, " Wa'al, yes ; think I'll try and accumulate a few." Descending the last hill before reaching Cape Neddock Harbor, I had a good view of tbe Nubble, which several writers have believed was the Savage Rock of Gosnold, and the first land in New England to receive an English name. The reliable accounts of the early voyagers to our coasts are much too vague to enable later historians to fix the points where they made the land with the confidence with which many undertake to fix them. A care- ful examination of these accounts justifies the opinion that Gosnold made his landfall off Agamenticus, and first dropped anchor, since leaving Falmouth, at Cape Ann. The latitude, if accurately taken, would of itself put the ques- tion beyond controversy; but as the methods of observing the ej^act position of a ship Avere greatly inferior to what they became later in the seventeenth century, I at first doubted, and was then constrained to admit, that the reck- oning of Gosnold, Pring, and Champlain ought to be accepted as trustworthy. Gabriel Archer, who was with Gosnold, says,"They held themselves by compu- tation well neere the latitude of 43 degrees," or a little northward of the Isles of Shoals. John Brereton, also of Gosnold's company, says they fell in with the coast in thick weather, and first made land with the lead. By all accounts the Concord, Gosnold's ship, was to the northward of Cape Ann. Land was sighted at six in the morning of the 14th of May, 1602, and Gosnold stood "fair along by the shore" until noon, which would have carried him across Ipswich Bay, even if the Concord were a dull sailer. In 1603 Martin Pring FROM WELLS TO OLD YORK, 121 sailed over nearly the same track as Gosnold. It is by comparing these two voyages tliat Savage Rock appears to be located at Cape Ann. Pring, says Gorges, observing his instructions (to keep to the northward as high as Cape Breton), arrived safely out and back, bringing with him "the most exact discovery of that coast that ever came to my hands since ; and indeed he was the best able to perform it of any I met withal to this present." Pring's relation wrought such an impression on Sir F. Gorges and Lord Chief- justice Popham that, notwithstanding their first disasters, they resolved on another efibrt. He had no doubt seen and talked with Gosnold after his re- turn ; perhaps had obtained from him his courses after he fell iu with the coast. The Speedioell, Pring's vessel, also made land in forty-three degrees. It proved to be a multitude of small islands. Pring, after anchoring under the lee of the largest, coasted the main-land with his boats. The narrative con- tinues to relate that they " came to the mayne in 43^, and ranged to south- west, iu which course we found several inlets, the more easterly of which was barred at the mouth. Having passed over the bar, we ran up into it five miles. Coming out and sailing south-west, we lighted upon two other inlets; the fourth and most westerly was best, which we rowed up ten or twelve miles." Between forty-three and forty-three and a half degrees are the Saco, then barred at the mouth,' the Mousam,York, and the Piscataqua, the "most westerly and best." " We (meeting with no sassafras)" — to follow the narrative — " left these places and shaped our course for Savage's Mocks, discovered the year before by Captain Gosnold." Savage Rock, then, was by both these accounts (Archer and Pring) to the southward of forty-three degrees, while the Xub- ble, or rather Agamenticus, is in forty-three degrees sixteen minutes. " Departing hence, we bare into that great gulf which Captain Gosnold overshot the year before." This could be no other than Massachusetts Bay, for Gosnold, according to Brereton, after leaving Savage Rock, shaped his course southward ("standing off" southerly into the sea") the rest of that day and night (May lotli), and on the following morning found himself "em- bayed with a mighty headland," which Avas Cape Cod. Pring, on the con- trary, steered into the bay, "coasting, and finding people on the north side thereof." If my conjecture be correct, he was the first English mariner in Boston Bay. It is hardly possible tliat a navigator falling in with the New England coast in forty.-three or forty-three and a half degrees, and steering south-west, should not recognize in Cape Ann one of its remarkable features, or pass it by unperceived in the night. He would have been likely to find Savage Rock and end his voyage at the same moment. Cliamplain and Smith are both in ' An old sea-chart savs, " Saco liiver bear place at low water." 122 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. evidence. The former, wlio examined the coast minutely two years after Pi'ing (June, 1605), lias delineated "Cap des Isles" on his map of 1612, which accompanied the first edition of his voyages. The account he gives of its position is as clear as that of Archer is obscure. Says the Frenchman, in his own way : " Mettant le cap au su pour nous esloigner afin de mouiller I'ancre, ayant fait environ deux lieux nous apper9uines un cap a la grande terre au su quart de suest de nous ou il pouvoit avoit six lieues; a I'est deux lieues appergumes trois ou quatre isles assez hautes et a I'ouest un grand cu de sae." Here are the bearings of Cape Ann, the Isles of Shoals, and of Ipswich Bay defined with precision. Champlain also puts the latitude of Kennebunk River at forty-three degrees twenty-five minutes, which shows Pring could hardly have explored to the eastward of Cape Elizabeth. Smith, in 1614, de- scribed Cape Ann and Cape Cod as the two great headlands of New England, giving to the former the name of Tragabigzanda; but Champlain had pre- ceded him, as Gosnold had preceded Chamjdain. On the whole, Gosnold, Pring, and Champlain agree remarkably in their latitude and in their itin- erary. At Cape Neddock I "put uj)," or rather was put up — an expression ap- plied alike to man and beast in every public-house in New England — at tlie old Freeman Tavern, a famous stopping-place in by-gone years, when the mail- coach between Boston and Portland passed this way. Since I knew it the liouse had been brushed up with a coat of paint on the outside, the tall sign- post was gone, and nothing looked quite natural except the capacious red barn belonging to the hostel. The bar-room, however, was unchanged, and the aroma of old Santa Cruz still lingered there, though the pretty hostess assured me, on the word of a landlady, there was nothing in the house strong- er than small beer. It was not so of yore, when all comers appeared to have taken the famous Highgate oath: "Never to drink small beer when you could get ale, unless you liked small beer best." The evening tempted me to a stroll down to the harbor, to see the wood- coasters go out with the flood. Afterward I walked on the beach. The full moon shone out clear in the heavens, lighting up a radiant aisle incrusted with silver pavement on the still waters, broad at the shore, receding until lost in the deepening mystery of the farther sea. The gi-ound-s\vell rose and fell with regular heaving, as of Old Ocean asleep. As a breaker wavei'ed and toppled over, a bright gleam ran along its broken arch like the swift flash- ing of a train. Occasionally some craft crossed the moon's track, where it stood out for a moment with surprising distinctness, to be swallowed up an instant later in the surrounding blackness. Boon Island had unclosed its brilliant eye — its light in the window for the mariner. It had been a perfect da}-, but the night was enchanting. WHAT THE bE\. C IN DO CHAPTER IX. AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY. " Land of the forest and the rock, Of dark-blue kike and mighty river, Of mountains reared aloft to mock The storm's career, the lightnings shock— My own green land forever." Whittier. HO for Agamenticus ! It is an old saying, attributed to the Iron Duke, that when a man wants to turn over it is time for him to turn out. As there are six good miles to get over to the mountain, and as many to return, I was early astir. The road is chiefly used by wood teams, and was well beaten to within half a mile of the hills. From thence it dwindled into a green lane, which in turn becomes a footpath bordered by dense under- growth. Agamenticus is not a high mountain, although so noted a land- mark. There are in reality three summits of nearly equal altitude, ranging north-east and south-west, the westernmost being the highest. At the mount- ain's foot is a scattered hamlet of a few unthrifty-looking cabins, tenanted by wood-cutters, for, notwithstanding the axe has played sad havoc in the neigh- boring forests, there are still some clumps of tall pines there fit for the king's ships. You obtain your first glimpse of the hills when still two miles dis- tant, the road then crossing the country for the rest of the way, with the mountain looming up before you. Along shore, and in the country-side, the people call the mount indifter- ently " Eddymenticus" and " Head o' Menticus." Some, who had lived with- in a few miles of it since childhood, told me they had never had the curios- ity to try the ascent. One man, who lived within half a mile of the base of 124 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. the western hill, had never been on any of the others. The name is unmis- takably of Indian origin. General Gookin, in his " Historical Collections of the Indians in New England," written in 1674, has the following in relation to the tribes inhabiting this region : " The Pawtuckett is the fifth and last great sachemship of Indians, Their country lieth north and north-east from the Massachusetts, whose dominion reacheth so far as the English jurisdiction, or colony of the Massachusetts, now doth extend, and had under them sev- eral other small sagamores, as the Pennacooks, Agawomes, Naatnkeeks, Pas- catawayes, Accomintas, and others,'" The climb is only fatiguing; it is not at all difficult. The native forest has disappeared, but a new growth of deciduous trees, with a fair sprinkling of evergreens, is fast replacing it. In some places the slender stems of the birch or pine shoot up, as it were, out of the solid rock. Following the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and turning at every step to wonder and admire, in half an hour I stood on the top. The summit contains an acre or more of bare granite ledge, with tufts of wiry grass and clumps of tangled vines grow- ing among the crevices. Some scattered blocks had been collected at the highest point, and a cairn built. I seated myself on the topmost stone of the monument, A solitary mountain lifting itself above the surrounding country is always impressive. Agamenticus seems an outpost of the White Hills, left stranded here by the glacier, or upheaved by some tremendous throe. The day was not of the clearest, oi-, rather, the morning mists still hung in heavy folds about the ocean, making it look from my airy perch as if sky and sea had changed places. Capes and headlands were revealed in a striking and mys- tical way, as objects dimly seen through a veil. Large ships resembled toys, except that the blue space grasped by the eye was too vast for playthings. Cape Elizabeth northward and Cape Ann in the southern board stretched far out into the sea, as if seeking to draw tribute of all passing ships into the ports between. Here were the Isles of Shoals, lying in a heap together. That luminous, misty belt was Rye Beach. And here was the Piscataqua, and here Portsmouth, Kittery, and Old York, with all the sea-shore villages I had so lately traversed. As the sun rose higher, the murky curtain was rolled away, and the ocean appeared in its bi'ightest azure. The sea is what you seldom tire of, especially v/here its nearness to the chief New England marts shows it crowded with sails bearing up for port. Craft of every build, flags of every nation, pass Agamenticus and its three peaks in endless procession — stately ships "That court'sy to them, do them reverence As they fly by on their woven wings," ' "Massachusetts Historical Collections," 1792, vol. i. AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY. I05 Old Ocean parts before the eager prow. You fancy you see the foam roll away and go glancing astern. Here is a bark with the bottom of the Tagus, and another with the sands of the Golden Horn, sticking to the anchor-fluke; and here a smoke on the horizon's rim heralds a swifter messenger from the Old World — some steamship climbing the earth's rotundity; and yet water, they, say, will not run up hill! "When I looked forth upon this moving scene my. lungs began to "crow like chanticleer." I waved my hat, and shouted "a" good voyage" to sailors that could not hear me. I had no fear of listen- ers, for the Old Man of the Mountain tells no tales. To stand on a mountain- top is bettei-, to my mind, than to be up any distance in a balloon. You have, at least, something under you, and can come down when you like. What a fulcrum Agamenticus would have made for the lever of Archimedes ! Landward, the horizon is bounded by the White Hills — the "Crystal Mountains, daunting terrible," of the first explorer.' They look shadowy enough at this distance — seventy miles as the crow flies — Mount Washington, grand and grim, its head muffled in a mantle of clouds, overtopping all. The lofty ranges issuing from these resemble a broken wall as they stretch away to the Connecticut, with Moosehillock towering above. " To me they seemed the barriers of a world, Saying, 'Tims far, no fitrther!'" The busy towns of Dover and Great Falls, with the nearer villages of Eliot and Berwick, are grouped about in picturesque confusion, a spire peeping out of a seeming forest, a broad river dwindling to a rivulet. After feasting for an hour upon this sight, I became more than ever per- suaded that, except in that rare condition of the atmosphere when the White Hills are visible far out to sea, Agamenticus must be the first land made out in approaching the coast anywhere within half a degree of the forty-third parallel. Juan Verazzani, perchance, certainly Masters Gosnold and Pring, saw it as plainly as I now saw the ships below me, where they had sailed. I thought it fitting here, on the top of Agamenticus, with as good a map of the coast spread before me as I ever expect to see, to hold a little chat with the discoverers. If Hendrik Hudson haunts the fastnesses of the Cats- kills — and a veracious historian asserts tliat he has been both seen and spoken Avith — why may not the shade of Captain John Smith be lurking about this headland, where of yore he trafficked, and, for aught I know, clambered as I have done ? Right over against me, though I could not see them, were the Basque provinces, whose people the Romans could not subdue, and whose language, says the old French proverb, the devil himself could not learn. Cape Finis- terre was there, with its shoals of sardines and its impotent conclusion of a ' An Irislmian, Darby Field by name. 126 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. name, as if it had been tlie end of the world indeed ! Archer says, in his relation of Gosnold's voyage,' that the day before they made the land they had sweet smelling of the shore as from the southern cape and Andalusia, in Spain. It was, says Brereton, " a Basque shallop, with mast and sail, an iron grapple and a kettle of copper, came boldly aboard of us." In 1578 there were a liundred sail of Spanish fishermen on the Banks of Newfoundland to fifty English. Spanish Biscay sent twenty or thirty vessels there to kill whales; France sent a hundred and fifty; and Portugal fifty craft of small tonnage to fish for cod. The Indians who boarded Gosnold could name Pla- centia and Newfoundland, and might have come from thence in their shallop, since they so well knew how to use it. But if Brereton's surmise was right, then some of those daring fellows from the Basse Pyrenees were first at Sav- age Rock. He says, "It seemed, by some words and signs they made, that some Basques, or of St. John de Luz, have fished or traded in this place, being in the latitude of 43 degrees." Because tliere was no sassafras, it is not much we know about Savage Rock. The root of this aromatic tree was worth in England three shillings the pound, or three hundred and tliirty-six pounds the ton, when Gosnold found store of it on the Elizabeth Islands ; but as he was informed, " before his going forth that a ton of it would cloy England," few of his crew, "and those but easy laborers," were employed in gathering it. "The powder of sassafras," says Archer, " in twelve hours cured one of our company that had taken a great surfeit by eating the bellies of dog-fish, a very delicious meat." That the medicinal qualities of sassafras were highly esteemed may be in- ferred from what is said of it in "An English Exposition," printed at Cam- bridge (England), in 1676, by John Hayes, printer to the University. '^Sassafras. — A tree of great vertue, which groweth in Florida, in the WeSt Indies; the rinde herof hath a sweete smell like cinnamon. It comfort- eth the liver and stomach, and openeth obstructions of the inward parts, being hot and dry in the second degree. The best of the tree is the root, next the boughs, then the body, but the principal goodnesse of all resteth in the rinde." One Master Robert Meriton, of Gosnold's company, was " the finder of the sassafras in these parts," from which it would appear that the shrub in its wild state was little known to these voyagers. Coming down from my high antiquarian steed, and from Agamenticus at the same time, I walked back to the tavern by dinner-time, having fully set- tled in my own mind the oft-repeated question, the touch-stone by which even one's pleasures must be regulated, "Will it pay?" And I say it will pay in solid nuggets of healthful enjoyment, even if no higher aspirations are de- ' Puvchas, vol. iv., lGt7. AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY. 127 veloped, in standing where at every instant man and liis works diminish, while those of the Creator expand before you. Douglass remarks tliat "Aquamenticus Hills were known among our sail- ors as a noted and useful land-making for vessels that fall in northward of Boston or Massachusetts Bay." Leaving my comfortable quarters at Cape Neddock, I pnrsued my walk to Old York the same afternoon, taking the Long Sands in my way. It was farther by the beach than by the road, but as I was in no haste I chose the shore. I noticed that the little harbor I had quitted was so shallow as to be left almost dry by the receding tide, the channel being no more than a riv- ulet, easily forded within a few rods of the sea. Between this harbor and Wells Bay I had passed several coves where, in a smooth sea and during a w^esterly wind, small vessels were formerly hauled ashore, and loaded with Avood at one tide with ease and safety. York Beach is about a mile across. I did not find it a long one. It being low tide and a fine afternoon, the beach was for the time being turned into a highway, broader and smoother than any race-course could be, over which all maimer of vehicles were being driven, from the old-fashioned gig of the village doctor to the aristocratic landau, fresh from town. The sands are hard and gently shelving, with here and there a fresh-water brook- let trickling through the bulk-head of ballast heaped up at the top by the sea. Tliese little streams, after channeling the beach a certain distance, dis- ajipeared in the sand, just as the Platte and Arkansas sink out of sight into tiie plain. There was a fresh breeze outside, so that the coasters bowled merrily along with bellying sails before it, or else bent until gunwale under as they hugged it close. The color of the sea had deepened to a steely blue. White caps were flying, and the clouds betokened more wind as they rose and un- rolled like cannon-smoke above the horizon, producing effects such as ^tan- field liked to transfer to his canvas. Mackerel gulls were wheeling and cir- cling above the breakers with shrill screams. Down at low-water mark the seas came bounding in, driven by the gale, leaping over each other, and beat- ing upon the strand with ceaseless roar. The beach, I saw, had been badly gullied by the late storm, but the sea, like some shrewish housewife, after exhausting its rage, had set about putting things to rights again. I found shells of the deep-sea mussel, of quahaug and giant sea' clam, bleaching there, but did not see the small razor-clam I have picked up on Nahant and other more southerly beaches. The sea-mussel, as I have read, was in the olden time considered a cure for piles and hemorrhoids, being dried and pulverized for the purpose, William Wood speaks of a scarlet mussel found at Piscataqna, that, on being pricked with a pin, gave out a purple juice, dying linen so that no washing would wear it out. "We mark our handkerchiefs and shirts with it," says thin 128 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. writer.* The large mussel is very toothsome. Like the oyster and clam, it was dried for winter use by the Indians. The giant or hen clam-shell, found in every buttery within fifty miles of the coast, was the Indian's garden hoe. After a storm many clams would be cast up on the beaches, which the natives, taking out of the shells, carried home in baskets. A large shell will hold a plentiful draught of water, and is unequaled for a milk- skimmer. Only a part of the fish is used for food, as there is a general belief that a portion is poisonous, like the head of a lobster. Mourt's relation of the landing of the pilgrims at Cape Cod says they found " great mussels, and very fat and full of sea-pearle, but we could not eat them, for they made us all sicke that did eat, as well saylers as passengers," As they are only found on the beach after an easterly storm, they become well filled with sand, and. require thorough cleansing before cooking. Mobile those taken from the water near the shore are better, because free from sand. The common clam is not eaten along shore during the summer, except at the ho- tels and boarding-houses, not being considered wholesome by the resident population in any month that has not the letter R. The same idea is current with respect to the oyster. In either case the summer is infei-ior to the win- ter fish, and as Charles XII. once said of the army bread, " It is not good, but may be eaten." There was but little sea-weed or kelp thrown up, though above high-water mai-k I noticed large stacks of it ready to be hauled away, containing as many varieties as commonly grow among the rocks hereaway. But there were innumerable cockles and periwinkles lately come ashore, and emitting no pleasant odor. The natives used both these shells to manufacture their wampum, or wampimipeag, the delicate inner wreath of the periwinkle being preferred. Now and then I picked up a sea-chestnut, or " whore's egg," as they are called by the fishermen. But the sand roller, or circle, is the curi- osity of the beach as a specimen of ocean handicraft. I passed many of them scattered about, though a perfect one is rarely found, except on shallow bars beyond low-water mark. Looking down over the side of a boat, I have seen more than I was able to count readily, but they are too fragile to bear the buffeting of the surf In appearance they are like a section taken off the top of a jug where the cork is put in, and as neatly rounded as if turned off a pot- ter's lathe. Naturalists call them the nest of the cockle. Going down the sands as far as the sea would allow, I remarked that the nearest breakers were discolored with the rubbish of shredded sea-weed, and ' In England there is a cockle called the purple, from the coloring matter it contains, believed to be one of the sources from which tlie celebrated Tyrian dye was obtained. The discovery is at- tributed in mythical story to a dog. The Tyrian Hercules was one day walking with his sweet- heart by the shore, followed by lier lap-dog, when the animal seized a shell just cast upon the beach. Its lips were stained with the beautiful purple flowing from the shell, and its mistress, charmed with the color, demanded a dress dyed with it of her lover. AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY. 129 by the particles of sand they held in solution. As I walked on, countless sand- fleas skipped out of my path, as I have seen grasshoppers in a stubble-field out West. The sandpipers ran eagerly about in pursuit, giving little plaint- ive squeaks, and leaving their tiny tracks impressed upon the wet sand. Little sprites they seemed as they chased the refluent wave for their food, sometimes overtaken and borne off" their feet by the glancing surf. I remember having seen a flock of hens scratching among the sea-moss for these very beach-fleas in one of the coves I passed. Old Neptune's garden contains as wonderful plants as any above high- water mark, though the latter do well with less watering, I have thought the botany of the sea worth studying, and, as it is sometimes inconvenient to pluck a plant or a flower Avhen you want it, the beach is the place for speci- mens. Some years ago delicate sea-mosses were in request. They were kept in albums, pressed like autumn leaves, or displayed in frames on the walls at home. It was a pretty conceit, and employed many leisure fingers at the sea-side, but appears to have been discarded of late. One day, during a storm, I went down to the beach, to find it encumbered with "devils' apron" and kelp, whitening where it lay. I picked up a plant having a long stalk, slender and hollow, of more than ten feet in length, re- sembling a gutta-percha tube. The root was firmly clasped around five deep- sea mussels, while the other end terminated in broad, plaited leaves. It had been torn from its bed in some sea-cranny, to be combined with terrestrial vegetation ; but to the mussels it was equal whether they died of thirst or of the grip of the talon-like root of the kelp. There were tons upon tons'of weed and moss, which the farmers were pitching with forks higher up the beach, out of reach of the sea, the kelp, as it was being tossed about, quiver- ing as if there were life in it. I found the largest mass of sponge I have ever seen on shore — as big as a man's head — and was at a loss how to describe it, until I thought of the raops used on shipboard, and made of rope-yarns ; for this body of sponge was composed of slender branches of six to twelve inches in length, each branching again, coral-like, into three or four offshoots. The pores were alive with sand-fleas, who showed great partiality for it. What at first seems paradoxical is, that with the wind blowing directly on shore, the kelp will not land, but is kept just beyond the surf by the un- der-tow ; it requires an inshore wind to bring it in. One who has walked on the beach weaves of its sea-weed a garland : " From Bermuda's reefs, from edges Of sunken ledges, On some far-off, bright Azore; Erom Bahama and the dashing, Silver-flashing Surges of San Salvador: >K >K « >K 4: 9 130 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. Ever drifting, drifting, drifting On the shifting Currents of the restless main." I had before walked round the cape one way, and now, passing it from a contrary direction, had fairly doubled it. After leaving York Beach I pusli- ed on for Old York, finding little to arrest my steps, until at night-fall I ar- rived at the harbor, after a twenty-mile tramp, with an appetite that augured ill for mine host. It was not my first visit to Old York, but I found the place strangely altered from its usual quiet and dullness. The summer, as Charles Lamb says, had set in with its usual severity, and I saw fishers in varnished boots, boatmen in tight-fitting trowsers, and enough young Americans in navy blue to man a fleet by-and-by. Parasols fluttered about the fields, and silks swept the wet floor of the beach. I had examined with a critical eye as I walked the impressions of dainty boots in the sand, keeping step with others of more masculine shape, and marked where the pace had slackened or quickened, and where the larger pair had diverged for a moment to pick up a stone or a ])ebble, or perchance in hurried self-communing for a question of mighty im- port. Sometimes the foot-prints diverged not to meet again, and I saw the gentleman had walked off" with rapid strides in the opposite direction. For hours on the beach I had watched these human tracks, almost as devious as the bird's, until I fancied I should know their makers. Not unfrequently I espied a monogram, traced with a stick or the point of a, parasol, the lesser initials lovingly twined about the greater. Faith 1 I came to regard the beach itself as a larger sort of tablet graven with hieroglyi^hics, easy to de- cipher if you have the key. The hoteP appeared deserted, but it was only a seclusion of calculation. After supper the guests set about what I may call their usual avocations. Not a few " paired oflf," as they say at Washington, for a walk on the beach, springing down the path with elastic step and voices full of joyous mirth. One or two maidens I had seen rowing on the river showed blistered hands to condoling cavaliers. Young matrons, carefully shawled by their husbands, sauntered off for a quiet evening ramble, or mingled in the frolic of the juve- niles going on in the parlor. The dowagers all sought a particular side of the house, where, out of ear-shot of the piano, they solaced themselves Mnth the evening newspapers, dainp from presses sixty miles away. A few choice spirits gathered in the smoking-room, where they maintained a frigid reserve toward all new-comers, their conversation coming out between pufis, as void of warmth as the vapor that rises from ice. On the beach, and alone with inanimate objects, I had company enough and to spare ; here, with a hundred ' Situated on Stage Neck, a rocky peninsula connecied with the main shore hy a narrow isth- mus, on which is a beach. There was formerly a fort on the north-east point of the Neck. AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY. 131 of my own species, it was positively dreary. I took a turn on the piazza, and soon retired to my cell; for in these large caravansaries man loses his indi- viduality and becomes a number. Old York, be it remembered, is one of those places toward which the his- tory of a country or a section convei'g'cs. Thus, when you are in Maine all roads, historically sjieaking, lead to York. Long before there was any set- tlement it had become well known from its mountain and its position near the mouth of the Piscataqua. Its first name was Agamenticus. Says Smitli, "Accominticus and Pascataquack are two convenient harbors for small barks, and a good country within their craggy cliifs :" this in 1G14. He could not have sounded, perhaps not even ascended, the Piscataqua. Christopher Levett, in his voyage, begun in 1623 aud ended in 1624, says of this situation: "About two leagues farther to the east (of Piscataqua) is another great river, called Aquamenticus. Tiiere, I tliink, a good plantation may be settled; for there is a good harbor for ships, good ground, and much already cleared, fit for planting of corn and other fruits, having heretofoi-e been planted by the savages, who are all dead. There is good timber, and likely to be good fishing; but as yet there hath been no trial made that I can hear of." Levett was one of the Council of New England, joined with Rob- ert Gorges, Francis West, and Governor Bradford. Fi'om his account, Aga- menticus appears to have been a permanent habitation of the Indians, who had been stricken by the same plague that desolated what Avas afterward New Plymouth. The first English settlement was begun probably in 1624, but not earlier tlian 1623, on both sides of York River, by Francis Norton, who had raised himself at home from the rank of a common soldier to be a lieutenant-colonel in tlie army. This was Norton's project, and he had the address to persuade Sir Ferdinando Gorges to unite in the undertaking. Artificers to build mills, cattle, and other necessaries for establishing the plantation, were sent over. A patent passed to Ferdinando Gorges, Norton, and others, of twelve thou- sand acres on the east to Norton, and twelve thousand on the west of Aga- menticus River to Gorges. Captain William Gorges was sent out by his un- cle to represent that interest.' The plantation at Agamenticus was incorporated into a borough in 1641, and subsequently, in 1642, into a city, under the name of Gorgeana. Thomas Gorges, cousin of Sir F. Gorges, and father of Ferdinando, was the first mayor. It was also made a free port. Though Gorgeana was probably the first in- corporated city in America, it was in reality no more than an inconsiderable sea-coast village, with a few houses in some of the best places for fishing and navigation. Its territory was, however, ample, embracing twenty-one square miles. There was little order or morality among the people, and in one ac- ' Sir F. Gorges's own relation. 132 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. count it is said " they had as many sliares in a woman as a fishing boat.' All the earlier authorities I have seen agree in giving Gorgeana an indifferent character, and I was not surprised to find a couplet still extant, expressive of the local estimate in which its villages were once held. "Cape Neddock and tlie Nubble, Old York and the d— 1." Governor Wintlirop, of Massachusetts, made, in 1643, the following entry in his "Journal:" "Tliose of Sir Ferdinando Gorge his province beyond Pis- cat were not admitted to the confederation,^ because they ran a difterent course from Us, both in their ministry and ciA'il administration ; for they had lately made Accomenticus (a poor village) a corporation, and had made a taylor their mayor, and had entertained one Mr. Hull, an excommunicated person, and very contentious, for their minister." A Boston man, and a mag- istrate, stood thus early on his dignity. Sir F. Gorges makes his appearance in that brilliant and eventful period when Elizabeth ruled in England, Henry IV. in France, and Philip II. in Spain. He is said to have revealed the conspiracy of Devereux, earl of Es- sex, to Sir Walter Raleigh, after having himself been privy to it." This act a bar-sinister in the biography of Gorges, sullies his escutcheon at the outset. History must nevertheless award that he was the most zealous, the most indefatigable, and the most influential of tliose who freely gave their talents and their wealth to the cause of American colonization. Gorges deserves to be called the father of New England. For more than forty years — extending through the reigns of James I. and of Charles I., the Com- monwealth, and the Restoration — he pursued his favorite idea with a con- stancy that seems almost marvelous when the troublous times in which he lived are passed in review." In a letter to Buckingham on the affairs of Spain, Gorges says he was sometimes thought worthy to be consulted by Elizabeth. Sir Ferdinando commanded at Plymouth, England, with his nephew Wil- liam for his lieutenant, when Captain Weymouth returned to that port from New England. On board Weymouth's ship were five natives, of whom three were seized by Gorges. They were detained by him until they were able to give an account of the topography, resources, and peoples of their far-off country. Frojn this circumstance dates Gorges's active participation in New England affjiirs. He was interested in Lord John Popham's ineffectual attempt. Finding ' About 1G47 the settlements at Agamenticus were made a town by the name of York, proba- bly from English York. ^ Confederation of the colonies for mntnal protection. ' Elizabeth died while Martin Fring was preparing to sail for America ; and Essex and Raleigh both went to the block. AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY. I33 the disasters of tliat expedition, at home and abroad, liad so disheartened his associates that he could no longer reckon on their assistance, he dispatched Richard Vines and others at his own charge, about 1617, to the same coast the Popham colonists had branded, on their return, as too cold to be inhab- ited by Englishmen. Vines established himself at or near the mouth of the Saco. Between the years 1617 and 1620, Gorges sent Captains Hobson, Ro- croft, and Dermer to New England, but their voyages were barren of results. In 1620 Gorges and others obtained from the king a separate patent, with similar privileges, exemption from custom, subsidies, etc., such as had for- merly been granted the Virginia Company. By this patent the adventurers to what had heretofore been known as the "Northern Colony in Virginia," and "The Second Colony in Virginia," obtained an enlargement of territory, so as to include all between the fortieth and forty-eighth parallels, and extending westward to the South Sea or Pa- cific Ocean. This was the. Great Charter of New England, out of which were made the subsequent grants within its territory. The incorporators were styled "The Council of Plymouth."' The Virginia Company, whose rights were invaded, attempted to annul the Plymouth Company's patent. Defeated before the Lords, they brought the subject the next year, 1621, before Parliament, as a monopoly and a griev- ance of the Commonwealth. Gorges was cited to appear at the bar of the House, and made his defense, Sir Edward Coke^ being then Speaker, After hearing the arguments of Gorges and his lawyers on three several occasions, the House, in presenting the grievances of the kingdom to the throne, placed "Sir Ferd. Gorges's patent for sole fishing in New England" at the head of the catalogue ; but Parliament, having made itself obnoxious to James, was dissolved, and some of its members committed to the Tower. The patent was saved for a time. Before this affair of the Parliament the Pilgrims had made their ever-fa- mous landing in New England. Finding themselves, contrary to their first intention, located within the New England patent, they applied through their solicitor in England to Gorges for a grant, and in 1623 they obtained it. This was the first patent of Plymouth Colony; in 1629 they had another, made to William Bradford and his associates. * In 1623 the frequent complaints to the Council of Plymouth of tlie abuses and disorders committed by fishermen and other intruders within their pa- tent, determined them to send out an officer to represent their authority on the spot. Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando, was fixed upon, and became for a short time invested with the powers of a civil magistrate. According to Belknap, he was styled " Lieutenant-general of New England." George Popham was the first to exercise a local authority within her limits. ' The insertion of the lengthy title in full appears unnecessary. " The celebrated commentator. 134 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. The Great Cli.artei* of New England Avas sun-endered to the crown in April, 1635, and the territory embraced within it was parceled ont among the patentees, Gorges receiving for his share a tract of sixty miles in extent, from the Merrimac to the Kennebec, reaching into the country one hundred and twenty miles. This tract was called the province of Maine. It was di- vided by Gorges into eight bailiwiclis or counties, and these again into six- teen hundreds, after the manner of the Chiltern Hundreds, a fief of the English crown. The Hundreds were subdivided into parishes and tithings. It would fatigue the reader to enter into the details of the government established by Gorges within what he calls " my province of Maine." It was exceedingly cumbrous, and the few inhabitants were in as great danger of being governed too much as later communities have often been. An annual rental was laid on the lands, and no sale or transfer could be made without consent of the Council. This distinction, as against the neighboi'ing colony of Massachusetts, where all were freeholders, was fatal. The crown, in con- firming the grant to Gorges, vested him with privileges and powers similar to those of the lords palatine of the ancient city of Durham. Under this au- thority the plantation at Agamenlicus was raised to the dignity of a city, and a quasi ecclesiastical government founded in New England. Belknap says further that there was no provision for public institutions. Schools were unknown, and they had no minister till, in pity of their deplora- ble state, two went thither from Boston on a voluntary mission. There are yet some interesting objects to be seen in Yoi"k, though few of the old liouses are remaining at the harbor. These few will, however, re- pay a visit. Prominent among her an- tiquities is the meeting-house of the first parish. An inscription in the foundation records as follows : "Founded A. D. 1747. The Revd. Mr. Moody, Pas." The church is placed on a grassy knoll, with the parsonage behind it. Its exterior is plain. If such a dis- tinction may be made, it belongs to the third order of New England churches, succeeding to the square tunnel-roofed edifice, as that had suc- ceeded the original barn-like house of worship. Entering the porch, I saw two biers leaning against the stair- case of the bell-tower, and noticed that ^"*^^ mketing-house. the bell-ringer or his assistants had indulged a passion for scribbling on the AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY. I35 walls, though not, as might be infevred, from Scripture texts. The interior is as severe as the exterior. Besides its rows of straight-backed pews, it was furnished at one end with a mahogany pulpit, communion-table, and sofa covered with black hair-cloth. Hanging in a frame against the pul])it are fac-similes of letters from the church at York to that of Rowley, bearing the date of 1673. The tower is an ingenious piece of joinery that reminded me of Plingham church. Shubael Duminer, the first minister of this parish, was killed in 1692, at the sacking of the place by the Indians. He was shot down in the act of mounting his horse at his own door, a short distance toward the harboi-. Mather, in his "Magnalia," indulges in a strain of eulogy toward this gentle- man that we should now call hifahitin. Dummer's successor was Samuel Moody, an eccentric but useful minister, still spoken of as "Parson Moody." He was Sir "William Pepperell's chaplain in the Louisburg expedition, and noted for the length and fervor of his prayers. After the capitulation Sir William gave a dinner to the superior officers of the army and fleet. Knowing the pi'olixity of his chaplain, he was em- barrassed by the thought that the parson's long-winded grace might weary the admiral and others of his guests. In this dilemma, he was astonished to see the parson advance and address the throne of gi'ace in these words: "O Lord, we have so many things to thank thee for, that time will be infinitely too short for it; we must therefore leave it for the work of eternity." A second parish was formed in York about 1730. Rev. Joseph Moody, the son of Samuel, was ordained its first pastor, in 1732. At the death of his wife he fell into a settled melancholy, and constantly appeared with his face covered with a handkerchief. From this circumstance he was called " Hand- kerchief Moody." He was possessed of wit, and some dreary anecdotes are related of him. Mr. Hawthorne has made the incident of the handkerchief the frame- work of one of his gloomiest tales. I know of no authority other than tradition to support the statement made in a note accompanj'ing the tale, that " in early life he (Moody) had accidentally killed a beloved friend."' It is only a short distance from the church to tlie old burying-ground, and I was soon busy among the inscriptions, though I did not find them as in- teresting as I had anticipated. The place seemed wholly uncared for. The grass grew rank and tangled, making the examination difficult, and at every step I sank to the knee in some hollow. The yard is ridged with graves, and must have received the dust of many generations, going back even to those who acknowledged the first James for their dread lord and sovereign. ' We are warranted in the belief that the first sei-vices held in this plantation were those of the Church of England. The first, or borough, charter mentions the church chapel. Robert Gorges, in 1623, brought over an Episcopal chaplain, William Morrell, and with him also came, as is sup- posed, Rev. William Blackstone, the first inhabitant of Boston. 136 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. As usual, the older stones, when I had found tlieni, were too much defaced to be deciphered, and I remarked that the slate grave-stone of Parson Moody preserved but few of its original lines. Beside him lay the remains of his wife. The following is his own epitaph : " Here lies the body of the Rev'd SAMUEL MOODY, A.M. The zealous, faithful, and successful pastor of the First Church of Christ in York. Was born in Newbury, January 4th, 1675. Graduated 1697. Came hither May i6th, Died here November 13th, 1747. For his farther character read the 2d Corinthians, 3d chapter and first six verses." In the corner of the ground next the main street is the monumental tablet of Hon. Diivid Sewall. A plain slab of slate at his side marks the resting- place of his wife. On this are enumerated some of the public offices held by her husband, and the two monuments might furnish the reader with materials for a biography. Mr. Adams, in his " Diary," notes meeting his " old friend and classmate " at York, when he was going the circuit in 17V0. Sewall had just returned from a party of pleasure at Agamenticus, and the talk was of erecting a bea- con upon it. At this time he was looked upon as a'Tory, but became a zeal- ous Whig before hostilities with the mother country began. JAIL AT OLD YORK. In 1640, says Lechford, nothing was read nor any funeral sermon made at a bui'ial,but at the tolling of the bell all the neighborhood came together, and after bearing the dead solemnly to the grave, stood by until it was closed. Tlie ministers were commonly, but not always, present. In these few and simple rites our fathers testified "The emptiness of human pride, The nothingness of man." AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY. 137 On a rising ground opposite the town-house is tlie old jail of York. I have deemed it worthy a passing notice. It is a quaint old structure, and has held many culprits in fonner times, when York was the seat ot'justice for the county, though it would not keep your modern burglar an hour. It is perched, like a bird of ill omen, on a rocky ledge, where all might see it in ])assing over the high-road. Thus, in the early day, the traveler on enter- ing the county town encountei'ed, first, the stocks and wliipping- post ; continuing his route, he in due time came to the gallows, at tlie town's end. Tlie exterior of the jail is not especially repulsive, now that it is no longer a prison ; but the inside is a relic of barbarism — just such a place as I have often imagined the miser-^ able Avitchcraft prisoners might have been confined in. The back wall is of stone. The doors are six inches of solid oak, studded with heavy nails ; the gratings secured with the blades of mill saws, having the jagged teeth upward ; the sills, locks, and bolts are ponderous, and unlike any thing the present centurj'^ has produced. The dungeons, of wiiich there are two, admitted no ray of light except when the doors were opened; and these doors were of two thicknesses of oaken planks banded between with plates of iron, and on the outside with rusty blades of mill saws, as were also the crevices through which the jailer passed bread and water to the wretched criminals. The gloom and squalor of these cachots oppressed the spirits of even the casual visitor, free to come and go at pleasure; what must it, then, have been to the wretches condemned to inhabit them ? Above these dungeons were two or three cells, secured by precautions similar to those below; Avhile other apartments were reserved for the jailer's use. The house was inhabited, and children ' _ _ STOCKS. • were playing about the floor. I fancied their merry laughter issuing from solitary dungeons where nothing but groans and imprecations had once been heard. Perchance there have been Hester Prynnes and Cassandra Southwicks immured within these walls. As I never feel quite at home within a prison, I made haste to get into the open air again. I noticed, what is common in the country, that an un- derpinning of boards had been placed around the foundation at the distance of a foot, the space within being filled with eartli. "That," said a whimsical fellow, "is to keep the coarsest of the cold out." They have a jail at Alfred hardly more secure than the old. I was told of a prisoner who coolly informed the jailer one morning that if he did not 138 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. supply him with better victuals he would not stay another clay. He was as good as his word, making his escape soon after. Wagner, the Isles of Shoals murderer, also broke jail at Alfred, but was recaptured. I should have liked to devote a few moments to the old court-house, its eminent and distinguished judges and barristers of the provincial courts, not forgetting its crier and constables. I should, I repeat, like to open the court, and marshal the jurors, witnesses, and even the idlers to their places in the king's name. I should like to hear some of those now antiquated, but then oft-quoted, scraps of law from the statutes of Richard II. or Sixth Edward. But it is all past. Bag-wigs, black gowns, and silver buckles are no more seen, except in family portraits of the time, and the learned counsel of to-day ^]o more address each other as " Brother A " or " B ." There do re- main, however, in front of the old court-house four beautifully spreading elms, planted by David Sewall in 1773. To look at them now, it is not easy to fancy they could be grasped with the hand when the battle of Lexington was fought. I passed on by the old tavern -stand where AVoodbridge, in 1770, swung his sign of " Billy Pitt," and underneath, the words " Entertain- ment for the Sons of Liberty " — a hint to Tories to take their custom else- where. I should have enjoyed a pipe with that landlord, as John Adams says he did. In Old York they have a precinct known as Scotland, said to have been first settled by some of the prisoners of Cromwell's victory at Dunbar, and shipped over seas to be sold as apprentices for a term of years. I was bound thither to see the garrison houses that had withstood the onset of the Indians in King William's war. It is four miles from the village to Scotland parish, the road passing through broad acres of cleared land or ancient orchards, with now and then a by-way of green turf leading to a farm-house on the river, or a gleam of the stream itself winding through the meadows as you mount the rocky hills in your route. Cider Hill is a classic localitj'-, which the traveler must pass through. It is well named, I should say, the trees, though old, being laden with apples, fit only for the cider-j)ress. I was struck with the age of the orchards, and in- deed with the evidences on all sides of the long occupancy of the land. In going up and down the traveled roads of York the impression is everywhere gained of an old settled country. By the side of the road is the withered trunk of an ancient tree, said to have been brought from England in a tub more than two hundred years ago. Nothing remains but the hollow shell, which still puts forth a few green shoots. Next to the rocks, it is the oldest object on the road. At a little distance it has sent up an offshoot, now a tree bearing fruit, and has thus risen again, as it were, from its own ashes. This tree deserves to be remem- AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY. 139 OLD GARRISON-HOUSE. bered along with tlie Stnyvesant and Endicott pear-trees. There is, or was, another apple-tree of equal age with this in Bristol. "You have a good many apples this year," I said to a farmer. " Oh, a marster sight on 'em, sir, marster sight; but they don't fetch nothing." "Is the cool summer in- juring your corn?" I pur- sued. "Snouted it, sir; snout- ed it." The Junkius's garrison is the first reached. It is on the brow of a high hill over- looking the river meadows, where, if good watch were kept, a foe could hardly have approached unseen. It can not survive much longer. It is dilapidated inside and out to a degree that every blast searches it through and through. The doors stood ajar; the floors were littered with corn-fodder, and a hen was brooding in a corner of the best room. Having served as dwelling and castle, it embodies the economy of the one with the security of the other. The chiumey is of itself a tower; the floor timbers of the upper story project on all sides, so as to allow it to overhang the lower. This was a type of building imported from England by the early settlers, common enough in their day, and of which specimens are still extant in sucii of our older towns as Boston, Salem, and Marblehead. Its form admitted, however, of a good defense. The walls are of hcAvn timber about six inches thick, and bullet-proof. On the north-east, and where the timbers were ten inches thick, they have rotted away under their long exposure to the weather. I observed a loop-hole or two that had not been closed up, and that the roof frame was of oak, with the bark adhering to it.* In one room was an old hand-loom ; in another a spinning-wheel lay over- turned ; and in the fire-place the iron crane, Slackened Avith soot, was still fixed as it miG;ht have been when the Q-arrison was beset in '92. Between ' Ilntchinson says: "In every frontier settlement there were more. or less garrison houses, some with a flankart at two opposite angles, others at each corner of the house ; some houses sur- rounded with palisadoes ; others, which were smaller, built with square timber, one piece laid hori- zontally npon another, and loop-holes at every side of the house ; and besides these, generally in any more considerable plantation there was one garrison house capable of containing soldiers sent for the defense of the plantation, and the families near, whose houses were not so fortified. It was thought justifiable and necessary, whatever the general rule of law might be, to erect such forts, castles, or bulwarks as these upon a man's own ground, without commission or special license there- for." — "History of Massachusetts," vol. ii., p. 67. 140 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. the house and the road is the Junkins's family bnrying-ground. The house attracts many curious visitors, though it lacks its ancient warlike accessories, its lookouts, palisades, and flankarts. A few rods farther on, in descending the hill, is the M'Intire garrison. It is on the opposite side of the Berwick road from the house through which I have just hurried the reader; and, except that a newer addition has been joined to the garrison part, does not materially differ from it, Mr. M'Intire, now the owner of both houses, showed me an opening in the tloor of the pro- jection through which, according to the family tradition, boiling water was poured upon the heads of any who might try to force an entrance. It has been supposed that these two garrisons were erected as early as 1640 or 1650, As no motive existed for building such houses at that time, the tradition is not entitled to credit. Few of the Indians were possessed of fire-arms, as the sale to them was strictly prohibited in the English colonies. The digging up of the hatchet by the eastern Indians, in 1676, during Philip's war, probably first led to the building of fortified houses in all the sea-coast towns. During the attack of 1692, the four garrisons in York saved the lives of those they sheltered, while fifty of the defenseless inhabitants were killed outright, and one hundred and fifty were led prisoners to Canada. It is not my purpose to jjursue farther the history of ancient Agamenticus. The state of the settlement five years after its destruction by the Indians ap- pears in a memorial to the French minister, prepared in order to show the feasibility of a thorough wiping out of tlie English settlements from Boston to Pemaquid : "From Wells Bay to York is a distance of five leagues. There is a fort within a river. All the houses having been destroyed five years ago by the Indians, the English have re-assembled at this place, in order to cultivate their lands. The fort is worthless, and may have a garrison of forty men." As a memorial of the dark days when settler fought with savage, the Junkins's garrison-house appeals for protection in its decrepit old age. Its frame is still strong. A few boards and a kindly hand should not be want- ing to stay its ruin. I left it as for nearly two hundred years it has stood, " On its windy site uplifting gabled roof and palisade, And rough walls of unhewn timber with the moonlight overlaid." POKTSMOUTU, ZsiiVV UAAIl'blllliE, laiUM KlTTEliV BKlUGJi. CHAPTER X. AT KITTERY POIXT, MAINE. " We have no title-deeds to house or lands ; Owners and occupants of earlier dates From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands, And hold in mortmain still their old estates." LoNGFELLOAV. X OUIS XV. said to Bouret, the financier, " You are indeed a singular per- -'-^ son not to have seen Marly ! Call upon me there, and I will show it to you." Our way lies from Old York to Kittery Point.' To get from the one to the other you must pass the bridge over York River, built in 1761. It inau- gurated in New England the then novel method of laying the bridge super- structure on a frame-work formed of wooden piles driven into the bed of the river. The inventor was Major Samuel Sewall, of York, whose bridge was the model of those subsequently built over the Charles, Mystic, and Merri- mac. Kittery Point is separated from Kitterj' Foreside by Spruce Creek. It is also divided from Geri'ish's Island, the outermost land of the eastern shore ' The name of Kittery Point is from a little hamlet in England. It is the first and oldest town in the State, having been settled in 1G23. Gorgeana, settled 1024, was a city corporate, and not a town. Kittery first included North and South Berwick and Eliot. 142 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. of the Piscataqua, by Chauncy's Creek. It is important at Kittery Point to get nsed to the names of Cutts, Gerrish, Sparhawk, Pepperell, Waldron, Chauncy, and Champernowne. They recur with remarkable frequency. If coming from Portsmouth, the visitor will first traverse the village, with its quaint little church, built in 1714, its secluded cemetery, and fine old elms. They say the frame of the meeting-house was hewn somewhere about Dover, and floated down the stream. There are few older churches in New Eno-land, or that embody more of its ancient homeliness, material and spiritual. Since I was there it has been removed about sixty feet northward, and now fronts the south, entirely changing the appearance of that locality. NAVY-YAKD, KITTERY, MAINE. Formerly, in leaving the church door, you were confronted by a sombre old mansion, having, in despite of some relics of a former splendor, an unmistak- able air of neglect and decay. The massive entrance door hung by a single tastening, the fluted pilasters on either side were rotting away, window panes were shattered, chimney tops in ruins, the fences prostrate. It was nothing but a wi-eck ashore. This was the house built by Lady Pepperell, after the death of Sir William. Report said it was haunted ; indeed I found it so, and by a living phantom. Repeated and long-continued knocking was at length answered by a trem- ulous effort from within to open the door, wliich required the help of my com- panion and myself to eflect. I shall never forget the figure that appeared to us: "We stood and gazed; Gazed on her sunburned face with silent awe, Her tattered mantle and her hood of straw." Poor Sally Cutts, a harmless maniac, was the sole inhabitant of the old AT KITTERY POINT, MAINE. I43 house; she and it were fallen into hopeless ruin together. Her appearance was weird and witch-like, and betokened squalid poverty. Au old calash al- most concealed her features from observation, except when she raised her head and glanced at us in a scared, furtive sort of way. Yet beneath this Avreck, and what touched us keenly to see, was the instinct of a lady of gentle breeding that seemed the last and only link between her and the world. With the air and manner of the drawing-room of fifty years ago she led the way from room to room. We tracked with our feet the snow that had drifted in underneath the hall door. The floors were bare, and echoed to our tread. Fragments of the original paper, representing ancient ruins, had peeled off the walls, and vandal hands had wrenched away the pictured tiles from the fire-places. The upper rooms were but a repetition of the disorder and misery below stairs. Our hostess, after conducting us to her own apartment, relapsed into im- becility, and seemed little conscious of our presence. Some antiquated fur- niture, doubtless family heir-looms, a small stove, and a bed, constituted all her worldly goods. As she crooned over a scanty fire of two or three wet sticks, muttering to herself, and striving to warm her withered hands, I thought I beheld in her the impersonation of Want and Despair. Her family was one of the most distinguished of New England, but a strain of insanity developed itself in her branch of the genealogical tree. Of three brothers — John, Richard, and Robert Cutt — who, in 1641, emigrated from Wales, the first became president of the Province of New Hampshire, the second settled on the Isles of Shoals, and the third at Kittery, where he became noted as a builder of ships. This house had come into the possession of Captain Joseph Cutts' about the beginning of the century. He was a large ship-owner, and a successful and wealthy merchant. Ruined by Mr. Jefferson's embargo and by the war of 1812, he lost his reason, and now lies in the village church-yard. Two of his sons inherited their father's blighting misfortune : one fell by his own hand in Lady Pepperell's bed-chamber. Sally, the last survivor, has joined them within a twelvemonth. * Captain Joseph Ciitts was born in 1764, and died on liis birthday anniversary, aged ninety- seven. He married a granddaughter of President Chainicy, of Harvard College. Sarah Chaun- cy, known to us as "Sally Cutts,"was removed daring her last illness to the house of her cousin, where she was kindly oared for. When near lier end she became more rational, and was sensible of the attentions of her friends. She died June 30th, 1874. Her brother Charles was hopelessly insane forty-four years, and often so violent as to make it necessary to chain him. Joseph, the other brother, entered the navy : overtaken by his malady, he was sent home. Under these re- peated misfortunes, added to the care of her fiither and brothers, Sally's reason also gave way. The town allowed a small sum for the board of her father and brothers, and her friends provided wood and clothing. Her house even was sold to satisfy a Government claim for duties, owed by her father. It has now been renovated, and is occupied by Oliver Cutts, Esquire. 144 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. Poor Sally Cutts ! She rose to take leave of us with the same ceremoni- ous politeness which had marked her reception. Her slight and shrunken figure was long in my memory, her crazy buffet, and broken, antiquated chairs, to which she clung as the most precious of earthly possessions. It was one of her hallucinations to be always expecting the arrival of a messen- ger from Washington with full reparation of the broken fortunes of her fam- ily. Some charitable souls cared for her necessities, but such was the poor creature's pride that artifice was necessary to effect their purpose. Flitting through the deserted halls of the gloomy old mansion — dreading tlie stran- ger's approach, the gossip of the neighborhood, the jibes of village urchins — Sally remained its mistress until summoned to a better and kindlier mansion. I said the house was haunted, and I believe it. A short walk beyond the cemetery brings you up with Fort M'Clary,' its block-house, loop-holed for musketry, its derricks, and general disarray. Not BLOCK-HOUSE AND FOKT, KITTERl POINT. many would have remembered the gallantry of Major Andrew M'Clary at Bunker Hill, but for this monument to his memory. The site has been forti- fied from an early day b}'' garrison-house, stockade, or earth-work. It should have retained its earliest name of Fort Pepperell. John Stark's giant com- rade might have been elsewhere commemorated. It is said no village is so humble but that a great man may be born in it. Sir William Pepperell was the great man of Kittery Point. He was what is now called a self-made man, raising himself from the ranks through native genius backed by strength of will. Smollett calls him a Piscataquay trader. ^ My appearance within Fort M'Clary caused a panic in the garrison. A few unimportant questions concerning the old works were answered only after a hurried consultation between the sergeant in charge and the head workman. The Government was then meditating war with Spain, and I had reason to believe I was looked upon as a Spanish emissary. AT KITTERY POINT, MAINE. 145 with little or no education, and utterly unacquainted with military operations. Though contemptuous, the description is literally true. Sir William's father is first noticed in the annals of the Isles of Shoals. The mansion now seen near the Pepperell Hotel was built partly by him and in part by his more eminent son. The building was once much more exten- sive than it now appears, having been, about twenty years ago, shortened ten feet at either end. Until the death of the elder Pepperell, in 1734, the house Mas occupied by his own and his son's families. The lawn in front reached to the sea, and an avenue, a quarter of a mile in length, bordered by fine old trees, led to the house of Colonel Sparhawk, east of the village church. With its homely exterior the mansion of the Pepperells represents one of the great- est fortunes of colonial New England. It used to be said Sir William might ride to the Saco without g-oing off" his own possessions.' SIR WILLIAM PEPPERELL S HOUSE, KITTERY POINT. There is hanging in the large hall of the Essex Institute, at Salem, a two- thirds length of Sir William Pepperell, painted in 1751 by Smibert, when the baronet was in London. It represents him in scarlet coat, waistcoat, and breeches, a smooth-shaven face and powdered periwig: the waistcoat, richly ' The house was also occupied at one time as a tenement by fishermen. It exhibits no marks, either inside or out, of tlie wealth and social consequence of its old proprietor. 10 146 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. golcl-embi'oiclered, as was then the fashion, was worn long, descending almost to the knee, and formed tlie most conspicuous article of dress. In one hand Sir William grasps a truncheon, and in the background the painter has de- picted the siege of Louisburg.' Smollett accredits Auchmuty, judge-advocate of the Court of Admiralty of New England, with the plan of the conquest of Louisburg, which he pro- nounces the most important achievement of the war. Mr. Hartwell said in ilie House of Commons that the colonists took Louisburg from the French single-handed, without any European assistance — "as mettled an enterprise as any in our history," he calls it. The 3 honor of the Louisburg expedition has J also been claimed for James Gibson, of Boston, and Colonel William Vaughan, ^ of Damariscotta. But the central figures appear to have been Governor William Shirley and Sir William Pepperell.'^ The year of Louisburg was an event- ful one, for all Europe was in arms. The petty German princes were striving for the imperial crown vacant by the death of the emperor, Charles VII. France "^P JBHi H ilW^^^ff^iMini supports the pretensions of the Grand "Iwl^wlSyB^^^^i! ^BBH -^'^^^^ of Tuscany with a powerful army under her illustrious profligate, Maurice de Saxe ; Austria invades Bohemia ; the old Brummbar swoops down upon Sax- ony, and his cannon growl under the walls of Dresden ; the Rhenish frontiers, Silesia, Hungary, and Italy, are all ablaze. England must have a hand in the fighting. Lord Chesterfield's mission to the Hague, the Quadruple Alliance at Warsaw, are succeeded by the stunning blow of Fontenoy. The allied army recoiled, and drew itself to- gether under the walls of Brussels. The Duke of Cumberland was defeated by a sick man.^ It was at this moment of defeat that the news of the fall of Louisburg reached the allies. The Dunkirk of America had capitulated to a "trader of SIK WILLIAM PEPPERELL. ' Mr. Longfellow has, at Cambridge, a painting by Copley, representing two children in a park. These children are William Pepperell and his sister, Elizabeth Royall Pepperell, children of the last baronet. ^ Both were made colonels in the regnlar British establishment ; their regiments, numbered the Fiftieth and Fifty-first respectively, were afterward disbanded. ' Marshal Saxe, unable to mount his horse, was carried along his lines in a litter. AT KITTERY POINT, MAINE. I47 Piseataquay." It put new life into tlie beaten army, and was celebrated with great rejoicings in its camps/ Among those who served with distinction under Pepperell were Richard Gridley, who afterward placed tlie redoubt on Bunker Hill ; Wooster, who fell at Ridgefield ; Thornton, a signer of our Magna Charta ; and Nixon and Whiting, of the Continental army. It Avas sought to give the expedition something of the character of a crusade. George Whitefield furnished for its banner the motto, , "A17 Desperandum^ Christo DuceP A little more family history is necessary to give the reader the entree of the four old houses at Kittery Point, The elder Sir William, by his will, made the son of his daughter Elizabeth and Colonel Sparhawk his residuary legatee, requiring him, at the same time^ to relinquish the name of Sparhawk for that of Pepperell. The baronetcy, extinct with the death of Sir William, was revived by the king for the benefit of his grandson, a royalist of 1775, who went to England at the outbreak of hostilities. The large family estates were confiscated by the patriots. The tomb of the Pepperells, built in 1734, is seen between the road and the Pepperell Hotel. ^ When it Avas repaired some years ago, at the instance of Harriet Hirst Sparhawk, the remains were found lying in a promiscuous heap at the bottom, the wooden shelves at the sides having given way, pre- cipitating the coffins upon the floor of the vault. Tlie planks first used to close the entrance had yielded to tlie jiressure of the feet of cattle grazing in the common field, filling the tomb with rubbish. About thirty skulls were found in various stages of decomposition. A crypt was built in a corner, and the scattered relics carefully placed within.^ Dr. Eliot, the pioneer among American biographers, says Dr. Belknap oft- en mentioned to him that his desire to preserve the letters of Sir William Pepperell led to the founding of the Massachusetts Historical Society. This object does not seem to have been wholly accomplished, as it is well known the baronet's papers have become widely scattered.'' Not far from the mansion of the Pepperells is the very ancient dwelling of Bray, whose daughter, Margery, became Lady Pepperell. It was long be- ^ The j'ear 1745 was also signalized by the death of Pope in June, and of the old Duchess of Marlborough in October, who died at eighty-five, immensely rich, and "very little regretted either by her own family or the world in general." — Smollett. ^ Mr. E. F. Safford, the proprietor, exercises watch and ward over this and other relics of the Pepperells with a care worthy of imitation all along the coast. ^ Mr. Sabine notes in his "Loyalists" that the tomb, when entered some years ago, contained little else than bones strewed in confusion about its muddy bottom; among them, of course, the remains of the victor of Louisburg, deposited in it at his decease in 1759. ^ The best biography of Sir William Pepperell is that by Ur. Usher Parsons. 148 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. fore the old shipwright made up his mind to consent to match his daughter so unequally. This house is considered to be two hundred and twenty-five years old, and is still habitable. Down at the water-side are seen the rotting timbers of the wharf where the Pepperells, father and son, conducted an ex- tensive trade. A little east of the hotel and the pleasant manse below the river makes a noble sweep, inclosing a favorite anchorage for storm or wind bound craft. KITTERT POINT, MAINE. Not unfrequently a hundred may be seen quietly riding out a north-easter at snug moorings. At such times this harbor and Gloucester are havens of ref- uge for all coasters caught along shore. The sight of the fleet getting under way with the return of fine weather is worth going to see. When at Kittery Point the visitor may indulge in a variety of agreeable excursions by land or water; the means are always at hand for boating and driving, and there is no lack of pleasant rambles. I first went to Gerrish's AT KITTERY POINT, MAINE. I49 Island on a wild N'oveinber day, and in a north-east snow-storm. I never en- joyed myself better. In the first place, this island is one of the headlands of history as well as of the Piscataqua. It was conveyed as early as 163G, by Sir F. Gorges, to Arthur Champernowne, a gentleman of Devon.' The island was to take the name of Dartington, from the manor of the Cliampernovvnes.^ In this indent- ure Brave Boat Harbor is mentioned. The Province of Maine was then some- times called New Somersetshire. There is something in this endeavor of all the promoters of New England to graft upon her soil the time-honored names of the Old, to plant with her civilization something to keep her in loving remembrance, that appeals to our protection. These names are historical and significant. They link us to the high renown of our mother isle. No political separation can disinherit us. I think the tie is like the mystery of the electric wave that passes under the sea, unseen yet acknowledged of all, active though invisible. The island, with many contiguous acres, became the property of Francis, son of Arthur Champernowne, and nephew of Sir F. Gorges, who is buried there, his grave distinguished by a heap of stones. Tradition said he forbade in his last testament any stone to be raised to his memory.' In the hands of subsequent proprietors the island was called Ciitts's, Fryer's, and Ger- rish's Island. It is usually spoken of as two islands, being nearly though not quite subdivided by Chauncy's Creek. The venerable Cutts's farm-house on the shore of the island is two hundred and thirty years old by family ac- count. All the islands lying northward of the ship channel belong to Kittery.* IMany of them have interesting associations. Trefethren's, the largest, pro- jects far out into the river, and is garnished with the earth-works of old Fort Sullivan, from which shot might be pitched with ease on the decks of invad- ing ships. Fernald's, now Navy Yard Island, became in 1806 the property of the United States, by purchase of Captain William Dennett, for the sum of five thousand five hundred dollars. Badger's, anciently Langdon's Island, is a reminiscence of one of the no- ' The relation in Purchas, vol. iv., p. 1935, of the voj-age of Robert, earl of Essex, to the Azores in 1597, has a supplementarj' or larger relation, written by Sir Arthur Gorges, knight, a captain in the earl's fleet of the ship Wast-Sjnte. There is mention of a Captain Arthur Champernowne, who appears to have sailed with the admiral in this expedition. ^ The father of James Anthony Froude, the historian, was rector of Dartington ; the historian was born there. ' He is fully recognized as a personage of distinction in the beginnings of Kittery. Charles W. Tuttle gives him a touch of royal blood. I failed to find such a provision in his own draft of his will. * They are, in descending the river. Badger's, Navy Yard, Trefethren's, or Seavey's, Clark's, and Gerrisli's Island. 150 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. blest of the old Ro- mans of the revolu- tionary time. His still elegant mansion adorns one of the handsomest streets in Portsmouth.' Wash- ington, when there, considered it the fin- est private house in the town. Langdon was six feet tall, with a very noble presen<:'e. Duke Rochefoucauld Lian- court mentions that he had followed the sea first as mate, then as master of a ship. He ultimately GOVERNOR langdon' S MANSION, PORTSMOUTH. 1 ,^ „ • * ' became an emment merchant and ship-builder. A devoted patriot, he was one of the leaders in the first act of aggression committed by the Portsmouth Whigs against the ci'own. As the words of a man of action and a model legislator in time of invasion by a foreign enemy, his well-known speech to the New Hampshire Assembly is worth the quoting. This is his manner of cutting short useless de- bate : " Gentlemen, you may talk as much as you please ; but I know the en- emy is upon our frontiers, and I am going to take my pistols and mount my horse, and go and fight in the ranks of my fellow-citizens." And he did it. Yet a little more about Langdon. Chastellux relates that Avhen on his Avay to Gates's camp he was followed by a favorite slave. The negro, who beheld the energy with which his master pi-essed on, without other repose than could be snatched in the woods, said to him, at last, "Master, you un- dergo great hardships, but you go to fight for liberty. I also should suffer patiently if I had the same liberty to defend." "Then you shall have it," said John Langdon ; "from this moment I give you your freedom." Continental Agent Langdon became the superintendent of war ships or- dei'ed here by Congress. He presided at the building of the Ranger^ the Al- liance, and the America, the last a seventy-four gun ship, generously given to Louis XVI, for one of his lost on our coast. Paul Jones was much here; a brave braggart, quarreling with Langdon and Congress, writing quires of ' In Pleasant, near Court Street. AT KITTERY POINT, MAINE. 151 memorials, little esteemed among his peers, though a lion on his own quarter- deck. Though Langdon was a member elect "of the Old Congress, as his State stipulated that only two of the delegates were to go to Philadelphia, his does not appear among the names signed to the Declaration. Matthew Thornton, elected after Langdon, was allowed to sign when he took his seat in Novem- ber. Langdon became an opponent of the measures and administration of Washington, joining with Jefterson, Pierce Butler, and a few others in or- ganizing the Republican party of that day. They had five votes in the Sen- ate. Li the House was Andrew Jackson, a member from Tennessee, Avho at- tracted little attention, though he voted with the small coterie of the Upper House, including Langdon, Butler, and Colonel Burr. Jacob Sheaffe, who in his day carried on a more extensive business than any other merchant iii Portsmouth, became the successor of Langdon as Gov- ernment agent. It is said he purchased the island wliere the Navy Yard now is. One of the six frigates ordered under Washington's administration was begun here. We had voted to build these vessels to punish tlie Algerine corsairs ; we then countermanded them ; afterward a treaty was made witli these pirates by which they were to have a new frigate of tliirty-two guns, which was laid down at Portsmouth. The family name of Sheaffe was once much more familiar in New England than now. It was of Peggy Sheaffe, a celebrated Boston beauty, that Baron Steuben perpetrated the following mot: When introduced to lier at the house of Mrs. Livingstone, mother of the chancellor, the baron exclaimed, in his broken English, " I have been cautioned from my youth against Mischief, but had no idea her charms were so irresistible." Kittery is mentioned by Josselyn as the most populous of all the planta- tions in the Province of Maine. It engrosses the left bank of the Piscataqua from the great bridge at Portsmouth to the sea. The booming of guns at the Navy Yard often announces the presence of some dignitary, yet none, I fancy, more distinguished than Washington have set foot in Kittery. I regret he has not much to say of it, but more of the fishing-party of which he was, at the moment, a member. "Having lines," he says, "we proceeded to the fishing banks without the harbor, and fished for cod, but it not being a proper time of tide, we caught but two." The impregnable character of the President for truthful- ness forbids the presumption that want of skill had aught to do with his ill- luck. It would be matter for general regret if tlie selectmen of Kittery should again, as long ago happened, be presented by a grand jury for not taking care that their children were taught their catechism, and educated according to law. The number of steeples and school-houses seen by the way inilicates, in this respect, a healthy public opinion. Kittery church-yard contains many 152 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. mute appeals to linger and glean its dead secrets. Mrs. Thaxter sweetly sings as she felt the story of one of these mildewed stones : " Crushing the scarlet strawberries in the grass, I kneel to read the slanting stone. Alas! How sharp a sorrow speaks! A hundred years And more have vanished, with their smiles and tears, Since here was laid, upon an April day, Sweet Mary Chauncey in the grave away, A hundred years since here her lover stood Beside her grave." * * * I found both banks of the Piscataqua charming. The hotels at Newcastle, Kittery, Old York, etc., are of the smaller class, adapted to the comfortable entertainment of families ; and as they are removed from the intrusion of that disagreeable constituent of city life known over-seas as the " swell mob," real comfort is attainable. They are not faultless, but one may always con- fidently reckon on a good bed, a polite, accommodating host, and well-pro- vided table. WHALE S-BACK LIGHT. CHAPTER XL THE ISLES OF SHOALS. " O warning lights, bnrn bright and clear, Hither the storm comes I Leagues away It moans and thunders low and drear — Burn 'til the break of day!" Celia Thaxter. ON" the loth of July, 1605, as the sun was declining in the west, a little bavk of fifteen tons, manned by Frenchmen, was standing along the coast of New England, in quest of a situation to begin a settlement. The principal personage on board was Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, a noble gentleman, and an officer of the household of Henry IV. His commission of lieutenant-general bore date at Fontainebleau in the year 1603. He was em- 154 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. \\ POUTSMOUTH AND THE ISLES OF SHOALS. powered by it to col- onize Acadia from tlie fortieth to tlie forty-sixth parallel, ill vii'tue of the dis- coveries of the Tus- can, Verazzaiii. It recited, in quaint old French, that Du Guast had already made several voy- ages to these and other iieighboiino- countries, of which he liad knowledge and experience.' The commission likewise conferred authoi'ity to make war or peace with the peoples inhabiting the country of Acadia, with sole power to traffic in skins and furs for ten years in the Bay of St. Clair and the river of Canada. The broad autograph of Henry and the great seal of yellow wax are appended to the parchment. On board the bark, besides the leader of the expedi- tion, were a few gentlemen adventurers and twenty sail- ors. The name of De Monts's pilot was Champdore.^ The geographer of the expedition was Samuel Champlain. Accompanying De Monts, as guides and interpreters, were two natives, Panonnias and his wife. Since the 15th of June De Monts had been minutely examining the New England coast from St. Croix, where he had wintered, to near the forty-third parallel, in the hope of finding "a place more suitable for habitation and of a milder temperature" than the inhospitable region he had first pitched upon. The greater part of De Monts's colony remained at the Isle of St. Croix. After leaving the mouth of the Saco, and looking in at the entrance of * "Et en la connoissance et experience que vous avez de la qualite, condition et situation dndit pais de la Cadie, pour les diverses navigations, voyages, et frequentatious que vous avez faits en ces terres et autres proches et circonvoisines." ^ Williamson erroneously calls Cluunplain the pilot. THE ISLES OF SHOALS. I55 Ivennebunk River, De Monts, still keeping as close in as was prudent with the land, which Chaniplain describes as flat and sandy {^platte et sahloueuse), found himself on that July afternoon in presence of three striking land- marks.' Cape Ann bore south, a quarter east, six leagues distant. To the west was a deep bay into which, the savages afterward told hitn, a river emptied ; and in the ofting they perceived three or four islands of fair ele- vation. These last, historians agree, were the Isles of Shoals. Xotwithstanding the isles are not identified on either of Chaniplain's maps (]61'2 and 1632), it is no longer doubtful that De Monts made them out nine years before Smith saw them, though the latter has first given them on a map a locality and a name. But I take Pring to have been the first to men- tion them, when, two years before De Monts, lie sighted a multitude of small islands in about forty-three degrees, and anchored under the shelter of the greatest.^ Gosnold must have seen the isles, but thought them hardly worth entering in his log. Prince Charles, afterward Cliarles I., graciously confirmed the name Smith had, in 1614, given the isles. Yet he has little or no title to be considered their discoverer, and has left no evidence that he ever landed upon them. The French, Smith relates, had two ships forty leagues to the westward (of Monhegan) that had made great trade while he was on the coast. Beyond all these, the Basque shallop seen in these waters by Gosnold remains a nut for historians to crack. De Poutrincourt's expedition of 1606 into Massachusetts Bay was the sequel to that of 1605. De Monts, a heretic, through the jealousy of rivals and Jesuit intrigue, was soon deprived of the privileges with which he had been endowed by his fickle monarch. In this his experience was not unlike that of Gorges and the Council of Plymouth. De Monts was really the head of a commercial company, organized by Chauvin, governor of Dieppe.^ The detail of his voyage along the New England coast in 1605 is the first intelligible record to be found. Shall we not, at last, have to do the tardy justice of acknowledging him the chief and guiding spirit of the expedi- tion, now universally referred to as Chaniplain's? The latter has become the prominent figure, while Du Guast is not even mentioned in some of our so-called school histories. Christopher Levett is the first Englishman to give an account of the isles ■worthy of the name. Its brevity may be advantageously contrasted with later descriptions, though the natural features remain, in many respects, the same. He says, writing seven years after Captain Smith : ' A little book I have seen translates rather freely in making Champlain say ' ' and on tlie west Ipswitch Bay." See p. 122 for Champlain's exact language. " Pring came to the main-land in forty-tlu'ee and a half degrees — his farthest point westward on this voyage — and worked along tiie coast to the south-west. I know of no other islands between Cape Ann and his land-fall answering his description. ^ De Monts sailed from Havre de Grace ]\Iarch 7th, IGOi. 156 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. "The first place I set my foot upon in New England was the Isle of Shoals, being islands in the sea about two leagues from the main. " Upon these islands I neither could see one good timber - tree nor so much good ground as to make a garden. "The place is found to be a good fishing-place for six ships, but more can not well be there, for want of convenient stage room, as this year's experience hath proved." The year 1623 is the earliest date I have seen of the islands being occu- pied as a fishing station. Monhegan was earlier known, and more frequented by English vessels for this purpose. A word or two about the fishery of those days. Cabot notices the cod under the name of " bacalo ;" Jean Alfonse speaks of the "bacaillos;" Captain Uring calls it "baccalew;" the Indian name was "tamwock." Smith says the fish on our coast were much better than those taken at Newfoundland, which he styles " poor John," a nickname ever since current up the Mediterranean. One of his ships, in 1614, loaded with dry fish for Spain, where the cargo brought "forty ryalls," or five dollars, the quintal. Fifteen or eighteen men, by his relation, took with the hook alone sixty thousand fish in a month. Charlevoix believed this fish could turn itself inside out, like a pocket. He says they found bits of iron and glass, and even pieces of broken pots, in the stomachs of fish caught on the Banks of Newfoundland ; and adds that some people believed they could digest them. Josselyn says the fishermen used to tan their sails and nets with hemlock-bark to preserve them. Allusion has been made to the number of fishermen frequenting the Grand Banks in 1578. Without the evidence few would be willing to believe the fishery had attained such proportions at that early day, on a coast we have been accustomed to regard as almost unknown. It certainly goes verj'^ far toward dispelling illusions respecting the knowledge that was had of our own shores by those adventurous " toilers of the sea." In Captain Richard Whitbourne's relation of his voyages and observations in Newfoundland (Purchas, vol. iv., p. 1882), he says: "More than four hundred sail of fishing ships were annually sent to the Grand Banks by the French and Portuguese, making two voyages a year, fishing winter and summer. "In the year 1615, when I was at Newfoundland," he adds, " there were then on that coast of your Majestie's subjects two hundred and fiftie saile of ships, great and small. The burthens and tonnage of them all, one with an- other, so neere as I could take notice, allowing every ship to be at least three- score tun (for as some of them contained lesse, so many of them held more), amounting to more than 15,000 tunnes. Now, for every three-score tun bur- then, according to the usual manning of ships in those voyages, agreeing with the note I then tooke, there are to be set doune twentie men and boyes; by THE ISLES OF SHOALS. I57 which computation in these two liundred and fiftio saile tliere were no lesse than five thousand persons." De Poutrincourt, writing to Paris in 1618 from Port Royal, estimates the fishery to be then worth a '■^ tnllUon cVor'''' annually to France. He declares he would not exchange Canada for Peru if it were once seriously settled ; and foreshadows the designs of the English on New France as soon as they should have made themselves strong in Virginia. By a royal edict of 1669 the French fishermen of New France were allowed to land their fish in all the ports of the mother country, except Havre, freo^of duty. The advantages possessed by the Isles of Shoals were deep water, with a reasonably secure haven for ships, free from molestation by the savages, while the crews were engaged in taking and curing their fish. To this ought to be added their nearness to the best fishing grounds. All along shore the islands were, as a rule, earlier frequented than the main-land. Levett says (and he thought it a fatal objection) the ships that fished at Cape Ann in 1623 had to send their boats ticenty miles to take their fish, and the masters were in great fear of not making their voyages. "I fear there hath been too fair a gloss set upon Cape Ann," writes Levett. La Hontan, writing from Quebec in 1683, says of the cod-fishery on the Banks of Newfoundland : "You can scarce imai.ANI THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 15 9 tlons of the isles. Perhaps one or two of the passengers had no more busi- ness at tlie islands than myself. It is not easy to have a more delightful sail than down the Piscataqua, or to find a more beautiful stream when its banks are clothed in green. It has often been described, and may again be, without fear of exhausting its capa- bilities. The movement of shipping to and fro; the shifting of objects as you glide by them, together with the historic renown Avith which its shores are incrusted, fill the eye while exciting the imagination. A few miles above Portsmouth the river expands into a broad basin, which receives the volume of tide, and then pours it into the sea between narrow banks. We gained the narrows of the river with Peirce's Island on the right and Seavey's on the left, each crowned with grass-grown batteries thrown up in the Revolution to defend the pass. Here the stream is not a good rifle-shot in breadth, and moves with increased velocity within the contracted space, the swirl and eddying of the current resembling the boiling of a huge cal- dron. Its surface is ringed with miniature whirlpools, and at flood-tide the mid-channel seems lifted above the level of the river, as I have seen tlie mighty volume of the Missouri during its annual rise. It is not strange the place should have received the anathemas of mariners from immemoi-ial time, or boast a name so unconventional withal as Pull-and-be-d — d Point. Clearing the narrows, we left behind us the city steeples, the big ship- houses, lazy war ships, and tall chimneys on Kittery side. The wind being light, the skipper got up a stay-sail from the fore-hatch. As it was bent to the halyards, a bottle labeled "ginger ale," but smelling uncommonly like schnapps, rolled out of its folds. We were now slowly forging past Xew- castle, or Great Island. The sun came out gloriously, lighting up the spire of the little church at Kittery Point and the masts of vessels lying at anchor in the roads. Glancing astern, I remarked four wherries coming down at a great pace with the ebb. They kept directly abreast of each other, as if moved by a single oarsman, while the rowers talked and laughed as they might have done on the pavement ashore. I could see by the crates piled in the stern of each boat that they were lobstermen, going outside to look after their traps. As they went by they seemed so many huge water-spiders skimming the sur- face of the river. Fort Constitution, with its dismantled walls and frowning port-holes, is now passed, and Whale's Back, Avith twin light-houses, shows its ledges above water. We open the mouth of the river with Odiorne's Point on the star- board and Gerrish's Island on the port bow, the swell of ocean lifting our little bark, and making her courtesy to the great deep. The islands had appeared in view when we were oflf Newcastle, the hotel on Star Island, where it loomed like some gray sea-fortress, being the most conspicuous object. As we ran off the shore, the " cape of the main-land " and 160 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. the ^^ cul-de-sac'''' of Champlain came out, and fixed themselves wlieve he had seen them. One by one the islands emerged from the dark mass that involved the whole, and became individuals. The wind dying away off Duck Island, I was fain to take an oar in the whale-boat towing astern. We rowed along under Appledore into the little haven between that island and Star, with no sound but the dip of our oars to break the stillness, and beached our boat as the evening shadows Avere deepening over a stormy sea. There had been a striking sunset. Great banks of clouds were massed above the western horizon, showing rifts of molten gold where the sun burst through, which the sea, in its turn, reflected. As I looked over toward White Island, the lamps were lighted in the tower, turning their rays hither and thither over a blackness that recalled Poe's sensuous imagery of lamp-light gloating over purple velvet. The weather-wise predicted a north-easter, and I went to bed with the old sea " moaning all round about the island." I passed my first night, and a rude one it was, on Stai- Island. When I arose in the morning and looked out I fancied myself at sea, as indeed I was. The ocean was on every side, the plash of the waters being the last sound heard at night and the first on waking. I saw the sun rise over Smutty Nose through the same storm-clouds in which it had set at evening. I am an early riser, but even before I was astir a wherry crossed the little harbor my window overlooked. The islands lie in two States, and are seven in number. Duck Island, the most dangerous of the group ; Appledore, sometimes called Hog Island ; Smutty Nose, or Haley's, and Cedar, belong to Maine; Star, White, and Lon- doner's, or Lounging Island, are in New Hampshire. Appledore is the largest, and Cedar the smallest. In one instance I have known Star called Staten Island, though it was formerly better known as Gosport, the name of its fish- ing village, whose records go back to 1731. Counting Malaga, a little islet attached to Smutty Nose by a breakwater, and there are eight islands in the cluster. They are nine miles south-east of the entrance of the Piscataqua and twenty-one north-east from Newburyport Light. The harbor, originally formed by Appledore, Star, and Haley's Islands, was made more secure by a sea-wall, now much out of repair, from Smutty Nose to Cedar Island. The roadstead is open to the south-west, and is indifferently sheltered at best. Between Cedar and Star is a narrow passage used by small craft, through which the tide runs as in a sluice-way. The group is environed Avith several dangerous sunken rocks. Square Rock is to the Avestward of Londoner's; White Island Ledge south-west of that isle ; Anderson's Ledge is south-east of Star Island ; and Cedar Island Ledge south of Smutty Nose.' ' Star Island is three-fourths of a mile long and half a mile wide; Wliite Island is also three- fourths of a mile in length. It is a mile and three quarters from Star Island. Londoner's is five- eighths of a mile in length, and one-eighth of a mile from Star Island. Duck Island 's seven- THE ISLES OF SHOALS. IGl The name of the Isles of Shoals is first mentioned by Christopher Levett, in his narrative of 1623. The mariners of his day must have known of tlie description and the map of Smith, but they seem to liave little aftected the name he gave the islands. It would not be unreasonable to infer that the group was known by its present name even before it was seen by Smith, and that his claims were of little weight with those matter-of-fact fishermen. Some writers have made a difiiculty of the meaning of the name, attributing it to the shoals, or schools, offish seen there as everywhere along the coast at certain seasons of the year. East of the islands, toward the open sea, there is laid down on old charts of the Province an extensive shoal called Jefl:Vey's Ledge, named jjcrhaps for one of the first inhabitants of the isles, and extend- ing in the direction of the coast from the latitude of Cape Porpoise to the southward of the Shoals. On either side of this shallow, which is not of great breadth, are soundings in seventy fathoms, while on the ledge the lead brings up coarse sand in thirty, thirty-five, ai]d forty-five fathoms. The presence of this reef tends to strengthen the theory that these islands, as well as the remarkable system of Casco Baj^, once formed part of the main-land. The earlier navigators who approached the coast, cautiously feeling their way with the lead, soon after passing over this shoal came in sight of the islands, M-hich, it is believed, served to mark its presence. Jefl'rey's Ledge has been a fishing-ground of much resort for the islanders since its first discovery,' To whatever cause science may attribute the origin of the isles, I was struck, at first sight, with their resemblance to the bald jieaks of a submerged volcano thrust upward out of the waters, the little harbor being its crater. The remarkable fissures traversing the crust of the sevei-al members of the group, in some cases nearly parallel with tiie shores, strengthens the impres- sion. In winter, or during violent storms, the savagery of these rocks, ex- posed to the full fury of the Atlantic, and surrounded by an almost pei'petual surf, is overwhelming. You can with difficulty believe the island on which you stand is not reeling beneath your feet. After exploring the shore and seeing with liis own eyes the deep gashes in its mailed garment, the basins hollowed out of gi'anite and flint, and the utter wantonness in which the sea has pitched about the fragments it has wrested from the solid rock, the futility of words in which to ex])ress this confusion comes home to the spectator. Mr. Hawthorne's idea greatly re- eighths of a mile in length, and tliree miles from Star Island meeting-house. Appledore is seven- eighths of a mile from Star, and a mile in length. Haley's, or Smutty Nose, is a mile in length, and five-eighths of a mile from Star Island meeting-house. Cedar Island is one-third of a mile long, and three-eighths of a mile distant from the meeting-house. The whole group contains some- tiiing in excess of six hundred acres. ' The term "Shoals of Isles" seems rather far-fetched, and scarcely significant to English sail- ors familiar with the hundred and sixty islands of the Hebrides. I can find no instance of these isles having been so called. 11 162 THE NEW ENGLAND COx\ST. sembles the Indian legend of the origin of Nantucket. "As much as any- thing else," he says, " it seems as if some of the massive materials of the woi'ld remained superfluous after the Creator had finished, and were careless- ly thi'own down here, where the milliontli part of them emerge from the sea, and in the course of thousands of years have become partially bestrewn with a little soil." The old navigators stigmatized Labrador as the place to which Cain was banished, no vegetation being produced among the rocks but thorns and moss. What a subject White Island vv^ould make for a painting of the Deluge ! A Finlander with whom I parleyed told me his country could show ruder ])laces than these isles, and that the winters there were longer and colder. Parson Tucke used to say the winters at the Shoals were "a thin undcr- waistcoat, warmer" than on the opposite main-land. Doubtless the Orkneys or Hebrides equal these islands in desolateness and wildness of aspect, but they could scarce surpass them. The islands are so alike in their natural features that a general descrip- tion of one will -i-pply to the rest of the cluster; and hence tlie first explored, so far as its crags, sea-caverns, and galleries are in question, is apt to make the strongest impression. But after closer acqtuiintance each of the seven is found to possess attractions, peculiarities even, of its own. They grow upon you and chai-m away your better judgment, until you find sermons, or what is better, in stones, and good health everywhere. The change comes over you imperceptibly, and you are metamorphosed for the time into a full-fledged "Shoaler," ready to climb a precipice or handle an oar with any native — I was about to say of the soil — but that would be quite too strong a figure for the Shoals. The little church on Star Island is usually first visited. When I was be- fore here, it was a strikingly picturesque object, surmounting the islands, and visible in clear weather twenty miles at sea. It is now dwarfed by tlie ho- tel, and is perhaps even no longer a sea-mark for the fishermen. Such quaint little turrets have I seen in old Dutch prints. The massive walls are of rough granite from the abundance of the isle. Its roof and tower are of wood, and, being here, what else could it have but a fish for its weather- vane ? The bell was used, while I was there, to call the workmen to tlieir daily labor; but its tones were always mournful, and vibrated with strange dissonance across the sea. The Avhitewash the interior walls had received was plentifully bespattered upon the wooden benches. In a deeply recessed window one of the tiny sea- birds that frequent the islands was beating the panes with its wings. I gave the little fellow liis liberty, but he did not stay for thanks. The church is not more than ten paces in length by six in breadth, yet was sufficient, no doubt, for all the church-goers of the seven islands. Its foundations are uoon a rock, and it is altogether a queer thing in an odd place. THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 163 After the desertion of Appledore, a meeting-house was erected on Star Island, twenty-eight by forty-eight feet, with a bell. Mr. Moody, of Salis- bury, Massachusetts, was, in 1706, called to be the first minister there. lu 1730 he was succeeded by Rev. John Tucke. Mather relates many anecdotes of Rev. John Brock, one of the earlj^ min- isters at the islands, in illustration of the efficacy of prayer. The child of one Arnold, he says, lay sick, so nearly dead that those present believed it had really expired; "but Mr. Brock, perceiving some life in it, goes to prayer, and in his prayer uses this expression, 'Lord, wilt thou not grant some sign before we leave prayer that thou wilt spare and heal this child? We can not leave thee 'til we have it.' The child sneez'd immediately." MEETING-HOUSE, STAR ISI-AND.' Going round the corner of the church, I came uj)on a coast pilot, peering through his glass for the smoke of a steamer, cable-freighted, that had been momentarily expected from Halifax for a week. His trim little boat lay in the harbor below us at her moorings. It was, he said, a favorite station from which to intercept inward-bound vessels. The pilot told me, with a quiet chuckle, of a coaster, manned by raw Irish hands, that had attempted in broad day to run into the harbor over the breakwater from Haley's to Cedar isl- and. They did not get in, he said ; but it being a full tide and smooth sea, the mole only knocked off the cut-water of their craft. Behind the meeting-house is the little school-house, in as dire confusion ' Built in 1800, through the efforts of Dudley A. Tynp:, of Newburyport, Massachusetts. Ded- icated in November by Rev. Jedediah Jlorse, father of S. F. B. Morse. A school was for a time kept in it. 164 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. Avheii I saw it as any bad boy could have wished. The windows were sliat- tered, chairs and benches overturned, and a section of rusty stove-pipe hung from the ceiling, while tlie fragment of a Avall map, pressed into service as a window-curtain, was being scanned through tlie dingy glass by an urchin with a turn for geography. East of the church is a row of cottages, the remnant of the fishing village, serving to show what it was like before modern innovations had swept the moiety of ancient Gosport from the face of the island. Each had a bird- house on the peak of its gable. There was the semblance of regularity in tlie ai'rangement of these cottages, the school-house leading the van ; but they were nearly or quite all unpainted, these homely abodes of a rude people. On looking around, you perceived walled inclosures, some of them con- taining a little earth patched with green grass, but all thickly studded with boulders. Is it possible, you ask, that such a waste should ever be the cause of heart-burnings, or know the name of bond, mortgage, or warranty? Little did these impoverished islanders dream the day would come when their ster- ile rocks would be eagerly sought after by the fortunate jiossessors of abun- dance. Star Island formerly afforded pasturage for a few sheep and cows. There is a record of a woman who died at Gosport in 1795, aged ninety. She kept two cows, fed in winter on hay cut by her in summer with a knife among tlie rocks. Tlie cows were taken from her by the British in 1775, and killed, to the great grief of old Mrs. Pusley. Formei-ly there was more vegetation here, but at odd times the poor people have gathered and burned for fuel fully half the turf on the island. It is written in the book of records that the soil of the islands is gradually decreasing, and that a time would come when the dead must be buried in the sea or on the main-land. From the year 1775 until 1820, the tew inhabitants who remained on the islands lived in a deplorable condition of ignorance and vice. Some of tliem had lost their ages for want of a record. Each family was a law to itself The town organization was abandoned. Even the marriage I'elation was for- gotten, and the restraints and usages of civilized life set at naught. Some of the more debased, about 1790, pulled down and burned the old meeting- house, which had been a prominent landmark for seamen; but, says the rec- ord, "the special judgments of Heaven seem to have followed this piece of wickedness to those immediately concerned in it." Tlie parsonage -house might have fared as ill, had it not been floated away to Old York by Mr. Tucke's son-in-law. Rev. Jedediah JNIorse has entered in the record two marriages solemnized by him during the time he was on the islands, with the following remai-ks: " The two couples above mentioned had been published eight or ten years ago (but not married), and cohabited together since, and had each a number of children. had been formerly married to another woman; she had THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 105 left him, and coliabited with lier uncle, by whom she has a number of chil- dren. No regular divorce had been obtained. Considering the peculiar de- ranged state of tlie people on these islands, and the ignorance of the parties, it Avas thought expedient, in order as far as possible to prevent future sin, to marry them,'" THE GRAVES, WITU CAPTAIN jOUN SMITH'S MONUMENT, STAH ISLAND. It is perhaps as well the visitor should be his own guide abotit the i'^lanc^- leaving it to chance to direct his footsteps. After an inspection of the more prominent objects, such as may be taken in at a glance from the little church, I wandered at will, encountering at every few steps some new surprise. Some one says, if we seek for pleasure it is pretty sure to elude our pursuit, coming oftener to us unawares, and the more unexpected the higher the gratification. It was in some such mood I stumbled, to speak literally, on the old burial- place of the islands. I am aware that one does not, as a rule, seek enjoyment in a grave-yard ; but I have ever found an unflagging interest in deciphering the tal)lets of a buried city or liamlet. These stones may be sententious or loquacious, pompous or humble, and sometimes grimly merry. ' For more than a centniT previous to the EevoUition tlie islands were prosperous, containing from three to six hundred souls. In 1800 there were three fomilies and twenty persons on Smutty Nose : fifteen families and ninety-two persons on Star Island, alias Gosport ; eleven dwellings and ten fish-houses on the latter, and three decent dwellings on the former. At this time there was not an inhabitant on Appledore, alias Hog Island. 166 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. Our German friends call the church-yard " God's Field." Here are no in- scriptions, except on the liorizontal slabs of Tncke and Stephens. There is no difference between the rough stones protruding from the ground and the frag- ments strewn broadcast about the little house-lots. So far as this inclosure is concerned, the annals of the hamlet are as a closed book. The instinct which bids you forbear treading on a grave is at fault here. It requires sharp eyes and a close scrutiny to discover that some effort has been made to distinguish this handful of graves by head and foot stones ; that some are of greater and some of lesser length ; or that the little hollows and hillocks have their secret meaning. The two shepherds lie at the head of their little fold, in vaults composed of the rude masses found ready at hand. For fear their inscriptions might one day be eflfaced, I transcribed them : In Memory of THE REV. JOSIAH STEPHENS, A faithful Instructor of Youth, and pious Minister of Jesus Christ. Supported on this Island by the Society for Propagating the Gospel, who died July 2, 1804. Aged 64 years. Likewise of MRS. SUSANNAH STEPHENS, his beloved Wife, who died Dec. 7, 1810. Aged 54 years. Underneath are the Remains of THE REV. JOHN TUCKE, A.M. He graduated at Harvard College, A.D. 1723, Was ordained here July 26, 1732, And died Aug. 12, 1773. ^t. 72. He was affable and polite in his manner. Amiable in his disposition. Of great piety and integrity, given to hospitality, Diligent and faithful in his pastoral office. Well learned in History and Geography, as well as General Science, And a careful Physician both to the bodies and the souls of his People. Erected 1800. In Memory of the Just, THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 167 For two-score years tliis pious man labored in his stony vineyard. His ])arishioners agreed to give him a quintal per man of winter fish — their best. They covenanted to carry las wood from the landing home ibr him. With this he was content. lie was their minister, teacher, physician, and even kept the accounts of a little store in a scrupulously exact way, I have been ])oring over his old-time chirography, clear-cut and beautiful as cojiper-plate. There are the good old English names of Ruth, Nabby, and Judy, of Betty, Patse}', and Love. We get a glimpse of tlieir household economy in the por- ringers, pewter lamps, and pint-pots; the horn combs, thread, tape, and end- less rows of pins for women-folk ; the knitting-needles that clicked by the fireside in long winter nights, while the lads were away on Jeff"rey's Ledge. From liere I wended my way to Smitli's monument, erected in 1864, a tri- angular shaft of marble, rising eight or ten feet above a craggy rock. It is j)laced on a pedestal of rough stone, and protected b}^ a railing from vandal hands. Its situation on one of the highest eminences of Star Island has ex- posed the inscription to the weather, until it is become diflicult to decijjher. Tiie three sides of the pillar are occupied by a lengthy eulogium on this hero of many adventures. Of moving accidents by flood and field ; Of liair-breadth scapes i' the imminent deadly breach." Like Temple Bar of old, the monument is crowned with heads — those of the three Moslems slain by Smith, and seen on his scutcheon, as given by Stow, where they are also quartered. I know of no other instance of decapi- tated heads being set up in New England since King Philip's was struck oflf and stuck on a pike at Plymouth, in 1676. Two of the heads had fallen down, and the third seemed inclined to follow. Then the monument will be as headless as the doughty captain's tombstone in the pavement of St. Sepul- chre's, worn smooth by many feet. In brief, the three Turks' heads stick no better than the name given by Smith to the islands oiF Cape Ann — after they had been named by De Monts. Smith says he had six or seven charts or maps of the coast so unlike each other as to do him no more good than waste paper. He gives credit to Gos- nold and Weymouth for their relations. A few rods south-east of the old burying-ground is a sheltered nook, in which are three little graves, wholly concealed by dwarf willows and wihl rose-bushes. They are tenanted by three children — "Jessie," two years; "Millie," four years; and "Mittie," seven years old — the daughters of Rev. George Beebe, some time missionary to these isles. Under the name of the little one last named are these touching, tearful words : " I don't want to die, but I'll do just as Jesus wants me to." A gentle hand has formed this re- treat, and protected it with a wooden fence. While I stood there a song- bird perched above the entrance and poured forth his matin lay. There is a third burial-place on the harbor side, but it lacks interest. IGS TFIE NEW ENGLAND COAST. Another historic spot* is tlie mined foi-t, on the west point of tlie island, overlooking the entrance to the roadstead. Its contour may be traced, and a little of the emhanknieut of one face remains. The well was filled to tlie curb with water. It once mounted nine four-pounder cannon, but at the be- ginning of the Revolution was dismantled, and tlie guns taken to Nevvlniry- l»ort. I suppose the inhabitants for a long time to have neglected precau- tions for defense, as Colonel Romer, in his report to the Lords of Trade, about 1699, makes no mention of any fortification here. One of its terrible fuur- pounders would not now make a mouthful for our sea-coast ordnance. Continuing my walk by the shore, I came to the cavern popularly known as Betty Moody's Hole. It is formed by the lodgment of masses of rock, so as to cover one of the gulches common to the isle. Here, says tradition, Betty concealed herself, with her two children, while the Itulians were ravaging the isles and carrying many females into captivity. The story goes that the children, becoming frightened in the cavern, began to cry, whereat their in- human mother, in an excess of fear, strangled them both; others say she v.'as drowned here. The afl:air is said to have happened during Philip's War. I do not find it mentioned by either Mather or Hubbard.' At times dui-ing the fishing season there was hardly a man left upon the islands, a circum- stance well known to the Indians. A memoir extracted from the French archives gives a picture of the Isles in 1702, when an attack appears to have been meditated. "The Isles de Chnoles are about three leagues from Peskatoue to the south-south-east from the enibouchure of the river, where a great quantity of fish are taken. These are three isles in the form of a tripod, and at about a musket-shot one from the other." * * * "There are at these three islands about sixty fishing shallops, manned each by four men. Besides these are the masters of the fishing stages, and, as they are assisted by the women in taking care of the fish, there may be in all about two hundred and eighty men ; but it is neces- sary to observe that from Monday to Saturday there are hardly any left on shore, all being at sea on the fishing-grounds." Taking note of the ragged fissures, which ti'adition ascribes to the day ' 1091. A considerable body of Eastern Indians came down from the interior, with the inten- tion of sacking the Isles of Shoals, but on August 4th came upon some English forces at Maqiioit, under Cajjtain March, and had a fight with them. This prevented their proceeding, and saved the Shoals. — " Magnalia," vol. xi., p. Gil. 1692. Governor Fletcher examined three deserters, or renegadoes, as he calls them, from Que- bec, who came before him September 23d. They said two men-of-war had arrived at Quebec, and were fitting out for an expedition along the coast, "with a design to fall on Wells, Isle of Shoals, riscataqua, etc." — " New York Colonial Documents," vol. iii., p. 855. 1721. After the Indians had cut off Captain Winslow and thirteen of his men in the Eiver St. George, encouraged by this success, the enemy made a still greater attempt by water, and seized two shallops at the Isles of Shoals. — Hutchinson's "Massachusetts," vol. ii., p. 307. THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 169 of tlie Crucifixion, I clambered down one of the rocky o-orges from wli ich the softer forma- tion has been eat- en out by tlie consuming appe- tite of the waves. Sometimes the de- scent was made easy by irreguhir stei)S of trap-rock, and again a flying leap was necessa- vy from stone to stone. The per- pendicular walls of the gorge rose near fifty feet at its outlet, at the shore It was a gokge, star island. relief to emerge from the di'ipping sides and pent-up space into the open air. The Flume, on Star Island, is a fine specimen of the intrusion of igneous rock among the harder fornnition. If you- would know what the sea can do, go down one of these gulclies to the water's edge and be satisfied. I could not find a round pebble among the debris of shattered rock that lay tuml)led about; only fractured pieces of irregular shapes. Those rocks submerged by the tide were blackened as if by fire, and shagged with weed. Overhead the precipitous clifts caught the sun's i-ays on countless glittering points, the mica with which they are so plentifully bespangled dazzling the eye with its brilliancy. Elsewhere they were flint, of which there w'as more than enough to have furnished all Europe in the Thirty Years' War, or else granite. Looking up from among the ahat- tis which girds the isle about, you are confronted by masses of overhanging roclvs that threaten to detach themselves from the clifl" and bury you in their ruins. It is not for the timid to attempt a ramble among the rocks on the At- lantic side at low tide. He should be sure-footed and supple-jointed who un- dertakes it, with an eye to estimate the exact distance where the incoming surf-wave is to break. The illusions produced in the mind by the great waves that roll past are not the least striking sensations experienced. The speed with which they press in, and the noise accompanying their passage 170 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. tlirongli the gullies and rents of the shore, contribute to make them seem much larger than they really are. It was only by continually watching the waves and measuring their farthest reach that I was able to await one of these curling monstei's with composure; and even then I could not avoid looking suddenly round on hearing the rush of a breaker behind me ; and ever and anon one of greater volume destroyed all confidence by bursting far above the boundaries the mind had assigned for its utmost limits. Nothing struck me more than the idea of such miglity forces going to pure waste. A lifting power the Syracusan never dreamed of literally throw- ing itself away! An engine sufficient to turn all the machinei'y in Christen- dom lying idle at our very doors. What might not be accomplished if Old Neptuue would i)ut his shoulder to the wheel, instead of making all this mag- nificent but useless pother! I noticed that the waves, after churning themselves into foam, assumed emerald tints, and caught a momentary gleam of sapphire, melting into ame- thyst, during the rapid changes from the bluish-green of solid water to its greatest state of disintegration. The same change of color has been observed in the Hebrides, and elsewhere. The place that held for me more of fiiscination and sublimity than others was the bluff that looks out upon the vast ocean. I was often there. The swell of the Atlantic is not like the long regular roll of the Pacific, but it beats with steady rhythm. The grandest effects are produced after a heavy north-east blow, when the waves assume the larger and more flattened form known as the ground-swell. I was fortunate enough to stand on the cliff after three or four days of" easterly weather" had produced this effect. Such billows as poured with solid impact on the rocks, leaping twenty feet in the air, or heaped themselves in fountains of boiling foam around its base, give a competent idea of resistless power ! The shock and recoil seemed to shake the foundations of the island. Upon a shelf or platform of this cliff a young lady-teacher lost her life in September, 1848. Since then the rock on which she was seated has been called "Miss UnderhilTs Chair." Other accidents have occurred on the same spot, insufficient, it would seem, to prevent the foolhardy from risking their lives for a seat in this fatal chair. There are circumstances that cast a melancholy interest around the fate of Miss Underhill. In early life she had been betrothed, and the banns, as was then the custom, had been published in the village church. Her father, a stern old Quaker, opposed the match, threatening to tear down the marriage intention rather than see his daughter wed with one of another sect. Wheth- er from this or other cause, the suitor ceased his attentions, and not long after took another wife in the same village. The disappointment was believed to have made a deep impression on a girl of Miss Underhill's strength of character. She was a Methodist, deeply THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 171 imbued with the relio-ious zeal of that deuomiiiation. Ilearinsj from one who had been at the Isles of Shoals that the people were in as great need of a missionary as those of Burmah or of the Gold Coast, it became an affair of conscience with her to go there and teach. She came to the islands, and applied herself with ardor to the Avork before her, a labor from which any but an enthusiast would have recoiled. It is as- serted that no spot of American soil contained so debased a community as this. It was her habit every pleasant day, at the close of school, to repair to the high cliff on the eastern shore of Star Island, where a rock conveniently placed by nature became her favorite seat. Here, with her Bible or other book, she was accustomed to pass the time in reading and contemplation. She was accompanied on her last visit by a gentleman, erroneously thought to have been her lover, who ventured on the rock with her, A tidal wave of unusual magnitude swept them from their feet. The gentleman succeeded in regaining his foothold, but the lady was no more seen. Search was made for the body without success. A week after the occur- rence it was found on York Beach, where the tide had left it. There was not the least disorder in the ill-fated lady's dress; the bonnet still covered her head, the ear-rings were in her ears, and her shawl was pinned across her breast. In a word, all was just as when she had set out for her walk. The kind-hearted man who found the poor waif took it home, and cared for it as if it had been his own dead. An advertisement caught the eye of Miss Under- hill's brother. She was carried to Chester, New Hampshire, her native place, and there buried. Notwithstanding the humble surroundings of her home, Miss Underhill was a person of superior and striking appeai-ance. Her face was winning and her self-possessed manner is still the talk of her old-time associates. I have heard, as a sequel to the school-teacher's story, that some years after tiie fatal accident her old suitor came to the Isles, and, while bathing there, was drowned. The recovery of the body of the lady uninjured seems little short of miraculous, and confirms the presence of a strong undcr-tow, as I had suspected on seeing the floats of the lobster-men moored within a few feet of the rocks. Schiller may have stood, in imagination, on some such crag as this when his wicked king flung his golden goblet into the mad sea, and with it the life of the hapless stripling who plunged, at his challenge, down into "The endless and measureless world of the deep." In a neighboring ravine I found a spring of fresh water, though rather brackish to the taste; and in the more sheltered places were heaps of mussel- shells, the outer surface of a beautiful purple. They look better where they are than in my cabinet, though the lining of those I secured have an enamel 172 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. oi' niotlier-of-pearl. Anotlier reniarkuble fL\ature I observed were the depos- its of gravel among tlie crevices; but I saw no flint among the water-woi-n bouhlers wedged, as if by a heavy pressure, in Assures of the rocks. I re- mai'ked also tlie presence of a poor schistus intersecting the strata here and there. Some of it I could break oft' with my hands. Anotlier delightful ramble is on the harbor side, from tlie old fort round to Caswell's Peak or beyond. Passing by the little hand-breadth of sandy beach where the dories may land, once paved, the chronicles tell us, many feet deep with fish-bones, I observed with pleasure the green oasis spread out between the hotel and the shore. Tlie proprietor seemed resolved that the very rocks should blossom, and already "a garden smiled" above the flint. There is a sight worth seeing from the cupola of the hotel; of the White Hills, and Agamenticus, with the sands of Rye, Hampton, and Squam strelrh- ing along shore. I could see the steeples of Portsmouth and of Xewbury- poit, the bluft" at Boar's Head, and the smoke of a score of inland villages. Following with the eye the soutli coast where it sweeps round Ipswich Bay one sees Csipe Ann and Tiiatcher's Island outlying; the gate-way of the busy bay beyond, into which all manner of craft were pressing sail. Northward were Newcastle, Kittery, and York, and farther eastward the lonely rock of Boon Island. Shoreward is Appledore, with the turret of its hotel visible above; and right below us the little harbor so often a welcome haven to the storm-tossed mariner.^ Most visitors to the islands are familiar with the terrible zicry of the wreck of the KoUingliam galley, of London, in the year 1710. She was bound into Boston, and having made the land to the eastward of the Piseat- aqua, shaped her course southward, driven before a north-east gale, accom- panied with rain, hail, and snow. For ten or twelve days succeeding they had no observation. On the night of the 11th of December, while under easy sail, the vessel struck on Boon Island. With great difficulty the crew gained the rocks. The ship having imme- diately broken up, they were able to recover nothing eatable, except three small cheeses found entangled among the rock-weed. Some pieces of the spars and sails that came ashore gave them a temporary shelter, but every ' Mountains seen off the coast : Agamenticus, twelve miles north of the entrance of the Piscat- a(|iia ; tliree inferior summits, known as Frost's Hills, at a less distance on the north-west. In New Hampsliire the first ridge is twenty or thirty miles from sea, in the towns of Barrington, Notting- ham, and Kochester — the summits known as Teneriffe, Saddleback, Tuckaway, etc. Their general name is the Blue Hills. Beyond these are . several detached summits — Mount Major, ]\Ioo>e Mountain, etc. ; also a third range farther inland, with Chocorua, Ossipee, and Kearsarge. In tlie lofty ridge, sejjarating the waters of the Merrimac and the Connecticut is Grand Monadnock, twen- ty-two miles east of the Connecticut River; thirty miles north of this is Sunapee, and forty-eight farther, Moosehillock. The ranges then trend away north-east, and are massed in the White Hills. THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 1V3 tiling else had been carried away from the island by the strong drift. In a day or two tlie cook died. Day by day their sufferings from cold and hun- ger increased. The main-land being in full view befoi-e them, they built a boat and got it into the water. It was overset, and dashed in pieces against the rocks. One day they descried three boats in the ofBng, but no signals they were able to make could attract notice. Then, when reduced to a mis- erable band of emaciated, hopeless wretches, they undertook and with great labor constructed a raft, upon which two men ventured to attempt to reach the shore. Two days afterward it was found on the beach, with one of its crew lying dead at some distance. After this they were obliged to resort to cannibalism in order to sustain life, subsisting on the body of the carpenter, sparingly doled out to them by the captain's hand. To make an end of this chapter of horrors, the survivors were rescued after having been twenty-four days on the island. The raft Avas, after all, for them a messenger of preser- vation, for it induced a search for the builders. No one can read this narrative without feeling his sympathy strongly ex- cited for the brave John Deane, master of the wrecked vessel. He seemed possessed of more than human fortitude, and has told with a sailor's simple directness of his heroic struggle for life. His account was first published in 1711, appended to a sermon by Cotton Mather. Deane afterward command- ed a ship of war in the service of the Czar, Peter the Great.' Few who have seen the light-house tower on this lonely rock, distant not more than a dozen miles from the coast, receiving daily and nightly obeisance of hundreds of passing sails, can realize that the story of the JSTottlngJiam could be true. It is a terrible injunction to keep the lamps trimmed and brightly burning.^ Proceeding onward in this direction,! came to the fish-houses that remain on the isle. Tubs of trawls, a barrel or two offish-oil, a pile of split fish, and the half of a hogshead, in which a " kentle" or so of " merchantable fish " had just been salted down, were here and there; a hand-barrow on which to carry the fish from the boat, a lobster-pot, and a pair of rusty scales, ought to be added to the inventory. Sou'-westers and suits of oil- skin clothing hung against the walls; and in the loft overhead were a spare block or two and a parcel of oars, evidently picked up adrift, there being no two of the same length. In some of the houses were whale-boats, that had been hauled up ti> be calked and painted, that the men were preparing to launch. They were all schooner-rigged, and some were decked over so as to fiirnish a little cuddy for bad weather. No more sea-worthy craft can be found, and under guid- ance of a practiced hand one will sail, as sea-folk say, "like a witch." They ' John Ward Dean, of Boston, the accomplished antiquary, has elicited tliis and other facts rel- ative to his nninesake. " On Boone Island it is said there is no soil except what has been carried there. 174 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. usually contained a coil of lialf-inch line for the road, a "killick," and a brace of powder-kegs for the trawls. The process of curing, or, as it is called by the islanders, " saving," fish is familiar to all who live near the sea-shore, and has not changed in two hun- dred years. It is described rs practiced here in 1800, by Dr. Morse : "The fish, in the first place, are thrown from the boat in piles on the shore. The cutter then takes them and cuts their thi-oat, and rips open their bellies. In this state he hands them to the header, who takes out the entrails (detaching the livers, which are preserved for the sake of the oil they con- tain), and breaks olF their heads. Tiie splitter then takes out the backbone, and splits them completely open, and hands them to the salter, who salts and piles them in bulk, where they lie from ten to twenty hours, as is most convenient. The shoremen and the women then wash and spread them on the flakes. Here they remain three or four weeks, according to the weather, during which time they are often turned, piled in fagots, and then spread again, until they are completely cured for market." The "dun," or winter fish, formerly cured here, were larger and thicker than the summer fish. Great pains were taken in drying them, the fish- women often covei'ing the "fagots" with bed- quilts to keep them clean. Being cured in cold weather, they required but little salt, and were almost transi)arent when held up to the light. These fish sometimes weighed a huii- died pounds or more. The dun fish were of great esteem in Spain and in the Mediterranean ports, bringing the liighest price during Lent. They found their way to Madrid, where many a platter, smoking hot, has doubtless graced the table of the Escurial. In 1745 a quintal would sell for a guinea. In 1775 the revolting colonies, unable to protect the islands, ordered their abandonment. A few of the inhabitants remained, but the larger number removed to the near main-land, and were scattered among the neighboring towns. The Shoals became through the war a rendezvous for British ships. The last oftieial act of the last royal governor of New Hampshire was per- formed here in 1775, when Sir John Wentworth prorogued the Assembly of his nuvjesty's lost province. CLIFFS, WHITE ISLAND. CHAPTER XII. THE ISLES OF SHOALS COntluilcd. " — There be land-iats and water-rats, water tliieves and land tliievcs ; I mean ijirates. " — Merchant of Venice. "il /TY next excursion was to Smutty Nose, or Haley's. Seen fi-om Star Isl- -*-'^ and it sliows two eminences, with a little liamlet of four houses, all having their gable-ends toward the harbor, on the nearest rising ground. Uound the south-west point of Smutty Nose is tlie little haven already al- luded to in the previous cliapter, made b}^ building a causeway of stone over to Malaga, where formerly the sea ran through. This Mr. Samuel Haley did at his own cost, expending part of a handsome fortune on the woi-k. Into this little haven, we are told, many distressed vessels have put in and found 17G TPIE NEW ENGLAND COAST. safe ancliorage. The chronicles, spealvuig by tlie pen of a fair ishander, say old Mr, Haley, in building a wall, turned over a large flat stone, beneath which lay four bars of solid silver; with whicli, adds tradition, he began his sea mole. I should have thought, had this precious discovery gained cur- lency, no stone would liave been left unturned by the islanders, and that Haley's wall might liave risen with magical celerity. It is certain these islands were in former times the resort of freebooters, with such names as Dixy Bull, Low, and Argall (a licensed and titled bucca- neer), who left the traces of their own lawlessness in the manner of life of tlu; islanders. It Avas a convenient place in which to relit or obtain fresh pro- visions without the asking of troublesome questions.' The pirates could ex- pect little booty from the fishei'men, but they often picked them up at sea to leplenisli their crews. In the year 1G89 two noted buccaneers, Thomas Hawkins and Thomas Pound, cruised on the coast of New England, committing many depredations. The Bay colony determined on their capture, and dispatched an armed sloop called the 3^avi/, Samuel Pease commander, Avhich put to sea in October of that year. Hearing the pirates had been cruising at the mouth of Buzzard's Bay, Captain Pease made all sail in that direction. The Mary overhauled the outlaw off Wood's Hole. Pease ran down to her, hailed, and ordered her to heave to. The freebooter ran up a blood-red flag in defiance, when the Mary fired a shot athwart her foi'efoot, and again hailed, with a demand to strike her colors. Pound, who stood upon liis quarter-deck, answered the hail with, "Come on, you dogs, and I will strike you." Waving his sword, his men poured a volley into the Mary, and the action for some time raged fiercely, no quarter being expected. Captain Pease at lengtli carried his ad- versary by boarding, receiving wounds in the hand-to-hand conflict of which he died. In 1723 the sloop Dol2)/th},ot' Ci\])e Ann, was taken on the Banks by Phil- lips, a noted pirate. The able-bodied of the Dolp/iin were foi-ced to join the pirate crew. Among the luckless fishermen was John Fillmore, of Ipswich. Phillips, to quiet their scruples, promised on his honor to set them at liberty at the end of three months. Finding no other ho])e of escape, for of course the liar and pirate never meant to keep his word, Fillmore, with tlie help of Edward Cheesman and an Indian, seizing his opportunity, killed three of the chief pirates, including Philli])S, on the spot. The rest of the crew, ' 1670. The General Court being informed that there is a ship tiding in the road at the Isle of Siioales snspected to be a pirat, and hath jtirattically seized the sayd sliip and goods from some of the French nation in amity with tlie English, and doeth not come under comand, this Convt doeth declare and order that neither the sayd ship or goods or any of the company shall come into our jurisdiction, or be brought into any of om- ports, upon penalty of being seized upon and se- cured to answer what shall be objected against them. — "Massachusetts Colonial llecords," vol. iv., part ii., p. 441). THE ISLES OF SHOALS. IVV made np in part of pressed men, snbmitted, and the captured vessel was brought into Boston by tlie conquerors on the 3d of May, 1724. John Fill- more, the quasi pirate, was the great-grandfather of Millard FiHniore, thir- teenth President of the United States. It is affirmed on the authority of Charles Chauncy that Low once cap- tured some fishermen from the "Shoals." Disappointed, perliaps, in liis ex- ]iectation of booty, he first caused tlie captives to be barbarously flogged, and afterward required each of them three times to curse Parson Mather or be hanged. The prisoners did not reject the alternative. No doubt these pirates had heard of the sermons Cotton Mather was in the habit of preaching before the execution of many of their confederates. In his time it was the custom to march condemned prisoners under a strong guard to some church on the Sabbath preceding the day on which they were to suffer. There, marshaled in the broad aisle, they listened to a discourse on the enormity of their crimes and the torments that awaited them in the other world, this being the manner in which the old divines administered the con- solations of religion to such desperate malefactors. New England could contribute a thick volume to the annals of piracy in the New World from the records of a hundred years subsequent to her set- tlement. The name of Kidd was long a bugbear with which to terrify way- ward children into obedience, and the search for his treasure continues, as we have seen, to this day. Bradish, Bellamy, and Quelch sailed these seas like true followers of those dreaded rovers who swept the English coasts, and sent their defiance to the king himself: "Go tell the King of England, go tell him thus from me, Though he reigns king o'er all the land, I will reign king at sea." They have still the ghost of a pii-ate on Appledore, one of Kidd's men. There has consequently been much seeking after treasure. The face of the spectre is " pale, and very dreadful" to behold; and its neck, it is averred, shows the livid mark of the hangman's noose. It answers to the name of "Old Bab." Once no islander could be found hardy enough to venture on Appledore after night-fall. I shrewdly suspect "Old Bab" to be in the pay of the Laightons. In 1700, Rear-admiral Benbow was lying at Piscataqua, with nine of Kidd's pirates on board for transportation to England. Robert Bradenham, Kidd's surgeon, says the Earl of Bellomont, was the " obstinatest and most harden- ed of 'em all." In the year 1726 the pirates "William Fly, Samuel Cole, and Henry Greenville were taken and put to death at Boston, after having been well preached to in Old Brattle Street by Dr. Colman. Fly, the captain, like a truculent knave, refused to come into church, and on the way to execu- tion bore himself with great bravado. lie jumped briskly into the cart with a nosegaj' in his hand, smiling and bowing to the spectators, as lie passed 12 1^8 THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. alonfT^ with real or affected unconcern. At the gallows he showed the same obstinacy until his face was covered.' The various legends relative to the corsairs, and the secreting of their ill- gotten gains among these rocks, would of themselves occupy a lengthy chap- ter; and the recital of the fearful sights and sounds which have confronted such as were hardy enough to seek for treasure would satisfy the most in- veterate marvel-monger in the land. Among others to wliom it is said these islands were known was the cele- brated Captain Teach, or Blackbeard, as he was often called. He is sup- posed to have buried immense treas- ure here, some of which, like Haley's ingots, has been dug up and appro- priated by the islanders. On one of his cruises, while lying off the Scottish coast waiting for a licli trader, he was boarded by a stranger, who came off in a small boat from the shore. The new-comer demanded to be led before tlie pirate chief, in whose cabin he re- mained some time shut up. At length Teach appeared on deck with the stran- ger, whom he introduced to the crew as a comrade. The vessel they were expecting soon came in sight, and after a bloody conflict became the prize of Blackbeard. It was determined by the corsair to man and arm the captured vessel. The unknown liad fought with undaunted bravery and address during the battle. He was given the com- mand of the prize. The stranger Scot was not long in gaining the bad eminence of being as good a pirate as his renowned commander. His crew thought him invinci- ble, and followed where he led. At last, after his a])petite for wealth had been satisfied by the rich booty of the Southern seas, he arrived on the coast of his native land. His boat was manned, and landed him on the beach near an humble dwelling, whence he soon returned, bearing in his arms the lifeless form of a woman. The pirate ship immediately set sail for America, and in due time dropped her anchor in the road of the Isles of Shoals, Here the crew passed tlieir ' After execution the bodies of the pirates were taken to the little island in Boston harbor known as Nix's Mate, on which there is a monument. Fly was hung in chains, and the other two buried on the beach. The total disappearance of this island before the encroachments of the sea is the foundation of a legend. Bird Island, in the same harbor, on which pirates have been exe- cuted, has also disappeared. It formerly contained a considerable area. BLACKBEARD. THE PIRATE. THE ISLES OF SHOALS. 179 time in secreting tlieir riclies and in caronsal. The commander's portion was' buried on an island apart from the rest. He roamed over the isles with liis beautiful companion, forgetful, it would seem, of his fearful trade, until one morning a sail was seen standing in for the islands. All was now activity on board the pirate ; but before getting under way the outlaw carried the maiden to the island where he had buried his treasure, and made lier take a fearful oath to guard the spot from mortals until his retui ii, were it not 'til doomsday. He then put to sea. The strange sail proved to be a warlike vessel in search of the freebooter. A long and desperate battle ensued, in which the cruiser at last silenced her adversary's guns. The vessels were grappled for a last struggle, when a ter- rific explosion strewed the sea with the fragments of both. Stung to mad- ness by defeat, knowing that if taken alive the gibbet awaited him, the rover had fired the magazine, involving friend and foe in a common fate. A few mangled wretches succeeded in reaching the islands, only to pei*- ish miserably, one by one, from cold and hunger. The pirate's mistress re- mained true to her oath to the last, or until she also succumbed to want and exposure. By report, she has been seen more than once on White Island — a tall, shapely figure, wrapped in a long sea-cloak, her head and neck uncovered, except by a profusion of golden hair. Her face is described as exquisitely rounded, but pale and still as marble. She takes her stand on the verge of a low, projecting point, gazing fixedly out upon the ocean in an attitude of in- tense expectation. A former race of fishermen avouched that her ghost was