The Project Gutenberg EBook of America, Volume 5 (of 6), by Joel Cook
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Title: America, Volume 5 (of 6)
Author: Joel Cook
Release Date: May 29, 2013 [EBook #42842]
Language: English
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Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_.
The Title Page and Table of Contents for this book refer to it as
Volume V. The half-title, and page and chapter numbering is
consistent with this being the first half of Volume III.
THE OLD BAY STATE.
VOL. III.
[Illustration: _The Temperance Outfit_]
_EDITION ARTISTIQUE_
The World's Famous
Places and Peoples
AMERICA
BY
JOEL COOK
In Six Volumes
Volume V.
MERRILL AND BAKER
New York London
THIS EDITION ARTISTIQUE OF THE WORLD'S FAMOUS PLACES AND PEOPLES IS
LIMITED TO ONE THOUSAND NUMBERED AND REGISTERED COPIES, OF WHICH THIS
COPY IS NO. 205
Copyright, Henry T. Coates & Co., 1900
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
VOLUME V
PAGE
FANEUIL HALL, BOSTON 44
ALONG THE SHORE AT CAPE ANNE, GLOUCESTER,
MASS. 86
STATE CAPITOL, HARTFORD, CONN. 162
LOG BRIDGE OVER THE WILD CAT, NEAR
JACKSON, N. H. 212
HOUSE OF "THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND,"
CASCO BAY, ME. 244
ALONG THE COAST OF BAR HARBOR, ME. 270
AMERICA, PICTURESQUE AND DESCRIPTIVE.
XV.
THE OLD BAY STATE.
Early Explorations -- John Cabot -- Bartholomew Gosnold --
The Old Colony -- The Mayflower -- Plymouth -- Plymouth
Rock -- Duxbury --Samoset -- Governor Bradford -- Miles
Standish -- Cape Cod -- Chatham -- Barnstable -- Truro --
Highland Light -- Provincetown -- The Puritan Compact --
Quincy -- Marshfield -- Daniel Webster -- Minot's Ledge --
Nantasket -- Hingham -- Squantum -- Boston -- Shawmut
--Boston Harbor and Islands -- Boston Common -- Beacon Hill
and the State House -- The Codfish -- Boston Attractions --
Old South Church -- Old State House -- Faneuil Hall -- Old
Christ Church -- Boston Fire -- Boston Development -- The
New West End -- Parks and Suburbs --Brook Farm -- Newton --
Nonatum Hill -- Natick -- Cochituate Lake --Wellesley --
Sudbury -- The Wayside Inn -- Charlestown -- Old Ironsides
-- Jackson's Head -- Bunker Hill -- Cambridge -- Harvard
University -- Henry W. Longfellow -- James Russell Lowell
-- Oliver Wendell Holmes -- Margaret Fuller -- Waltham --
Lexington -- Concord in Middlesex and its Bridge -- Ralph
Waldo Emerson -- Nathaniel Hawthorne -- Henry D. Thoreau --
The Alcotts -- Massachusetts North Shore -- Lynn -- Nahant
-- Swampscott -- Marblehead -- Salem and the Witches --
Beverley -- Wenham Lake -- Ipswich -- Andover -- Merrimack
River -- Salisbury -- Concord in New Hampshire --
Manchester -- Nashua -- Lowell -- Lawrence -- Haverhill --
Newburyport -- Bridal of Pennacook -- Cape Ann --
Gloucester -- The Fisheries -- Norman's Woe -- Wreck of
the Hesperus -- Land's End -- Thatcher's Island --Rockport
-- Lanesville -- Granite -- The Fishermen.
EARLY EXPLORATIONS.
John Cabot was the first explorer of the coasts of New England under
British auspices. After Columbus had discovered America, fabulous
tales were told of its outlying islands. The primitive maps
represented the Atlantic Ocean as full of islands, some being very
large, especially the Island of Brazil, and the fabled Island of the
Seven Cities. The latter was said by sailors to be inhabited by
Christians who years before had fled from seven cities of Asia, under
their seven bishops, taking refuge there. Bristol was then the leading
English seaport, and five years after the discovery by Columbus, John
Cabot started from it on a western voyage of exploration in search of
these famous islands. King Henry VII. encouraged the enterprise, and
in May, 1497, Cabot sailed in the little ship "Matthew," with a crew
of eighteen, and going westward he discovered one of these islands,
which he called the New Found Land. It was Cape Breton Island, but
being apparently unproductive and without inhabitants, although some
signs of people were seen, he soon returned to England. The greatest
excitement followed his arrival home, and the report got abroad that
he had discovered the Island of the Seven Cities and the coast of
Asia. Cabot became all the rage in England, and a writer of that time
records that Englishmen called him "the Great Admiral," followed him
about "like madmen," that he was "dressed in silks," and "treated like
a prince." Cabot, feeling his importance, wanted his friends to share
his good fortune, so he appointed some of them governors, and others
bishops over the new world he had discovered, while King Henry was so
delighted at the success of the voyage that he sent Cabot a letter of
thanks and the munificent present of £10. King Henry VII. was always
regarded as being "a little near."
In 1498, another and larger expedition was fitted out, Cabot planning
to sail westward until he reached the land he had discovered in the
previous year, and then he thought by turning south he would come to
the Island of Cipango (Japan), where he would fill his ships with
spices and jewels, a half-dozen small vessels making up the fleet.
They took a more northerly course than before, got among icebergs, and
where the summer days were so long there was very little night. They
reached Labrador, where the sailors were frightened at the amount of
ice, and turning south, Cabot sailed along the American coast nearly
to Florida, once trying to plant a colony, but being discouraged by
the barren soil, abandoning it. Yet sterile as the land might be, the
waters were filled with fish, so that Cabot called the country the
"Land of the Codfish," there was such an abundance of them. The
explorers recorded that the bears were harmless, they could so easily
get food, describing how they would swim out into the sea and catch
the fish. Then Cabot disappeared from view. Whether he died on the
homeward voyage or after he returned is unknown, as everything about
his subsequent career has faded from history. But his two voyages were
the foundation of the British claim to the Atlantic coast from
Labrador to Florida, and the basis of all the English grants for the
subsequently formed American colonies.
Bartholomew Gosnold planted the first English colony in the Old Bay
State. Upon Friday, May 14, 1602, after elaborate preparations, he
sailed from Falmouth, England, in the ship "Concord," his party
numbering thirty-two, of whom about a dozen expected to remain in the
new country as settlers. Crossing the ocean and coming into view of
the American coast, he steered south, soon finding his progress barred
by a bold headland, which encircled him about. He had got into the
bight of Cape Cod Bay, and thus discovered that great bended, sandy
peninsula, to which he gave the name from the abundance of codfish he
found disporting in the waters. Many whales were also seen, and vast
numbers of fish of all kinds. He tried to get out of the bay, and
coasting around the long and curiously hooked cape, emerged into the
Atlantic, and then coming down the outer side got into Vineyard Sound,
where he planted his colony on Cuttyhunk Island, but soon abandoned
it. Gosnold returned to England, and in 1607 sailed with Newport's
expedition, carrying Captain John Smith to Virginia.
THE OLD COLONY.
The first English settlement permanently planted in New England was
the famous "Old Colony" at Plymouth. The Puritan Separatists, from the
Church of England, sought refuge from English persecution in Holland,
living in Leyden under their pastor, John Robinson, for eleven years,
when they decided to migrate to America. They arranged with the
Virginia Company to send them across the ocean, and about the middle
of the summer of 1620 the little band of Pilgrims sailed from
Delft-haven, the port of Leyden, on the "Speedwell," in charge of
Elder Brewster. The "Mayflower" joined at Southampton with other
Puritans from England, but the "Speedwell" sprung a leak and they put
into Plymouth roads. Then they decided to go on in the "Mayflower"
alone, and the party left Plymouth early in September. They were
seeking Virginia, but found the land, after a voyage of over two
months, at Cape Cod, anchoring inside the Cape. Then they thanked God,
"who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered
them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet
on the firm and stable earth." While the ship lay there, the famous
"Mayflower Compact" was drawn up, pledging the signers to obey the
government that it established, and John Carver was chosen the first
Governor, forty-one men signing the compact. After nearly a month
spent in exploration, their shallop going all about the coasts,
Plymouth was selected, and the pioneers landed December 21, 1620, the
day being now annually celebrated as "Forefathers' Day."
Plymouth has a little land-locked harbor behind a long and narrow sand
beach, projected northward from the ridge of Manomet below, this beach
acting as a protective breakwater to the wharves. The harbor is so
shallow, however, that there is little trade by sea. The town spreads
upon the bluff shores, and on a plateau to the hills in the rear.
There is now a population of about nine thousand, engaged mainly in
manufacturing cordage and textiles, and having a considerable fishery
fleet. While the town is of modern build, yet it is devoted to the
memory which gives it deathless fame, every relic of the Pilgrims
being restored and perpetuated. There is little to be seen that comes
from the olden time, however, outside of the hills and harbor and
original streets, excepting the carefully cherished relics of the
"Mayflower's" passengers, that have been gathered together. The choice
of Plymouth as the landing-place seems to have been mainly from
necessity, when protracted explorations failed to find a better place,
and the coming of winter compelled a landing somewhere. The actual
location was hardly well considered, the Pilgrims themselves being
far from satisfied. After the "Mayflower" anchored inside of Cape Cod,
several weeks were passed in explorations, and finally, upon a Sunday
in December, 1620, a landing was made upon Clark's Island, where
religious services were held, the first in New England. Upon the most
elevated part of this island stands a huge boulder, about twelve feet
high, called from some local circumstance the "Election Rock." Its
face bears the words taken from _Mourt's Relation_, which chronicled
the voyage of the "Mayflower":
"Upon the Sabbath-Day wee rested, 20 December, 1620."
Eighteen of the Pilgrims thus "rested," after their shallop, in making
the shore, had been almost shipwrecked. The next day they sailed
across the bay to the mainland, their first landing being then made at
Plymouth, and upon the second day, December 22d, the entire company
came ashore and the settlement began.
Within the Pilgrim Hall, a fireproof building upon the chief street,
are kept the precious relics of the "Mayflower" and the Pilgrims, with
paintings of the embarkation from Delft-haven and landing at Plymouth,
and old portraits of the leaders of the colony. Among the interesting
documents are autograph writings, establishing a chain of
acquaintanceship connecting the original Pilgrims with the present
time. Peregrine White was the first child of the new colony, the
infant being born on the "Mayflower" after she came into Cape Cod Bay,
in November, 1620, and he was only a month old when they landed. The
baby, surviving all their hardships, lived to a ripe old age, and
"Grandfather Cobb," born in 1694, knew him well. Cobb, in his day,
lived to be the oldest man in New England, his life covering space in
three centuries, for he exceeded one hundred and seven years, dying in
1801. William R. Sever, born in 1790, knew Cobb and recollected him
well, and living until he was ninety-seven years old, died in 1887.
These three lives connected the Pilgrim landing almost with the
present day. The old cradle that rocked Peregrine White on the
"Mayflower," and after they landed, is preserved--an upright,
stiff-backed, wicker-work basket, upon rude wooden rockers. One of the
chief paintings represents the signing of the memorable "Mayflower
Compact." There are also in the hall some of the old straight-backed
chairs of the Pilgrims, with their pots and platters, and among other
relics Miles Standish's sword. In the court-house are the original
records of the colony, the first allotment of lands among the
settlers, their deeds, agreements and wills, and the patent given the
colony by Earl Warwick in 1629. There are also shown in quaint
handwriting, with the ink partly faded out, records of how they
divided their cattle, when it was decided to change from the original
plan of holding them in common. Signatures of the Pilgrims are
attached to many of these documents. Governor Carver died the first
year, William Bradford succeeding, and there is preserved in Governor
Bradford's writing the famous order establishing trial by jury in the
colony.
THE PLYMOUTH ROCK.
"The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast."
Thus begins Mrs. Hemans' beautiful hymn on the landing of the
Pilgrims. Unfortunately for the poetry, however, sand is everywhere
about, and scarcely a rock or boulder can be seen for miles, excepting
the very little one on which they landed. Down near the water-side is
this sacred stone, worshipped by all the Pilgrim descendants, the
retrocession of the sea having left it some distance back. It is a
gray syenite boulder, oval-shaped, and about six feet long. It was
some time ago unfortunately split, and the parts have been cemented
together. At the time of the landing this boulder lay on the sandy
beach, partly embedded, being almost solitary on these sands, for
unlike the verge of Manomet to the southward, and the coast north of
Boston, this sandy shore is almost without rocks of any kind. Dropped
here in the glacial period, and lying partly in the water, the rock
made a boat-landing naturally attractive to the water-weary Pilgrims
when they coasted along in their shallop from Clark's Island, so they
stepped out upon it to get ashore dry-shod. The rock is in its
original location, but has been elevated several feet to a higher
level, is surmounted by an imposing granite canopy, and is railed in
for protection from the relic-hunter. The numerals "1620" are rudely
carved upon its side, and a sort of fissure in its face seems like the
impress of a foot. Surmounting the canopy is a scallop shell, the
distinctive emblem of the pilgrim. The scallop has been called the
"Butterfly of the Sea," and in the time of the Crusades, a scallop
shell fastened in the cap denoted that the wearer had made a
pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Thus it is said in the _Hermit_:
"He quits his cell, the pilgrim staff he bore,
And fixed his scallop in his hat before."
Behind the Plymouth Rock rises the bluff shore into Cole's Hill,
having its steep slopes sodded, this having been the place up which
the Pilgrims climbed after the landing. A view to the front shows the
wharves, and across the bay the narrow sandspit protecting the harbor,
while on the right hand is the long ridge of Manomet, and over the
water to the left appear distant sand-dunes along Duxbury Beach. Off
to the northward rises the "Captain's Hill" of Duxbury, surmounted
with the monument to Captain Miles Standish, erected in 1889, rising
one hundred and ten feet. Upon Cole's Hill was the first burial-place
of the Pilgrims, and here were interred about half the intrepid band,
who died from the privations of the first winter. Their bones were
occasionally washed out by heavy rains, or found in digging for the
foundations of buildings, but all have been carefully collected, and,
with several of the dead thus exposed, were again entombed in the
canopy over Plymouth Rock. A little way to the southward is Leyden
Street, running from the water's edge for some distance back up the
slope to the side of the "Burial Hill," the first cemetery. This was
the earliest highway laid out in New England, although it did not
receive its present name until long afterwards. Upon this street the
Pilgrims built their first rude houses, the lots extending southward
from it to the "Town Brook," a short distance beyond, which supplied
them with good water, and was the chief feature inducing them to
select this place for settlement.
The story of their landing is told in _Mourt's Relation_, written by
one of the actors in this great historical drama. After describing
their explorations and hasty selection of the place, he continues:
"So, in the morning, after we had called on God for direction, we came
to this resolution, to go presently ashore again, and to take a better
view of two places which we thought most fitting for us; for we could
not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals
being much spent, especially our beer, and it being now the 19th of
December. After our landing and viewing the places so well as we
could, we came to a conclusion, by most voices, to set on a high
ground, where there is a great deal of land cleared, and hath been
planted with corn three or four years ago; and there is a very sweet
brook runs under the hillside, and many delicate springs of as good
water as can be drunk, and where we may harbor our shallops and boats
exceeding well; and in this brook fish in their season; on the further
side of the river also much corn-ground cleared. In one field is a
great hill on which we point to make a platform and plant our
ordnance, which will command all around about. From thence we may see
into the bay and far into the sea, and we may see thence Cape Cod. Our
greatest labor will be the fetching of our wood, which is half a
quarter of an English mile; but there is enough so far off. What
people inhabit here we know not, for as yet we have seen none. So
there we made our rendezvous, and a place for some of our people,
about twenty, resolving in the morning to come all ashore and to build
houses." About a week after landing they began constructing their
first fort on the hill, and allotted the plots of land on their
street, subsequently named Leyden. Thus the town was begun, and behind
it rose two hills, the one now known as the Burial Hill being at the
head of this street, and elevated about one hundred and fifty feet
above the sea. Miles Standish, with his military eye, for he had seen
veteran service in Flanders, selected this hill for the fort, and
here in 1622 was built the square timber block-house that made them
both a fort and a church, the entire settlement as it then existed
being enclosed with a stockade for further protection. This caused the
hill to be named Fort Hill, and it was not until long afterward that
it was used as a cemetery and called Burial Hill, the first interred
being some of the original Pilgrims after the graveyard on Cole's
Hill, down by the waterside, had been abandoned.
Upon Fort Hill was built the "Watch House," where an outlook was kept
for the Indians. Stones now mark the locations both of the fort and
the watchhouse, and surrounding them are the graves of several of the
"Mayflower" Pilgrims, with many of their descendants, the dark slate
gravestones having been brought out from England. There is a fine
outlook from Burial Hill, far over the sea to the distant yellow
sand-streak of Cape Cod. About a half-mile northward is the other
hill, rising somewhat higher, and upon it is the National Monument to
the Pilgrims, dedicated in 1889. This is a massive granite pedestal
forty-five feet high, surmounted by the largest stone statue in
existence, a colossal figure of Faith, thirty-six feet high, and
adorned by large seated statues emblematic of the principles upon
which the settlement was founded, representing Law, Morality, Freedom
and Education. Upon this great monument are also representations of
the landing of the Pilgrims, their names, and the "Mayflower
Compact." It was into this infant colony of Plymouth, after some weeks
of careful parley and investigation, there strode the stalwart Indian
Samoset, making their acquaintance and paving the way for the
subsequent treaty and alliance with Massasoit, which for many years
was scrupulously observed by both parties, and not broken until after
he died. Canonicus, of the Narragansetts, to the southward, sent to
the colony after Massasoit's death a sheaf of arrows bound with a
rattlesnake's skin as a token of hostility. Governor Bradford did not
want war, but he knew they must maintain a brave outlook, so he
promptly filled the skin with powder and shot and sent it back to
Canonicus, who understood the grim challenge, and fearing the deadly
musketry, prudently restrained the hostile instincts of his tribe. The
privations of the first year, which killed half the settlers, and were
only relieved by succor from England, are said to have originated the
New England Thanksgiving Festival Day, which has since spread over the
whole country. In December, 1621, they had their first Thanksgiving,
upon the arrival of a relief ship from abroad. Such was the dawning of
the ruling race of the American nation.
DUXBURY AND MILES STANDISH.
Upon the upper side of Plymouth Bay, enclosing its northern portion,
is one of those long peninsulas of sand and rocks, abounding upon the
Massachusetts coasts, which projects about six miles southeastward
into the sea and terminates in a high knob, called the Gurnet, with a
hook turned inward. This elongated sand-strip is Duxbury Beach, the
town of Duxbury being upon the mainland inside, a fishing village
probably best known as the terminus of the French Atlantic Cable. It
was at Duxbury that the first regular pastor was Ralph Partridge, whom
Cotton Mather described as having "the innocence of a dove and the
loftiness of an eagle." The Pilgrims allotted this district to Miles
Standish and to their youngest member, John Alden. Standish named it
from Duxbury Hall, in Lancashire, the seat of his English ancestors.
The brave Miles was not a Puritan and did not belong to their church,
but as he was an experienced warrior, they made him the commander of
their standing army of twelve men. Is is said that there have been
only two renowned military chieftains in history who were personally
acquainted with all their soldiers--Julius Cæsar and Miles Standish.
The redoubtable old captain lost his wife Rose soon after the landing,
and he then engaged the fascinating and youthful Alden to do his
courtship for him and woo the gentle Priscilla Mullins, with the usual
result that the maiden preferred the more attractive Alden to the grim
old soldier. Standish has been described as "a short man, very brave,
but impetuous and choleric, and his name soon became a terror to all
hostile Indians." His is the romance of early Plymouth, for he has
been made the hero of Longfellow's poem, and of renowned operas and
many New England tales, while the fair Priscilla gave her name to the
great Long Island Sound steamer. Standish lived upon the "Captain's
Hill," out on the Duxbury peninsula, the highest land thereabout,
rising one hundred and eighty feet, upon a broad point projecting into
Plymouth Bay. His monument is near the site of his house upon the
bare-topped, oval-shaped hill, a rather bleak place, however, to have
selected for a home. Beyond it the projecting Duxbury Beach ends in
the high Gurnet, with twin lighthouses, and then hooks inward to
another bold terminating bulb, the headland of Saquish. To the
northward is Clark's Island, where the Pilgrims first landed, a
similarly round-topped mass rising from the water. Thus is Plymouth
Bay environed, for to the southward its long guarding ridge on that
side, Manomet, projects far into the sea.
CAPE COD.
The Old Bay State presents a front to the rough Atlantic like a
gladiator at bay. She has in Cape Cod one defensive forearm boldly
extended, and she likewise is prepared, if necessary, to thrust out
the other, which keeps close guard upon her rugged granite breast in
Cape Ann. These capes are the portals of Massachusetts Bay, and of the
ocean entrance to Boston. Everyone, in viewing the map, marvels at the
extraordinary formation of Cape Cod. Thoreau, who in days gone by
tramped all over the Cape, says, "A man may stand there and put all
America behind him." This great sandy headland stretches eastward from
the mainland at Sandwich about thirty miles, then turns north and
northwest thirty miles more, finally terminating in a huge hook, bent
around to the south and east again, and forming the spacious
landlocked harbor of Provincetown. At Harwich and Chatham the elbow
sharply bends, the shoulder is at Buzzard's Bay, the wrist at Truro,
and the closing fingers make Provincetown's haven. The Cape is nearly
all white sand, with boulders occasionally appearing, particularly
near the extremity. Thin layers of soil extend as far as Truro, but
the sand is seen through many rents, and the extremity is completely
bare, being a wilderness of sand, kept in partial motion by the winds,
and making constantly shifting dunes. The prevalent northeast winds
and surf are regarded as having made the hooked end of the Cape by
gradually moving the sands upon the shore around to the west and
south. This hooked end impressed the Colonial navigators, and the
ancient Dutch maps call it Staaten Hoeck, and the enclosed waters
Staaten Bay. The extremely white sand, in contrast with the darker
rocks of more northern shores, led Champlain to name it Cape Blanc.
Gosnold, as already announced, from the abundance of codfish named it
Cape Cod, whereof the faithful historian, Cotton Mather, who records
the fact, writes naïvely that he supposes it will never lose its name
"till swarms of codfish be seen swimming on the highest hills."
This remarkable cape came near being an island, Buzzard's Bay on the
south and Cape Cod bay on the north being so deeply indented that
their waters approach within about seven miles. The isthmus is a low,
broad alluvial valley stretching between, having Monumet River flowing
from Herring Pond south into Buzzard's Bay, and the Scusset River
north from the divide, their headwaters only a thousand yards apart,
so that this narrow neck of land, nowhere elevated more than
twenty-five feet, is all that saves the famous Cape from being an
island. A canal was projected there as early as 1676, and the proposed
"Cape Cod Ship Canal" has been regularly agitated ever since, and may
at some time be constructed, saving the shipping from the long detour
around the Cape. This neck has been called "the collar of the Cape,"
and beyond was the Indian domain of Monomoy. Chatham then was Nauset,
and Barnstable was Cummaquid, these, as indeed every village on the
Cape, being famous nurseries of sailors and fishermen. Here is some
agriculture, the farms and towns having roomy old houses, and the
extensive cranberry bogs showing one of the chief industries of the
people. Along the southern shore are Marshpee, Cotuit, and Hyannis,
all changing from fishing-ports to modern fashionable watering-places.
The surface is composed of sharply defined hills of white sand,
having broad sandy levels between that are almost desert plains. There
are some trees, but the growth becomes gradually stunted, as the
journey is made out upon the Cape, and villages are less frequent and
population sparser. Modern cottages crown the hilltops, and the
frequent cranberry bogs are as level as a floor, being thickly grown
with the myriad runners and sombre foliage of the prolific plant.
Passing Yarmouth and Harwich, the railway turns northward at the elbow
of the cape, where Chatham is on the ocean shore. Brewster is
northward, and Eastham, noted for its fortified church, whose colonial
pastor received by law, for his salary, part of every stranded whale
coming upon the shore. To the left is Welfleet, on the bay shore, and
to the right the triple lighthouses of Nauset Beach, in front of which
the ocean tides divide, moving in opposite directions, one current
south to Nantucket Sound, and the other north, to go around the Cape
into Massachusetts Bay. Northward is the sandy desert of Truro, the
"Dangerfield" of early days, regarded as the most fatal coast in New
England. This town of Truro has been described as "a village where its
able-bodied men are all ploughing the ocean together as a common
field," while in North Truro "the women and girls may sit at their
doors and see where their husbands and brothers are harvesting their
mackerel fifteen to twenty miles off on the sea, with hundreds of
white harvest-wagons." Here, upon the high hill making the ocean
shore, where the headland curves from north around to the west, is the
guardian beacon of Cape Cod, the lofty Highland Light, forty-one miles
southeast of Boston Light, and whose powerful white rays shine for
twenty miles over the ocean without, and the bay within. The tower
stands on a hill one hundred and forty-two feet high, and the light is
elevated nearly two hundred feet. Along here Thoreau walked on the
"sand-bar in the midst of the sea," and as he gazed far over the
ocean, thus reflected: "The nearest beach to us on the east was on the
coast of Galicia in Spain, whose capital is Santiago, though by old
poets' reckoning it should have been Atlantis, or the Hesperides; but
Heaven is found to be farther west now. At first we were abreast of
that part of Portugal _entre Douro e Mino_, and then Galicia and the
port of Pontevedro opened to us as we walked along, but we did not
enter, the breakers ran so high. The bold headland of Cape Finisterre,
a little north of east, jutted toward us next with its vain brag; for
we flung back 'Here is Cape Cod, Cape Land's Beginning.' A little
indentation toward the north--for the land loomed to our imaginations
like a common mirage--we knew was the Bay of Biscay, and we sang,
'There we lay, till next day, in the Bay of Biscay, O!' A little south
of east was Palos, where Columbus weighed anchor, and further yet the
pillars which Hercules set up."
THE PURITAN COMPACT.
At the extremity of Cape Cod is Provincetown, among the sand dunes, a
town with about forty-five hundred inhabitants, encircling the harbor
on its western verge, a long, narrow settlement between the high white
sand-hills and the beach. There are two main streets, one along the
beach and the other parallel to it back among the hills. Upon the
highest hill is the Town Hall, the mariner's landmark entering the
harbor, and from it are good views over ocean and bay, displaying the
curious end of the Cape sweeping grandly around and enclosing the
spacious harbor with room enough for anchoring an enormous fleet. To
the west and south is the great bended hook having Race Point on its
northwesterly verge and a lighthouse on the southern termination,
whence a tongue of beach juts over towards Truro. This is a haven for
many fishermen, and the people, who are among the purest descendants
of the original Puritans, devote their energies largely to catching
mackerel and cod, curing and stacking the fish all around the bay. The
first appearance of Provincetown in history was when the "Mayflower"
entered the harbor with the Pilgrims in November, 1620. Cape Cod was
the first land they saw after leaving the English Channel, then not
bare as now, but wooded down to the shore. They anchored in the bay,
and the men were forced to wade "a bow-shoot" to the shore to make a
landing, and it was this wading and subsequent exposure which gave
them the colds and sickness resulting in the deaths of so many during
the subsequent winter. It is recorded that upon Monday, November 23,
1620, the women went ashore to wash, and thus they inaugurated that
universal institution which has extended all over the country, the
great American Monday washing-day. It was while anchored in
Provincetown harbor the Pilgrims framed and signed the celebrated
Puritan Compact, so long ruling Plymouth, which is regarded as the
foundation of constitutional government. John Quincy Adams said of it:
"This is perhaps the only instance in human history of that positive
original social compact which speculative philosophers imagined as the
only legitimate source of government." It was signed by forty-one
Pilgrims, of whom twenty-one died during the ensuing four months. It
reads:
"In the name of God, amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal
subjects of our direct sovereign lord King James, by the grace of God,
of Great Britain, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith,
etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God and advancement of the
Christian faith and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant
the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these
presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one
another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body
politic, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of
the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute and
frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and
offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and
expedient for the general good of the colony; unto which we promise
all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof, we have
hereunder inscribed our names at Cape Cod, the 11th day of November
(old style), in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord King
James, of England, France and Ireland, the 18th, and of Scotland, the
54th, Anno Domini, 1620."
Provincetown was a long time afterwards started, and began with a few
fishermen's huts, which grew in the eighteenth century to a small
village with extensive fish-drying flakes. The people top-dressed the
soft sands with clay, shells and pebble, thus making the streets.
There are relics of wrecks all about the extremity of the Cape, and it
has had a sad history, though now, being better lighted and having
life-saving stations, these terrible disasters are rare. The town has
become an attractive summer resort, and has quite a development of
pleasant homes. The visitor mounts High Pole Hill to get the view, and
all around it is over the sea, for, gaze whither one may as the winds
blow freshly across the Cape, the scene is of dazzling white sand or
deeply blue water.
APPROACHING MASSACHUSETTS BAY.
From Plymouth Harbor northward to Massachusetts Bay is but a short
distance. Inland from the coast-line the land rises into the noted
"Blue Hills of Milton," their highest dome-like summit elevated six
hundred and fifty feet and surmounted by an Observatory. These are
granite hills, having the picturesque town of Quincy stretching down
to the sea, with a broad fringe of salt marshes in front. Thus are
named the "Quincy granites," famous for building, and it was to get
these huge stones out that the earliest rude railway in New England
was constructed in 1826, a line three miles long to Neponset River,
the cars being drawn by horses. It is said by the geologists that
these hills of Milton are an older formation than the Alps, and their
earliest English name, designated by King Charles I., was the Cheviot
Hills. Among the salt marshes just north of Duxbury is Marshfield, the
home of Daniel Webster, whose remains lie in an ancient graveyard on
an ocean-viewing hill not far away. Beside him are the graves of his
sons--Edward, killed in the Mexican War, and Fletcher, killed at Bull
Run in the Civil War. An ornamental villa has replaced his old house,
which was burnt, and the homestead has gone to strangers. Close by
Webster's is the grave of the early Pilgrim Governor Winslow, whose
quaint old dwelling is near. Quincy is famous as the home of the
greatest families of the original colony of Massachusetts Bay--Quincy
and Adams. The antique church of Quincy, known as the Adams Temple,
has in the yard the graves of the two Presidents Adams, father and
son. John Hancock, whose bold signature leads the Congress in the
Declaration of Independence, was a native of Quincy. It was among the
earliest Massachusetts settlements, having been colonized by a number
of Episcopalians at Merry Mount, who were such jovial people that the
strict Puritans of Plymouth were aghast at their goings on, and sent
Miles Standish with the whole army against them, and capturing the
leaders shipped them prisoners back to England. This severe treatment
was administered a second time before they were subdued. Thomas
Morton, who was among those twice banished, wrote the _New England
Canaan_, giving this curious account of the aborigines: "The Indians
may be rather accompted as living richly, wanting nothing that is
needful, and to be commended for leading a contented life, the younger
being ruled by the elder and the elder ruled by the Powahs, and the
Powahs are ruled by the Devill; and then you may imagine what good
rule is like to be amongst them." This theory was generally prevalent
among the early colonists, for Cotton Mather was convinced that "the
Indians are under the special protection of the Devill."
The coast, as Massachusetts Bay is approached, rises into the rocky
shores of Scituate and Cohasset. Here is the dangerous reef of Minot's
Ledge in the offing, guarded by the leading beacon of the New England
waters, about four miles from the shore. The original lighthouse was
washed away in a terrific storm in April, 1851. The catastrophe
occurred in the night, when those on shore heard a violent tolling of
the lighthouse bell, and in the morning the tower was gone, with all
the light keepers, the only relic being a chair washed ashore, which
was recognized as one that had been in the watch-room of the tower.
Scituate was the birthplace of Samuel Woodworth, author of the _Old
Oaken Bucket_. These shores are all lined with villas and attractive
coast resorts, and the noted Jerusalem Road is the chief highway of
Cohasset, following the coast-line around to the westward. Here
projects the narrow and strange peninsula of Nantasket Beach, five
miles out into the sea to Point Allerton, then hooking around and
terminating in the town of Hull, and making one of the most popular
seaside resorts of Bostonians. Farther to the westward, behind it, is
Hingham Harbor, the quaint old village of Hingham on its shores,
settled in 1635, having the oldest occupied church in New England,
dating from 1681. This most ancient church of Yankeedom is a square
building of the colonial style, its steep roof sloping up on all four
sides to a platform at the top surrounded by a balustrade and
surmounted by a little pointed belfry. Still farther westward, and
within the entrance to Boston Harbor, projects the bold bluff of
Squantum, thrust out into the bay, it having been named in memory of
the old sachem who ruled all the country round about when Boston was
first colonized, his home being on an adjacent hill. Sturdy old
Squantum was a firm friend of the colonists, and when he was dying he
besought Governor Bradford to pray for him, "that he might go to the
Englishman's God in Heaven."
THE CITY OF BOSTON.
The approach to the New England metropolis, especially by way of the
harbor, is fine. The city rises gradually ridge above ridge, until the
centre culminates in Beacon Hill, surmounted by the bright gilded dome
and lantern-top of the Massachusetts State House. From all sides the
land, with its varied surfaces of hill and vale, slopes down towards
the water courses, leading into the deep indentation of Boston Harbor.
The pear-shaped peninsula, forming the original town, was the Indian
Shawmut, or the "sweet waters," a name reproduced in many ways in the
modern city. William Blackstone, the recluse Anglican clergyman of
London who could not get on there with the "Lords Bishops" and
emigrated, was the first white inhabitant of Shawmut, coming in 1623.
Governor John Winthrop, of the Massachusetts colony, who came out in
1630 to Salem, removed to Shawmut the same year with Thomas Dudley
and a number of Puritans, crossing over from Charlestown in a search
for good water, which led them to select this place, which, from its
three hills, they called the Tri-mountain, since shortened into
Tremont. Blackstone, having lived there in solitude for several years,
soon tired of having such near neighbors, and in 1634 he sold out the
whole town site to them for about $150, and being disgusted with these
"Lords Brethren," as he had previously been with the "Lords Bishops,"
avoided controversy by going farther into the wilderness. Winthrop and
Dudley had come originally from Boston in England, and making this the
capital of the Massachusetts colony, they gave it that name. The
English Boston in Lincolnshire grew around the monastery of the Saxon
St. Botolph, established in the seventh century, and hence its name of
Botolph's Town, which has been condensed into Boston. Some years ago
the English Bostonians presented a Gothic window from the ruins of old
St. Botolph's to Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston. When this
Massachusetts colony was originally established, one of Winthrop's
depressed companions, writing home, described Shawmut as "a hideous
wilderness possessed by barbarous Indians, very cold, sickly, rocky,
barren, unfit for culture, and like to keep the people miserable." Yet
the settlement grew, and, as an early historian says, "Philadelphia
was a forest and New York was an insignificant village long after its
rival, Boston, had become a great commercial town." In 1663 an
English visitor, describing the place, wrote that "the buildings are
handsome, joining one to the other, as in London, with many large
streets, most of them paved with pebble-stones. In the high street
toward the Common there are faire houses, some of stone." The young
colony encouraged commerce and became possessed of many ships, the
earliest built at Boston being the bark "Blessing of the Bay" of
thirty tons, a noted vessel belonging to Governor Winthrop, and
considered a wonder in her time. The first solid wharf was built in
1673. It was Governor Winthrop who put into one of his official
messages this chunk of wisdom: "The best part of a community is always
the least, and of that part the wiser are still less." Anterior to the
Revolution, Boston was the largest and most important American city,
then having twenty-five thousand inhabitants.
Boston Harbor covers about seventy-five square miles, having various
arms, such as South Boston Bay and Dorchester Bay, and the estuaries
of the Charles, Mystic and Neponset Rivers, which enlarge the
landing-spaces. The outer harbor has great natural beauty, increased
by the improvements and adornments of buildings, the water surface
gradually narrowing towards the city, and dotted with craggy,
undulating islands, having long stretches of bordering beaches,
interspersed with jutting cliffs, broad and bold promontories, and
both low and lofty shores. The adjacent coasts are lined with
villages that gradually merge into the suburbs of the great city. In
this spacious harbor there are at least fifty large and small islands,
and most of these, which were bare in Winthrop's day, are now crowned
with forts, lighthouses, almshouses, hospitals and other civic
institutions, several being most striking edifices, giving a pleasing
variety to the scene. The splendid guiding beacon for the harbor
entrance stands upon Little Brewster or Lighthouse Island, at the
northern edge of Nantasket Roads. This is Boston Light, elevated about
one hundred feet, a revolving light visible sixteen miles. George's
Island, near the entrance and commanding the approach from the sea,
has upon it the chief defensive work of the harbor, Fort Warren, about
two miles west of Boston Light. Farther in, and near the city, off
South Boston, is Castle Island, with Fort Independence, the successor
of the earliest Boston fort, the "Castle," built by Winthrop in 1634.
Opposite and about one mile northward is Governor's Island, containing
Fort Winthrop. This island was originally the "Governor's garden," and
Winthrop paid a yearly rent of two bushels of apples for it. These
forts are nearly all constructed of Quincy granite, but none has seen
actual warfare. Long Island spreads its high crags across the harbor,
outside of the inner forts, and has a lighthouse on its northern end,
while to the eastward is a low, rocky islet, bearing as a warning to
the mariner a curious stone monument, known as Nix's Mate. It was
here the colonists used to hang the pirates caught on the New England
coasts. Upon Deer and Rainsford Islands are hospitals and
reformatories, and upon Thompson's Island, which is fantastically
shaped like an unfledged chicken, is an asylum and farm-school for
indigent boys. Spectacle, Half Moon and Apple Islands received their
names from their shapes.
At the inward, western extremity of the harbor is the pear-shaped
Shawmut peninsula of Boston, having water ways almost all around it.
Upon the one side is South Boston and upon the other Charlestown, the
comparatively narrow intervening water courses of Fort Point Channel
and Charles River being in parts nearly roofed over with bridges, that
grudgingly open their draws to let through the vessels laden with
lumber and coal. To the northeast, upon another peninsula, which
formerly was an island, is East Boston, having Chelsea beyond to the
northward. Towards the west, across the broadened estuary of Charles
River, is Cambridge, this part of the estuary known as the Back Bay
having been largely encroached upon to create more land for the
crowded and spreading city. To the southward are Roxbury and
Dorchester, and to the westward Brookline, Brighton and Somerville.
Upon the Shawmut peninsula, the original city of Boston covered only
seven hundred and eighty-three acres, but by the reclamations this has
been more than doubled. It absorbed Dorchester Neck to enlarge South
Boston; took in Noddle's Island for East Boston; and annexed about all
the other suburbs, so that the city now covers forty-three square
miles. The hills have been partly levelled and the whole face of the
ancient town altered, these improvements and the great changes wrought
by fires obliterating the older narrow and crooked streets, having
thus wrought a complete transformation. The alignments of the colonial
maps can now hardly be recognized, and scarcely a vestige, beyond the
three old burying-grounds and a few buildings, remains of primitive
Boston. When the first settlers coming from Charlestown saw Shawmut or
the Tri-mountain, it seemed to chiefly consist of the three high hills
which they called Copp's, Beacon and Fort Hills, the highest of these,
the Beacon, being itself a sort of tri-mountain, having three
well-developed surmounting little peaks. These, however, were
afterwards cut down, although the massive elevation of Beacon Hill,
whereon the colonists burnt their signal-fires, remains the crowning
glory of the peninsula.
BOSTON COMMON.
The city of Boston has a population of six hundred thousand, and the
centre around which it clusters is the well-known Boston Common, set
apart in 1634, and always jealously reserved for public uses, the
surface rising upon its northern verge towards Beacon Hill. No matter
by what route approached, the city has the appearance of a broad cone
with a wide-spreading base, ascending gradually to the bulb-like apex
of the gilded State House dome. Occasionally a tall building looms
above the mass, or it is surmounted by church-spires and the fanciful
towers of modern construction, or by a high chimney pouring out black
smoke; but it is a symmetrical scene in the general view, though in
many parts the surface of the actual city is very uneven. The Common
rises towards the State House from the south and west by a graceful
plane interspersed with hillocks. It is crossed by many pleasant
walks, and has broad open spaces used for sports and military
displays. It is rich in noble old trees, and covers nearly fifty
acres, while to the westward is an additional level park of half the
size, known as the Public Garden, separated by a wide street
accommodating the cross-town traffic. This noted Boston Common was the
ancient Puritan pasture-ground, and it is rich in traditions. In the
colonial wars, the captured hostile Indians were put to death here,
their grinning heads impaled on stakes for a public warning. Murderers
were gibbeted, witches burnt and duels fought here. The impassioned
George Whitefield, in the middle of the eighteenth century, preached
here to a congregation of twenty thousand. An English traveller in the
late seventeenth century described the place as "a small but pleasant
Common where the gallants, a little before sunset, walk with their
marmalet-madams till the bell at nine o'clock rings them home."
Sometimes it was a fortified camp, and it was always a pleasure-ground,
while during the great fire of 1872, which destroyed the chief
business section with property valued at $70,000,000, enormous piles
of hastily saved goods filled the eastern portions next to Tremont
Street, bounding it on that side. Beacon Street is the northern border
and Boylston Street the southern, there being rows of stately elms
upon the walks along these streets and the pathways leading across the
Common in various directions.
Flagstaff Hill, the most prominent eminence, near the centre of the
Common, is surmounted by the Soldiers' Monument, rising ninety feet,
with a colossal statue of America on the apex, overlooking the city.
It was designed by Milmore, and is one of the most imposing memorials
of the Civil War in the country. Nearby stood the "Old Elm," which was
much older than the city, and was blown down in 1876. The adjacent
sheet of water is the noted "Frog Pond" of colonial memory, and dear
to the hearts of all old Bostonians. Near the northeastern boundary
the Brewer Fountain, famous for its magnificent bronzes, the
munificent gift of a prominent citizen, pours out its limpid waters. A
colossal equestrian statue of Washington adorns the Public Garden.
These attractive grounds are additionally embellished by tasteful
little lakes, statues and lovely floral displays. On the southern side
of the Common is the old Central Burying-Ground, which contains the
grave of Gilbert Stuart, the portrait painter, who died in 1828.
Beneath the edge of the Common on the southern and eastern sides is
the great Subway, which crosses Boston, giving needed relief to the
congested traffic, and was completed in 1898 at a cost of nearly
$5,000,000, a most commodious, airy and well-lighted tunnel,
accommodating many lines of electric cars, and providing speedy
transit across the crowded city.
THE STATE HOUSE.
The famous Boston State House, fronting on Beacon Street at the summit
of the hill, stands upon ground which, in the eighteenth century, was
John Hancock's cow-pasture, his residence, for many years alongside,
having been replaced by the ornamental "swell-fronts" of the Somerset
Club. This rounded construction, known as the swell-front, is a
distinctive feature of the old-time Boston residential architecture,
and in many buildings the effect is heightened by the luxuriant
overrunning vines of the Boston ivy, which is especially fine in the
autumn. A Corinthian portico fronts the State House, which was built
about the beginning of the nineteenth century, but has since been
repeatedly enlarged, the latest extension being completed in 1898, so
that the whole building is now four hundred by two hundred and twelve
feet, the lantern on the dome rising one hundred and fifty feet. Upon
the terrace in front are statues of Daniel Webster and Horace Mann.
The eastern side of the last extension has a small park, and here, on
top of Beacon Hill, has been erected a reproduction, practically on
the original site, of the Beacon Monument, which was put there in 1790
to commemorate the success of the Revolution, but was removed in 1812.
Within the State House is the Memorial Hall, containing the
battle-flags of Massachusetts regiments and other historical relics.
Portraits, busts and statues of the great men of Massachusetts adorn
the interior rooms. From the lantern surmounting the dome is the
finest view of Boston, with the mass of estuaries penetrating the land
on all sides, the harbor and islands, and over the neighboring country
for many miles. In the Representatives' Chamber hangs, high on the
wall, one of the precious relics of the Old Bay State, the noted
carved codfish, typifying a great industry. In the original State
House preceding this one, down on Washington Street, in the heart of
the older town, on March 17, 1785, Representative Rowe--who is also
said to have been the suggester of throwing the tea overboard in
Boston harbor--according to the minutes moved, "That leave might be
given to hang up the representation of a codfish in the room where the
House sit, as a memorial of the importance of the cod-fishery to the
welfare of the Commonwealth, as had been usual formerly." Leave was
accordingly given, and this emblem was brought in time to the present
State House and hung on the wall, and it has always been an object of
interest to visitors, not only as emblematic of sundry fishery
problems that perplex the statesmen, but also as recalling a question
always of lively interest in New England and elsewhere, "Does the
codfish salt the ocean, or the ocean salt the codfish?" Another great
treasure is held by the State Library, which has a hundred thousand
volumes; and the chief of its possessions, exhibited under glass, is
the "History of the Plimouth Plantation," popularly known as the "Log
of the 'Mayflower,'" written by Governor William Bradford. This
manuscript, discovered in London in 1846, was presented to
Massachusetts in 1898.
NOTABLE BOSTON ATTRACTIONS.
A ramble through the older parts of Boston discloses many objects of
interest. Near the northern edge of the Common, at the corner of Park
and Tremont Streets, is the old "Brimstone Corner," where stands the
citadel of orthodoxy, the Puritan meeting-house, Park Street Church.
Adjoining is an ancient graveyard, the "Old Granary Burying-Ground,"
where lie the remains of some of the most famous men of Boston, John
Hancock, Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, James Otis, Peter Faneuil, many of
the colonial Governors, and also the parents of Benjamin Franklin, a
prominent monument marking the graves of the latter. The rows of
ancient, dark-looking and half-effaced gravestones in this quiet
burial-place, in one of the busiest parts of the city, are an antique
novelty. Many noted buildings are near it--Tremont Temple, the
Horticultural and Music Halls, the Athenæum, and not far away,
fronting Pemberton Square, the massive County Court-house of granite
in Renaissance style, four hundred and fifty feet long, having in its
imposing central hall a statue of Rufus Choate. On Tremont Street was
established the first Episcopal Church in Boston, the King's Chapel,
the present building replacing the original one in 1754. Adjacent is
the oldest burying-place of the colony, where lie the remains of
Governor John Winthrop and his sons, with other early settlers. Most
of the old gravestones in this yard have been taken away from the
graves and reset in strange fashion as edge-stones along the paths.
One of these odd old stones of a greenish hue marked the grave of
William Paddy, dying in 1658. In an unique poetical effusion it
records these quaint words:
"Hear sleaps that blessed one
Whoes lief God help us all
To live that so when tiem shall be
That we this world must liue,
We ever may be happy
With blessed William Paddy."
Adjoining this old-time region is the splendid City Hall, grandly
rising beyond the graveyard, in Italian Renaissance, with an imposing
louvre dome. In front, upon School Street, are statues of Benjamin
Franklin and Josiah Quincy.
Various intricate streets and passages lead eastward from Tremont
Street into Washington Street, these two chief business highways in a
certain sense being parallel. Washington Street is the main
thoroughfare of the city, having prominent theatres, newspaper
offices, many of the largest stores and great office buildings, and it
finally crosses over into the South End, being a wider and straighter
street in this newer portion. Benjamin Franklin was born in a little
old dwelling near Washington Street, where now stands a newspaper
office. Alongside is the "Old South Church," the most famous church of
Boston, but now an historical relic and museum of Revolutionary
antiquities, the congregation having built themselves a magnificent
temple, the "New Old South Church," upon Boylston Street, in the
fashionable quarter of the Back Bay. This ancient church is a curious
edifice of colonial style, built in 1729, when it replaced an earlier
building. It has a tall spire and a clock, to which it is said more
eyes are upturned than to any other dial in New England. The interior
is square, with double galleries on the ends, and its original
condition has been entirely restored. It is brimful of history, and
was the colonial shrine of Boston, wherein were held the spirited
meetings of the exciting days that hatched the Revolution. Within it
were arranged the preliminaries leading to the march from its doors of
the party of disguised men who went down to the Liverpool wharf and
threw the tea overboard in December, 1773. Behind the pulpit is the
famous window through which climbed Dr. Joseph Warren in 1775 to make
the oration on the anniversary of the "Boston Massacre," that had so
much to do with creating the high condition of feeling producing the
final defiance of the British soldiery, culminating in the battle of
Lexington. The British afterwards turned the building into a
riding-school. Franklin was baptized in the original church, and here
Whitefield preached. For nearly two centuries there was delivered, in
this noted church, the annual "election sermon" before the Governor
and Legislature. It was only by the greatest exertions that the
venerable building was saved from the fire of 1872, which halted at
its edge. It now belongs to a patriotic society, who maintain it as a
precious historical relic.
Also fronting upon Washington Street is the "Old State House," an
oblong and unpretending building at the head of State Street, dating
from 1748, which was the headquarters of the Massachusetts Provincial
Government. The "Boston Massacre," in March, 1770, originating in an
encounter between a British sentry and the crowd, resulting in the
troops firing upon the populace, occurred in the street on its
eastern side. Afterwards Samuel Adams, voicing the public
indignation, made within the building, in an address to the Executive
Council, his memorable and successful demand that the British soldiery
should be removed outside the city. It has been restored as far as
possible to its original condition, even the figures of the British
"Lion and Unicorn," which had been taken down in Revolutionary days,
having been replaced on the wings of the roof over the southern front.
The upper rooms contain a valuable collection of relics and paintings,
and much that is of interest in connection with early Boston history.
Opposite are the tall Ames and Sears Buildings of modern construction,
while State Street extends northeast through the financial district to
the harbor, passing the massive granite dome-surmounted Custom House.
Dock Square is not far away, and Change Alley and other intricate
passages lead over to the Boston "Cradle of Liberty," Faneuil Hall.
Old Peter Faneuil, a Huguenot merchant, built it for a market and
presented it to the city in 1742, but it was unfortunately burnt,
being rebuilt in 1761. Within it were held the early town-meetings,
and it is still the great place for popular assemblages. It was
enlarged to its present size in 1805. This famous Hall is a plain
rectangular building, seventy-six feet square inside, the lower floor
a market, and the upper portion an assembly room. It is located, with
surmounting cupola, in an open square, and when anything excites the
public it is crowded with standing audiences, there being no seats.
Across the end is a raised platform for the orators, behind which, on
the wall, is Healy's large painting, representing the United States
Senate listening to a speech by Daniel Webster, his noted oration in
the South Carolina nullification days of 1832, when Webster was the
champion of the Union. There are numerous historical portraits on the
walls. The "Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company," dating from
1638, occupy the floor above the Hall, while in front of it and
extending towards the harbor is the spacious Quincy Market.
At the corner of Washington and School Streets is another ancient
building, its quaint gambrels and gables recalling primitive
architecture--the "Old Corner Book-store," long a favorite literary
haunt. Northward, Washington Street extends to Haymarket Square, and
beyond is Charlestown Street, passing by Copp's Hill, now reduced in
size. Upon this hill is the oldest Boston church,--Christ Church in
Salem Street,--dating from 1723, from whose steeple, on the eve of the
battle of Lexington, in April, 1775, were displayed the lights giving
warning of the movement of the British troops starting from Boston for
Concord. These signals notified Paul Revere, across the Charles River,
who made his famous midnight ride that roused the country. The
silver-plate, service-books and Bible of the church were gifts from
King George II., and in the adjacent burial-ground are the graves
of the three noted Doctors Mather, who had so much to do with colonial
affairs and history--Increase, Cotton and Samuel--the last dying in
1785. The great Boston fire of 1872, which ravaged the district east
of Washington Street for two days, extended over fifty acres, and
destroyed nearly eight hundred buildings. The section was quickly
rebuilt, however, with much finer structures, and is now the chief
wholesale business district of Boston. The elaborate Government
Building, containing the Post-office and Courts, was erected, since
the fire, of Cape Ann granite, at a cost of $7,500,000. In this
district are enormous office-buildings, insurance-offices, banks,
extensive blocks of stores, and the headquarters of the leading trades
of New England, the boot and shoe, cotton and woollen, dry goods,
paper and wool merchants, Boston being the greatest wool mart in the
country. When Boston, having preserved Beacon Hill and reduced in size
Copp's Hill, decided to remove the third eminence of the
"Tri-mountain," Fort Hill, its earth and rocks were used to give
better commercial facilities by filling in and grading the magnificent
marginal highway fronting the harbor, Atlantic Avenue. In front of
this broad street the wharves project many hundreds of feet, having
rows of capacious storehouses in their centres, while on either side
are wide docks for the shipping. Here is conducted an extensive
traffic with all parts of the world, and to these wharves come the
yacht-like fishing-smacks to unload their catch of cod and mackerel,
while there are piles of fish in the stores. Thus is realized the
significance of the emblematic codfish hanging in the State House.
[Illustration: _Faneuil Hall, Boston_]
BOSTON DEVELOPMENT.
When the great Boston fire had been quenched, and an estimate was
being formed of the enormous losses, the significant statement was
made that "the best treasure of Boston cannot be burnt up. Her grand
capital of culture and character, of science and skill, humanity and
religion, is beyond the reach of flame. Sweep away every store and
house, every school and church, and let the people with their history
and habits remain, and they still have one of the richest and
strongest cities on earth." This is the prominent characteristic of
Boston public spirit. The people take the greatest pride in their
city, its high rank and achievements, and the wealthy and energetic
townsfolk are always alert to extend them. There are more libraries,
schools, colleges, art and scientific collections, museums,
conservatories of music and educational foundations in and near Boston
than in any other American city. Magnificent structures, the homes of
art, science and education, are scattered with prodigality all about.
Next to the Library of Congress, the Boston Public Library is the
largest in America. Bostonians love the fine arts, and the many open
spaces and public grounds are adorned with statues of eminent men and
groups representing historical events. The people seem to be always
studying and investigating, the women as well as the men pursuing the
difficult paths of abstruse knowledge, so that armies of them, fully
equipped, scatter over the country to impart the learning of the
"Modern Athens" to less fortunate communities. There are many fine
churches, especially in the newer parts of the West End, whither have
removed into grand temples of modern artistic construction quite a
number of the wealthy congregations of the older town. Boston is also
full of clubs, in endless variety, formed for every conceivable
purpose, and several of them very handsomely housed.
To get available room and facilitate business, the city has gathered
the terminals of all the railways into two enormous stations on the
northern and southern sides of the town, and for nearly a half century
it has been filling-in the fens and lowlands to the westward, so that
now this reclaimed West End is the fashionable section, containing the
finest churches, hotels, and residences. Through this splendid
district extends for over a mile the grand Commonwealth Avenue, two
hundred and forty feet wide, its centre being a tree-embowered park
adorned by statues of Alexander Hamilton, John Glover, William Lloyd
Garrison, and Leif Ericson, and having on either side a magnificent
boulevard. The bordering residences are fronted by delicious gardens,
and at regular intervals fine streets cross at right angles, their
names arranged alphabetically, in proceeding westward, with the
well-known English titles, Arlington, Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth,
Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester, Hereford, etc. Parallel to the Avenue
are also laid out Boylston, Marlborough, Newbury and Beacon Streets
through this favorite residential section. Proceeding out Boylston
Street are passed the stately buildings of the Museum of Natural
History, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with twelve
hundred students, the leading institution of its kind in America.
Beyond, at the intersection of Dartmouth Street, is Copley Square,
displaying around it the finest architectural group in the city, five
magnificent buildings, three of them churches. Trinity Episcopal
Church, built on the northern side, in free Romanesque, is formed as a
Latin cross, with a massive central tower, two hundred and ten feet
high. It has elaborate interior decoration and fine windows. The
Public Library, on the southern side, is in Roman Renaissance, two
hundred and twenty-eight by two hundred and twenty-five feet, and
sixty-eight feet high, erected at a cost of nearly $2,400,000. It
contains eight hundred thousand volumes, and the interior is
excellently adapted to its uses, being tastefully adorned. The Second
Unitarian Church, on the northern side of the square, built in 1874,
was the church of the three Mathers, and of Ralph Waldo Emerson. The
Museum of Fine Arts, on the eastern side of the square, is constructed
of red brick and terra-cotta, and contains extensive collections. The
fifth building fronting the square is the "New Old South Church," in
Italian Gothic, with a tower rising two hundred and forty-eight feet.
Beyond this fashionable district, the "Back Bay Fens" have been
skillfully laid out in a series of boulevards and parks, making a
chain extending several miles south and southwest through the suburbs,
Franklin Park, covering nearly a square mile, being the chief. Here,
on grounds with great natural adornments, in Roxbury, Brookline, and
Brighton, is a region of much beauty. The surface is undulating,
finely wooded, dotted with lakes, and displaying many costly suburban
houses, in full glory of garden and foliage. This pleasant region
spreads to Chestnut Hill, where the city has its great water
reservoir, holding eight hundred million gallons, the favorite drive
from Boston being to and around this reservoir, the route giving
splendid views from the hilltop. Jamaica Pond and Jamaica Plain are
near by, two of Boston's attractive cemeteries being beyond the
latter, Mount Hope and Forest Hills. Here is also the famous Arnold
Arboretum, the greatest institution of its kind, now part of the park
system, and having a grand outlook from its central hill. In West
Roxbury is the Martin Luther Orphan Home, which now occupies the noted
"Brook Farm," where a group of cultivated people, led by George
Ripley, and including Hawthorne, Curtis, Dana, Channing, Thoreau,
Emerson, and Margaret Fuller, made their famous attempt to found a
socialistic community in 1841, but found that it would not work. It
was described as an experiment in "plain living and high thinking,"
the articles of association calling it the "Brook Farm Institute of
Agriculture and Education," for the establishment of an "agricultural,
literary, and scientific school or college." Pupils were taken, and in
its most successful period there were about one hundred and fifty
persons in the community; "kitchen and table were in common; very
little help was hired, but philosophers, clergymen and poets worked at
the humblest tasks, milking cows, pitching manure, cleaning stables,
etc., while cultivated women cooked, washed, ironed, and waited at
table; all work, manual or intellectual, was credited to members at a
uniform rate of ten cents an hour." Later, it became a Fourieristic
"phalanstery," under the title of the "Brook Farm Phalanx;" then, in
1845, the chief building burnt down, and financial difficulties
following, the experiment, which had excited world-wide comment, was
abandoned in 1847.
NONATUM AND SUDBURY.
To the westward of Brighton is the extensive and wealthy suburban city
of Newton, a favorite place of rural residence for Bostonians. Here
rises, near Newton Corner, the ancient Nonatum Hill, where the
Apostle Eliot first preached to the Indians, the name being now
classically modernized into Mount Ida. Eliot converted these Indians,
who became the Christian tribe of Nonatum and formed their system of
government after the plan set forth in the Book of Exodus, with rulers
of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens. For them the Bible was
translated into the Indian language by Eliot and printed at Cambridge
in 1663. They removed nearer to Charles River, where there were better
soils, at Natick, their village consisting of three streets lined with
little huts and gardens, a large circular fort, and a building for a
church and school, at the same time having a rude bridge constructed
over the river. Natick is now a busy shoemaking town, with about ten
thousand people, and in South Natick is the old Indian cemetery and
Eliot's Oak. To the northward of Natick is Cochituate Lake, the chief
source of Boston's water supply, over three miles long, and having
with tributary ponds nearly a thousand acres area when full of water
in the spring. To the eastward of Natick is Wellesley, where the
famous Wellesley Female College, with seven hundred students, has its
spacious buildings located in a beautiful park. To the northward is
the valley of Sudbury River, into which Lake Cochituate discharges,
and here at Sudbury was the old colonial tavern which Longfellow has
given renown in his "Tales of a Wayside Inn":
"One autumn night in Sudbury town,
Across the meadows bare and brown,
The windows of the wayside inn
Gleamed red with firelight through the leaves
Of woodbine hanging from the eaves
Their crimson curtains rent and thin.
"As ancient is this hostelrie
As any in the land may be.
Built in the old Colonial day,
When men lived in a grander way,
With ampler hospitality.
A kind of old Hobgoblin Hall,
Now somewhat fallen to decay,
With weather stains upon the wall,
And stairways worn, and crazy doors,
And creaking and uneven floors,
And chimneys huge, and tiled and tall.
"A region of repose it seems,
A place of slumber and of dreams,
Remote among the wooded hills!"
Here Longfellow located his modern Canterbury tales by the landlord,
the student, the theologian, the poet, the musician, and other
sojourners, which have become interwoven so attractively with our
better American literature.
CHARLESTOWN AND BUNKER HILL.
Across the Charles River, northward from the Shawmut peninsula of
Boston, is Charlestown, one of the earliest settled suburbs, a large
part of the river front being occupied by the Navy Yard, which covers
a surface approximating a hundred acres. Here were built many famous
vessels of the older navy, anterior to the change to steel
construction, and the first Government dry-dock in the country was
placed at this yard, which after the war of 1812 became one of the
leading naval stations. Among the historical features of the yard has
been the famous ship "Constitution," familiarly known as "Old
Ironsides," which is again to be rebuilt for preservation. This noted
ship, with others that achieved renown in the war of 1812, was kept at
Charlestown, and all of them having rotted, the Navy Department in
1830 decided to destroy them so as to save further trouble, and an
article announcing this appeared in a Boston newspaper. Little did the
naval authorities, however, appreciate the sentimental love the
country had for the old "Constitution." Two days after the newspaper
announcement, Oliver Wendell Holmes, then twenty-one years of age,
published his poem of "Old Ironsides," which caused such a sensation.
"Aye, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle's shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;--
The meteor of the ocean's air
Shall sweep the land no more.
"Her deck--once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below--
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;--
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!
"O, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave:
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail;
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!"
These stirring lines of earnest protest touched the popular heart,
there was an universal outburst of indignation, and the "Constitution"
was saved. The old ship was rebuilt on her original lines, only a few
timbers, including the keel, being retained, and the former
allegorical figure-head was replaced by one modelled in the image of
Andrew Jackson, then President of the United States. This change was
sanctioned by the Secretary of the Navy, although Commodore Hull, who
had charge of rebuilding the ship, protested against it. The
reconstructed "Constitution" was launched in 1834, and anchored, with
her figure-head, but a short distance from Charlestown bridge.
Politics ran high at the time, and the change caused great
controversy, particularly in and around Boston. One stormy night,
Captain Samuel W. Dewey, then a hardy young sailor, managed without
discovery to saw off Jackson's head, and carried it away. When the
mutilation was disclosed next day there was another great clamor, and
so intense was the excitement that the utmost exertions were vainly
made to find the man who did the daring deed. Dewey kept his secret
for several weeks, but suddenly, under an unexplainable impulse,
decided he would go to Washington and give the sawed-off head to
President Jackson himself. He appeared before the Secretary of the
Navy, and stating that he was the man who had removed the figure-head
from the "Constitution," said he had brought it along to restore it,
exhibiting the grim features tied up in a bandana handkerchief. The
Secretary was indignant, and spoke of having him arrested, but Dewey
said there was no statute that he had violated, and the Secretary,
calming down finally, listened to the man's story of how he took away
the head, and agreed to take it to President Jackson. He took the
mutilated head over to the White House, exhibited it to Jackson, and
repeated to him Dewey's story. When Jackson had heard the tale he
burst out in loud laughter, and pointing at the head, said: "That is
the most infernal graven image I ever saw. The fellow did perfectly
right; you've got him, you say; well, give him a kick and my
compliments, and tell him to saw it off again." Captain Dewey was
afterwards called the "figure-head man," and was given a public dinner
in Philadelphia on his return from Washington. He died at an advanced
age, in 1899.
The crowning glory of Charlestown is the Bunker Hill Monument, marking
the greatest historical event of Boston, the famous battle fought June
17, 1775, when the British stormed the Yankee redoubt on the hilltop
north of Charles River, which was then open country, but long ago
became surrounded by the buildings of the expanding city, excepting
the small space of the battlefield, now reserved for a park around the
monument. The granite shaft rises two hundred and twenty-one feet,
upon the highest part of the eminence. The Provincial troops had
assembled in large numbers north and west of Boston, mainly in
Cambridge to the westward, and hearing that the British intended to
occupy Bunker and Breed's Hills, in Charlestown, a force was sent
under Colonel William Prescott, a veteran of the old French war, in
the night, to fortify Bunker Hill. Upon crossing over, they hastily
decided that it was better to occupy Breed's Hill, which, while part
of the same ridge, was nearer Boston, and they constructed upon it a
square redoubt. The British ships in Charles River discovered this at
daylight, and began a cannonade; American reinforcements were sent
from Cambridge; and in the afternoon General Gage attacked, his
onslaught being three times repulsed with heavy slaughter, when, the
Americans' ammunition being spent, they could only resist with clubbed
muskets and stones, and had to retreat. Facing Boston, in front of the
monument, the direction from which the attack came, is the bronze
statue of Prescott, the broad-brimmed hat shading his earnest face,
as, with deprecatory yet determined gesture, he uttered the memorable
words of warning that resulted in such terrible punishment of the
British storming column: "Don't fire until I tell you; don't fire
until you see the whites of their eyes." The traces of the hastily
constructed breastworks of the redoubt can be seen on the brow of the
hill, and a stone shows where Dr. Joseph Warren fell, he being killed
in the battle. He came to the fight as a volunteer, and had been made
a General in the Provincial army. The top of the tall monument gives a
splendid view in all directions over the harbor and suburbs of Boston,
with traces of Mount Wachusett far to the westward, and on clear days
a dim outline of the distant White Mountains. The corner-stone of the
monument was laid by Lafayette on his American visit in 1825, and it
was completed and dedicated in 1842, the oration on both occasions
being delivered by Daniel Webster. One of his glowing passages thus
tells the purpose of the monument:
"We come as Americans to mark a spot which must forever be dear to us
and to our posterity. We wish that whosoever, in all coming time,
shall turn his eye hither, may behold that the place is not
undistinguished where the first great battle of the Revolution was
fought. We wish that this structure may proclaim the magnitude and
importance of that event to every class and every age. We wish that
infancy may learn the purpose of its erection from eternal lips, and
that weary and withered age may behold it and be solaced by the
recollections which it suggests. We wish that labor may look up here
and be proud in the midst of its toil. We wish that in those days of
disaster which, as they come upon all nations, must be expected to
come upon us also, desponding patriotism may turn its eyes hitherward,
and be assured that the foundations of our national powers are still
strong."
CAMBRIDGE AND HARVARD.
Various long causeways over the wide expanse of Charles River where it
spreads out to form the Back Bay, and passing in front of the newly
filled-in West End, lead from Boston to the academic city of
Cambridge. This populous city, best known from Harvard University, is
beautifully situated on a plain, has important manufacturing
industries, handsome public buildings, and a large number of elegant
private residences in spacious grounds ornamented with fine old trees,
shrubbery and flower-gardens. Cambridge was settled soon after Boston,
as the "Newe Towne," in 1630. Its Common contains the venerable
"Washington Elm," over three hundred years old, under which, after the
battle of Bunker Hill, General Washington assumed command, July 3,
1775, of the American army besieging Boston. Opposite the southern
end of the Common are old Christ Church, built of materials sent out
from England, and the First Parish Church, with a Gothic steeple,
having between them the burying-ground of the old town. Of these,
Oliver Wendell Holmes has written:
"Like Sentinel and Nun they keep
Their vigil on the green;
One seems to guard and one to weep
The dead that lie between."
In the suburbs of Cambridge, adjoining Charles River, is Boston's
chief place of interment, Mount Auburn Cemetery, a romantic enclosure
of hill and vale, covering one hundred and twenty-five acres, with a
grand development of tombs and landscape. The tower upon the summit of
the Mount gives a beautiful outlook over the winding Charles River
valley and the Brookline, Brighton and West Roxbury villa and park
districts beyond, the distant view being closed by the charming Blue
Hills of Milton. In this cemetery are interred many of the famous men
of Massachusetts, including Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Everett,
Sumner, Motley, Choate, Quincy, Agassiz and Prescott.
The great Cambridge institution, however, is Harvard University, the
oldest, largest and wealthiest seat of learning in America. In 1636
the Massachusetts Legislature founded a school at the "Newe Towne,"
voting £400 for the purpose, and in 1638 John Harvard, who had been
for a short time a pastor in Charlestown, died at the age of
thirty-one, and left to this school his library of two hundred and
sixty volumes and half his estate, valued at about £800. Then the
school was made a college and named Harvard, and the town was called
Cambridge by the Legislature. The monument of the youthful patron is
in Charlestown, and, cast in heroic bronze, he now sits in a capacious
chair in front of the Harvard Memorial Hall. This great University far
antedates its rival Yale at New Haven, for its first class was
graduated in 1642, and in 1650 "The President and Fellows of Harvard
College" were incorporated. In fact, Harvard was founded only ninety
years later than the great College of English Cambridge--Emmanuel.
John Harvard and Henry Dunster, who was the first President of
Harvard, and several other prominent Boston colonists, had been
students at Emmanuel, and thus from the older Puritan foundation came
the younger, and it was natural to adopt for the town the name of the
English University city. The first New England printing-press was set
up in 1639 at Cambridge, and in the Riverside Press and the University
Press of to-day it is succeeded by two renowned book-making
establishments. Closely allied, in a scientific way, has also been at
Cambridgeport for many years the works of Alvan Clark & Co., the noted
makers of telescope lenses.
Harvard University has sent out many thousands of famous graduates,
and Longfellow, Holmes and Lowell have been members of its faculty. It
is liberally endowed, has ample grounds, and there are over sixty
buildings devoted to the purposes of the University, the annual
disbursements exceeding $1,000,000. Its government was formerly a
strictly religious organization, most of the graduates becoming
clergymen, but it was recently secularized so that no denominational
religion is now insisted upon, and comparatively few graduates enter
the pulpit. There are schools of law, medicine, dentistry, divinity,
agriculture, the arts and sciences, all the learned professions being
provided for, but everything is elective. In the various departments
there are more than four thousand students, taught by about four
hundred professors and instructors. It has some seven hundred acres of
land, interest-bearing endowments exceeding $8,000,000, receives,
besides, annual gifts sometimes reaching $400,000, and has a library
of five hundred thousand volumes and almost as many pamphlets. Much
attention is given outdoor sports and athletic training, Harvard
having the finest gymnasium in the country, and an athletic field of
twenty acres south of the river. Among the graduates have been two
Presidents, John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams; also his
grandson, Charles Francis Adams, William Ellery Channing, Edward
Everett, George Bancroft, Jared Sparks, William H. Prescott, Emerson,
Holmes, Sumner, Lowell, Motley and Thoreau.
The University buildings are in the centre of the old city, enclosing
two large quadrangles shaded by elms. Massachusetts Hall, the oldest
building now standing, dates from 1720, Harvard Hall from 1766, and
University Hall from 1815. The most elaborate modern building is the
Memorial Hall, a splendid structure of brick and Nova Scotia stone,
three hundred and ten feet long, having a cloister at one end and a
massive tower at the other. This was erected in memory of the Harvard
graduates who fell in the Civil War; and in the grand Vestibule which
crosses the building like a transept, having a marble floor and rich
vaulted ceiling of ash, and fine windows through which pours a
mellowed light, there are tablets set in the arcaded sides bearing the
names of the dead. Upon one side of this impressive Vestibule is the
spacious Saunders Theatre, used for the commencements and public
services, having as an adornment the statue of Josiah Quincy, a
President of the College and long the Mayor of Boston. Upon the other
side of the Vestibule is the college Great Hall, one hundred and
sixty-four feet long and eighty feet high, with a splendid roof of
open timber-work and magnificent windows. This is the refectory where
a thousand students can dine, and in it centre the most hallowed
memories of Harvard, portraits and busts of the distinguished
graduates and benefactors adorning it, with the great western window
in the afternoon throwing a flood of rich sunlight over the scene.
Harvard has been patterned much after the original Cambridge, thus
adding to the English vogue of many things seen about Boston. When
Charles Dilke visited America he wrote of Harvard, "Our English
Universities have not about them the classic repose, the air of study,
which belongs to Cambridge, Massachusetts; our Cambridge comes nearest
to her daughter-town, but even the English Cambridge has a breathing
street or two, and a weekly market-day, while Cambridge in New England
is one great academic grove, buried in a philosophic calm, which our
universities cannot rival as long as men resort to them for other
purposes than work." The people at Boston told Dilke, when he was
here, that they spoke "the English of Elizabeth," and they heartily
congratulated him at the same time upon using what they said was "very
good English for an Englishman."
Adjoining Cambridge Common is Radcliffe College, for women, named in
honor of the English Lady Anne Radcliffe, afterwards Lady Moulson, the
first woman giving a scholarship to Harvard (in 1640). Some four
hundred women receive instruction here from Harvard professors, and
the graduates are granted the college degrees. Near by, in Brattle
Street, is the Craigie House, dating from 1759, which was Washington's
headquarters in 1775-6, and later, for nearly a half century, was the
home of Henry W. Longfellow, until he died in 1882. Longfellow was for
twenty years Professor of Modern Languages in Harvard, being succeeded
in 1854 by James Russell Lowell, whose home of Elmwood, an old
colonial house, is farther out Brattle Street. Lowell was born in
Cambridge in 1819, dying in 1891. Oliver Wendell Holmes was born in
Cambridge in 1809, and being a skillful physician as well as a
_litterateur_, he was Professor of Anatomy and Physiology at Harvard
from 1847 till 1882. He resided in Boston on Beacon Street, dying in
1894. Margaret Fuller, the noted transcendentalist, was born in
Cambridge in 1810, and after writing several books, and achieving fame
as a linguist and conversationalist, she went abroad, marrying the
Marquis d'Ossoli in Rome, and returning to New York, they were both
lost by shipwreck at Fire Island in 1850.
LEXINGTON AND CONCORD.
Following up the Charles River, about ten miles west of Boston is
Waltham, with twenty-two thousand people, noted for the works of the
American Waltham Watch Company, the largest in the world, producing
nearly six hundred thousand watches and movements in a year. The
extensive factory buildings spread along the river, and there are also
large cotton mills. General Nathaniel P. Banks was a native of
Waltham. To the northward and about twelve miles from Boston is the
quiet village of Lexington, chiefly built on one long tree-shaded
street, which terminates at its western end in a broad Green of about
two acres, whereon a plain monument recalls the eight Revolutionary
patriots killed there April 19, 1775. A handsome Memorial Hall of
brick is built on the Green to commemorate the Lexington soldiers who
fell in the Civil War. It also contains statues of John Hancock and
Samuel Adams, and of the "Minute Man of 1775" and the "Volunteer of
1861."
The British commander in Boston, having learnt that the Massachusetts
patriots had collected arms and military stores at Concord, about
twenty miles northwest of Boston, on the night of April 18, 1775,
despatched a force to destroy them, and incidentally to capture
Hancock and Adams, who were at Lexington. The roads leading westward
out of Boston were picketed to prevent news being carried of the
expedition, but the signals from the old Christ Church on Copp's Hill
enabled Paul Revere to start from Charlestown through Cambridge, and
he made his rapid horseback ride, arriving by midnight at Lexington.
The bells of the village churches rang out the alarm, signal-guns were
fired, and messengers were sent in every direction to arouse the
people. About five o'clock in the morning Major Pitcairn with six
British companies arrived at Lexington, where the patriots, numbering
about seventy, were drawn up in line on the Green. Pitcairn rode
forward and shouted "Disperse, ye rebels; throw down your arms and
disperse!" They held their ground, and a volley was fired over their
heads, when, not dispersing, a second volley was fired, killing eight
and wounding ten men, the first blood shed in the American Revolution.
The American commander, seeing resistance was useless, withdrew and
dispersed his little band, some, as they retired, discharging their
muskets at the British, three of the latter being wounded and
Pitcairn's horse struck. Then the British made a rapid movement to
Concord, and some of the military stores which had not been removed
were found and destroyed. Meanwhile about four hundred Minute Men
gathered near the North Bridge over Concord River, about a mile from
the Common, and under orders they attacked and drove away the British
infantry, who had been placed on guard there. As the morning advanced,
the whole country became aroused, and armed patriots assembled from
every direction, those of Lexington having rallied and placed
themselves along the Concord road. The British commander was greatly
alarmed and ordered a retreat. They marched back to Boston under a
rattling fire, every house, barn and stone wall being picketed by
patriot sharpshooters, so that the road was strewn with dead and dying
British. Passing through Lexington, the British met reinforcements,
but they were still pursued to Cambridge and Charlestown, the
slaughter only ceasing when they had got under protection of the guns
of the fleet. The British loss was about two hundred and seventy, and
the Americans lost one hundred. In Concord the British graves and the
battle monuments are on one side of the historic bridge, and on the
other is a fine bronze statue of the "Minute Man." This Concord fight
was the first organized attack made by the Americans upon the British
in the Revolution, thus beginning the patriot rebellion against
British rule, as the Minute Men were acting under authority of the
Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, assembled in Concord, and
protecting their military stores.
"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world."
Concord has about six thousand people, and is also famous for its
literary history and associations. It is near the tranquil Concord
River and the junction of the little Assabet and Sudbury Rivers, a
pleasant tree-embowered quiet place of rural residence. Peter Bulkley,
an English rector, who was oppressed by Archbishop Laud, fled to New
England, and in 1636 buying of the Indians their domain of
Musketaquid, founded the town and church of Concord, thus naming it
because of its peaceful acquisition. In the nineteenth century it
became noted as the home of some of the greatest men of letters in
America. Near Concord bridge is an ancient gambrel-roofed house built
for Parson William Emerson in 1765, and from its windows he watched
the fight. This is the "Old Manse" in which Ralph Waldo Emerson,
himself once a clergyman, and descended from seven generations of
clergymen, was born in 1803. Emerson was known as the "Sage of
Concord," or, as Fredrika Bremer the novelist, who visited him there,
described him, the "Sphinx in Concord," and was the head of the modern
school of transcendental philosophy. He died in 1882. Nathaniel
Hawthorne lived for awhile in the "Old Manse" at Concord, and there
wrote his "Mosses from an Old Manse." The house was afterwards burnt.
Hawthorne died in 1864. Both Emerson and Hawthorne are buried in the
attractive little Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Emerson's grave being marked
by a large block of pink quartz. Henry D. Thoreau, the eccentric but
profound scholar and naturalist, in 1845 built himself a hut on the
shores of the sequestered Walden Pond near Concord, leading the life
of a recluse, raising a few vegetables, and now and then, to get a
little money, doing some work as carpenter or surveyor. He was
profoundly skilled in Oriental and classic literature, and was an
ardent naturalist, delighting in making long pedestrian excursions to
the forests, lakes and ocean shores of New England. He never voted,
nor paid a tax, nor entered a church for worship, and of himself he
said, "I am as unfit for any practical purpose as gossamer is for
ship-timber." Emerson tells us that "Thoreau dedicated his genius
with such entire love to the fields, hills and waters of his native
town, that he made them known and interesting to all; he grew to be
revered and admired by his townsmen, who had at first known him only
as an oddity." Dying in 1862, he, too, is buried in Sleepy Hollow
Cemetery. In the Orchard House in Concord lived the Alcotts, of whom
Louisa M. Alcott, author of _Little Women_, is so widely known.
Adjacent is the building used by the "Concord School of Philosophy,"
established in 1879 by A. Bronson Alcott. They also rest in the little
Cemetery. Thus is Concord famed, and it has well been said of this
historic old place that "it is dangerous to turn a corner suddenly for
fear of running over some first-class saint, philosopher or sage."
THE MASSACHUSETTS NORTH SHORE.
The outer verge of Boston Harbor may be described as protected on the
south by the long projection of Nantasket Beach, while on the northern
side there comes out, as if to meet it, another curiously-formed
peninsula, making the bluffs of Winthrop, and a strip beyond
terminating in the rounded headland of Point Shirley. Deer Island,
almost connected with the Point, stretches farther, and we were
anciently told it was so called "because of the deare who often swim
thither from the maine when they are chased by the wolves." All these
places are popular resorts, and their odd formations assist in making
the Boston surroundings picturesque. Some distance up the coast, and
eleven miles from Boston, is the shoemaking city of Lynn, with seventy
thousand people, the flourishing society of the "Knights of St.
Crispin" ruling the shoemakers' "teams" and largely running the
politics of the town. Most of the work is done by machinery, there
being over two hundred factories, making more women's shoes than any
other place in the country. The first colonists were brought by their
pastor from Lynn-Regis, England, in 1629, and thus the town was named.
It spreads broadly along the water-front, its attractive City Hall
seen from afar, and many ornamental villas adorning the shore. Out
beyond it, thrust into the sea, is the long, low and narrow sand-strip
barely a hundred yards wide, leading for nearly four miles to Nahant.
This is a most curious formation, the name meaning the "Lovers' Walk,"
a mass of rocks and soil at the outer end of the sand-strip covering
nearly five hundred acres, and crowned with villas, the neat tower of
a pretty white church rising on the highest part near the centre. The
Bostonians have made Nahant, thus surrounded by the ocean, one of
their most fashionable suburban sections, and it is popularly known as
"Cold Roast Boston." This strange rocky promontory was originally
bought from the Sagamore Poquanum for a suit of clothes, and it is now
valued at over $10,000,000. Many are the poems written about this
curious projection, and N. P. Willis says of it: "If you can imagine a
buried Titan lying along the length of a continent, with one arm
stretched out into the midst of the sea, the spot to which I would
transport you, reader mine, would be, as it were, in the palm of the
giant's hand." Invocations have been addressed to Nahant by
Longfellow, Whittier and Mrs. Sigourney; there Longfellow wrote part
of _Hiawatha_, Motley began his _Dutch Republic_, Prescott wrote his
Spanish histories, and Agassiz composed _Brazil_.
The region beyond Lynn and Nahant is the famous Massachusetts "North
Shore," stretching to the extremity of Cape Ann, a domain of villas
and summer homes, pleasant sea-beaches, and brisk towns with
interesting past history, now devoted largely to shoemaking and the
fisheries. From Boston State House to the extremity of the Cape at
Halibut Point, or the Land's End, is thirty-one miles, and Lucy Larcom
thus attractively describes the route along the shore:
"You may ride in an hour or two, if you will,
From Halibut Point to Beacon Hill,
With the sea beside you all the way,
Through pleasant places that skirt the bay;
By Gloucester harbor and Beverley beach,
Salem's old steeples, Nahant's long reach,
Blue-bordered Swampscott, and Chelsea's wide
Marshes laid bare to the drenching tide,
With a glimpse of Saugus' spire in the west,
And Malden Hills in their dreamy rest."
Saugus, Lynn, Nahant, Swampscott, Salem and Marblehead were originally
the Indian domains of Saugus, Naumkeag and Massabequash. Beyond Lynn,
most of the coast has undergone a modern evolution from fishery
stations to smart summer resorts; and here, around the swamps and
marshes, abounding crags protrude, with many fine villas in another
fashionable Boston suburb, Swampscott, as populous and almost as
famous as Nahant, with huge hotels down by the seaside. Swampscott
merges into Clifton, and then an uneven backbone of granite covering
about six square miles is thrust into the ocean in the direction of
Cape Ann, and is hedged about with rocky islets. On one side this
granite peninsula forms Salem harbor, while on the other a miniature
haven is made by a craggy appendage to the southeastward, attached to
the main peninsula by a ligature of sand and shingle. The quaint old
town of Marblehead occupies most of the surface, and the appendage is
the modern yachtsmen's headquarters, Marblehead Neck. This is a very
ancient place, dating back to the early seventeenth century, and was
once pre-eminently nautical and the second port in Massachusetts; but
the sailors and fishermen are missing, excepting those who man the
summer yacht fleets, and the people, like so many other Massachusetts
communities, have gone largely into shoemaking, the big shoe-factories
being scattered about. The crooked narrow streets run in all
directions among and over the rocks, which appear everywhere and have
gained the mastery. When George Whitefield, the preacher, visited
Marblehead, he gazed in astonishment upon these superabundant rocks,
and asked, in surprise, "Where do they bury their dead?" Out on the
headland is the superannuated little Fort Sewall, once protecting the
port and commanding both harbors, and though the walls are decaying,
it is preserved as a memento of the past. Fine villas are all about,
and the numerous islands add picturesqueness to the sea-view. Elbridge
Gerry, of "Gerrymander" fame, was a native of Marblehead, and its
hardy sailors formed most of the crew of the old ship "Constitution"
when she fought and captured the "Guerriere," and afterwards the
"Cyane" and "Levant." Marblehead was also the scene of "Skipper
Ireson's Ride," which Whittier has made historic:
"Old Floyd Ireson, for his hard heart,
Tarred and feathered and carried in a cart
By the women of Marblehead!"
He had refused to take some of his townsmen off a drifting wreck,
because it would cost too much to feed them on the way home.
SALEM AND THE WITCHES.
Westward of the Marblehead peninsula, there stretches into the
mainland another noted haven of the olden time, Salem harbor,
dividing it into two arms, the North and South Rivers, having between
them the town, chiefly built upon a peninsula about two miles long.
This was the Indian domain of Naumkeag, a name preserved in many
titles there, and meaning the "Eel-Land." It was the mother-colony on
Massachusetts Bay, the first house being built in 1626, and old John
Endicott having got a grant from Plymouth for the colony, he came out
and founded the town two years afterwards, calling it Salem, "from the
peace which they had and hoped in it." But despite this peacefulness,
the people soon developed warlike tendencies. They scourged Philip
Ratcliffe, and cut off his ears and banished him soon after the
founding, for "blasphemy against the First Church," and when the port
had got well under way, an annual trade statement showed imports of
$110,000 in arms and cannon, against $90,000 in everything else. The
"First Church," formed in 1629, was the earliest church organization
in New England, and it still exists. There were then ten houses in the
town, besides the Governor's house, which the early history describes
as "garnished with great ordnance;" adding, "thus we doubt not that
God will be with us, and if God be with us, who can be against us?"
John Winthrop was here as Governor, briefly, in 1630, soon migrating
to Shawmut, to found Boston for the capital of the colony. After the
Revolution, Salem was the leading seaport of New England; but its
glory has departed, and the trade has gone to Boston. In 1785 it sent
out the first American vessel that doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and
during a half century afterwards it held almost a monopoly of the East
India and China trade with the United States, having at one time
fifty-four large ships thus engaged. The Salem ships also went to the
Southern seas, Japan and Africa. This trade gave its people great
wealth and influence, and it was said, about 1810, that a Salem
merchant was then the largest shipowner in the world. But this has
retired into the dim past, and now it is a restful city of about forty
thousand people, its leading townsmen, the descendants of the
merchants and captains, living in comfortable mansions surrounding the
Common and along the quiet elm-shaded streets in the residential
section. The rest of the population have gone into shoemaking and
other manufactures.
George Peabody, the philanthropist, was the most noted citizen of
Salem, born in the suburb of Danvers (since changed to Peabody) in
1795, and, dying in 1869, his remains rest in Harmony Grove Cemetery.
In the Peabody Institute, which he founded in Danvers, is kept as a
sacred relic Queen Victoria's portrait, her gift to him in recognition
of his benefactions. General Putnam, Nathaniel Bowditch, William H.
Prescott, the historian, W. W. Story, the sculptor, and Nathaniel
Hawthorne, were natives of Salem. The East India Marine Hall is its
most noted institution, a fine building filled with a remarkable
Oriental collection, gathered in the many voyages made by Salem ships,
and also having a valuable Natural History Museum, designed to show
the development of animal life. In the Essex Institute are interesting
historical paintings and relics, including the charter given by King
Charles I. to the colony of Massachusetts Bay. Also, carefully kept
near by, is the original "First Church," built in 1634 for the
organization formed in 1629, and of which Roger Williams was the
pastor before the Puritans banished him from the colony. When the
enlarging congregation built a more spacious church, this quaint
little house, with its high-pointed roof, diamond-paned windows and
gallery, which is revered as the shrine of Salem, was removed to its
present location. In Essex Street is also the old "Roger Williams
House," a low-roofed structure with a little shop in front, his home
for a brief period in 1635-36. This house has acquired additional fame
as a relic of the witchcraft days, for in it was held the court trying
some of the witches in 1692, who were afterwards taken to the gallows
or Witch Hill, on the western verge of the town, to be put to death.
The witchcraft delusion began in the Danvers suburb and soon overran
most of New England, the prosecutions continuing more than a year.
Nineteen proven witches were executed, while one, under the ancient
English law, was pressed to death for standing mute when told to
plead. Old Cotton Mather, the historian and pastor, was a leader in
the movement against the witches.
The North Shore, beyond Salem Harbor, stretches far along the
rock-bound coast of Cape Ann. Here all the old fishing towns have
become modern villa-studded summer resorts, picturesque and attractive
in their newer development. Beverley, Manchester-by-the-Sea and
Magnolia all have grand headlands and fine beaches. Beverley also has
shoe-factories, and is proud of the memory of Nathan Dane, the eminent
jurist, who named Dane Hall, the Harvard Law School. Manchester has
the "Singing Beach," where the white sand, when stirred, emits a
musical sound. Magnolia, on a rocky bluff, is adjoined by the
attractive Crescent Beach, and has around it very fine woodland. To
the eastward is Rafe's Chasm, sixty feet deep and only a few feet
wide, and off shore, almost opposite, is the bleak reef of Norman's
Woe. Inland is Wenham Lake, near Beverley, noted for its ice supply,
upon which all these places depend, while beyond, the Ipswich River
comes down through the pleasant town of Ipswich, covering both banks
with houses, and flowing into Ipswich Bay north of the peninsula of
Cape Ann. To the westward is Andover, where the thrifty Puritan
Fathers, having bought the domain from the Indians "for twenty-six
dollars and sixty-four cents and a coat," established the noted
Andover Theological Seminary of the Congregational Church, where its
ablest divines have been taught in what has been called "the school
of the prophets." Here, on "Andover Hill," abstruse theology has been
the ruling influence and intense religious controversies have been
waged, over three thousand clergymen having been graduated. Mrs.
Harriet Beecher Stowe lived here after publishing _Uncle Tom's Cabin_,
and is buried here. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps was born here, and wrote
_Gates Ajar_ in the venerable "Phelps House." The Seminary buildings,
the local guidebook tells us, cause visitors to wonder "if orthodox
angels have not lifted up old Harvard and Massachusetts Halls and
carried them by night from Cambridge to Andover Hill." Ipswich, too,
has a famous Seminary, but it is for the opposite sex. We are told
that one reason for the popularity of Ipswich Female Seminary is that
its location tends to softening the rigors of study, as this is the
place "where Andover theological students are wont to take unto
themselves wives of the daughters of the Puritans." The indented shore
of Ipswich Bay was ancient Agawam, of which Captain John Smith,
coasting along in 1614, recorded in his narrative that he saw "the
many cornfields and delightful groves of Agawam." The fertile valley
of Ipswich River is a veritable oasis among the rocks, moors and
salt-marshes that environ it.
THE MERRIMACK RIVER.
Near the northern boundary of Massachusetts is the famous Merrimack
River, flowing northeastward into the Atlantic, and noted for the
enormous water-powers it provides for the various mill-towns that line
its banks. It is a vigorous stream, having frequent waterfalls and
carrying a powerful current, the name appropriately meaning "the swift
water." Oliver Wendell Holmes writes of it in _The School Boy_:
"Do pilgrims find their way to Indian Ridge,
Or journey onward to the far-off bridge,
And bring to younger ears the story back
Of the broad stream, the mighty Merrimack?"
The Merrimack drains the southern slopes of the White Mountains, and
takes the outflow of Lake Winnipesaukee, a vast reservoir, the waters
being regulated at its outlet to suit the wants of the mills below. It
flows southward through New Hampshire into Massachusetts, turning
northeast to the ocean. The river passes near Salisbury, where Daniel
Webster was born in 1782; then, seventy-five miles northwest of
Boston, comes to Concord, the capital of New Hampshire, which has a
fine Capitol building and quarries of excellent granite; and eighteen
miles below, it reaches Manchester, the chief city of New Hampshire,
having sixty thousand people and many large mills owned by wealthy
corporations. Here are the Amoskeag Falls (the Indian name meaning the
"fishing-place"), the largest on the Merrimack, having fifty-five feet
descent, and their water-power being utilized through two canals. The
chief products are textile goods, locomotives and steam fire-engines.
Eighteen miles farther southward the Nashua River comes up from the
southwest, having passed the industrial town of Fitchburg on the way,
and here at its confluence with the Merrimack is Nashua, another busy
factory town. At Amherst, not far away, Horace Greeley was born in
1811. Crossing the boundary into Massachusetts, the river comes to the
Pawtucket Falls, having thirty-two feet descent, and furnishing the
water-power, twenty-six miles northwest of Boston, for the great mills
of Lowell, the third city of Massachusetts, having a hundred thousand
people, and spreading along the Merrimack at its confluence with
Concord River, coming up from Concord Bridge of Revolutionary fame.
The first mill was built at Lowell in 1823, and its industries have
assumed a wide range and enormous output, though the operatives are
nearly all French Canadians, and the language heard in this once
Yankee mill-town is now mainly French. The Merrimack, having turned
northeast, next comes to Lawrence, where it descends rapids of
twenty-eight feet in the course of a half-mile. Here the Lawrence
family, of which the noted Abbott Lawrence was the chief, established
a town of cotton and woollen mills, utilizing the rapids by
constructing a huge dam nine hundred feet long and thirty feet high,
in 1845, at a cost of $250,000. Here are the great Pacific Mills,
among the largest textile works in the world, and the city has over
sixty thousand inhabitants. Nine miles farther down the river is
Haverhill, another manufacturing town, with forty thousand people,
largely engaged in shoemaking. The poet John G. Whittier was born in
1807 near Lake Kenoza, the scene of his _Snowbound_, on the
northeastern verge of Haverhill.
Below Haverhill the Merrimack is a navigable, tidal stream, broadening
into a spacious harbor at its mouth in the town of Newbury, where the
"ancient sea-blown city" of Newburyport is built on the southern
shore, while five miles to the westward, on the Pow-wow River, is
Amesbury, long the home of Whittier, who died in 1892, after having
celebrated this whole region in his poems. His house is maintained as
a memorial. Newburyport long since turned its attention from commerce
to making shoes and other manufactures, and it now has about eighteen
thousand population. Its splendid High Street, upon the crest of the
ridge, one of the noted tree-embowered highways of New England,
stretches several miles parallel to the river, down towards the sea,
bordered by the stately mansions of the olden time. The Merrimack
sweeps grandly along in front of them with a broad curve to the ocean,
three miles below. The Newburyport Marine Museum contains foreign
curiosities brought home by the old-time sea captains, and the Public
Library, endowed by George Peabody, occupies an impressive colonial
mansion, which has been flavored by the entertainment of Generals
Washington and Lafayette. The Old South Presbyterian Church has the
body of the famous preacher George Whitefield, who died in Newburyport
in 1770, interred in a vault under the pulpit. In a little wooden
house behind this church, William Lloyd Garrison, the Abolitionist,
was born in 1805. Caleb Cushing the jurist and John B. Gough the
temperance lecturer lived in Newburyport; but its resident who
probably achieved the greatest notoriety in his day was "Lord" Timothy
Dexter, an eccentric merchant of the eighteenth century, who made a
large fortune by singular ventures, among them shipping a cargo of
warming-pans to the West Indies, where they were sold to the planters
at a stiff profit for boiling sugar.
Whittier's home was on the Merrimack, and he has written for the river
a noble invocation:
"Stream of my fathers! sweetly still
The sunset rays thy valley fill;
Poured slantwise down the long defile,
Wave, wood, and spire beneath them smile.
"Centuries ago, that harbor bar,
Stretching its length of foam afar,
And Salisbury's beach of shining sand,
And yonder island's wave-smoothed strand,
Saw the adventurer's tiny sail
Flit, stooping from the eastern gale;
And o'er these woods and waters broke
The cheer from Britain's hearts of oak,
As, brightly on the voyager's eye,
Weary of forest, sea and sky,
Breaking the dull continuous wood,
The Merrimack rolled down his flood.
"Home of my fathers! I have stood
Where Hudson rolled his lordly flood:
Seen sunrise rest and sunset fade
Along his frowning Palisade;
Looked down the Appalachian peak,
On Juniata's silver streak;
Have seen along his valley gleam
The Mohawk's softly winding stream;
The level light of sunset shine
Through broad Potomac's hem of pine;
And autumn's rainbow-tinted banner
Hang lightly o'er the Susquehanna;
Yet wheresoe'er his step might be,
Thy wandering child looked back to thee:
Heard in his dreams thy river's sound
Of murmuring on its pebbly bound,
The unforgotten swell and roar
Of waves on thy familiar shore."
THE BRIDAL OF PENNACOOK.
It was in the valley of the Merrimack that Whittier located the scene
of his famous poem, the "Bridal of Pennacook." This American epic
tells--
"A story of the marriage of the chief
Of Saugus to the dusky Weetamoo,
Daughter of Passaconaway, who dwelt
In the old time upon the Merrimack."
Winnepurkit was the son of Nanapashemet, or the New Moon, and was the
Sagamore of Saugus, Naumkeag, and the adjoining domain. He was of
noble blood and valor, and for his bride chose the daughter of
Passaconaway, the great chief, ruling all the tribes in the Merrimack
Valley, who lived at Pennacook, now Concord. Not only was Passaconaway
a mighty chief, but he was also the greatest Powah or wizard of his
time, the colonial annalists gravely telling that he could make trees
dance, waters burn, and green leaves grow in winter, through his
necromancy. When Winnepurkit married this wizard's daughter, great was
the feasting at this "Bridal of Pennacook." Then Passaconaway caused a
select party of warriors to escort his daughter to her husband's home
at Saugus, where they received princely entertainment. Not long
afterwards the bride expressed a wish to again see her father and her
home at Pennacook, whereupon her husband sent her thither, escorted by
a trusty band, who were graciously received and rewarded. After some
time Weetamoo desired to return to Saugus, and her father sent word of
this to his son-in-law by messengers, requesting that a suitable guard
be provided to escort her down. But Winnepurkit liked not this method,
and bade the messengers return with this reply, "That when his wife
departed from him he caused his own men to wait upon her to her
father's territories, as did become him; but now that she had an
intent to return, it did become her father to send her back with a
convoy of his own people, and that it stood not with Winnepurkit's
reputation either to make himself or his men so servile as to fetch
her again." This reply, as may be imagined, ruffled the old chief, and
he sent a sharp answer "That his daughter's blood and birth deserved
more respect than to be slighted in such a manner, and therefore, if
Winnepurkit would have her company, he were best to send or come for
her." Neither would yield the point of Indian etiquette, and the
colonial narrator leaves it to be inferred that she then remained with
her father, though it is supposed she subsequently rejoined her
husband. The poet has made good use of the story, illustrating the
scenery of the region with great felicity, but giving the tale a
highly dramatic ending. Whittier makes the heart-broken bride, in her
effort to return to her husband, launch her canoe upon the swollen
Merrimack above the falls at Amoskeag when a spring freshet was
bringing down masses of ice:
"Down the vexed centre of that rushing tide,
The thick, huge ice-blocks threatening either side,
The foam-white rocks of Amoskeag in view,
With arrowy swiftness sped that light canoe.
"Sick and aweary of her lonely life,
Heedless of peril, the still faithful wife
Had left her mother's grave, her father's door,
To seek the wigwam of her chief once more!
"Down the white rapids, like a sere leaf whirled,
On the sharp rocks and piled-up ices hurled,
Empty and broken, circled the canoe,
In the vexed pool below--but where was Weetamoo?"
CAPE ANN.
Out in front of the region we have been describing projects the famous
"ridge of rocks and roses," the gaunt headland of Cape Ann. This is a
ponderous mass of hornblende granite, advanced forward twelve to
fifteen miles into the ocean, with Thatcher's Island beyond, on which
are the twin lighthouses that guard the mariner, forty-two miles north
of the Highland Light on Cape Cod. The granite hills of the iron-bound
headland are fringed with forests, while jagged reefs and rocky islets
surround it, against which the sea beats in perpetual warfare. The
surface is strewn with boulders, many of large size, and beds of the
finest white sand are interspersed. The Indians called this promontory
Wingaersheek, and when Captain John Smith came along he named it Cape
Tragabizonda, in memory of a Moslem princess who had befriended him
when a prisoner in Constantinople, also calling three small islands
off the cape the "Three Turks' Heads." But King Charles I. would have
none of this, however, and called the headland Cape Ann, after his
royal mother, and thus it has remained. The haven on the southern
side, Gloucester harbor, was early sought as a fishing station, being
known in 1624, and it received its name in 1642, most of the early
settlers coming from Gloucester in England. Champlain found it a safe
harbor when in peril, and writes of it as "Le Beau Port." In
August, 1892, this famous fishery port celebrated its two hundred and
fiftieth anniversary with great fervor.
[Illustration: _Along the Shore, Cape Anne, Gloucester, Mass._]
The prosperity of Gloucester has come from the fisheries, it being the
greatest cod and mackerel port in America, and having the most
extensive fleet of fishing-boats in the world, exceeding six hundred,
employing over six thousand men. The population approximates thirty
thousand, and it is said their earnings on the fishery product are
over $4,000,000 annually. The earliest form of the Cape Ann
fishing-smack was known as the "Chebacco," two-masted, cat-rigged, and
of ten or twelve tons, made sharp at both ends, and getting the name
from the first place of building, Chebacco Parish, in Ipswich,
adjoining the Cape. From this was developed the popular American build
of vessel known as the schooner, the first one being launched at
Gloucester in 1713. After sliding down the launching-ways, she so
gracefully glided out upon the water that a bystander exclaimed in
admiration, "See how she schoons!" and thus was she unexpectedly
named, for a "schooner" has that style of vessel been ever since
called. Gloucester surrounds its spacious harbor as a broad crescent,
having Ten Pound Island in front sentinelling the entrance to the
inner haven, so named because that was the price said to have been
paid the Indians for it. The deeply indented harbor opens towards the
southwest, being protected from the ocean by the long peninsula of
Eastern Point, having a fort and lighthouse on its extremity. Some
seventy wharves jut out from the circular head of the bay, with
granite hills rising behind, up which the town is terraced. Shipping
of all kinds are scattered about, including large salt-laden ships,
while fishermen and sailors wander through the streets and assemble
around the docks, spinning yarns and preparing for fishing ventures
out to the "Banks." The odd old town around the harbor has seen little
change for years, but the newer portions are greatly improved, having
many imposing buildings, including a fine City Hall. The numerous
churches have gained for it the title of "Many-spired Gloucester," and
no place could disclose more picturesque sea views.
But the fishery interest pervades the whole town, dwarfing everything
else. The main street winds about the head of the harbor, bending with
the sinuosities of the shore, and from it other streets, without much
regularity, go down to the wharves. Fishing-boats are everywhere, with
new ones building, and on most of the open spaces are "cod-flakes," or
drying-places, where the fish are piled when first landed, preparatory
to being cut up and packed in the extensive packing-houses adjoining
the wharves. Here many hundreds are employed in preparing the fish for
market, both men and women working. The best fish are either packed
whole or cut into squares, so they may be pressed by machinery into
what are known as "cod-bricks," one and two-pound bricks being put
into forty-pound boxes for shipment. When packed whole, the best fish
are known as "white clover," in this stage of what is called the
fishery "haymaking." This fish-packing is an enormous industry, and
the Gloucester product goes to all parts of the world. But the fishery
has its sombre side; the vessels are small, rarely over one hundred
tons, and the crews are numerous, so that wrecks and loss of life are
frequent. Often a tremendous storm will destroy a whole fleet on the
"Banks," with no tidings ever received; and scarcely a family exists
in Gloucester or its neighborhood that has not lost a member at sea.
Sometimes the badges of mourning are universal.
An enormous development of rocks and boulders is seen everywhere in
and around Gloucester. The houses are built upon rocks, the sea beats
against rocks; but though excellent building-material is here, the
houses are mostly of wood throughout the whole Cape Ann district.
There is almost universally an ocean outlook over a sea of deepest
blue. The outer extremity of the harbor to the westward is a long
granite ridge ending in the popular watering-place of Magnolia Point.
Down on the Eastern Point, alongside its terminating lighthouse, is a
curious granitic formation, the rocks reproducing an elderly dame with
muffled form and apron, known as "Mother Ann," this rude image being
locally regarded as representing, in the eternal granite, the lady
who named the Cape, the royal mother of King Charles I. The white
flashing light upon Ten Pound Island between them is said to have for
one of its chief duties the guiding of the mariner past the
treacherous reefs of Norman's Woe, just west of the harbor entrance,
which Longfellow has immortalized in his poem _The Wreck of the
Hesperus_. One "Goodman Norman" and his son were among the first
settlers near there, and hence the name, but no record is found as to
the "Woe" he may have had. Neither is it known that any wreck ever
occurred on this famous reef. In the winter of 1839 a terrific storm
caused many disasters around Cape Ann, and forty dead bodies, one
being a woman lashed to a spar, were washed on the Gloucester shore.
Longfellow read in a newspaper the story of these wrecks and the
horrible details, one of the vessels being named the "Hesperus," and
he somewhere saw a reference to "Norman's Woe." This name so impressed
him that he determined to write a ballad on the wrecks. Late one
night, as he sat by the fireside smoking his pipe, he conjured up the
vivid scene and wrote the ballad. He retired to bed, but, as he
relates, it was not to sleep; new thoughts crowded his mind, and he
rose and added them to the ballad, and at three o'clock in the morning
had finished his immortal poem. There was no such wreck at the place,
but his genius has associated it with the iron-bound coast of Cape
Ann, and Norman's Woe is a monument consecrated to one of America's
greatest poets.
"It was the schooner Hesperus
That sailed the wintry sea;
And the skipper had taken his little daughter
To bear him company.
"And fast through the midnight dark and drear,
Through the whistling sleet and snow,
Like a sheeted ghost the vessel swept
Towards the reef of Norman's Woe.
"She struck where the white and fleecy waves
Looked soft as carded wool,
But the cruel rocks they gored her sides
Like the horns of an angry bull.
"Her rattling shrouds, all sheathed in ice,
With the masts went by the board;
Like a vessel of glass, she stove and sank,
Ho! ho! the breakers roared!
"At daybreak on the bleak sea-beach,
A fisherman stood aghast,
To see the form of a maiden fair,
Lashed close to a drifting mast.
"The salt sea was frozen on her breast,
The salt tears in her eyes;
And he saw her hair, like the brown sea-weed,
On the billows fall and rise.
"Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,
In the midnight and the snow!
Christ save us all from a death like this
On the reef of Norman's Woe!"
THE LAND'S END.
The impressive scenery and bold picturesqueness all about attract many
artists, who haunt the rocks and sea views of Cape Ann. The whole
district is full of summer-homes, with flower-gardens and shrubbery
amid the rocks and boulders, and the cliffs and ocean presenting an
endless variety of changing scenery. The outer extremity of the Cape,
long called Halibut Point, has been modernized into the Land's End,
thus being rightly named as the termination of the great Massachusetts
granite ridge, which falls away sharply into the sea. Upon the one
hand Pigeon Cove, with its adjacent Sandy Bay, indents the rocky
buttress, while upon the other side is Whale Cove. Just off the Land's
End is the noted Thatcher's Island, low-lying on the sea, elongated,
narrow and barren, with its tall twin lighthouses, and having nearby,
in front of Whale Cove, the diminutive Milk Island. To the northward,
off Pigeon Cove, is another barren rock surmounted by a lighthouse,
Straitsmouth Island. These three outlying islands were the "Three
Turks' Heads," as originally named by Captain John Smith. Thatcher's
Island has about eighty acres of mainly gravelly surface strewn with
boulders, being named from Anthony Thatcher's shipwreck there in 1635
in the most awful tempest known to colonial New England. Rockport is a
town of quarries extended around Sandy Bay, protected by breakwaters,
behind which vessels come to load stone almost alongside the quarry.
Pigeon Cove is the port for shipping stone taken out of Pigeon Hill,
where the granite ridge is humped up into a grand eminence.
Lanesville, to the north, is another large exporter of paving-blocks
and building-stone. Alongside is Folly Point, guarding Folly Cove, at
the northeastern extremity of the Cape, and to the westward are the
villages of Bay View and Annisquam, with more quarries, and having,
not far away, flowing out to Ipswich Bay through a lovely valley in
the very heart of the Cape, the attractive little Squam River. The
people of Cape Ann outside of Gloucester are almost all quarrymen,
their product, largely paving-blocks, being shipped to all the
seaboard cities. So extensive is this trade that it is difficult to
decide which now brings the district most profit, the granite or the
fish. There is no doubt, however, that the greatest fame of this
celebrated Cape comes from its fisheries and the venturesome men who
make them so successful. Edmund Burke, in the British House of
Commons, in 1774, thus spoke of these Massachusetts fishermen: "No sea
but what is vexed by their fisheries; no climate that is not witness
of their toils; neither the perseverance of Holland, nor the activity
of France, nor the dexterous and firm sagacity of English enterprise,
ever carried their most perilous mode of hardy industry to the extent
to which it has been pursued by this recent people--a people who are
yet in the gristle, and not yet hardened into manhood."
For three centuries, almost, this perilous trade has been carried on,
and they are fully as daring and even more enterprising now than in
the colonial days. Thus Whittier describes them:
"Wild are the waves which lash the reefs along St. George's Bank,
Cold on the shore of Labrador the fog lies white and dank;
Through storm and wave and blinding mist, stout are the hearts
which man
The fishing-smacks of Marblehead, the sea-boats of Cape Ann.
"The cold North light and wintry sun glare on their icy forms
Bent grimly o'er their straining lines, or wrestling with the
storms;
Free as the winds they drive before, rough as the waves they roam,
They laugh to scorn the slaver's threat against their rocky home."
THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF
NARRAGANSETT.
XVI.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF NARRAGANSETT.
The State of Rhode Island -- Narragansett Bay -- Point
Judith -- Aquidneck -- Conanicut Island -- Jamestown --
Beaver Tail Light -- Patience, Hope and Despair Islands --
The Starved Goat -- Durfee Hill -- Narragansett Indians --
Canonicus -- Miantonomoh -- The Narragansett Fort Fight --
Uncas -- Norwich -- Sachem's Plain -- Nanunteno -- Yantic
Falls -- Narragansett Pier -- Commodore Perry -- Stuart the
Artist -- Wickford -- Clams -- Rocky Point -- Blackstone
River -- Seeconk River -- Vinland -- Roger Williams -- What
Cheer Rock -- Providence -- General Burnside -- Malbone's
Masterpiece -- Brown University -- Pawtucket -- Samuel
Slater -- Central and Valley Falls -- William Blackstone --
Study Hill -- Woonsocket -- Worcester -- George Bancroft --
Lake Quinsigamond -- Ware -- Mount Hope Bay -- The Vikings
-- Taunton Great River -- Bristol Neck -- Taunton --
Dighton Rock -- The Skeleton in Armor -- Bristol -- Mount
Hope -- King Philip -- Last of the Wampanoags -- Massasoit
-- Death of Philip -- Fall River -- Watuppa Ponds --
Newport -- Brenton's Point -- Fort Adams -- William
Coddington -- Bishop Berkeley -- The Cliff Walk -- Newport
Cottages -- The Casino -- Bellevue Avenue -- Judah Touro --
Touro Park -- The Old Stone Mill -- Buzzard's Bay --
Acushnet River -- New Bedford -- The Whale Fishery --
Clark's Point -- Fort Taber -- Nonquitt -- Vineyard Sound
-- Bartholomew Gosnold -- No Man's Land -- Elizabeth
Islands -- Cuttyhunk -- Sakonnet Point -- Hen and Chickens
-- Sow and Pigs -- Gay Head -- Naushon -- Penikese --
Nashawena -- Pasque Island -- James Bowdoin -- Wood's Holl
-- Martha's Vineyard -- Vineyard Haven -- Thomas Mayhew --
Cottage City -- Edgartown -- Chappaquidick Island -- Cape
Poge -- Nantucket -- Manshope -- Thomas Macy -- Wesco --
Whaling -- Nantucket Sound -- Nantucket Shoals -- Nantucket
Town -- Siasconset -- Wrecks.
THE STATE OF RHODE ISLAND.
Narragansett Bay is one of the finest harbors on the New England
coast. It stretches thirty miles inland, the rivers emptying into it
making the water-power for the numerous and extensive textile
factories of Rhode Island, which embraces the shores surrounding and
the islands within the bay. It opens broadly, having beautiful shores,
lined with pleasant beaches which dissolve into low cliffs and
water-worn crags; for the character of the coast gradually changes
from the sandy borders of Long Island Sound to the rocks of New
England. Its western boundary, stretching far out into the sea, is the
famous Point Judith, a long, low, narrow and protruding sandspit
thrust into the Atlantic, a headland dreaded by the traveller, to whom
"rounding Point Judith" and its brilliant flashing beacon, thus
changing the course over the long ocean swells, when voyaging upon a
Sound steamer, means a great deal in the way of tribute to Neptune.
This headland was always feared by the mariner, and we are
romantically told that in the colonial days a storm-tossed vessel was
driven in towards this shore, her anxious skipper at the wheel, when
suddenly his bright-eyed daughter, Judith, called out, "Land, father,
I see the land!" His dim vision not discerning it, he shouted, "Where
away? Point, Judith, point!" She pointed; he was warned; and quickly
changing the course, escaped disaster. This story was often repeated,
so that in time the sailors gave her name to the headland. It is an
interesting tale, but there are people, more prosaic, who insist that
the Point was really named after Judith Quincy, wife of John Hull, the
coiner of the ancient "pine-tree shillings," who bought the land there
from the Indians. But, however named, and whoever the sponsor, Judith
is usually well-remembered by those circumnavigating the dreaded
Point.
Within Narragansett Bay, the chief island is Aquidneck, or Rhode
Island, about fifteen miles long and of much fertility, having the
best farm land in New England, and at the southern end the noted
watering-place of Newport. This island furnishes the first half of the
long official title of the little State--"Rhode Island and Providence
Plantations." The memory of the old Narragansett chieftain, Canonicus,
is preserved in Conanicut Island, west of Rhode Island, and seven
miles long, there being between the two islands the capacious
anchorage-ground of Newport Harbor. This island in 1678 was named
Jamestown in honor of King James, and at its southern end, near the
ruins of an old British fort, is the famous Beaver Tail Light, the
guide into Newport harbor, the oldest lighthouse in America, dating
from 1667. Roger Williams, who founded the "Providence Plantations,"
distributed various names to the other islands, several of them now
popular resorts, among these titles, which represent the varying
phases of his early emotions, being Prudence, Patience, Hope and
Despair, while some later colonists with different ideas, evidently
named Dutch Island, Hog Island, and the Starved Goat. Rhode Island is
the smallest State in the Union, though among the first in
manufactures, and in wealth proportionately to population. It has
barely twelve hundred square miles of surface, of which more than
one-eighth is water, and the highest land, Durfee Hill, is elevated
only eight hundred feet.
THE LAND OF THE NARRAGANSETTS.
The region back of Point Judith and around Narragansett Bay was the
home of the Narragansett Indians, who were early made, by Roger
Williams, the friends of the white man. When the Pilgrims landed at
Plymouth, there were said to be thirty thousand of them, but they were
afterwards wasted by pestilence, and when Williams fled to Providence
and was received by them, he said they had twelve towns within twenty
miles, and five thousand warriors. They fought the Pequots, to the
westward, but were friendly with the tribes of Massachusetts, to which
they really gave the name, for, living in a comparatively flat
country, they described these tribes as belonging "near the great
hills or mountains," which is the literal meaning of the word, they
telling Williams it meant the many hills of that State, including the
"blue hills of Milton." Canonicus and Miantonomoh were the great
chiefs of the Narragansetts, described by the early colonists as wise,
brave and magnanimous. The former made the grant of the lands at
Providence to Roger Williams, and was his firm friend. The latter, the
nephew and successor of Canonicus, joined the Puritans under Mason at
Pequot Hill in the attack and defeat of the Pequots. In their original
theology they looked forward to a mystic realm in the far southwest
where the gods and pure spirits dwelt, while the souls of murderers,
thieves and liars were doomed forever to wander abroad. Their
friendship with the whites ended in 1675, however, when King Philip
incited them to join in his war, and the colonists attacked them on a
hill in a pine and cedar swamp near Kingston, west of Narragansett
Bay, where scanty remains still exist of their fortifications. It was
in December, amid the winter snows, and after a furious struggle their
wigwams were fired, and in the most blinding confusion a band of
warriors dashed out and covered the retreat of fully three thousand of
their people, leaving the whites in possession. Both sides had heavy
losses, but the result was the scattering and final annihilation of
the tribe. This was the famous "Fort Fight in Narragansett," of which
the memorial of the Connecticut Legislature says, "The bitter cold,
the tarled swamp, the tedious march, the strong fort, the numerous and
stubborn enemy they contended with for their God, King and country,
be their trophies over death."
To the westward, beyond the Rhode Island border, lived Uncas, the
enemy of Miantonomoh. His domain extended to the river Thames, and he
had been a chief of the Pequots, who revolted in 1634 against the
Sachem Sassacus and joined the Mohicans, being chosen their chief
sachem. He was friendly to the colonists, and by sagacious alliances
with them increased the power of his tribe, which had previously been
in a relatively subordinate position. He helped defeat the Pequots,
and became so strong that he was described as the "most powerful and
prosperous prince in New England." He sold the shores of the Thames
River to the whites, reserving a small tract on the river bank, and in
1660 disposed of the present site of Norwich, Connecticut, to a
nomadic church from Saybrook, for £70. He held his people friendly to
the colonists, even in King Philip's war, frequently visited their
capitals at Hartford and Boston, and after reigning nearly fifty
years, died in 1683. He is described as crafty, cruel and rapacious,
but, as the head of a savage people, far-sighted and sagacious;
skillful and fearless as a military leader. His holding aloof from the
Indian alliances adverse to the colonists and fighting with the whites
against the powerful hostile tribes, are regarded as having really
saved colonial New England. His quarrel with Miantonomoh resulted in
the battle of Sachem's Plain, on the outskirts of Norwich, in 1643.
This was then a Mohican village, and Miantonomoh marched to attack it
with nine hundred Narragansetts, Uncas defending with five hundred
warriors. By a preconcerted plan, Uncas invited him to a parley, and
while it was going on, and the Narragansetts were off their guard, the
Mohicans made a sudden onslaught, defeating and pursuing them for a
long distance. Hundreds of the Narragansetts were slain, and
Miantonomoh, being captured, was taken prisoner to the English at
Hartford. He was ultimately surrendered back to Uncas, who took him
again to the Sachem's Plain, where he was put to death, the historian
says, "by the advice and consent of the English magistrates and
elders." A monument marks the place of execution, inscribed
"Miantonomoh, 1643." His son, Nanunteno, who succeeded, led the tribe
into King Philip's war, as he hated the colonists, and being captured,
he declined to treat with them for a pardon, saying, when threatened
with death, "I like it well; I shall die before my heart is soft or I
have spoken anything unworthy of myself," whereupon he was shot. He
was "acting herein," says old Cotton Mather, "as if, by a Pythagorean
metempsychosis, some old Roman ghost had possessed the body of this
Western Pagan, like Attilius Regulus."
A few miles south of Norwich is the ancient fortress of Uncas on a
hill, and a handful of weak half-breeds are all that remain of his
famous people. In the city, on Sachem Street, near the Yantic Falls,
is a little cemetery in a cluster of pine trees. This, centuries ago,
was the burial-place of the Mohican chiefs, and the whole line of
sachems is here interred, down to the last of them, Mazeen, buried in
1826 in the presence of a small remnant of the tribe. Ancient stones
mark their graves, and in the centre is an obelisk in memory of Uncas,
of which President Andrew Jackson laid the foundation-stone. The
Yantic and Shetucket Rivers unite at Norwich to form the Thames, and
the town has arisen around their admirable water-powers, which serve
many mills. The city has about twenty thousand people, being in a
beautiful situation between and on the acclivities adjoining the two
rivers. The praises of the Yantic Falls were sung by Mrs. Sigourney
and others, but their glory has departed, for the stream has been
diverted into another channel, leaving a deep cutting in the hard
rock, the bottom filled with curiously-piled and water-worn boulders.
ASCENDING NARRAGANSETT BAY.
On the western shore of Narragansett Bay, just inside of Point Judith,
stood the little fishing village of Narragansett Pier, originally
named from its ancient, sea-battered and ruined pier, built for a
breakwater in early times, which has since become one of the most
fashionable New England coast resorts, having many large hotels
spreading in imposing array along the shore. The smooth sands of its
bathing-beach look out upon Newport far over the bay and behind
Conanicut Island in front. Upon the southern border of this beach
there are precipitous cliffs against which the Atlantic Ocean breakers
dash, the last rocks on the coast of the United States until the
Florida reefs are reached. The famous Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry
was a native of this town, born in 1785, a midshipman in the war with
Tripoli, and the victor in the naval battle on Lake Erie in 1813. His
brother, Commodore M. C. Perry, born in Newport in 1794, commanded the
noted expedition to Japan in 1852-54, and concluded the treaty with
that country, cementing the friendly relations with the United States
ever since existing. The celebrated portrait painter Gilbert Stuart
was also a native of this place, born in 1755, his portrait of
Washington being regarded as the best existing. The western shores of
the bay north of the Pier are lined with coast resorts. Here is quaint
old Wickford, on Coweset Bay, which has a ferry twelve miles across to
Newport, and still exhibits the "Rolling Rock," where Canonicus and
Roger Williams are said to have signed their compact, and the old
Blockhouse built for a defense in 1641. Farther northward is the
ancient Shawomet, whither Samuel Gorton came, changing its name to Old
Warwick in honor of his friend and patron, the Earl of Warwick. It
appears that Gorton, a layman, who had a penchant for theological
disputation, made himself obnoxious to the Plymouth Puritans in the
early colonial time, and they banished him in 1637. He went to Newport
and expressed his opinions too freely, and was banished thence in
1641. Wandering to Providence, he was driven from there to Cranston,
nearby, the next year, and again expelled from Cranston a few months
later, and he finally settled at Shawomet. But they still pursued him,
and in 1643 a detachment of troops came from Boston and took him and
ten others back as prisoners, and they were tried and sentenced as
"damnable heretics" to banishment from America. Gorton sought
Warwick's protection, and the Earl sent him back to Shawomet, where he
lived undisturbed, but, after changing its name, spent the rest of his
life in publishing pamphlets attacking Massachusetts and Rhode Island,
among them being the "Antidote Against Pharisaic Teachers" and
"Simplicitie's Defence against Seven-Headed Policy." The next thing of
note occurring in Warwick was the disfranchisement, in 1652, of the
clerk of the unfortunate town on seven charges: first, calling the
officers of the town rogues and thieves; second, calling all the town
rogues and thieves; third, threatening to kill all the mares in town,
etc. In 1676 the Indians attacked and burnt it, and since, it has had
little history. General Greene was a native of Warwick, born in 1742.
In sailing up Narragansett Bay, one is struck with the universality
of the prolific crop of these waters,--the clam. Many of the
inhabitants seem to spend much of their time gathering them; men and
boys in boats are dredging all the coves and shallows for the clams,
seizing enormous numbers by the skillful use of their handy double
rakes. These people are proud of their home institution, the Rhode
Island "clam-bake," which is a main-stay of all the shore resorts, and
is considered a connecting link, binding them to the Narragansetts,
who originated it. To properly conduct the "clam-bake" a wood fire is
built in the open air, upon a layer of large stones, and when these
are sufficiently heated, the embers and ashes are swept off, the hot
stones covered with sea-weed, and clams in the shells, with other
delicacies, put upon it, being enveloped by masses of sea-weed and
sail-cloths to keep in the steam. The clams are thus baked by the
heated stones, and steamed and seasoned by the moisture from the salt
sea-weed. The coverings are then removed, the clams opened, and the
feasting begins. With appetite whetted by the delicious breezes coming
over the bright waters of the bay, the meal is relished beyond
description. There are millions of clams thus consumed, but their
growth is enormous, and the supply seems perennial. The chief of these
places is Rocky Point, a forest-covered promontory, the favorite
resort of the population of the Rhode Island capital, where the
"clam-bakes" have acquired great fame.
ROGER WILLIAMS.
There flows southeastward out of Massachusetts the Blackstone River
into Rhode Island, and going over Pawtucket Falls it then becomes for
a brief space the Pawtucket River, and finally, at its mouth, the
Seeconk River, making part of Providence harbor and one of the heads
of Narragansett Bay. The shores of this river swarm with industrial
operatives, for its valley is one of the greatest regions of textile
mills in the world, and half the people of Rhode Island live in the
chief city on its banks, Providence. Nine centuries ago the Norsemen
are said to have sailed up into this region, which they called
Vinland, but the first settlement was not made until 1636. The brave
and pious Welshman, Roger Williams, the heretical Salem preacher whom
the Puritans in 1635 banished from Massachusetts, went afoot through
the forest to the Seeconk Plains along the lower Blackstone River, and
halting there, lived with the Narragansetts, who were always his firm
friends. But the wrathful Puritans would not long permit this, and
ordered him to move on, so that in the spring of 1636, with five
companions, he embarked in a log canoe and floated down the Seeconk
River, his movements being watched by Indian groups upon the banks. He
crossed over the stream finally, and landed on what has since been
called "What Cheer Rock," on the eastern edge of Providence, thus
named because, when Williams stepped ashore, some of the Indians
saluted him with the pleasant greeting, "What cheer, Notop?"
(friend)--words that are still carefully preserved throughout
Providence and the State in the names of banks, buildings, and various
associations. He regarded this as a decidedly good omen, and started a
settlement, calling it Providence, "in grateful acknowledgment of
God's merciful providence to him in his distress." His exalted piety
was beyond question, and not only is the religious spirit in which the
city was founded indicated by its name, but even in the titles of the
streets are incorporated the cardinal virtues and the higher emotions,
as in Joy Street, Faith Street, Happy Street, Hope Street, Friendship
Street, Benefit Street, Benevolent Street, and many more. We are told
that his early colonists adopted the Indian foods, such as parched
corn, which the aborigines called "anhuminea," from which has come the
name of hominy, and the famous Narragansett mixture of corn and beans,
the "m'sickquatash," which has become succotash.
Roger Williams in Rhode Island, in 1639, became a Baptist, and the
"Society of the First Baptist Church," which he founded that year in
Providence, claims to be the oldest Baptist organization in America.
But Williams seems to have been somewhat unstable, for he only
remained with this church as pastor four years, then withdrawing, as
he had grave doubts of the validity of his own baptism. It appears
that when this church was started, a layman, Ezekiel Holliman, first
baptized Williams, and then Williams baptized Holliman and the others.
When he withdrew, it was not only from the pastoral relation, but he
ceased worshipping with the brethren, and his conscientious scruples
finally brought him to the conclusion that there is "no regularly
constituted church on earth, nor any person authorized to administer
any church ordinance, nor could there be until new apostles were sent
by the great Head of the Church, for whose coming he was seeking."
During many years thereafter he held his religious meetings in a
grove. This venerable Baptist society which Roger Williams founded
built a new church in 1726, and in its honor they had a "grand
dinner." The elaborate banquet of those primitive days consisted of
the whole congregation dining upon one sheep, one pound of butter, two
loaves of bread, and a peck of peas, at a cost of twenty-seven
shillings. Their white wooden church, with its surmounting steeple,
overlooks the city from a slope rising above Providence River.
THE CITY OF PROVIDENCE.
Providence is beautifully situated on the hills at the head of
Narragansett Bay, and its centre is a fine new Union Railway Station,
completed in 1897. Near by is the massive City Hall, one of the chief
public buildings in Rhode Island, a granite structure costing
$1,500,000. In high relief upon its front is a medallion bust of the
founder of the little State, Roger Williams, wearing the typical
sugar-loaf hat. A feature of this impressive building is the
magnificent stair-hall, lighted from above; and from the surmounting
tower there is a wide view over the city and suburbs, and far down the
bay towards the ocean. In front is the public square, with a stately
Soldiers' and Sailors' Monument of blue Westerly granite, bearing the
names of nearly seventeen hundred men of Rhode Island who fell in the
Civil War, and guarded by well-executed bronze statues representing
the different arms of the service. Facing it is a statue in heroic
bronze of the Rhode Island General Burnside, who died in 1881. These
works are artistic, but the priceless art gem in Providence is the
exquisite little picture of "The Hours," painted on a sheet of ivory
six by seven inches, in London, by the great portrait and miniature
painter, Edward Greene Malbone, of Newport--the three Grecian nymphs,
Eunomia, Dice and Irene, representing the Past, Present and Future.
The President of the Royal Academy said of it, "I have seen a picture,
painted by a young man of the name of Malbone, which no man in England
could excel." This is his masterpiece, one of the most admired
paintings in America, and is kept carefully in the Athenæum (to which
it was presented by a public subscription in 1853), a solid little
granite house built on the hillside, not far from the Baptist church.
Farther up this hill are the campus and rows of buildings of Brown
University, the great Rhode Island Baptist College with seven hundred
students, founded in 1764, and bearing the name of one of the leading
families of the wealthy manufacturing house of Brown & Ives. The
campus is shaded with fine old elms, and some of the newer buildings
are handsome and elaborate structures. Around this university, and all
through the extensive suburbs, are the splendid homes of the
capitalists and mill-owners of the State, who have made this hill,
rising between the Providence and Seeconk Rivers, the most attractive
residential section. Benefit Street, on the hill, is lined with the
palaces of these textile millionaires. Providence is, in fact, a city
of many hills, and its houses are mostly of wood. Extensive sections
can be traversed without seeing a single brick or stone building.
There is a large railway traffic, but only a small trade by sea,
beyond bringing coal and cotton, though the city formerly enjoyed an
extensive China trade. Like all the Rhode Island towns it has many
mills and much wealth, and there are thirty or forty banks to take
care of its money. Besides textiles, its mills make locomotives and
Corliss steam-engines, silverware and jewelry, cigars, rifles and
stoves, gimlet-pointed wood-screws, tortoise-shell work and cocoanut
dippers, cottonseed and peanut oils, and many other things, not
overlooking the famous "Pain-killer," for the ills of humanity, which
is consumed by the hundred thousand gallons in all parts of the world.
The "Pain-killer" factory was always one of the lions of the town,
although now the new Rhode Island State House, finished in 1898, also
commands great public admiration. This is a huge dome-surmounted
building in Renaissance, constructed of Georgia marble and pink
granite. But Providence, above everything else, reveres the memory of
Roger Williams, who died in 1683, and is interred in the old North
Burying Ground. On Abbott Street is carefully preserved, as a precious
relic, a small old house with quaint peaked roof, built in the
seventeenth century, and reverenced as the place where he held some of
his religious meetings. His bronze statue ornaments the Roger Williams
Park to which Broad Street leads, a beautiful tract of about one
hundred acres, surrounding the quaint gambrel-roofed house in which
lived his great-great-granddaughter, Betsy Williams, for many years,
who gave this domain to the city in 1871, as her tribute to his
memory. Here are refreshments served at "What Cheer Cottage." But the
most treasured memorial of the founder is his original landing-place
of "What Cheer Rock," where the Indians greeted him alongside the
Seeconk River,--a pile of slaty rocks, enclosed by a railing, near the
foot of Williams Street, down by the waterside.
PROVIDENCE TO WORCESTER.
We ascend the Seeconk River to Pawtucket, about five miles distant, a
busy manufacturing town of thirty thousand people, noted as the place
where Samuel Slater introduced the cotton manufacture into the United
States in 1790, the original Slater mill still standing. The Pawtucket
Falls of fifty feet give the valuable water-power which has made the
place, and here are some of the greatest thread factories in the
world. The town extends up into the villages of Central and Valley
Falls, and the enormous power furnished by the river is drawn upon at
different levels from several dams. All sorts of cotton textiles,
muslins and calicoes are made, and the slopes running up from the
valley, with the plateaus above, are covered with the operatives'
houses. This town has the most attractive situation on the Blackstone
River, which here changes its name to the Pawtucket, and finally to
the Seeconk. Samuel Slater, who started it, was a native of Belper, in
Derbyshire, England, having worked there for both Strutt and
Arkwright, the fathers of the textile industries. Learning that
American bounties had been offered for the introduction of Arkwright's
patents in cotton-spinning, he crossed the ocean, landing at Newport
in 1789. Here he heard that Moses Brown had attempted cotton-spinning
by machinery in Rhode Island. He wrote Brown, telling what he could
do, and received a reply in which Brown said his attempt had been
unsuccessful, and added: "If thou canst do this thing, I invite thee
to come to Rhode Island and have the credit and the profit of
introducing cotton manufacture into America." Slater went to
Pawtucket, and on December 21, 1790, he started three carding-machines
and spinning-frames of seventy-two spindles. He afterwards became very
prominent, building large mills at Pawtucket and elsewhere, and the
impetus thus given the place made it the leading American
manufacturing centre for a half-century. The Indian name of the falls
was retained by the city.
The Blackstone River was named after the recluse Anglican clergyman,
Rev. William Blackstone, who, as heretofore stated, first settled
Boston about 1625. When he found, after a brief experience, that he
could not get on with the Puritan colonists, who came in there too
numerously, he sold out and "retired into the wilderness." He wandered
for over forty miles into the forests, and during more than forty
years made his home on the banks of this stream among the Indians, not
far above Pawtucket Falls. He lived there in his hermit home at Study
Hill among his books, the river rushing by, and the Providence and
Worcester Branch of the New Haven Consolidated Railroad now cuts its
route deeply through his hill, running among the dams, and in some
cases over them, on its way up the busy valley of this very crooked
river. Its waters, which do such good service for so many mills,
become more and more polluted as they descend, so that its lower
course is a malodorous and dark-colored stream. The river is about
forty-five miles long, rising in the hills adjacent to Worcester and
flowing in winding reaches towards the southeast, descending over five
hundred feet to Providence. The mills, however, have grown vastly
beyond its capacity as a water-power, so that auxiliary steam is now
largely used. Numerous ponds and other feeders accumulate a vast
amount of water for the Blackstone in Southern Massachusetts, and its
lower course for nearly thirty miles is a succession of dams, canals
and mills, making one of the greatest factory districts in existence.
Over a half-million people work and live in this busy valley, the
operatives being chiefly French Canadians, Swedes, and the various
British races, the French preponderating in some of the towns. The
Yankees long ago left, seeking better pay elsewhere, being replaced by
a more contented people satisfied to work in mills. Most of the huge
factories lining the river are owned by wealthy corporations having
their head offices in Boston or Providence, and it is said that, the
buildings being without signs or names, many of the operatives
actually do not know who they work for. These mills are four and five
stories high, often a thousand feet long, with hundreds of windows and
ponderous stairway-towers.
Ascending the river, the factory settlements of Lonsdale, Ashton,
Albion and Manville are passed, and we come to Woonsocket Hill, one of
the highest in Rhode Island. Here the river goes around various bends
admirably arranged for conducting its waters through the mills, and
the town of Woonsocket is built where twenty thousand people make
cotton and woollen cloths, the noted "Harris cassimere" having been
long the chief manufacture at the Social Mills. To the northward,
Woonsocket spreads into the towns of Blackstone and Waterford, also
industrial hives; and finally, having followed the river up to its
sources, the route leads to Worcester, the second city of
Massachusetts, forty-five miles west of Boston, styled the "heart of
the Commonwealth," with a population of over one hundred thousand
people. Its chief newspaper, the _Massachusetts Spy_, is noted as
having actually started as a spy upon the royalists in the exciting
times preceding the Revolutionary War, and is still a prosperous
publication. It was at a Worcester banquet in 1776 that the "Sons of
Freedom" drank the noted toast: "May the freedom and independence of
America endure till the sun grows dim with age and this earth returns
to chaos; perpetual itching without the benefit of scratching to the
enemies of America!" Worcester is a great manufacturing city, but has
almost lost its New England population from the steady Yankee
migration westward, they being replaced in its numerous mills by
French Canadians, Swedes and Irish, the latter predominating. It has a
noble Soldiers' Monument, a splendid railway station, and the fine
buildings of the Massachusetts Lunatic Asylum standing on the highest
hill in the suburbs. Its new white marble City Hall, completed in
1898, is an imposing edifice. The huge Washburn & Moen Wire Works are
on Salisbury Pond, in the outskirts. Among the interesting old
dwellings is the Bancroft House, where the historian, George Bancroft,
was born, in 1800, dying in 1891. The great attraction of Worcester is
Lake Quinsigamond, on the eastern verge, a long, deep, narrow loch,
stretching among the hills four miles away, with little gems of
islands and villa-bordered shores. Scattered over the distant rim of
enclosing hills are several typical Yankee villages, with their
church-spires set against the horizon. Worcester had a chequered
colonial career, the Indians repeatedly driving out the early
settlers, until they built a fortress-like church on the Common, where
each man attended on the Sabbath, carrying his musket. These resolute
colonists were Puritans, bent on enforcing their own ideas, for when a
few Scotch Presbyterians came in 1720, and built a church of that
creed, it was declared a "cradle of heresy" and demolished. A
considerable number of the French Acadians, exiled from Nova Scotia in
the eighteenth century, came to Worcester, and their descendants are
now among its prominent people.
New England, as is well known, was forced to adopt manufacturing,
because the inhabitants could not extract a living from the soil. It
is difficult to say where is the most sterile region, but in
Massachusetts it seems to be generally agreed that the town of Ware,
on the Ware River, northwest of Worcester, is hard to beat in this
respect. It is a picturesquely located mill-village, with a soil that
is stony and sterile. The original grant of the land was made to
soldiers as a reward for bravery in King Philip's War. They thankfully
accepted the gift and went there, but after examination left, and sold
all their domain at the rate of about two cents an acre. President
Dwight, of Yale College, rode through the town, but never wanted to
see it again, saying regretfully, in describing the land: "It is like
self-righteousness; the more a man has of it, the poorer he is."
Someone wrote a poem describing the creation of the place, of which
this a specimen stanza:
"Dame Nature once, while making land,
Had refuse left of stone and sand.
She viewed it well, then threw it down
Between Coy's Hill and Belchertown,
And said, 'You paltry stuff, lie there,
And make a town, and call it Ware.'"
MOUNT HOPE BAY.
On the northeastern verge of Narragansett Bay is Mount Hope Bay, its
shores attractive alike in lovely scenery and the most interesting
tradition. It is also a region of most venerable antiquity in
America. Hither came the ancient Norsemen Vikings, who explored it,
and sojourned there almost a thousand years ago. These wandering
Norsemen, early colonizing Iceland and Greenland, are said to have
discovered the mainland of North America in the tenth century, the
energetic Leif, a son of Eric the Red, afterwards, in the year 1001,
sailing along the American coast, and finding first, Helluland, or the
"Flat Land," supposed to be Newfoundland, then Mark Land, or the "Wood
Land," now Nova Scotia, and Vinland, or the "Vine Land," being the
coasts of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and wintering in
Narragansett and Mount Hope Bays. The next year Leif's brother,
Thorvald, came along these coasts with thirty men, and also passed a
winter in Mount Hope Bay. The following season he sent a party of
explorers hither, and in the year 1004 he again came personally, and
was killed in a skirmish with the Indians, his companions returning to
Greenland. There seem to have been subsequent Norsemen visits, and the
name of Vinland was given by them on account of the profusion of vines
growing on the shores and islands, which was a novelty to these
wanderers from the far north.
Mount Hope Bay is the broadening estuary of Taunton Great River, and
the elongated peninsula of Bristol Neck divides it from Narragansett
Bay to the westward, stretching up to Providence. Upon Taunton Great
River is a magnificent water-power which has produced the success of
Taunton, a busy manufacturing town of thirty thousand people, where
they make locomotives and tacks, bricks, screws and britannia ware,
its name coming from Taunton in Somersetshire, its founder having been
Elizabeth Pool, a pious Puritan lady of that place. When the first
settlers explored the river they made a wonderful antiquarian
discovery. Upon the shore, below Taunton, and opposite what are now
the gardens and pleasure-grounds of Dighton, was found the famous
"Writing Rock," lying partly submerged by the waterside, and when the
tide is out, presenting a smooth face slightly inclined towards the
river. It is a large greenstone boulder, the color changed to dusky
red by the elements, and it now has the faint impression of
hieroglyphics on its surface that have been almost effaced by the
action of the water. In the early colonial days these marks were very
distinct, and even after the beginning of the nineteenth century they
could be plainly distinguished from the deck of a passing vessel.
These inscriptions on the Dighton rock excited much wonder, and were
generally attributed to the Norsemen. Old Cotton Mather described it,
saying that among the "curiosities of New England, one is that of a
mighty rock, on a perpendicular side whereof, by a river which at high
tide covers part of it, there are very deeply engraved, no man alive
knows how or when, about half a score lines, near ten foot long and a
foot and a half broad, filled with strange characters." Another
learned man speaks of them as "Punic inscriptions which remain to this
day," made by the Phoenicians. Below, and near Fall River, many
years ago, there was exhumed a skeleton in sitting posture, wearing a
brass breast-plate and a belt of brass armor. Much marvel resulted
from this important discovery, which was thought to have produced a
veritable dead Viking, and it is said to have inspired Longfellow's
poem of "The Skeleton in Armor":
"Speak! speak! thou fearful guest!
Who, with thy hollow breast
Still in rude armor drest,
Comest to daunt me!
"Wrapt not in Eastern balms,
But with thy fleshless palms
Stretched, as if asking alms,
Why dost thou haunt me?"
Thus he answers:
"I was a Viking old!
My deeds, though manifold,
No Skald in song has told,
No Saga taught thee!
"Take heed, that in thy verse,
Thou dost the tale rehearse,
Else dread a dead man's curse;
For this I sought thee."
And then the poet unfolds his weird and romantic history. Despite the
Norsemen traditions, however, it is regarded as more probable that
both the hieroglyphics and the skeleton were of Indian origin.
KING PHILIP.
Upon the western shore of Mount Hope Bay is the town of Bristol,
quiet, with wide, grassy, tree-shaded streets leading down to the
waterside, now a pleasant summer-resort, having a ferry over to Fall
River. Farther up the peninsula is Warren, with its factories. In
Bristol rises the splendid isolated eminence of Mount Hope, which
gives the bay its name. Its rounded summit is a mass of quartzite
rock, almost covered by grass. It is hardly three hundred feet high,
but being the most elevated spot anywhere around, has a grand outlook,
every town in Rhode Island being visible from it, and all the islands
of Narragansett Bay, while far to the southward, upon distant
Aquidneck, Newport gleams in the sunlight. Eastward, across Mount Hope
Bay, the city of Fall River, with its rising terraces of huge granite
mills, is built apparently into the sloping side of a ledge of rocks.
Upon this mountain lived the famous chief, King Philip, and from it,
with his warrior band, he sallied forth to carry slaughter and rapine
among the Puritan settlements. The eastern side of Mount Hope falls
off precipitously to the bay, and when he was finally surprised by the
colonists in his lair, he is said to have rolled down this steep
declivity like a barrel. The mountain top is now known as "King
Philip's Seat;" there is a natural excavation in the mountain side,
called "King Philip's Throne;" and from the foot the waters of
"Philip's Spring" flow away, a little purling brook, out to Taunton
River. One disgruntled early colonial annalist described the place as
"Philip's Sty at Mount Hope." The greatest tradition of this region
tells of the ambush, surprise and death of this famous sachem, the
"Last of the Wampanoags."
The name of Wampanoag means "the men of the East Land," or the Indians
to the eastward of Narragansett Bay. When the Pilgrims landed at
Plymouth, the noted Massasoit was the Grand Sachem of the Wampanoags,
or Pokanokets, whose territory embraced most of the country from
Narragansett Bay to Cape Cod. The tribe had previously numbered thirty
thousand, but a pestilence had reduced them to a small figure, barely
three hundred, not long before the arrival of the "Mayflower."
Massasoit felt his weakness and made friends with the colonists, his
treaties of peace being faithfully kept for a half-century. The old
sachem lived north of Mount Hope, at Sowamset, now the town of Warren,
where his favorite "Massasoit Spring" still pours out its libations.
He died in 1661, at the age of eighty, leaving two sons, Mooanum and
Metacomet. Shortly after his death, these sons went to Plymouth to
confirm the treaties with the whites, and were so much pleased with
their reception that they asked to be given English names. The
colonial court accordingly conferred upon them the names of Alexander
and Philip. The former was chief sachem, but died within a year,
Philip succeeding. During the next decade he lived in comparative
friendliness, but was always unsatisfied and restless. He grew to
distrust the colonists, and never could be made to comprehend their
religion. When John Eliot, the Indian apostle, who converted so many,
preached before him, Philip pulled a button off Eliot's doublet,
saying in contempt that he valued it more than the discourse, a remark
which led pious old Cotton Mather to exclaim, in horror, "the
monster!" It was not long before the peaceful relations were broken,
and, after 1671, Philip travelled among the tribes throughout New
England, exciting them to a crusade against the colonists, and forming
a powerful league, including the Narragansetts, who had been friendly.
The result was the most desolating Indian war from which the colonies
ever suffered. The whites were everywhere attacked, but made heroic
defense, and in 1675-6 they defeated all the tribes, the Narragansetts
and Wampanoags being practically annihilated.
KING PHILIP'S DEATH.
Defeated, and left without resources, the savage king was then hunted
from one place to another, finally seeking refuge in his eyrie on
Mount Hope, with a handful of followers. Here Captain Church attacked
him, and on August 12, 1676, he was killed by a bullet fired by an
Indian. In Church's annals of that terrible war the story is told of
the death of this chief, the last of his line. Philip was ambushed and
completely surprised on the mountain, and running away, rolled down
its side, the Indians trying to escape through a swamp at the foot.
The attacking party was posted around the swamp in couples, hidden
from view. Philip, partly clad, ran directly towards two of the
ambush, an Englishman and an Indian. The former fired, but missed him;
then the Indian fired twice, sending one bullet through his heart and
the other not more than two inches from it. Philip fell dead upon his
face in the mud and water; most of his companions escaped. In Church's
recital is told what followed:
"Captain Church ordered Philip's body to be pulled out of the mire on
to the upland. So some of Captain Church's Indians took hold of him by
his stockings, and some by his small breeches, being otherwise naked,
and drew him through the mud to the upland; and a doleful, great,
naked, dirty beast he looked like. Captain Church then said that,
forasmuch as he had caused many an Englishman's body to lie unburied
and rot above ground, not one of his bones should be buried. And,
calling his old executioner, bid him behead and quarter him.
Accordingly he came with his hatchet and stood over him, but before he
struck, he made a small speech, directing it to Philip, and said 'he
had been a very great man, and had made many a man afraid of him, but
so big as he was, he would now chop him in pieces.' And so went to
work and did as he was ordered. Philip having one very remarkable
hand, being very much scarred, occasioned by the splitting of a pistol
in it formerly, Captain Church gave the head and that hand to
Aldermon, the Indian who shot him, to show to such gentlemen as would
bestow gratuities upon him, and accordingly he got many a penny by it.
This being on the last day of the week, the Captain with his company
returned to the island (Aquidneck), tarried there until Tuesday, and
then went off and ranged through all the woods to Plymouth, and
received their premium, which was 30 shillings per head for the
enemies which they had killed or taken, instead of all wages, and
Philip's head went at the same price. Methinks it is scanty reward and
poor encouragement, though it was better than what had been some time
before. For this much they received four shillings and sixpence a man,
which was all the reward they had, except the honor of killing
Philip."
When the party brought Philip's head to Plymouth, the Puritan meeting
was celebrating a solemn thanksgiving, and quoting, again, the words
of old Cotton Mather, "God sent them in the head of a leviathan for a
thanksgiving feast." This head was exposed on a gibbet at Plymouth for
twenty years, as the arch-enemy of the colony. But things were
different afterwards. The "monster" of the seventeenth century became
a martyr in the nineteenth century. Irving wrote King Philip's
biography; Southey was his bard; and Edwin Forrest nobly impersonated
him. Thus the great Metacomet, in the light of history, is regarded as
sinned against as well as sinning, for he was trying to drive the
invader from his native land. The resistless westward march of the
white man overcame him, the first of a long line of famous Indians to
fall in front of American colonization.
FALL RIVER.
Across Mount Hope Bay is Fall River, in Massachusetts, now the leading
American city in cotton-spinning and the manufacture of print cloths.
Its huge granite mills stand in ranks, like the platoons of a marching
regiment, upon the successive rising terraces of the eastern shore.
Nestling among the hills above the town are the extensive Watuppa
ponds, long and narrow lakes, spreading eight or ten miles back upon
the higher plateau. These, with other tributary ponds, cover about
twelve square miles surface, discharging through a comparatively small
stream, yet one carrying a large volume of water. This is the Fall
River, dammed at the outlet of the ponds, and barely two miles long,
but running so steeply down hill that within about eight hundred yards
distance it descends one hundred and thirty-six feet, thus being
appropriately named, and in turn giving its name to the town gathered
around this admirable water-power. The mills, however, have grown so
far beyond the ability of the water-wheels that they now run chiefly
by steam, and Fall River has a population approximating one hundred
thousand. The prolific granite quarries in the surrounding hills have
furnished the stone for these imposing mills, and also for the chief
buildings. Although a New England manufacturing city of the first
rank, it is not a Yankee settlement, for the operatives are chiefly
English, Irish, Welsh and French Canadians. When the settlement began,
it was called Freetown, and afterwards Troy, but the name of the
stream finally became so popular that the others were discarded, and
Fall River was adopted officially upon its incorporation as a city.
The rocky environment enabled it to cheaply construct the grand mill
buildings, and thus had much to do with its success.
NEWPORT OF AQUIDNECK.
The eastern side of Narragansett Bay is chiefly occupied by Aquidneck,
or Rhode Island, upon which is the queen of American seaside resorts,
Newport. Aquidneck is the Indian "Isle of Peace," the word literally
meaning "floating on the water," and its southwestern extremity
broadens into a wide peninsula of almost level and quite fertile land,
making a plateau elevated about fifty feet above the sea. The island
is fifteen miles long and from three to four miles wide, and this
plateau rests upon rock, the strata making cliffs all around it, with
coves worked into them by the waters, presenting smooth sand beaches
having intervening bold promontories. The southeastern border of this
plateau, facing the Atlantic, has an irregular front of little bays
and projections, with the waves dashing against the bases of the
cliffs and among the rocks profusely strewn beyond them. Behind the
western extremity of the island is Brenton's Point, projecting in such
a way as to protect the inner harbor of Newport. Here are the wharves,
facing the westward, and the ancient part of the town, its narrow
streets and older houses covering considerable surface. The harbor is
protected by a breakwater, and beyond is Conanicut Island. This was
"Charming Newport of Aquidneck," as the colonial histories recorded
it, then a leading seaport of New England. Thames Street, fronting it,
was, in the eighteenth century, one of the busiest highways of
America. Protecting the harbor entrance, upon Brenton's Point, is Fort
Adams, which was a formidable fortification before modern-gunnery
improvements superseded the old systems, and, next to Fortress Monroe,
it is the largest defensive work in the United States, having
accommodations for a garrison of three thousand men. It was built
during the Presidency of John Adams, and named for him, being then
hurried to completion as a defense against French attacks, war with
that country seeming to be imminent, and the French particularly
desiring to possess Newport. All around the ancient town, and
spreading over the plateau, to which the surface slopes upward in
gentle ascent from the harbor, is the modern Newport of the American
nineteenth century multi-millionaires. From the older town, southward
across the plateau, stretches the chief street, Bellevue Avenue,
through the fashionable residential district.
William Coddington, whose name is preserved in various ways, but whose
descendants are said to have been degenerate, founded Newport. He led
a band of dissenters from the Puritan church in Massachusetts and
bought Aquidneck from the Indians, starting his colony in 1639. Most
of the earlier settlers, in fact, were people of various religious
sects driven out of the strictly Puritan New England towns. Having
abandoned England because they objected to a State Church, we are told
that the Puritans forthwith proceeded to set up in Massachusetts what
was very like a State Church of their own, and soon made it hot for
the unbelievers. They drove out both William Blackstone and Roger
Williams. Blackstone, when he had to go over the border and establish
his hermitage at Study Hill on Blackstone River, said: "I came from
England because I did not like the Lords Bishops, but I cannot join
with you, because I would not be under the Lords Brethren." After
Blackstone and Williams, many others came to Rhode Island and settled
at Newport, for there they enjoyed the completest liberty of
conscience. The Quakers were unmolested and came in large numbers; the
Baptists flocked in and built a meeting-house; the Hebrews came, solid
business men, originally from Portugal, and established the first
synagogue in the United States; the sternest doctrines of the
Calvinists were preached; the Moravians held their impressive
love-feasts; and orthodox Churchmen fervently prayed for the English
King. There were all shades of belief, and dissenters of all ilks, and
many having no belief at all, so that the fair town on Aquidneck was
pervaded with such an atmosphere of religious toleration and
cosmopolitan irregularity that it became famous for its sharp contrast
with the stern rigidity of New England. Hence it was not unnatural
that at the opening of the nineteenth century President Dwight should
have declared that an alleged laxity of morals in Stonington was due
to "its nearness to Rhode Island." But despite these peculiarities the
Newport colony got on well, so that the growing settlement on the
"Isle of Peace" in time came to be designated as the "Eden of
America." Dean Berkeley, afterwards Bishop, visited Newport in 1729,
remaining several years, and gave the colony an elevated literary
tone. An Utopian plan for converting the Indians brought him over from
England, but he soon discovered that it was impracticable, and went
back home to become a Bishop. His favorite resort is shown at the part
of the Newport Cliffs called the "Hanging Rocks," and it is said he
there composed his _Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher_, and the
noble lyric closing with the famous verse proclaiming the patriotic
prophecy which Leutze made the subject of his grand mural painting in
the Capitol at Washington:
"Westward the course of empire takes its way."
NEWPORT DEVELOPMENT.
Newport, before the Revolution, was a most important seaport. When
Dean Berkeley was there it had about forty-five hundred inhabitants,
and they had grown to twelve thousand when the Revolution began. The
preceding half-century was the era of its greatest maritime
prosperity, when Newport ships circumnavigated the globe. The
salubrity of the climate and advantages of the harbor providing safe
anchorage but a few miles from the ocean attracted many merchants and
a large trade, and in those days the Quakers and the Hebrews were the
leading citizens. In 1770 Boston alone surpassed Newport in the extent
of its trade, which then was much greater than that of New York. It
was about this time that a visitor to New York wrote back to the
_Newport Mercury_ that "at its present rate of progress, New York will
soon be as large as Newport." The Revolutionary War, however, almost
ruined the town, and annihilated its commerce. The port was at first
held by the English, and afterwards by the French, both battering and
maltreating it, so that it emerged from the conflict in a dilapidated
condition, with the population reduced to barely five thousand. The
French learned to love the attractive island, and sought earnestly
after the war to have it annexed to France, in return for the aid
given the Americans, but Washington strongly opposed this and
prevented it. The trade was gone, never to return, the merchants went
away to Providence, New York and Boston, and it existed in quiet and
uneventful neglect until the nineteenth century had made some
progress, when people began seeking its pleasant shores for summer
recreation. In 1840 two hotels were built, and this began the
_renaissance_. The Civil War made vast fortunes, and their owners
sought Newport, and it has since become the great summer home of the
fashionable world of America, where they can, in friendly rivalry,
make the most lavish displays possible for wealth to accomplish at a
seaside resort.
Unlike most American watering-places, Newport is not an aggregation of
hotels and lodging-houses, but it is pre-eminently a gathering of the
costliest and most elaborate suburban homes this country can show.
Built upon the extensive space surrounding the older town, and between
it and the ocean, south and east, modern Newport is a galaxy of large
and expensive country-houses, each in an enclosure of lawns,
flower-gardens and foliage, highly ornamental and exceedingly well
kept. Many of them are spacious palaces upon which enormous sums have
been expended; and in front of their lawns, for several miles along
the winding brow of the cliffs that fall off precipitously to the
ocean's edge, is laid the noted "Cliff Walk." This is a narrow
footpath at the edge of the greensward that has the waves dashing
against the bases of the rocks supporting it, while inland, beyond the
lawns, are the noble palaces of Newport. Each is a type of different
architecture, and no matter how grand and imposing, each is called a
"cottage." The greatest rivalry has been shown in construction, and
the styles cover all known methods of building--Gothic, Elizabethan,
Tudor, Swiss, Flemish, French, with every sort of ancient house in
Britain or Continental Europe, imitated and improved upon, and in some
cases widely varying systems being condensed together. Some of these
"cottages" have thus become piles of buildings, with all sorts of
porticos, doorways, pavilions, dormers, oriels, bow-windows, bays and
turrets, towers, chimneys, gambrel roofs and gables, the whole being
charmingly elaborated into wide-spreading, imposing and sometimes
astonishing houses. Occasionally the villa is elongated into the
stable, in an extended house, which includes the family, horses,
hounds, domestics and grooms, all living under the same roof. A low
and rambling style of architecture, with many gables and prominent
colors, is the favorite for various Newport cottages. To the southward
of the town are the Ocean Avenue and Ocean Drive, skirting the whole
lower coast of the island for some ten miles, and displaying fine
marine views.
There have been lavished upon these palaces of Newport, in
construction and decoration, large portions of the greatest incomes of
the multi-millionaires of New York and Boston, and hither they hie to
enjoy the summer and early autumn in a sort of fashionable
semi-seclusion, mingling only in their own sets, and rather resenting
the excursions occasionally made by the plebeian folk into Newport to
look at their displays. These princes of inherited wealth have made
Newport peculiarly their own, and, their expenditures being on a scale
commensurate with their millions, the growth and improvement of the
newer part of the place have been extraordinary. Land in choice
locations is quoted above $50,000 an acre, and a Newport "cottage"
costs $500,000 to $1,000,000 to build, with more for the furnishing.
Once, when I asked what was the qualification necessary to become a
director of one of the great banks of New York, I was told that it was
the ownership of ten shares of stock and a cottage at Newport. The
sense of newness is sometimes impressive in gazing at these Aladdin
palaces, for while the architecture reproduces quaint and ancient
forms, the ancestral ivy does not yet cling to the walls, and the
trees are still young. But there are older sites in Newport, back from
the sea-front, where some of the estates, existing many years, have
smaller and more subdued houses with signs of maturity, where the ivy
broadly spreads and the trees have grown. Some of the foliage-embowered
lanes, leading through the older suburbs, are charming in leafy
richness and make scenes of exquisite rural beauty.
The Casino is the fashionable centre of Newport, a building in Old
English style, fronting on Bellevue Avenue, having reading-rooms, a
theatre, gardens and tennis-court, and here the band plays in the
season, and there are concerts and balls. During the fashionable
period, Bellevue Avenue is the daily scene of a stately procession of
handsome equipages of all styles, as it is decreed that the great
people of Newport shall always ride when on exhibition, and they thus
pass and repass in the afternoons in splendid review. In the earlier
times the town's chief benefactor was Judah Touro, who gave it Touro
Park. His father was the rabbi of Newport synagogue, which now has no
congregation. Judah spent fifty years in New Orleans amassing a
fortune, which was bequeathed to various charities. He also liberally
aided the fund for building Bunker Hill Monument. The synagogue, with
the beautiful garden adjacent, the Jewish Cemetery, is maintained in
perfect order. Touro Park is a pretty enclosure in the older town,
containing statues of Commodore M. C. Perry and William Ellery
Channing, who were natives of Newport, and a statue of the former's
brother, Commodore Oliver H. Perry, the victor of Lake Erie, is also
at the City Hall, not far away. In Touro Park is the great memorial
around which the antiquarian treasures of this famous place are
clustered, the "Old Stone Mill," a small round tower, overrun with ivy
and supported on pillars between which are arched openings. Its origin
is a mystery, and this is the antiquarian shrine at which Newport
worships. Longfellow tells weirdly of it in his _Skeleton in Armor_,
and some of the wise men suggest that it was built by the Norsemen
when they first came this way and found Vinland so long ago. But the
more practical townsfolk generally incline to the belief that an early
colonist put it up for a windmill to grind corn, the weight of the
evidence appearing to favor the theory that it was erected by Governor
Benedict Arnold, of the colony, who died in 1678, and described it in
his will as "my stone-built wind-will." It is, however, of sufficient
antiquity and mystery to have a halo cast around it, and is the great
relic of the town. The seacoast rocks that make the Newport Cliffs
show some wonderful formations of chasms and spouting rocks. A fine
fleet of yachts is usually in Newport water, and it is a favorite
naval rendezvous, having the Training Station, War College and Torpedo
Station, and a new Naval Hospital. This most famous of American
seaside watering-places has a permanent population approximating
twenty-five thousand, considerably increased by the summer visitors.
NEW BEDFORD.
To the eastward of Narragansett another bay is thrust far up into the
land of Massachusetts, Buzzard's Bay, which almost bisects the great
defensive forearm of Massachusetts, Cape Cod. This bay is thirty miles
long and about seven miles wide. Between it and Narragansett are the
tree-clad hills of the sparsely-settled regions which the Indians
called Aponigansett and Acoaksett, out of which the Acushnet River
runs down to its broadening estuary, now the harbor of New Bedford.
Originally this city was peopled by Quakers of the English Russell
family, of which the Duke of Bedford is the head, so that the colony
was named from his title. A numerous Portuguese migration to the early
settlements has caused one of the suburbs to still retain the name of
Fayal. New Bedford stretches two miles along the western river-bank
and far back upon the gradually ascending surface, and the population,
including the opposite suburb of Fairhaven, numbers seventy thousand.
Early a shipping port, it grew into celebrity with the advance of the
whale fishery, which became its chief industry, and it was then said
to be the wealthiest city in the country in proportion to population,
having in 1854 four hundred and ten whaling ships, with ten thousand
sailors, its fleets patrolling the remotest seas. When this fishery
died out, the people went to manufacturing, and now they have numerous
large mills busily spinning cotton, its noted product being the
Wamsutta muslins. There still remain a few of the little bluff-bowed
and flush-decked old whalers rotting at the wharves, with huge
overhanging davits, and still redolent of oil--the relics of an almost
obsolete industry. The ample fortunes originally gathered in the
fishery enabled the marine aristocracy of the town to build their
stately and comfortable old mansions which now enjoy an honorable
repose in ample grounds along the quiet streets on the higher plateau
back from the river.
When Samuel de Champlain came into the St. Lawrence River, he wrote
that whales were killed by firing cannon-balls at them, and later
explorers described how the Indians captured them. The colonists early
began the fishery along the New England coasts, and New Bedford sent
out its first ships in 1755. The period of greatest success in whaling
was between 1820 and 1857. The advent of gas and petroleum, financial
reverses, the gradual extermination of the whales, which had been
pursued to the remotest regions, the substitution of steel for
whalebone, and the use of hard rubber, all contributed to the decline
of the business, and it was given its death-blow by the ravages of the
Confederate privateers among the Pacific whaling fleets. Its memory
is kept alive, however, by many romances of the sea, it having
furnished an extensive and interesting literature. Not long ago it was
related that the unfortunate sculptor who had carved the figure-heads
for the whaleships was since compelled to earn a precarious livelihood
by chopping out rude wooden idols for the South Sea islanders.
Acushnet River is dammed in its upper waters, making an immense
reservoir, furnishing power to the extensive mills. The harbor
gradually broadens as it opens into Buzzard's Bay, and Clark's Point
stretches far into the bay, having on the extremity an old-time square
stone fort, with bastions at the corners, formerly the trusted
defender of the harbor and the town, Fort Taber. Now, its only use is
to furnish, on the outer corner, a foundation for a lighthouse
lantern. The whaling fleet it formerly guided is all gone, but now it
is the beacon for an enormous trade in coal, landed here for
distribution by railway throughout New England. Another little stone
fort is also built on the opposite side of the harbor, on a rock at
the lower end of Fairhaven. Outside is the broad surface of the bay, a
noble inland sea, with irregular and generally thinly populated
shores, but with attractions that have drawn to it, in various
localities, a large summer population, with many ornate villas of
modern fashion. Just below Clark's Point is villa-studded Nonquitt,
upon an upland among the undulating hills, where lived General Philip
Sheridan, and to which he was brought home in a United States warship
to die, in July, 1888. They tell us that when the venturesome Norsemen
came along here, the bay was given the name of the Straum Fiord, but
the antiquary is at a loss to find a satisfactory derivation for the
present name of Buzzard's Bay. Far over its waters, as seen from
Clark's Point, is the low, dark, gray forest-clad eastern shore,
stretching down to the distant strait of Wood's Holl, leading out of
the bay into Vineyard Sound. Spread across the bay entrance to the
southward, and protecting it from the open sea, are the Elizabeth
Islands.
VINEYARD SOUND.
After Captain Bartholomew Grosnold had discovered Cape Cod in May,
1602, he coasted along its shores, and coming down into what is known
as Vineyard Sound, found himself in an archipelago of islands. He
halted at the one called "No Man's Land," and gave it the name of
Martha's Vineyard, which is now applied to the largest of these
islands. Who his favorite Martha was, and why she should have been
immortalized, old Bartholomew never told, thus disappointing many
industrious people who have vainly sought the lady's personal history.
"The Vineyard," as it is familiarly called, lies southeast of
Buzzard's Bay, across which is the extended and narrow range of the
Elizabeth Islands, trending far away to the southwestward, and ending
with Cuttyhunk, where the first English spade was driven into New
England soil. It was upon this, the outermost island, that Gosnold
landed and planted his colony, naming it Elizabeth, in honor of his
queen, a title afterwards given the entire range. The island had a
pond in which was a rocky islet, and here, as they feared the Indians,
the colonists built a fort and resided while they gathered a cargo of
sassafras for their ship, that being then a much-prized specific in
Europe. The settlement was brief; frightened by savage threats and
rent by quarrels, they soon abandoned the place, loading their ship
and returning to England disheartened. This settlement antedated by
eighteen years the arrival of the "Mayflower" at Plymouth.
The Elizabeth group is a range of sixteen islands, stretching in a
long line from the Cape Cod shore for eighteen miles southwest to the
extremity of Cuttyhunk. It makes the southeastern boundary of
Buzzard's Bay, with Martha's Vineyard beyond, there being between them
the long and rather narrow channel of Vineyard Sound. The mariner
going eastward out of Long Island Sound passes Sakonnet Point at the
eastern verge of Narragansett Bay, and finds in front a chain of
beacons posted across the route. Two of these are lightships, marking
reefs to which are given the bucolic names of the "Hen and Chickens"
and the "Sow and Pigs." If the shipmaster wishes to enter Buzzard's
Bay for New Bedford, he sails between these two unromantic shoals,
passing a lightship on either hand, and being further guided by a
lighthouse on the extremity of Cuttyhunk. But if he wishes to follow
the great maritime route to the eastward around Cape Cod, he gives the
"Sow and Pigs" a wide berth to the northward and passes between it and
the splendid flashing red and white beacon on Gay Head, the western
extremity of Martha's Vineyard, south of Cuttyhunk. Gosnold was the
first Englishman who saw the brilliant and variegated coloring of this
remarkable promontory when the sun shone upon it, and appropriately
called it the Gay Head. Its magnificent Fresnel lens, the most
powerful in this region, is elevated one hundred and seventy feet
above the sea, and is thirty miles east of Point Judith. The breadth
of the entrance to Vineyard Sound from this lighthouse across to the
lightship is about seven miles.
The northeastern extremity of the Elizabeth Islands is Naushon, and
between it and the main land of Cape Cod are the strait and harbor
formerly known to the sailor as Wood's Hole, but now refined into
Wood's Holl, just as "Holmes's Hole," another popular harbor over on
"the Vineyard," has since become Vineyard Haven. Both of these
"holes," and particularly the latter, have always been favorite places
for schooner skippers to run into and avoid adverse winds. The
Elizabeth group has four large islands, the others being small. Narrow
and often tortuous channels separate them. Cuttyhunk is about two and
one-half miles long, and the present successor of Gosnold's
ill-starred colony is a club from New York who have a seaside
establishment there. Not far away, to the northward, is Penikese
Island, covering about one hundred acres, which was formerly the
location of Professor Agassiz's "Summer School of Natural History."
East of Cuttyhunk is Nashawena, three miles long, and next comes
Pasque Island, also the abiding-place of an attractive club
comfortably housed. Naushon is the largest island, eight miles long,
stretching from Pasque almost to Wood's Holl, and having opposite each
other, on its northern and southern shores, two noted harbors of
refuge, the Kettle and Tarpaulin Coves. Upon Naushon, early in the
nineteenth century, lived James Bowdoin, the diplomatist and
benefactor of Bowdoin College in Maine, which was named for his
father. Naushon is a very pretty island, and was described in those
days by a distinguished English lady traveller as "a little pocket
America, a liliputian Western world, a compressed Columbia."
Clustering around its northeastern extremity are some of the smaller
islets of the group--the Ram Islands, and Wepecket, Uncatina and
Nonamesset. The strait at Wood's Holl forms a rocky gateway leading
from Buzzard's Bay into Vineyard Sound, and just beyond, on the Cape
Cod shore, is its guiding beacon on the point of Nobska Hill. Wood's
Holl has but a small harbor on the edge of the contracted and
tortuous passage, which is full of rocks, difficult to navigate, and
generally having the tide running through like a millrace. The
settlement is small, displaying attractive cottages on the adjacent
shores, and here are located the station and buildings of the United
States Fish Commission and the Marine Biological Laboratory.
MARTHA'S VINEYARD.
Between the Elizabeth Islands and Martha's Vineyard is the great route
of vessels passing to and from New England waters, and the lighthouse
keeper at the entrance has counted more than a thousand of them
passing in a single week. Aquatic birds skim the waters, and all about
the Sound are islands great and small, their granite coasts
contrasting with the blue waters they protect from the severity of
ocean storms. A tale is told of the origin of the names of some of the
islands, which is original, if apocryphal. The story comes as a
tradition from the "oldest inhabitant" of these parts, who is said to
have been the owner of all these islands, and who determined, before
he died, to bestow the chief ones upon his four favorite daughters.
Accordingly, Rhoda took Rhode Island; Elizabeth took hers; Martha was
given "the Vineyard;" and there was left for Nancy the remaining large
island--so "Nan-took-it."
Martha's Vineyard is shaped much like a triangle, and is twenty-three
miles long and about ten miles broad in the widest part. Vineyard
Haven, its chief harbor, is deep and narrow, opening like a pair of
jaws at the northern apex of the triangle, the entrance being guarded
by the pointed peninsulas of the East Chop and West Chop, each
provided with a lighthouse. Within is one of the most fairly
constructed natural harbors ever seen, a spacious haven of protection,
often crowded with vessels, which run in there to escape rough
treatment outside. Here is the pleasant village of Vineyard Haven,
prettily located upon the sloping banks of a small cove inside, and
having down at the end of the harbor a Government Marine Hospital.
"The Vineyard's" famous western promontory of Gay Head is composed of
ponderous cliffs, falling off steeply to the water, and presents an
interesting geological study. The inclined strata rise about two
hundred feet above the sea, being gaily colored in tints of red,
white, yellow, green, and black. About forty-five hundred people
reside on this island, including fishermen, sailors and farmers, but
mostly gaining a livelihood by ministering to the wants of the large
population of summer visitors. The first colonist was Thomas Mayhew, a
Puritan from Southampton, who came in 1642, being then the grantee
both of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket.
Cottage City is the chief settlement, built upon the eastern ocean
shore of "the Vineyard," a wonderful place attracting twenty to thirty
thousand people in the summer. The bluff shore rises precipitously
for thirty feet from the narrow beach forming the verge of the sea,
and there are myriads of cottages, many hotels, and a complete summer
town spreading over a large surface. Here are held the great Camp
Meetings which are the attraction in August--one Methodist and the
other Baptist. The former is the "Martha's Vineyard Camp Meeting
Association," first established and meeting in the Wesleyan Grove,
back from the sea. The other is the "Oak Bluffs Association," out by
the ocean's edge. This place, thoroughly alive in summer, is dormant,
however, for nearly nine months of the year. From it a railroad runs
several miles southward along the shore to the little village of
Edgartown, the place of original colonization, and the county-seat of
Dukes County, Massachusetts, which is composed of all these islands.
Towards the southeast, out of sight, is the distant island of
Nantucket. Nearer is seen the misty outline of old Chappaquadick
Island, called "the Old Chap," for short, with its long terminating
extremity of Cape Poge. To the northward is the hazy mainland of Cape
Cod, a streak upon the horizon, whence, long ago, these islands are
supposed to have been sliced off during the glacial epoch, and going
adrift, were thus anchored out in the ocean.
NANTUCKET.
The island of Nantucket, dropped in the Atlantic, everyone has heard
of, but few visit. We are told by tradition that it was originally
formed by the mythical Indian giant, Manshope, who, when he was tired
of smoking, emptied here into the sea the ashes from his pipe. It was
also the smoke from this pipe which created the fogs so plentifully
abounding around the place. These fogs are very dense, and it is said
of a certain noted Nantucket skipper going away on a long voyage that
he marked one of them with his harpoon, and returning to the harbor
three years later, at once recognized the same fog by his private
mark. Old Manshope, the giant, was the tutelary genius of all the
Indian tribes on the islands of Vineyard Sound and the adjacent
mainland, and his home was on the cliffs of Gay Head, in an ancient
extinct volcanic crater, now called the Devil's Den. He feasted here
on the flesh of whales, which he broiled on live coals, obtaining fuel
by uprooting huge trees. His firelight, thus made, is said to have
been the earliest beacon seen by superstitious sailors passing the
headland, and as it flickered in his midnight orgies, they solemnly
shook their heads, saying, "Old Manshope is at it again." This
powerful giant seems to have waded around Vineyard and Nantucket
Sounds and regulated all the affairs of the neighborhood. But finally
the sailors and colonists became so numerous that he waxed very wroth.
With a single stroke of his ponderous club he separated "No Man's
Land" from "the Vineyard," and then transformed his children into
fishes. His wife lamented this cruelty, and he seized and threw her
over to the mainland on Sakonnet Point, where she still lies, a
misshapen rock. Then the disgusted giant vanished forever.
The Norsemen first named the island Nautikon, appropriately meaning
the "Far Away Land." From this, on an early map, it appears as
Natocko, then as Nantukes, and finally it became Nantucquet, from
which the present name is derived. When Gosnold came along in 1602, he
first saw its great eastern promontory, Sankaty Head, describing the
island as covered with oak trees and populous with Indians. After the
original grant was made to Thomas Mayhew, he sold it in 1659 to the
"ten original purchasers" for £30 and two beaver hats, one for himself
and one for his wife, he reserving one-tenth. These purchasers
colonized the island, Thomas Macy, a Quaker who fled from Puritan
persecution in New England, beginning the first settlement, and Peter
Foulger, who came there somewhat later, had a daughter, who was the
mother of Benjamin Franklin. John G. Whittier, the good Quaker poet,
thus sings of Macy's flight to the island:
"Far round the bleak and stormy cape
The vent'rous Macy passed,
And on Nantucket's naked isle
Drew up his boat at last."
Macy landed at the site of the town of Nantucket, then the Indian
village of Wesco, or the "White Stone," which lay on the shore of the
harbor, and afterwards had a wharf built over it. The whale fishery,
which made Nantucket's prosperity, began early, in boats from the
island, and the population had increased by the Revolution to about
forty-five hundred, Sherburne, as it then was called, being the chief
whaling port in the world, with one hundred and fifty whale ships. The
island was covered with trees, but they were all destroyed during the
Revolution, and it was then made almost a desert, losing also the
greater part of its population and much of the fishery fleet. There
was a revival subsequently, and Nantucket reached its maximum
prosperity in 1840, with nearly ten thousand population. Afterwards
came the final decline of whaling, and the sandy, almost treeless
island now has about three thousand people, who depend for a living
chiefly on the summer visitors. It is without a whaleship, but it has
many snug cottages, and those going for health and rest can well say,
with Whittier:
"God bless the sea-beat island!
And grant forever more
That charity and freedom dwell,
As now, upon her shore."
Nantucket is southeast of Martha's Vineyard and south of Cape Cod, the
sea between them being known as Nantucket Sound. The island is an
irregular spherical triangle, sixteen miles long and three to four
miles wide, the outer coast bent around like a bow, as the Gulf
Stream currents wash the shores. To the south and east are the great
Nantucket Shoals, dangerous to the navigator, but acting as a
breakwater, preventing the island being entirely washed away by the
sea, which makes constant encroachments. The harbor of Nantucket town
presents sandy beaches and bluff shores, rising with some boldness
from the water, the sand dunes stretching away in regular lines behind
them. The town is snugly located at the bottom of a deep and secure
harbor, having a breakwater outside, and its chief daily event is the
arrival of the steamboat from the mainland, from which it is
frequently cut off for days together by winter ice and stormy weather.
There are various ancient and dilapidated wharves, fronting a
collection of strange-looking old gabled houses, many having raised
platforms on top of the peaked roofs, where the former inhabitants
used to go up to watch for vessels. It is a healthy place, with modern
hotels, tree-lined, pleasant streets, many gardens, and a magnificent
climate, the winter rigors corrected by the closeness of the Gulf
Stream. The surrounding country, outside the town, is almost
everywhere a flat prairie-land, with the one horizon all around, of
the distant blue sea. A narrow-gauge railroad leads over to the
southeastern coast at Siasconset, the quaint original gem of the
island, familiarly called 'Sconset, a curious little village of
fishermen's huts, existing now about the same as in the primitive
days. Its outlook is over the South Shoals, but not a sail is to be
seen, for these shoals are the grave of every vessel getting upon
them. It is a dismal reminder of vanished maritime prestige to see
about the Nantucket coasts the gaunt ribs of the old hulks, half
sunken in the sands where they have been cast ashore, as year by year
they gradually break up in the great storms and slowly disappear. In
the Boston _Daily Advertiser_ a poet plaintively mourns the fate of
these marine skeletons seen "at midnight off the coast":
"Half-tombed in drifting sands upon the shore
Are ye, and heedless lashed by angry seas,
As through your blackened ribs the breeze
Exultant plays, and crested breakers roar,
And screeching sea-gulls round thee, prostrate, soar.
Wert thou allured by sighs of moaning trees,
As sirens sought to charm with songs like these
Ulysses and his brave companions o'er
To reefs deep hidden, silent, save in storm?
The rolling thunder of the sullen surge,
The mournful sobbing of the gathering gale,
Plain answer make, as round the spectre form
Of these gaunt skeletons they ceaseless scourge
The giant's battered coat of oaken mail!"
THE CONNECTICUT RIVER AND
WHITE MOUNTAINS.
XVII.
THE CONNECTICUT RIVER AND WHITE MOUNTAINS.
The Long Tidal River -- Middletown -- Wethersfield -- Blue
Hills of Southington -- Meriden -- Berlin -- Hartford --
The Charter Oak -- Samuel Colt and the Revolver -- New
Britain -- Enfield Rapids -- Windsor Locks -- Agawam --
Springfield and the Armory -- Westfield River -- Brookfield
-- Chicopee Falls -- Hadley Falls -- Holyoke -- Mount Tom
-- Mount Holyoke -- Nonotuck -- Northampton -- Old Hadley
and its Street -- The Ox-Bow -- Goffe and Whalley -- Mount
Holyoke College -- Amherst -- Deerfield River and Old
Deerfield -- Greenfield -- Shelburne Falls -- Brattleboro'
-- Ashuelot River -- Keene -- Mount Monadnock -- Williams
River -- Bellows Falls -- Lake Sunapee -- Windsor, Vermont
-- Ascutney Mountain -- White River -- Olcott Falls --
Hanover -- Dartmouth College -- Mooseilauke -- Newbury --
Wells River -- Littleton -- Passumpsic River -- St.
Johnsbury -- Lake Memphramagog -- Dixville Notch -- Lake
Umbagog -- Rangeley Lakes -- Connecticut Lakes -- Source of
the Connecticut -- White Mountains -- Ammonoosuc River --
Bethlehem -- Gale River -- Sugar Hill -- Franconia Notch --
Coös -- Echo Lake -- Profile Lake -- Old Man of the
Mountain -- Pemigewasset River -- Flume and Pool -- North
Woodstock -- Plymouth -- Squam Lake -- Ethan's Pond --
Thoreau and the Merrimack -- White Mountain Notch -- Israel
River -- Jefferson -- Lancaster -- Fabyan's -- Crawford's
-- The Presidential Range -- Saco River -- Willey Slide --
View from Mount Willard -- Giant's Grave -- Mount
Washington -- Grand Gulf -- The Summit and View --
Tuckerman's Ravine -- The Glen -- Pinkham Notch -- Peabody
River -- Gorham -- Androscoggin River -- Ellis River --
Jackson -- Lower Bartlett -- Intervale -- North Conway --
Mount Kearsarge -- Pequawket -- Madison -- Ossipee -- Lake
Winnepesaukee -- Sandwich Mountains -- Chocorua --
Wolfboro' -- Weirs -- Alton Bay -- Centre Harbor -- Red
Hill -- Whittier's Poetry on the Lake and the Merrimack.
THE LONG TIDAL RIVER.
The greatest New England river, the Connecticut, was first explored by
the redoubtable Dutch navigator, Captain Adraien Blok. When he made
his memorable voyage of discovery from New Amsterdam along Long Island
Sound, Blok ascended the Connecticut to Enfield Falls. Its source is
in the highlands of northern New Hampshire upon the Canadian boundary,
at an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet, and it flows four hundred
and fifty miles southward to the Sound. Its Indian title was
Quonektakat, or "the long tidal river," from which the name has been
derived. It is noted for beautiful scenery and has many cataracts, the
chief being Olcott Falls, at Wilder in Vermont, South Hadley in
Massachusetts, and Enfield in Connecticut. The soils of its valley are
extremely fertile, making a garden-spot in the otherwise generally
sterile New England, the most luxuriant crop being the tobacco-plant,
known as "Connecticut seed-leaf," used largely for cigar-wrappers, and
often yielding two thousand pounds to the acre. Steamboats navigate
the river to Hartford, about fifty miles from the Sound. The blazing
red beacon of the Cornfield Point Lightship is the outer guide for the
mariner entering its mouth, while the white lights of Saybrook guard
the inner channel. The lower Connecticut flows through a region of
farms, enriched by copious dressings of manures made from the fish
caught in the stream, and it passes picturesque shores and pleasant
villages in the domain of Haddam, an extensive tract which the Indians
originally sold to Hartford people for thirty coats.
Middletown, the "Forest City," at a great bend in the lower river, has
many mills making pumps, tapes, plated wares, webbing and
sewing-machines, its shaded streets leading up the hill-slopes,
bordering the water, that have in them valuable quarries of rich brown
Portland stone. The county Court-house of Middletown is a quaint
little miniature of the Parthenon. The Wesleyan Methodist College,
having three hundred students, is located here, the chief buildings
being the Memorial and Judd Halls, built of the native Portland stone,
the latter the gift of Orange Judd. The large buildings of the
Connecticut Insane Hospital, also of Portland stone, overlook the
river from a high hill southeast of the city, and are in a spacious
park. To the northward of Middletown, level green and exceedingly
fertile meadows adjoin the river, their product being the noted onion
crops of Wethersfield, which permeate the whole country. This was the
earliest Connecticut settlement in 1635, and here in the next year
convened the first Connecticut Legislature to make the arrangements
for the war against the Pequots which annihilated that tribe. In one
of its old mansions General Washington had his headquarters, where, in
conjunction with the French officers, the plans were prepared for the
campaign closing the Revolution by the victory at Yorktown.
To the westward of the river are the famous "Blue Hills of
Southington," the most elevated portion of the State of Connecticut,
and nestling under their shadow is Meriden, the hills rising high
above its western and northern verge, in the West Peak and Mount
Lamentation. Here are gathered over thirty thousand people in an
active factory town, the neat wooden dwellings of the operatives
forming the nucleus of the city adjacent to the extensive mills, and
having as a surrounding galaxy the attractive villas of their owners,
scattered in pleasant places upon the steep adjacent hills. They are
industrious iron and steel, bronze, brass and tin workers, and the
Meriden Britannia and electro-plated silver wares are famous
everywhere. The Meriden Britannia Company has enormous mills, and is
the greatest establishment of its kind in the world. Meriden and
Berlin, a short distance northward, have long been the headquarters of
the peripatetic Connecticut tin-pedler, who goes forth laden with all
kinds of pots and pans, and other bright and useful utensils, to
wander over the land, and charm the country folk with his attractive
bargains. Berlin began in the eighteenth century the first American
manufacture of tinware. There are scores of villages about, cast
almost in the same mould. Each has the same beautiful central Public
Green, the charm of the New England village, shaded by rows of stately
elms; the tall-spired churches; the village graveyard, usually on a
gently-sloping hillside, with the lines of older white gravestones,
supplemented in the modern interments by more elaborate monuments; the
attractive wooden houses nestling amid abundant foliage, and
surrounded by gardens and flower-beds, that are the homes of the
people, and the huge factories giving them employment. Some of these
villages are larger than others, thus covering more space, but
excepting in size, all are substantially alike.
HARTFORD.
The high gilded dome of the Capitol at Hartford and the broad fronts
of the stately buildings of Trinity College surmounting Rocky Hill,
above a labyrinth of factories, are seen rising on the Connecticut
River bank to the northward. This is the noted city, with about
seventy thousand people, which has reproduced in New England the name
in the mother country of the ancient Saxon village just north of
London at the "Ford of Harts," whence some of its early settlers came.
The brave and pious Thomas Hooker led his flock from the seacoast
through the wilderness in 1636 to Hartford, to establish an English
colony at the Indian post of Suckiang, the Dutch three years before
having built a fort and trading-station at a bend of the Connecticut,
where the little Park River flowing in gave a water-power which
turned the wheels of a small grist-mill, to which all the country
around afterwards brought grain to be ground. Cotton Mather, the
quaint historian, described Hooker as "the renowned minister of
Hartford and pillar of Connecticut, and the light of the Western
churches." Hartford is known as the "Queen City," and its centre is
the attractive Bushnell Park, fronting on the narrow and winding Park
River. An airy bridge leads from the railway station over this little
stream, to the tasteful Park entrance, a triumphal brownstone arch
with surmounting conical towers, erected as a memorial to the soldiers
who fell in the Civil War. A grand highway then continues up the hill
to the Connecticut State Capitol, which cost $2,500,000 to build, one
of the finest structures in New England, an imposing Gothic temple of
white marble, three hundred feet long, the dome rising two hundred and
fifty feet, and all the fronts elaborately ornamented with statuary
and artistic decoration. The statue of General Putnam, who died at
Hartford in 1790, is in the Park, and his tombstone, battered and
weatherworn, is kept as a precious relic in the Capitol. The "Putnam
Phalanx" is the great military organization of Hartford. In the east
wing of the Capitol is the bronze statue of Nathan Hale, whom the
British hanged as a spy in the Revolution. It is a masterpiece, the
almost living figure seeming animated with the full vigor of
earnest youth, as with outstretched hands he actually appears to speak
his memorable words: "I only regret that I have but one life to lose
for my country." The Connecticut law-makers of to-day who meet in this
sumptuous Capitol are milder legislators than their ancestors who made
the "blue laws" of the olden time, when the iron rule of the Puritan
pastors governing the colony enacted a Draconian code, inflicting
death penalties for the crimes of idolatry, unchastity, blasphemy,
witchcraft, murder, man-stealing, smiting parents, and some others,
with savage punishment for Sabbath-breaking and the use of tobacco.
[Illustration: _State Capitol, Hartford, Conn._]
The celebrated Charter Oak is the great memory of Hartford. In 1856
the old tree was blown down in a storm, and a marble slab marks where
it stood. The remains of the tree were fashioned into many precious
relics, and our friend of humorous memory, Mark Twain, who lives in
Hartford, says he has seen all conceivable articles made out of this
precious timber, there being, among others, "a walking-stick,
dog-collar, needle-case, three-legged stool, bootjack, dinner-table,
tenpin alley, toothpick, and enough Charter Oak to build a plank-road
from Hartford to Great Salt Lake City." This ancient tree concealed
the royal charter of the Connecticut colony, granted by the King,
when, in 1687, the tyrannical Governor Andros came to Hartford with
his troops and demanded its surrender. While the subject was being
discussed in the Legislature, the lights were suddenly put out, and in
the darkness a bold colonist seized the precious document, and running
out, concealed it in the hollow of the oak. The fine statue
surmounting the Capitol dome and overlooking the city is now, with
extended arm, crowning the municipality with a wreath of Charter Oak
leaves, and the oak leaf is repeated in many ways in the decoration of
the Capitol and of many other buildings in the city. The Charter Oak
Bank and Life Insurance Company are also flourishing institutions. In
proportion to population, Hartford is regarded as the wealthiest city
in America, and it is financially great, particularly in Life and Fire
Insurance Companies, whose business is wide-spread. It has many
charitable foundations, book-publishing houses, banks, manufacturing
establishments and educational institutions, the most noted of the
latter being Trinity College, in the southern part of the city, its
brownstone Early English buildings having a grand view across the
intervening valley to the hills of Farmington and Talcott Mountain,
nine miles westward.
Picturesque suburbs adorned by magnificent villas environ the built-up
parts of Hartford, making a splendid semi-rural residential section,
where arching elms embower the lawn-bordered avenues, many localities
being adorned by superb hedges. There is a fine artistic and
historical collection in the Wadsworth Atheneum, where, among other
precious relics, are kept General Putnam's sword and the Indian King
Philip's club. Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Mrs. Sigourney, the
poetess, were long residents of Hartford. The citizen whom it holds in
steadfast memory, however, is Colonel Samuel Colt, who invented the
revolving pistol. He was born in Hartford, and his remains rest under
a fine monument in Cedar Hill Cemetery. His widow built as his
memorial a beautiful little brownstone chapel, the Church of the Good
Shepherd, which is not far away from the huge works of the Colt Arms
Company, the chief industrial establishment of the city. Colt, when a
boy, ran away from home and went to sea, and is said to have there
conceived the idea of his great invention. He sought vainly during
several years to establish a factory to make it, but did not prosper
until 1852, when he started in Hartford; and with the great demand for
small-arms then stimulated by the opening of the California gold mines
and the exploration of the Western plains, afterwards expanded by the
Civil War, his factory grew enormously. The heraldic "colt rampant"
adopted by the inventor is stamped on all the arms and reproduced in
all the decorations of these vast works. Among other large factories
is also the Pope bicycle works. A short distance west of Hartford is
New Britain, where there are twenty thousand people engaged in making
hardware, locks and jewelry, its noted resident having been Elihu
Burritt, the "Learned Blacksmith," who was born there in 1810 and died
in 1879.
SPRINGFIELD AND THE ARMORY.
To the north of Hartford is a fertile intervale, the rich meadows of
Mattaneag, where the Connecticut River pours down the Enfield Rapids,
and the diverted water flows through a canal formerly used to take the
river-craft around the obstruction, but now giving ample power to many
paper and other mills at Windsor Locks. The original colony was
started here by John Warham, said to have been the first New England
pastor who used notes in preaching. He sustained the "blue laws," but
his colony to-day is a great tobacco-growing section, through which
the Farmington River flows down from the western hills. At South
Windsor, John Fitch, the steamboat inventor, was born. The Hazardville
Powder Works, one of the greatest gunpowder factories in the world,
are beyond, and also Thompsonville, a prodigious maker of carpets, and
then the boundary is crossed into Massachusetts. Just north of the
line, the Connecticut River sweeps grandly around in approaching
Springfield, built on the eastern bank, and spreading for a long
distance up the slopes of the adjacent hills. It is a busy
manufacturing city, with sixty thousand population and an important
railway junction, where the roads along the river cross the route from
Boston to Albany and the West. This was the Indian land of
Agawam--"fish-abounding"--to which the Puritan missionary William
Pynchon led his hardy flock in 1636, and the statue of Miles Morgan, a
noted soldier of the early time, representing the "Puritan," stands,
matchlock in hand, in heroic bronze on the Public Square. Springfield
is noted for its great firearms factories, having the extensive works
of the Smith & Wesson Company, and also the United States Armory. This
enormous Government factory, making rifles for the army previously on
a large scale, quadrupled its output during the Spanish War of 1898.
It occupies an extensive enclosure on Armory Hill, up to which the
surface gradually slopes from the river, giving an admirable view over
the city. The chief buildings stand around a quadrangle, making a
pleasant stretch of lawn, with regular rows of trees crossing it.
There are a few old cannon planted about, giving a military air, and
here are made the Springfield rifles. During the Revolution most of
the arms for the American army were made here, and the cannon were
cast that helped defeat Burgoyne at Saratoga. In the Civil War the
main works were constructed, and they ran day and night for four
years, making nearly eight hundred thousand rifles for the Union
armies. The Arsenal, a large building on the western side of the
quadrangle, contains two hundred and twenty-five thousand arms,
tastefully arranged, and rivalling the collection at the Tower of
London. This armory is the chief industrial establishment of
Springfield, and Longfellow has thus described its great Arsenal:
"This is the Arsenal. From floor to ceiling,
Like a huge organ rise the burnished arms;
But from their silent pipes no anthem pealing
Startles the villages with strange alarms.
"Ah! what a sound will rise, how wild and dreary,
When the death-angel touches those swift keys!
What loud lament and dismal Miserere
Will mingle with their awful symphonies!
"I hear even now the infinite fierce chorus,
The cries of agony, the endless groan,
Which, through the ages that have gone before us,
In long reverberations reach our own.
* * * * *
"Were half the power that fills the world with terror,
Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts,
Given to redeem the human mind from error,
There were no need of arsenals or forts:
"The warrior's name would be a name abhorred!
And every nation that should lift again
Its hand against a brother, on its forehead
Would wear for evermore the curse of Cain!
"Down the dark future, through long generations,
The echoing sounds grow fainter and then cease;
And like a bell, with solemn, sweet vibrations,
I hear once more the voice of Christ say 'Peace!'
"Peace! and no longer from its brazen portals
The blast of war's great organ shakes the skies!
But beautiful as songs of the immortals,
The holy melodies of Love arise."
At Springfield the Agawam River flows from the westward into the
Connecticut, and along its broad bordering meadows comes the Boston
and Albany Railroad. This is one of the Vanderbilt lines, crossing
Massachusetts from the Berkshires to Boston, and it was among the
earliest railways built in New England, being in construction from
1833 to 1842. The project while zealously pushed was then generally
derided as chimerical, the Boston _Courier_ of that time saying the
road could only be built at "an expense of little less than the market
value of the whole territory of Massachusetts, and, if practicable,
every person of common sense knows it would be as useless as a
railroad from Boston to the moon." Yet it was built, and prospered so
much that, to break its profitable monopoly, Massachusetts had
afterwards to bore the costly Hoosac Tunnel on the only available
route, to provide a competing line. The railroad climbs up the
Taghkanic range from the Hudson River Valley, crosses the Berkshire
Hills, going through Pittsfield and over Hoosac Mountain at an
elevation of fourteen hundred and fifty feet, then coming down a wild
and picturesque defile made by a mountain brook flowing into Westfield
River, which in turn flows into the Agawam. It is a route of
magnificent scenery, gradually leading from a mountain gorge to a
broadening intervale, where it passes the fertile Indian domain of
Woronoco and the pleasant town of Westfield, noted for its whips and
cigars. Then the winding reaches of the Agawam lead through broad
meadows and past many mills to Springfield. The various streams around
the Armory City, like so much of the clear waters elsewhere in
Massachusetts, are largely devoted to paper-making, and eastward from
Springfield the railroad ascends the valley of the swift-flowing
Chicopee, meaning the "large spring," among more paper-mills. This is
a vast industry developed by the pure, clean waters of Central
Massachusetts. Farther eastward, however, the character of the mills
changes, and at Brookfield shoemaking villages appear, while elsewhere
there are textile and leather factories. Brookfield was the
birthplace, in 1818, of the noted female agitator Lucy Stone, its
Quaboag Pond furnishing the water turning the mill-wheels, and then
flowing off through Podunk meadows by the Sashaway River to the
Chicopee. At Spencer, not far away, was born in 1819 Elias Howe, the
inventor of the sewing-machine. Farther eastward the railway route
leads to Worcester, and thence to Boston.
THE LAND OF NONOTUCK.
The valley of the Connecticut north of Springfield is a hive of busy
industries where are made most of the finer papers used in the United
States. All the tributary water-courses teem with factories. Four
miles above Springfield the Chicopee flows in from the eastern hills,
there being a population of twenty thousand, and the mills, served by
the power from its falls two miles eastward, working cotton and wool,
brass and bronze, as well as making paper. Chicopee Falls was the home
of Edward Bellamy, author of _Looking Backward_, who died in 1898. A
few miles above the Chicopee, on the Connecticut, are the Hadley
Falls, the greatest water-power of New England, and the creator of
Holyoke, with fifty thousand people, the chief manufactory of fine
papers in the world. In a little more than a mile the river descends
sixty feet in falls and rapids, and by a system of canals the water is
led for three miles along the banks, thus serving the factories, which
have great advantages of position, as the river winds around them on
three sides, and its flow is also supplemented by steam-power. The
water, from its great descent, is used several times over. The main
Hadley fall descends thirty feet, and to prevent erosion is aproned
with stout timbers sheathed with boiler iron. The river is bridled by
a huge dam one thousand feet long, and has a boom to catch the
floating logs.
The scenery above the Hadley Falls grows more attractive; the hills
approach nearer the river and rise sharply into mountains; the river
winds about their bases, and, abruptly turning, goes through a gorge
between them. Upon the western side is the Mount Tom range, and upon
the eastern bank Mount Holyoke, with inclined-plane railways ascending
both, Mount Tom rising twelve hundred and fifteen feet, and Mount
Holyoke nine hundred and fifty-five feet. The Connecticut flows out
between them from the extensive valley above. These guardian peaks of
Tom and Holyoke bear the names of two pioneers of the valley, who are
said to have first discovered the pass, and the tradition is that the
broad and fertile plain above, spreading almost to the northern
Massachusetts boundary, was once a lake with the outlet towards the
west, behind Mount Tom, until the waters broke a passage through the
ridge, and made the Connecticut River route to the Sound. The origin
of these mountains was evidently volcanic, being built up of trap-rock
lifting its columned masses abruptly from the level floor of the
valley, and almost without foothills to dwarf the greater elevation.
The broad vale beyond is the fertile land of Nonotuck, bought from the
Indians in 1653 for "one hundred fathoms of wampum and ten coats."
Here to the westward of the river is Northampton, a most lovely and
attractive town, well described as "the frontispiece of the book of
beauty which Nature opens wide in the valley of the Connecticut." The
fairest fields surround it, with thrifty farmers cultivating their
rich bottom-lands, and the people have a splendid outlook in front of
their doors, in the glorious panorama of the noble mountains, with the
river flowing away through the deep gorge. The place was named
Northampton because most of the original settlers came from that
English town. Solomon Stoddart was the sturdy Puritan pastor, ruling
the flock at Nonotuck for over a half-century, the village being for
protection surrounded by a palisade and wall. The little church in
which he preached measured eighteen by twenty-six feet, being built in
1655 at a cost of $75, and the congregation were summoned to meeting
armed and by the blasts of a trumpet:
"Each man equipped on Sunday morn
With psalm-book, shot and powder-horn,
And looked in form, as all must grant,
Like th' ancient, true Church militant."
This renowned pastor was of majestic appearance, and as good a fighter
as he was a preacher. He never hesitated to lead his people in their
Indian wars, and once he is said to have got into an ambush, but the
awestruck savages, impressed by his noble bearing, hesitated to shoot
him, telling their French allies, "That is the Englishman's god." The
present stone church is the fifth built on the original site. During
nearly a quarter-century the noted Jonathan Edwards was the
Northampton pastor, but he was dismissed in 1750, because, owing to
the growing laxity of church members, he insisted upon "a higher and
purer standard of admission to the communion-table." Northampton is
famed for its educational development, the chief institution, endowed
by Sophia Smith in 1871, being Smith College for women, having a
thousand students and possessing fine buildings, with an art gallery,
music hall and gymnasium. There are various attractive public
buildings, including an Institution for Mutes and the State Lunatic
Asylum. The level land of Nonotuck raises much tobacco, the
Connecticut River winding in wide circular sweeps among the fields and
meadows, but making little progress as it goes around great curves of
miles in circuit. Upon an isthmus thus formed, with the broad river
loop stretching far to the westward, is "Old Hadley," the Connecticut
having made a five-mile circuit to accomplish barely one mile of
distance. Across the level isthmus from the river above to the river
below, stretching through the village, is the noted "Hadley Street,"
the handsomest highway in natural adornments in the Old Bay State.
Over three hundred feet wide, this street is lined by two double rows
of noble elms, with a broad expanse of greenest lawn between, and
nearly a thousand ancient trees arching their graceful branches over
it. This very quiet street has perfect greensward, for it is almost
untravelled, and its inhabitants grow tobacco and make brooms. Another
of these wayward river loops is the great "ox-bow" of the Connecticut,
where the river used to flow around a circuit of nearly four miles and
accomplished only one hundred and fifty yards of actual distance,
until an ice-freshet broke through the narrow isthmus and made a
straight channel across it, which has become the course of the river.
The abandoned channel of the "ox-bow" is now usually stored with logs
awaiting the sawmill. Hadley was the final home and burial-place of
Goffe and Whalley, the regicides, who fled there from New Haven. When
their house was pulled down, it was said the bones of Whalley, who
died in 1679, were found entombed just outside the cellar-wall. It was
the house of the pastor, and they were concealed in it fifteen years,
from 1664 to 1679, their presence known only to three persons. Once,
during the hiding, Indians attacked the town, and after a sharp fight
the people gave way, when there suddenly appeared "an ancient man with
hoary locks, of a most venerable and dignified aspect," who rallied
them to a fresh onslaught, driving the Indians off. He then
disappeared, the inhabitants attributing their deliverance to a
"militant angel." This was Goffe, and the tale is the chief legend of
"Old Hadley." General Joseph Hooker of the Civil War was born in
Hadley. At South Hadley is the Mount Holyoke College for girls, almost
under the shadow of the mountain, amid magnificent scenery, a noted
institution with four hundred students, where, during the past
century, have been educated many missionary women for their labors in
distant lands.
MOUNT HOLYOKE AND BEYOND.
There is a grand view from the summit of Mount Holyoke, spreading
almost from Long Island Sound to the White Mountains, and from the
Berkshire Hills in the west to the cloud-capped mountains Monadnock
and Wachusett, fifty miles to the eastward. This is regarded as the
finest view in New England, for the wide and highly cultivated valley
of the Connecticut, with its wayward, winding stream flowing
apparently in all directions over the rich bottom-lands cut up into
diminutive farms and fields like so many "plaided meadows," gives a
charm that is lacking in most other mountain views. The grand panorama
displays parts of four New England States. Off to the northeast
several miles is seen the town of Amherst, with four thousand people,
the seat of another noted educational institution, Amherst College,
having over four hundred students and a fine archæological museum.
The Hoosac Mountain range in the Berkshires sends down various streams
on its eastern slopes through wild and romantic gorges into the
Connecticut Valley, and one of these is Deerfield River, coming into
the main stream some distance north of Mount Holyoke. Here is the
village of "Old Deerfield," settled in 1670, on the Indian domain of
Pocomtuck, and named from the abundance of deer found in the forests.
Its streets often ran with blood in King Philip's and the later Indian
Wars, and its young men were then described by the quaint Puritan
chronicler as "the very flower of Essex County, none of whom were
ashamed to speak with the enemy in the gate." Its guardian peaks are
the Sugar Loaf, rising seven hundred and ten feet, and on the
opposite eastern side of the river Mount Toby, nearly thirteen hundred
feet high. King Philip, in his attack upon the settlers here in 1675,
made the tall and isolated Sugar Loaf his lookout station, whence he
directed the movements of his forces, and a crag on the top is yet
called "King Philip's Chair." Nearby, a monument marks the battlefield
of Bloody Brook in 1675, where the Indians killed Captain Lathrop and
eighty young men of Essex County. The Fitchburg Railroad from Boston
through Fitchburg comes across the Connecticut Valley, and passing the
village of Greenfield, takes advantage of the winding canyon of
Deerfield River to ascend westward to the wall of Hoosac Mountain,
where the great tunnel is pierced. The route is in a wild and
picturesque defile, in the heart of which is the pleasant village of
Shelburne Falls, where the stream glides down a series of cataracts
and rapids having one hundred and fifty feet descent. Here are mills
making cutlery, hooks, gimlets and other things, and there are
sheep-pastures on the mountain sides, and the people also tap the
maple trees for sugar. There are more villages among these mountains
farther up the gorge, where it may broaden to give a little arable
land, and at one of these, under the shadow of the great Pocomtuck
Mountain, was born in 1797 Mary Lyon, the devout and noted teacher who
founded Mount Holyoke College for girls. Finally the railway reaches
the Hoosac wall, and leaving the little Deerfield River which comes
down from the north, disappears westward in the tunnel.
The Connecticut River beyond the Massachusetts northern boundary
divides the States of New Hampshire and Vermont, and its scenery, as
ascended, becomes more romantic and mountainous. At Northfield, near
the boundary, lived Dwight L. Moody, the evangelist. Above the
boundary, the Massachusetts colony, as a protection to the river
settlements, in 1724 built Fort Dummer, which was often attacked by
the French and Indians in their forays from Canada, but never
captured, and near it was made the first settlement in Vermont, a
village named in 1753 Brattleborough, in honor of Colonel Brattle of
Boston, one of the landowners. The Whetstone Brook flows in, making a
fine water-power, and the town, now having six thousand people, is
charmingly situated on an elevated plateau, surrounded by lofty hills.
Brattleboro' is the centre of the Vermont maple-sugar industry, and it
has the largest organ-works existing, those of the Estey Company. Just
south of the town rises Cemetery Hill, overlooking it with a fine
view, and here is the grand monument erected in memory of the
notorious James Fisk, Jr., who was a native of the place. It bears
emblematic female statues representing Railroads, Commerce, Navigation
and the Drama, and was executed by Larkin G. Mead, the sculptor, also
a native of the town. It is recorded that when a lad, Mead worked one
long winter night on a snow figure at the head of the Main Street, and
next morning, the people were surprised to see there a beautiful
figure of the Recording Angel, modeled in the purest snow. Southwest
of Brattleboro' is Sadawga Lake, in the town of Whitingham, near
which, in a poor log hut, Brigham Young was born in 1801. He was a
farmer's son, educated in the Baptist Church, and afterwards
emigrating to Ohio, joined the Mormons there when about thirty years
old. When Rudyard Kipling had his home in Vermont, it was about three
miles north of Brattleboro'.
From the eastern highlands of New Hampshire the Ashuelot River flows
into the Connecticut below Brattleboro', and to the northeast in its
alluvial valley is Keene, the centre of an agricultural district, and
having about eight thousand people, some of whom make leather goods,
furniture and wooden ware. The Ashuelot means a "collection of many
waters," and the place was named before the Revolution in honor of Sir
Benjamin Keene, a British friend of Governor Wentworth of New
Hampshire, in consequence of which the colonial historian recorded
that "Keene is a proud little spot." To the southeast boldly rises
Mount Monadnock, its high and rugged top elevated nearly thirty-two
hundred feet, and having a hotel half-way up its side. This mountain
is about eighty miles from Boston, and the town of Jaffrey, at its
southeastern base, has an old church, the frame of which was raised on
the day of the battle of Bunker Hill, the workmen claiming that they
heard the cannonading. The Williams River, coming from the slopes of
the Green Mountains, flows into the Connecticut on the Vermont side,
at Bellows Falls, a picturesque summer resort located at the river
rapids, where there is a descent of forty-two feet in about a
half-mile, the power being availed of for various factories. Above, at
Claremont, the Sugar River flows in from New Hampshire, and to the
eastward is the charming Lake Sunapee, nine miles long, and surrounded
by wooded highlands, which has been often called the American Loch
Katrine. Over on the Vermont side, north of Claremont, is Windsor,
where it is recorded that during a fearful thunder-storm, and with the
appalling news of the loss of Fort Ticonderoga ringing in their ears,
the deputies of Vermont adopted the State Constitution, July 2, 1777.
Southwest of the village rises Ascutney Mountain, its Indian name
meaning the "Three Brothers," being supposed to refer to three
singular valleys running down the western slope. Its summit is
elevated thirty-three hundred and twenty feet. William M. Evarts, who
was a native of Boston, has his summer home Runnymede near Windsor,
and at Cornish, nearby, Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase was born in
1808, emigrating to Ohio in 1830.
HANOVER TO MEMPHRAMAGOG.
The White River, coming out from the Green Mountains, flows into the
Connecticut at a noted railway junction, while a short distance above
is the Olcott Falls, a cataract amid picturesque surroundings which
provides power for large paper-mills at Wilder, Vermont. To the
northward is Hanover, in New Hampshire, the seat of the most famous
educational foundation of northern New England, Dartmouth College,
having some seven hundred students. Rev. Eleazer Wheelock began it in
1770, and his name is preserved in the chief hotel. He started a
school in the forest to educate missionaries for the Indians, having
twenty-four students domiciled in rude log huts. He also educated
several Indians, giving them Master's degrees; but after some of them
had returned to savage life he changed his plan, and this object was
subordinated to the purposes of general and higher education, the
College, which was named for the Earl of Dartmouth, entering upon a
successful career subsequently to the Revolution. Among the graduates
have been Daniel Webster, Amos Kendall, Levi Woodbury, Benjamin
Greenleaf, George P. Marsh, George Ticknor, Rufus Choate, Thaddeus
Stevens and Salmon P. Chase. There are numerous buildings surrounding
an extensive elm-shaded campus, and also a spacious college park. The
Connecticut River above Hanover winds about the level fertile
intervale, making numerous "ox-bow" bends, and there appear numerous
mountain peaks which are outlying sentinels of the Franconia Mountains
to the eastward. The best known of these is Moosilauke, rising
forty-eight hundred feet, which formerly was the "Moose Hillock" of
the colonists. On the western river bank is the Vermont town of
Newbury, founded by General Bailey of Massachusetts. It is related
that during the Revolution a detachment of British troops came there
to capture him, but a friend who learned their object went out where
he was ploughing and dropped in the furrow a note, saying, "The
Philistines be upon thee, Samson!" Bailey, returning down the long
furrow, saw the note, took the hint and escaped. The crooked little
Wells River flows out of the Green Mountains and falls into the
Connecticut at the village of Wells River, nestling in a deep basin
among the high hills; and here is another important railway junction,
with routes going westward to Lake Champlain, northward to Canada, and
eastward to the White Mountains. The latter route is up the Ammonoosuc
River valley, past Littleton, with its glove factories and summer
boarding-houses, on the edge of the mountain district, and thence to
Bethlehem and into the heart of the White Mountain region.
The Passumpsic River flows from Vermont into the Connecticut a few
miles above, and about ten miles up that winding and hill-environed
stream is the picturesque town of St. Johnsbury, with about seven
thousand people, noted as the location of the extensive Fairbanks
Scale Works. St. John de Crevecoeur, the French Consul at New York,
was very popular in the Revolutionary times and a benefactor of
Vermont, and this town, settled in 1786, was named in his honor. It is
related that in 1830, when there was a good deal of excitement about
hemp-culture in the United States, the Fairbanks Brothers established
a hemp-dressing factory here, and one of them conceived the idea of a
platform-scale to weigh the hemp, which construction was the origin of
their extensive business, the works sending scales all over the world.
The railroad route to Montreal and Quebec ascends the Passumpsic,
crosses the watershed, passing Lake Memphramagog at Newport, and then
enters Canada. This noted lake is on the national boundary, more than
two-thirds of it being in Canada, and is thirty miles long.
Memphramagog means the "beautiful water," and the mountain ranges
enclosing it with their wooded slopes present fine views. The national
boundary is marked by clearings in the forests on either side of the
lake. The massive rounded summit of the Owl's Head rises thirty-three
hundred feet on the western shore in imposing magnificence, and many
other peaks are sentinelled all around. Steamboats ply on the lake
from Newport to Magog at the foot, where its waters discharge
northward into Magog River and thence flow over the vast plain of
Canada, which is so conspicuously contrasted with the mountains to the
southward, until at Sherbrooke they reach St. Francis River, and
finally the St. Lawrence. Lake Memphramagog has its Indian legends of
massacre and escape, but its chief modern tradition is of a noted
smuggler named Skinner, who in the early nineteenth century performed
prodigious feats of skill in eluding the revenue officers. Near the
boundary is Skinner's Island, having a spacious cavern on its
northwestern side. The smuggler usually disappeared near this island,
which came in time to be named for him, and it is related that one
night the officers, having had a long chase, found his boat on this
island and turned it adrift on the lake. The smuggler never appeared
afterwards, but some years later a fisherman, seeking shelter from a
squall under the lee of the island, discovered the cave hidden under
foliage and explored it.
"And what do you think the fisherman found?
Neither a gold nor a silver prize,
But a skull with sockets where once were eyes;
Also some bones of arms and thighs,
And a vertebral column of giant size;
How they got there he could not devise,
For he'd only been used to commonplace graves,
And knew naught of 'organic remains' in caves;
On matters like those his wits were dull,
So he dropped the subject as well as the skull.
'Tis needless to say
In this latter day,
'Twas the smuggler's bones in the cave that lay:
All I've to add is--the bones in a grave
Were placed, and the cavern was called 'Skinner's Cave.'"
SOURCES OF THE CONNECTICUT.
The Connecticut River comes from the northeast to its confluence with
the Passumpsic, a stream of reduced volume, flowing down rapids. There
is only sparse population above, and in New Hampshire, some distance
east of Colebrook, is the famous Dixville Notch. This is an attractive
ravine about ten miles long, cut through the isolated Dixville Range.
It is not a mountain pass in the usual sense, but a wonderful gorge
among high hills, the cliffs being worn and broken down into strange
forms of ruin and desolation. Theodore Winthrop describes the Dixville
Notch as "briefly, picturesque--a fine gorge between a crumbling,
conical crag and a scarped precipice--a place easily defensible,
except at the season when raspberries would distract sentinels."
Approached from Colebrook to the westward, the view is disappointing,
as it is entered at a high level, but after an abrupt turn to the
right, the tall columnar sides are seen frowning at each other across
the narrow chasm; cliffs of decaying mica slate presenting a scene of
shattered ruin that is mournful to behold. To the right of the Notch,
Table Rock rises five hundred and sixty feet above the road, being
elevated nearly twenty-five hundred feet above the sea, and is
ascended by a rude stairway of stone blocks called Jacob's Ladder. Its
summit is a narrow pinnacle only eight feet wide, with precipitous
sides. It gives an extensive view over the Connecticut Valley
northward to the Connecticut Lakes, and over the upper Androscoggin
Valley to the southeastward. Its most impressive sight, however, is
much nearer, the narrow dreary chasm immediately below, with its
broken palisades that seem almost ready to fall. Beyond is the Ice
Cave, a deep ravine where snow and ice remain throughout the summer.
Washington's Monument and the Pinnacle, remarkable rock formations,
rise high on the north side of the Notch. Beyond the Notch
southeastward is the Androscoggin, which small steamboats ascend to
Lake Umbagog on the Maine boundary. Still farther eastward and deep in
the Maine forests are the noted fishery waters of the Rangeley Lakes,
which have polysyllabic names, such as Mooselucmaguntic,
Mollychunkamunk, and Welokenebacook. They are elevated fifteen hundred
feet above the sea and cover eighty square miles of surface.
We have now ascended the picturesque Connecticut River to its mountain
sources. It has become only a brook, and having followed it up to the
Canadian boundary of Vermont, it is found to come out of Northern New
Hampshire, flowing westward from the Connecticut Lakes. The main lake
of this group is twenty-five miles northeast of Colebrook, covering
about twelve square miles, a favorite haunt of anglers, and navigated
by a small steamboat. The second lake, four miles farther northeast
through the forest, has about five square miles of surface, and the
third lake is to the northward, covering two hundred acres. The
Canadian northern boundary of New Hampshire is a low mountain range,
and on its southern slope is the fourth and highest lake, at
twenty-five hundred feet elevation above the sea, a pond of about
three acres, in which the great New England river has its head. These
Connecticut Lakes are in an almost unbroken forest.
THE WHITE MOUNTAINS.
To the eastward of the Connecticut River, which we have explored from
its mouth to the source, lies one of the most attractive regions in
America, the White Mountain district. It covers about thirteen hundred
square miles, stretching forty-five miles eastward from the
Connecticut to the Maine boundary, and being thirty miles wide from
the Ammonoosuc and Androscoggin on the north to the base of the
Sandwich range on the south. There are some two hundred of these
mountains rising from a plateau elevated generally sixteen hundred
feet above the sea. They cluster mainly in two groups, separated by a
broad table-land ten to twenty miles wide, the western group being the
Franconia Mountains and the eastern group the Presidential range, or
White Mountains proper. Their great mass is of granite, overlaid by
mica slate; their scenery is varied and beautiful; and the country has
nowhere a more popular resort than these mountains in the summer. They
send out from their glens and notches various rivers, westward to the
Connecticut, eastward to the Androscoggin and Saco, and southward to
the Merrimack. The Indians called the White Mountains Agiochook,
meaning "the Mountains of the Snowy Forehead and Home of the Great
Spirit," and held them in the utmost reverence and awe. They rarely
ascended the peaks, as it was believed no intruder upon these sacred
heights was ever known to return. The legend was that the Great Spirit
once bore a blameless chief and his squaw in a mighty whirlwind to the
summit, while the world below was overspread by a flood destroying all
the people. It was said that the great Passaconaway, the wizard-king
at Pennacook, was wont to commune with celestial messengers on the
summit of Agiochook, whence he was finally borne to heaven. The first
white man who visited these mountains was Darby Field, who came up
from Portsmouth on the seacoast in June, 1642, by the valley of the
Saco. The Indians tried to dissuade him, saying he would never return
alive, but he pressed on, attended by two seashore Indians, passing
through cloud-banks and storms, reaching the highest peak, whence he
saw, as he related, "the sea by Saco, the Gulf of Canada, and the
great lake Canada River came out of;" and he found many crystals that
he thought were diamonds, from which the range long bore the name of
the "Chrystal Hills." Towards the close of the eighteenth century
colonists began moving into the outlying glens; in 1792 Abel Crawford
lived on the Giant's Grave, now Fabyan's; in 1803 a small inn was
built there; and in 1820 a party of seven ascended and slept on the
summit of Mount Washington, giving the principal peaks the names they
now have.
From the Connecticut River the chief route of entrance to the White
Mountain region is by railway up the Ammonoosuc River alongside its
swift-flowing amber waters, and through the villages of North Lisbon
and Littleton, then coming to Bethlehem Junction, whence a short
narrow-gauge railroad leads steeply up the hill-slope westward to
Maplewood and Bethlehem. This is one of the most populous resorts of
the district--Bethlehem Street--a well-kept highway, stretching two
miles along a plateau upon the northern hill-slope at an elevation of
almost three hundred feet above the river. When old President Dwight,
in his early wanderings over New England, first saw this place, it was
known as the "Lord's Hill," and he recorded it as remote and sterile,
having "only log huts, recent, few, poor and planted on a soil
singularly rough and rocky," but he saw "a magnificent prospect of
the White Mountains and a splendid collection of other mountains in
this neighborhood." It is now an aggregation of fine hotels and summer
boarding-houses, the whole "Street" having a grand view of the
imposing Presidential range, seen nearly twenty miles to the eastward
over the Ammonoosuc Valley, while other mountain ranges are to the
north and west, so that Bethlehem is in a vast amphitheatre,
presenting, when the clouds permit, an environment of unsurpassed
magnificence. To the southward, the visitors climb Mount Agassiz,
rising twenty-four hundred feet, formerly known as the Peaked Hill,
and get an unrivalled view of mountains all around the horizon, the
Green Mountains of Vermont being plainly visible beyond the
Connecticut River to the westward. The southern flanks of Mount
Agassiz are drained by the pretty little Gale River, flowing through a
deep glen westward to the Ammonoosuc at North Lisbon. Down in this
glen, to the southwest of Bethlehem, is the village of Franconia, with
numerous hotels and boarding-houses, while to the southwest of the
glen rises Sugar Hill, another popular resort, with its great hotels
set high on the hilltop, and having superb views of the Franconia and
White Mountains to the eastward, and far away westward over the
Connecticut Valley where the horizon is enclosed by the long line of
the Green Mountains. It is a breezy and health-giving place.
THE OLD MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN.
To the southward of Bethlehem is the Franconia group, of which Mount
Lafayette is the crowning peak, its pyramidal summit rising fifty-two
hundred and seventy feet. A notch is cut down into the group, and
through this, the Franconia or Profile Notch, another narrow-gauge
railway going up-hill for ten miles in the forest, traverses the
flanks of Lafayette and leads to the Echo Lake and Profile House, the
most extensive hotel in the region. This is in Coös County, the
mountain county of northern New Hampshire, getting its strangely
pronounced name from the Indian word _cooash_, meaning the "pine
woods," with which almost the whole country was then covered. Here
lived the Abenaqui tribe, known as the "swift deer-hunting Coosucks."
At the highest part of the Notch, where its floor broadens
sufficiently for a few acres of smooth surface between the enormous
enclosing mountains, is built the hotel and its attendant cottages,
standing between two long, narrow lakes at the summit of the pass, the
waters flowing out respectively north and south, from the one, Echo
Lake to Gale River and the Ammonoosuc, and from the other, Profile
Lake to the Pemigewasset, seeking the Merrimack. The Pemigewasset
means "the place of the Crooked Pines," and Profile Lake used to be
called the "Old Man's Washbowl." On its western side rises Mount
Cannon, forty-one hundred feet high, on the southeastern face of
which is the "Old Man of the Mountain," the noted Franconia Profile.
The mountain rises abruptly from the edge of the lake, and twelve
hundred feet above the water is this "Great Stone Face," about which
Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote so famously. It is a remarkable semblance of
the human countenance, and can be properly seen from only one
position. Move but a short distance either north or south from this
spot, and the profile becomes distorted and is soon obliterated. It is
composed of three distinct ledges of granite projecting from the face
of the mountain, one forming the forehead, another the nose and upper
lip, and a third the chin. These three ledges are in different
vertical lines, the actual length of the profile being forty feet, and
they make an overhanging brow, a powerful and clearly-defined nose,
and a sharp and massive projecting chin, the very mark of complete
decision of character, so that the realism of the profile is almost
startling. The Old Man's severe and somewhat melancholy gaze is
directed towards the southeast over the lake, as if looking earnestly
down the Notch.
The white man's discovery of this profile was made in the early
nineteenth century by two road-makers, mending the highway through the
Notch. Stooping to wash their hands in the lake, just at the right
spot, they casually looked up and saw it, being struck instantly by
the wonderful facial resemblance. "That is Jefferson," said one of
them, Thomas Jefferson then being President of the United States, and
the stern countenance certainly looks like some of his portraits.
There he is, gazing far away, with sturdy, unchanging expression, as
he has done for thousands of years. Thomas Starr King, who has so well
described these mountains, regards the "Great Stone Face" as "a piece
of sculpture older than the Sphinx--an imitation of the human
countenance which is the crown of all beauty, that was pushed out from
the coarse strata of New England, thousands of years before Adam." Yet
a slight change from the proper position for view greatly alters the
profile. Move a few paces northward, and the nose and face are
flattened, only the projecting forehead finally being seen. Go a short
distance to the southward, and the Old Man's decisive countenance
quickly deteriorates into that of a toothless old woman wearing a cap,
and soon the lower portion of the face is so distorted that the human
profile is obliterated. The Cannon Mountain bearing the famous profile
is a majestic ridge named from a spacious granite ledge on its steep
slope, presenting, when observed from a certain position below, the
appearance of a cannon ready for firing. Its summit rises seven
hundred feet above the profile.
From the Profile Lake, the Pemigewasset River flows southward, deep
down in the narrow Franconia Notch, the stream descending over five
hundred feet in five miles. Here is the "Flume," and beyond it the
gorge widens, giving a view which Thomas Starr King has described as
"a perpetual refreshment," for it extends far away southward over the
broadening intervale, one of the fairest scenes in nature, stretching
many miles to and beyond Plymouth. The "Flume" is made by a brilliant
little tributary brook dashing along the bottom of a fissure for
several hundred feet, bordered by high walls rising sixty to seventy
feet above the torrent and only a few feet apart. The water rushes
towards the Pemigewasset between these smooth granite walls, and the
awe-struck visitor walks through in startled admiration. The "Pool" is
beyond, a deep, dark basin, into which the Pemigewasset falls,
surrounded by a high rocky enclosure, making an abyss over a hundred
feet across and one hundred and fifty feet deep. There is also another
pellucid green basin below, into which the river tumbles by a pretty
white cascade, this being a huge pothole originally ground out by the
action of boulders whirled around in it by the current. A galaxy of
peaks environ this pleasant glen in the Franconia and Pemigewasset
ranges, the highest of them, Mount Lincoln, rising fifty-one hundred
feet, and having Mount Liberty, a lower peak, to the southward.
TO PLYMOUTH AND BEYOND.
Emerging from the Franconia Notch, the broadened valley reaches the
attractive village of North Woodstock, another cluster of hotels and
summer boarding-houses in an attractive location. The Pemigewasset
receives its eastern branch, passes other villages, is swollen by the
brisk torrent of the Mad River, and then, amid lower mountains and
broader vales, but still with the most delicious views, comes to the
typical White Mountain outpost town of Plymouth, at the confluence of
the Pemigewasset and Baker Rivers, the latter coming in from the
northwest. Captain Baker with a company of Massachusetts rangers,
early in the eighteenth century, attacked an Indian village here, and
his name was given the tributary stream. The Puritan colonists,
however, did not actually settle Plymouth until 1764. The town is full
of summer cottages and boarding-houses, is noted for its manufacture
of fine buckskin gloves, and has as its chief relic the little old
building, then the court-house, in which Daniel Webster made his first
speech to a jury. It was here that Nathaniel Hawthorne suddenly died
in May, 1864. He was travelling with his intimate friend, ex-President
of the United States Franklin Pierce, and stopping overnight at a
hotel, was found dead in his room next morning, having passed quietly
away while sleeping. Far away beyond Plymouth the bright Pemigewasset
flows, receiving the outlets of the Waukawan Lake, and of the
beautiful and island-dotted Squam Lake, its enclosing hills being most
superb sites for summer villas. This is the "mountain-girdled Squam"
of which Whittier sings, and a giant pine tree is pointed out on its
banks where the poet used to sit and watch the lake by hours, and in
honor of which he wrote the _Wood Giant_, one of his most admirable
poems. The Pemigewasset joins the outlet stream of Lake Winnepesaukee
at Franklin, and they together form the noble Merrimack, which, in its
useful flow to the sea, turns so many New England mill-wheels. The
Pemigewasset and its branches drain the southern slopes of the
Franconia ranges in a vast primeval forest, whose inner solitudes are
rarely explored. Upon its eastern verge, far up on the southwestern
slope of Mount Willey, is Ethan's Pond, said to be the most elevated
source of the Merrimack, twenty-five hundred feet above the sea. Its
most remote source is the Profile Lake, at the head of the
Pemigewasset, over which the "Great Stone Face" mounts guard. Thus
writes Thoreau of the Merrimack:
"At first it comes on, murmuring to itself, by the base of stately and
retired mountains, through moist, primitive woods, whose juices it
receives, where the bear still drinks it and the cabins of settlers
are far between, and there are few to cross its stream; enjoying in
solitude its cascades still unknown to fame; by long ranges of
mountains of Sandwich and of Squam, slumbering like tumuli of Titans,
with the peaks of Moosilauke, the Haystacks and Kearsarge reflected in
its waters; where the maple and the raspberry, those lovers of the
hills, flourish amid temperate dews; flowing long and full of meaning,
but untranslatable as its name, Pemigewasset, by many a pastured
Pelion and Ossa, where unnamed muses haunt, tended by Oreades, Dryads
and Nereids, and receiving the tribute of many an untasted Hippocrene:
"'Such water do the gods distil,
And pour down every hill,
For their New England men.
A draught of this will nectar bring,
And I'll not taste the spring
Of Helicon again.'
"Where it meets the sea is Plum Island, its sand ridges scalloping
along the horizon like the sea-serpent, and its distant outline broken
by many a tall ship, leaning, still, against the sky. Standing at its
mouth, looking up its sparkling stream to its source,--a silver
cascade which falls all the way from the White Mountains to the
sea,--and behold a city on each successive plateau, a busy colony of
human beavers around every fall. Not to mention Newburyport and
Haverhill, see Lawrence and Lowell, and Nashua and Manchester and
Concord, gleaming one above the other."
THE WHITE MOUNTAIN NOTCH.
The most remarkable pass in this attractive mountain district is the
great White Mountain Notch, through the heart of the range. The
valley of the Ammonoosuc, farther ascended from Bethlehem Junction,
soon becomes an enormous chasm, cut deeply down, and sweeping grandly
around from the south towards the east, disclosing in magnificent
array the splendid galaxy of Presidential Peaks as it is carved along
their western bases. This Notch is formed by the headwaters of the
Ammonoosuc rising among the foothills of Mount Washington, flowing out
towards the west, and by the Saco River, flowing southeast to the
Atlantic. The Maine Central Railway avails of this remarkable pass to
get through the White Mountains, and bring the traffic of northwestern
New England and Canada down to the sea. To the northward arises the
Owl's Head, around which this railway circles after emerging from the
western portal of the Notch, and on the northern flanks of this
mountain are the head-streams of Israel River, over beyond which is
Mount Starr King. Here is Jefferson, another gathering of hotels and
cottages, enjoying one of the finest views of the White Mountain
range, a popular resort, from which there are grand drives around the
northern side of the Presidential range, seventeen miles eastward to
Gorham on the Androscoggin. It was on this route that the famous view
of these mountains was painted by George L. Brown--the "Crown of New
England," owned by the Prince of Wales. Jefferson Hill has been
described by Starr King as "the _ultima thule_ of grandeur in an
artist's pilgrimage among the New Hampshire mountains." Seven miles
northwest, down the Israel River, is Lancaster, with nearly four
thousand people, another favorite resort, though with more distant
mountain views.
Where the Ammonoosuc, now become so small, curves around from the east
towards the south at the western portal of the Notch, is Fabyan's, and
here are located some of the great hotels of the district, right in
front of Mount Washington. Between Fabyan's and Crawford's, four miles
southward, the Presidential Range is the eastern border of the Notch
and is passed in grand review. The headspring of the Ammonoosuc is on
the slope of the mountain alongside Crawford's, where the floor of the
valley is at its highest elevation, nineteen hundred feet above the
sea and three hundred and thirty feet above Fabyan's. Higher than this
the massive walls of the Notch rise some two thousand feet farther,
and then slope backward up to the mountain summits, which are much
higher, but invisible from the bottom of the valley. In front of
Crawford's, where there is a rather broader space, one looks southward
at the little oval lake which is the source of Saco River. Just beyond
is the "Gate of the Notch," where the rocky projections of the huge
mountains on either hand come out and almost close the passage,
leaving an opening of only a few feet width for the diminutive Saco,
here a mere rill, to start on its career, soon becoming a vigorous
mountain torrent, leaping and bounding down the canyon. Upon the left
hand of the stream the rocks have been cut out to give the wagon-road
room, and on the right hand the railroad has hewn its route through
the granite, the three being closely compressed between the high
cliffs towering above. The Elephant's Head, formed of dark rocks, with
trunk and eye well fashioned, looks down upon this "Gate," and just
beyond, another cliff presents the semblance of an Indian papoose
clinging to its mother's back. The little Saco soon cuts the Notch
deeply down, such is its steep descent, so that in a short distance it
becomes a vast ravine. Thus, with the railway high up on a gallery
upon the mountain side, and the road deep down by the Saco, the ravine
is cleft between Mounts Webster and Willard, the latter, as the chasm
bends, falling sharply off, a tremendous precipice of steep and bare
rock, when Mount Willey appears beyond. Thus the Notch deepens and
broadens, becoming an enormous chasm, with the rapid river down in the
bottom, constantly increasing in volume. The Saco is said to have been
thus named by the Indians because of the mass of water it brings down,
the word meaning "pouring out."
About three miles below the "Gate," the Notch broadens into a sort of
basin enclosed by the bare walls of Mount Willard to the westward and
Mount Willey to the south, curving around the long crescent-shaped
slope of Mount Webster, which makes the northern border. Here is the
Willey House, the scene of the Willey Slide, the great tragedy of the
Notch, a small and antiquated inn, now adjoined by a modern hotel. In
August, 1826, there was a terrific landslide down the slope of Mount
Willey behind the old house, then kept by Samuel Willey, from whom the
mountain was afterwards named. A heavy storm after a long drouth had
made a flood in the Saco, and Willey, fearing an overflow, deserted
his house in the night, with his family of nine persons, to seek
higher ground. Suddenly the slide came down the mountain and the
flight was fatal, the avalanche of rocks and dirt overwhelming them
all, while a convenient boulder behind the house so deviated it that,
although almost covered with rubbish, the building was uninjured. A
traveller who afterwards came through the Notch found the half-buried
inn deserted, with the doors open, the supper-table spread, and a
Bible lying open upon it, with a pair of spectacles on the page,
evidently just as they had been left in the sudden flight. Owing to
the bend in the Notch there is an unrivalled view down it from the
summit of Mount Willard, which thus stands practically at the head of
the deep pass. The southern face of this mountain is a vast and almost
perpendicular precipice, out on the brow of which the observer stands
to look down the deep valley stretching far away, and enclosed
between mountains rising nearly two thousand feet above him on either
hand, so that the view has a singular individuality, as if one were
looking at it through a camera. The depth of the gorge and the
precipitous front of the mountain make the Notch a tremendous gulf.
The deeply concave chasm is scooped out like an immense cylinder,
having the inside covered with dense green foliage, and grandly
bending around to the left until lost afar off behind the distant
projecting slope of Mount Webster. The railroad stretches, a streak of
brown, along the right-hand wall of the valley, twisting in and out
about the promontories. Down in the bottom the thick forest hides the
wagon-road and the bed of the Saco until they come out in a flat
cleared green spot in front of the Willey House. The towering mountain
slopes are scratched and scarred where slides have come down, and two
or three bright little ribbons of white water are suspended on their
sides, making cascades that help fill the river beneath. Beyond the
outlet of the Notch, the eastern background is a vast sea of mountain
ranges and billowy peaks, having the bold, white, pyramidal crown of
proud Chocorua rising behind them. This splendid scene, regarded by
many as the finest in the White Mountains, had a peculiar charm for
Anthony Trollope on his American visit. He did not usually view
America with favor, but he emphatically wrote: "Much of this scenery,
I say, is superior to the famed and classic lands of Europe," adding
"I know nothing, for instance, on the Rhine equal to the view from
Mount Willard and the mountain Pass called the Notch." Most
experienced observers are convinced that as an impressive exhibition
of a deep mountain canyon with an enchanting background, this is not
surpassed in Switzerland.
MOUNT WASHINGTON.
The Fabyan House, in front of Mount Washington, stands upon the
location of the "Giant's Grave," which was an elongated mound of sand
and gravel formed by the waves of an ancient lake, reacting from the
adjacent mountain slopes, and rising about fifty feet. Being high,
long and wide, it was just the place for a house. The tradition is
that once a fierce-looking Indian stood upon this mound at night,
waving a flaming torch and shouting "No paleface shall take root here;
this the Great Spirit whispered in my ear." The successive burnings of
hotels on this site would seem to indicate this as prophetic, and in
fact no hotel did stand there any length of time until the projectors
of the present large building, after the last one was burnt, as if to
avoid fate, had the mound making the "Giant's Grave" levelled and
obliterated. Here was built the earliest inn of the White Mountains in
1803 by a sawmill owner on the Ammonoosuc River, named Crawford. His
grandson, Ethan Allen Crawford, the famous "White Mountain Giant," was
the noted guide who made the first path to ascend Mount Washington
and built the first house on its summit. Now, the mountain is ascended
from this western side by an inclined-plane railway, reached by an
ordinary railway extending from Fabyan's five miles across to the base
of the mountain. The railway to the summit is about three miles long,
with an average gradient of thirteen hundred feet to the mile, the
maximum being thirteen and one-half inches in the yard. It is worked
by a cog-wheel locomotive acting upon a central cogged rail, and the
ascent is accomplished in about ninety minutes. It is an exhilarating
ride up the slope, for, as the car is elevated, the horizon of view
widens decidedly to the west and northwest, while the trees of the
forest get smaller and smaller, and their character changes. The
sugar-maples, yellow birches and mossy-trunked beeches, with an
occasional aspen or mountain ash, are gradually left behind in the
valley, being replaced on the higher slope by white pine and hemlock,
white birch, and dark spruces and firs hung with gray moss. These
gradually becoming smaller, soon the only trees left are a sort of
dwarf fir intertangled with moss. Then, rising above the limit of
trees, there is only a stunted arctic vegetation, and this permits a
grand and unobstructed view all around the western horizon.
The route of the railway goes over and up various steep trestles, the
most startling of all being "Jacob's Ladder," elevated about thirty
feet and having the steepest gradient. Here is a perfect arctic
desolation, the surface being broken blocks and rough stones of schist
and granite, cracked, honeycombed and moss-grown, having endured the
storms and frosts of centuries. There is a little vegetation where it
may get root, the reindeer-moss, saxifrage clumps and sandwort of
dreary Labrador or Greenland. The view covers a wide expanse far away
westward to the Green Mountains, the landscape being everywhere dark
forests and peaks, with the massive slopes of Mount Clay nearer to the
northward, and the whole Presidential range, Mounts Jefferson, Adams
and Madison, stretching beyond. As one looks over the vast, dark,
undulating wilderness of peaks, it can be realized how the flood of
emotion made an entranced observer exclaim, in the hearing of Mr.
Starr King, "See the tumultuous bombast of the landscape." Nearing the
summit, the railway gradient is less steep, and here an opportunity is
given to peer over the edge of the "Great Gulf," a profound abyss on
the eastern mountain slope between Washington, Clay and Jefferson.
This hollow gulf, its sides and bottom covered with dark trees,
relieved by a little glistening pond at the bottom, stretches out to
the narrow valley along the eastern base of the range, known as the
Glen, down into which one can look at an angle of about forty-five
degrees. Rounding the mountain summit, the train halts at a broad
platform in front of the Summit Hotel.
The top of Mount Washington is the highest elevation in the United
States east of the Rockies and north of the Carolinas. It is what may
be described as an arctic island, elevated sixty-two hundred and
ninety feet, in the temperate zone, and displaying both arctic
vegetation and temperature, the flora and climate being alike that of
Greenland. An observatory gives a higher view over the tops of the
buildings, and the first great impression of it is that the view seems
to be all around the world, limited only by the horizon. In every
direction are oceans of billowy peaks, the whole enormous circuit of
almost a thousand miles, embracing New England, New York, Canada and
the sea. The grand scene is at the same time gloomy. The almost
universal forests overspread everything with a mournful pall of sombre
green. The summit is spacious, and the contour of the mountain can on
all sides be plainly seen. Its slope to the westward, like all of the
Presidential range, is steeper than to the eastward, down which a
wagon-road zigzags into the Glen. Upon the eastern side, two long
spurs seem to brace the mountain, though profound ravines are there
cut into it. The southern slope of the summit pitches off suddenly,
while to the north there is a more gradual descent, both the railway
and wagon-road approaching that way. The original Tip-Top House, the
first inn erected, is preserved as a curiosity, a low and damp
structure built of the rough stones gathered on the mountain. The
newer hotel is of wood, with a steep roof, and is chained down to the
rocks to prevent the gales from blowing it over. There is a
weather-signal station at the summit, one of the most important posts
in the country.
THE GRAND MOUNTAIN VIEW.
The Indians always held the White Mountains in reverent awe. They were
the religious shrine of the Pennacooks, who roamed over the region
between the mountains and the sea. The early historian Josselyn in the
seventeenth century recorded, of these Indians: "Ask them whither they
go when they dye; they will tell you, pointing with their finger, to
Heaven, beyond the White Mountains." Passaconaway, the great
wizard-chief of the Pennacooks, who was finally converted to
Christianity by the Apostle Eliot, is said to have lived to the great
age of one hundred and twenty years, and then to have been translated.
The Pennacook tradition was that in the cold of mid-winter he was
carried away from them in a weird sleigh drawn by wolves, that took
him to the summit of Mount Washington, whence he was straightway
received into Heaven:
"Far o'er Winnepiseogee's ice,
With brindled wolves all harnessed then and there,
High seated on a sledge made in a trice
On Mount Agiochook of hickory,
He lashed and reeled and sang right jollily,
And once upon a car of flaming fire,
The dreadful Indian shook with fear to see
The King of Pennacook, his chief, his sire,
Ride flaming up to Heaven, than any mountain higher."
The first house on the mountain, built by Ethan Allen Crawford in
1821, was a small stone cabin having the floor covered with moss for
bedding, the only furniture being a chest to contain blankets, and a
stove; a roll of sheet-lead serving as the "register," on which the
guests scratched their names and the date of visit. This cabin was
swept away by a terrific storm in August, 1826. Some time later an
eccentric individual took possession of the summit, naming it "Trinity
Height," and called himself the modern "Israel of Jerusalem,"
proposing to inaugurate in this exalted place a new Order, styled "The
Christian or Purple and Royal Democracy." With an eye to business, he
put toll-gates on the bridlepaths and taxed each visitor a dollar.
There were bitter quarrels about the ownership for years afterwards,
and the first winter ascent was made by a sheriff, who went up to
serve a writ in 1858, and found frost over a foot thick enveloping
everything. The lawsuits, however, were ultimately fought out and
settled, and the present owners have been undisturbed for years.
The view from the summit is widespread. The most distant objects that
have been recognized are Mount Beloeil, northwest in Canada, and
Mount Ebeeme, northeast beyond the Moosehead Lake in Maine, each one
hundred and thirty-five miles away. These distant mountain tops are
said to be brought into view only by the aid of atmospheric
refraction, in raising them, as they are actually below the horizon.
Also northeast is Mount Abraham, sixty-eight miles away; and were it
not for this, Maine's greatest mountain, Katahdin, in the wilderness
of the upper Penobscot, might be seen, but Abraham obstructs the view.
Katahdin, rising nearly fifty-four hundred feet, is one hundred and
sixty-five miles northeast. Saddleback, at the head of the Rangeley
Lakes, is seen sixty miles away, and Bald Mountain, to the right, one
hundred miles off in Maine. To the eastward is seen Mount Megunticook,
in the Camden range, on Penobscot Bay, one hundred and fifteen miles
off. To the east and southeast for many miles is the ocean between
Casco Bay and Cape Ann. The sea, however, is never well viewed from
Mount Washington, because it is so nearly the color of the sky at the
horizon as to be difficult of acute discernment. The moving vessels,
however, can be readily seen by the aid of a glass. The bright waters
of Sebago Lake are to the southeast, and beyond are the shores of
Casco Bay and the city of Portland, sixty-seven miles off. The low
round swell of Mount Agamenticus shows faintly above the horizon,
seventy-nine miles south-southeast, and to the right there is also a
faint trace of the Isles of Shoals, ninety-six miles off. To the
southeast, twenty-two miles, is the sharpest and noblest peak of all
in the galaxy of view, the high, white, pyramidal top of Chocorua,
having the broad island-studded Lake Winnepesaukee to the right, with
the distant double peak of Mount Belknap seen over its clear waters.
Just to the west of south, and one hundred and four miles distant, is
the faint rounded summit of Mount Monadnock, near the southwest corner
of New Hampshire, and nearer is Mount Kearsarge, seventy miles off,
and appearing much similar. The Nelson Pinnacle, farther away, is to
the right of Kearsarge. The most distant mountain discernible in that
direction is Mount Wachusett, one hundred and twenty-six miles off. To
the southwest are seen Ascutney and the twin Killington Peaks, near
Rutland, Vermont, eighty-eight miles away. To the west are seen
plainly the two Green Mountain peaks of Mansfield and the Camel's
Hump, seventy-eight miles off, and over the northern slope of the
latter can be faintly detected the great Adirondack Mount Whiteface,
one hundred and thirty miles distant. Such is the splendid circuit of
mountains forming the horizon for Mount Washington. Among the striking
objects in the view are the deep river valleys as they go out from the
Presidential range. The Peabody flows through the Glen north to the
Androscoggin, which can be traced far northeast. The Ellis flows south
to the Saco, which goes out through the Notch and away southeast. The
valley of the Ammonoosuc runs off westward, where along the horizon is
the great trough of the Connecticut Valley stretching all across the
scene. Lakes and ponds are studded among the dark summits, and at the
observer's feet are the springs feeding many great rivers of New
England, the Merrimack, to the southward, also having its sources in
this great wilderness of mountains, which on all sides sends out
babbling brooks and silvery cataracts to bear their waters down to old
ocean.
THE GLEN AND NORTH CONWAY.
The wagon-road from Mount Washington summit down to the base, is on
the eastern side, and is a little more than eight miles long, with an
average gradient of one to eight, descending into the Glen and
displaying magnificent views. The descent occupies about one hour, and
the ascent five hours. On the southeastern side of the mountain is
Tuckerman's Ravine, a huge gorge enclosed by rocky walls a thousand
feet high. This ravine usually displays the "Snow Arch" until late in
August, formed by a stream flowing out from under the huge masses of
snow piled up in winter, until it gradually melts away and collapses.
The main Glen is formed by the deep and thickly-wooded Pinkham Notch
at the eastern base of Mount Washington, its floor being at two
thousand feet elevation, and this Notch continues north and south in
deeply-carved stream beds, the Peabody River flowing northward to the
Androscoggin at Gorham and the Ellis River southward to the Saco. The
Peabody descends rapidly to the Androscoggin, entering it at about
eight hundred feet elevation, the active town of Gorham being located
here in a beautiful situation, and having two thousand people, at the
northern gateway to the White Mountains. The Androscoggin, having
drained the eastern mountain slopes, flows away into the State of
Maine to seek the Kennebec, and thence the sea. In the Glen, in the
coaching days, the old Glen House was the headquarters at the foot of
the road down Mount Washington, but it was burnt in 1894, and has not
been rebuilt. To the eastward, bounding the Glen, rise the Wild Cat
Ridge and the impressive Carter Dome, which would be a grand mountain
elsewhere, but here is dwarfed by the overshadowing Presidential range
on the western side. From the Pinkham Notch the little Ellis River
goes southward, and below the outlet of Tuckerman's Ravine is the
beautiful Crystal Cascade, where it pours down eighty feet over
successive step-like terraces. Another lovely cataract it makes is the
Glen Ellis Fall, which is considered the finest in the White
Mountains, on the slope of the Wild Cat Ridge. The stream slides down
an inclined plane of twenty feet over ledges, and then falls seventy
feet through a deep groove, twisted by bulges in the rocks and making
almost a complete turn. Thus sliding, foaming and falling, the
stream leaps nearly a hundred feet into a dark green pool beneath. The
Glen broadens as it progresses southward, and soon becomes a widened
intervale, having many houses for summer boarders.
[Illustration: _Log Bridge over the Wild Cat, near Jackson, N. H._]
Here is the pleasant village of Jackson in a broad basin, surrounded
by low mountains, making splendid views in all directions. There are
the Tin, Iron, Thorn and Moat Mountains, with others, the intervale
being almost covered with hotels, boarding-houses, and the accessories
of a popular summer resort, and having pretty cottages perched on the
hill-slopes all about. This pleasant resting-place was originally
called New Madbury, but at the opening of the nineteenth century it
was named in honor of President John Adams. It continued contentedly
as Adams until his son John Quincy became President, and in 1828, when
politics ran high and John Quincy Adams was again a candidate, it
happened that all the votes in the town of Adams but one were given to
his competitor, Andrew Jackson, who was elected, whereupon the town
changed its name to Jackson. Since then it has had a quiet history
excepting once, when, in 1875, they were building the railroad through
the White Mountain Notch, and the bears, scared by the powder-blasts
of the builders, came in droves to Jackson and almost captured the
town from the frightened inhabitants. Just beyond Jackson, in Lower
Bartlett, the Ellis flows into the Saco in a magnificent environment,
the Ellis and the Eastern Branch from the Carter range coming in
together, and making the Saco a great river. This is another paradise
for the seeker after the picturesque. From the little church of the
village, looking down over the Saco intervales, when flooded with
sunset light, gives a most fascinating view. An enraptured visitor has
written of this landscape seen from the church door: "One might
believe that he was looking through an air that had never enwrapped
any sin, upon a floor of some nook of the primitive Eden." Bartlett
was named in honor of Josiah Bartlett, a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, and its pioneer settler, John Poindexter, came eighty
miles on foot through the wilderness from Portsmouth, dragging his few
household effects on a hand-sled, his wife riding an old horse, with
the feather-bed for a saddle, and carrying the baby in her arms.
The Saco Valley broadens below, and Intervale, another summer village,
is passed, and then North Conway, one of the most popular of the White
Mountain resorts. It spreads along a low sloping terrace on the
eastern verge of the widening valley, and looks out upon the river
with the elongated and massive ridge of Moat Mountain grandly rising
beyond. The town is largely built along a pleasant tree-bordered
street, having the Presidential range spread in magnificent array to
the northwest, sixteen miles away. To the southward the valley opens
over long stretches of fertile lowlands until the Saco turns sharply
to the eastward, seeking the sea. To the northward, the immediate
guardian of the valley is Mount Kearsarge, sometimes called Pequawket,
rising thirty-three hundred feet. Kearsarge means the "pointed pine
mountain," and its name was given the famous warship which fought and
sunk the privateer "Alabama." It is the beauty of the surroundings
which gives North Conway its charm, and the valley is called the
"Arcadia of the White Hills," where the harshness of the granite
ramparts beyond are in strange contrast with the genial repose of
these meadows, and the delicate curves of the long, swelling hills.
The restfulness of the scene is its attraction, everything
contributing to its serenity; even distant Mount Washington is said to
"not seem so much to stand up as to lie out at ease across the north;
the leonine grandeur is there, but it is the lion, not erect, but
couchant, a little sleepy, stretching out his paws and enjoying the
sun." Proud Chocorua, which is not far away, is also said to even
appear "a little tired," as seen from North Conway, and as if looking
wistfully down into
"A land
In which it seemed always afternoon."
These Conway intervales of the Saco were the Indian valley of
Pequawket, and its people have long been known as the Pigwackets. An
Indian village first occupied the site of North Conway, gradually
giving place to the rude huts of the colonists. It progressed greatly
by the trade through the mountain district, before the advent of the
railway, and was the chief stage-coach headquarters in those days. Now
it is quiet and restful, the excitements of the coaching times being
gone. Three miles below, the magnificent valley makes its grand bend
to the eastward, and the swelling Saco flows out through the State of
Maine and to the sea at the twin towns of Saco and Biddeford.
LAKE WINNEPESAUKEE.
The southern verge of the White Mountains has many lower peaks and
ridges, including the Ossipee and Sandwich ranges, and finally they
all run off into the serrated shores of the extensive and beautiful
Lake Winnepesaukee, cut by long, sloping promontories and abounding in
islands. Thirteen miles southward from North Conway, near Madison, is
the largest erratic boulder of granite known to exist, which was
brought down and dropped there by the great glacier and is estimated
to weigh eight thousand tons. It is seventy-five feet long, forty
wide, and from thirty to thirty-seven feet high. Lake Winnepesaukee
washes all the southeastern flanks of the mountain region, and has
many peaks in grand array around its northern borders. The Indians
were so impressed with the attractive scenery of the lake that they
gave it the poetical name, meaning "the Smile of the Great Spirit."
The Sandwich Mountains are spread across its northern horizon,
showing the rocky summit of Mount Tecumseh, rising over four thousand
feet; Tripyramid and its great "Slide," marked along its face, where a
vast mass of rocks and forest went down the slope in the rainy season
of 1869, moving over a distance of two miles and falling twenty-one
hundred feet; the broad, rounded summit of the Sandwich "Dome;" the
sharp peak of Whiteface, also scratched by a wide landslide on its
southern slope; the lofty top of Passaconaway, rising forty-two
hundred feet; and the proud apex of Chocorua, regarded as the most
picturesque of all these mountains. Its much-admired peaks do not rise
as high as some of the others, thirty-five hundred feet, but are built
of a brilliant crystalline labradorite, called Chocorua granite,
presenting a striking appearance, and being entirely denuded of trees.
Chocorua was an Indian prophet of the Pequawkets, whose family was
slain by the whites, and he took a terrible revenge. A reward was
offered for his scalp, and his pursuers followed him to the mountain
top and shot him down. When dying, he invoked the curses of the Great
Spirit upon them, and the mountain now bears his sonorous name. For
years afterwards the curses came true; pestilence raged in the
adjacent valleys, cattle could not be kept, for they all died, and the
people submitted humbly to the affliction, believing it to be the
realization of the Indian's imprecation. But one day a scientific
fellow wandered that way, and being of an investigating turn, he soon
found the sickness was due to muriate of lime in the water. After that
discovery the Indian's curse went for naught. Now the whole country
roundabout is healthy, and filled with the balsamic atmosphere which
invigorates the admiring thousands who come to see the noble mountain.
Thus sings Whittier of it in _Among the Hills_, after a storm:
"Through Sandwich Notch the west wind sang
Good morrow to the cotter;
And once again Chocorua's horn
Of shadow pierced the water.
"Above his broad Lake Ossipee,
Once more the sunshine wearing,
Stooped, tracing on that silver shield
His grim armorial bearing.
"For health comes sparkling in the streams
From cool Chocorua stealing:
There's iron in our northern winds;
Our pines are trees of healing."
Lake Winnepesaukee, thus magnificently outstretched in front of these
lofty hills, is twenty-five miles long and in the centre about seven
miles wide, covering a surface, exclusive of its many islands, of
seventy square miles. It has wonderfully transparent water, being fed
by springs, and its outline is very irregular, pierced by deep,
elongated bays, and having broad peninsulas or necks of land
stretching far out from the mainland. The shores are composed mostly
of rocks, myriads of boulders being piled up along the water's edge as
if for a wall, making an attractive rocky border with the foliage
growing out of it. An archipelago of islands of all sizes and
characters is dotted over the lake, there being two hundred and
seventy-four of them, several having inhabitants. These are what Starr
King calls "the fleet of islands that ride at anchor on its
bosom--from little shallops to grand three-deckers." This attractive
lake is the storage-reservoir for the many mills on the Merrimack,
keeping their water-supply equable throughout the year by a dam at the
Weirs, the western outlet, raising the surface six feet and making its
level about five hundred feet above the sea. The railroads approach
the lake both at the Weirs and at Wolfboro' on the eastern verge, and
steamboats take the people over the lake to the various settlements on
its shores. Wolfboro' was named after the British General Wolfe who
fell on the Plains of Abraham, and is the largest town on the lake,
having three thousand people. It has a beautiful outlook over the
water from the adjacent high hills of Copple Crown and Tumble-Down
Dick, the latter getting its name from an unfortunate blind horse
"Dick," who once fell over a cliff on its side.
The steamboat journey upon the lake discloses its beauties, the gentle
tree-clad shores with higher hills and mountains behind them, the many
pleasant cottages, and the wonderfully clear green waters. It is a
curious place, all arms and bays and great protruding necks of land,
the open spaces dotted with islands, so that everywhere there are long
vista views across the water and far up into the inlets of the shores,
while the large double peak of Mount Belknap stands up massive and
impressive at the southwestern border, and opposite in the northeast
is the proud white summit of Chocorua. Edward Everett, speaking of his
extensive travels in Europe, says, "My eye has yet to rest on a
lovelier scene than that which smiles around you as you sail from
Weirs Landing to Centre Harbor." The Weirs Landing is at the head of a
deep bay made by the outlet stream, and is a popular summer
camping-ground, the edge of the water fringed with cottages and the
adjacent groves used by the camps. Many fish ascended the outlet
stream in the early times seeking the clear waters, and the shallows
at the outlet were availed of by the Indians to set their nets, so
that it naturally got the name of the Weirs. Here, adjoining the
shore, is the ancient "Endicott Rock," which was marked by the first
surveyors sent up by Governor Endicott of Massachusetts to find the
source of the Merrimack. The outlet stream goes through a region of
many ponds and lakes bordered by large icehouses, the chief of these
waters being Lake Winnisquam, and all these extensive reservoirs help
to supply the great river of mill-wheels. The longest fiord indented
in the southern shore of Winnepesaukee is narrow and five miles long,
called Alton Bay, and it has a most attractive environment, with Mount
Belknap rising to the westward twenty-four hundred feet high.
Upon the northern shore, grandly encircled by the Sandwich Mountains,
the most extensive bay running up into the land is Centre Harbor, and
here is a popular place of summer sojourn. Its background is a grand
mountain amphitheatre from Red Hill to the westward around to the dark
Ossipee range to the east, while in front, over the lake, is one of
the most charming views in nature, with its many islands, long arms,
deep bays, and strangely protruding elongated necks of wooded land.
Thus the delicious water scene stretches for over twenty miles away,
having in the distance the twin peaks of Belknap and the long and wavy
summits of the attendant ridges nestling low and blue at the southern
horizon. Climbing to the top of Red Hill, rising over two thousand
feet, this magnificent view is got in a way which one charmed observer
says "defies competition, as it transcends description; it is the
perfection of earthly prospects." Whittier, who was passionately fond
of this whole region, after admiring it from Red Hill, wrote the noble
invocation:
"O, watched by silence and the night,
And folded in the strong embrace
Of the great mountains, with the light
Of the sweet heavens upon thy face--
"Lake of the Northland! keep thy dower
Of beauty still, and while above
Thy silent mountains speak of power,
Be thou the mirror of God's love."
Far over to the westward can be traced the outlet stream, flowing past
many lakes and seeking the great river where these pellucid waters do
such useful work. Thus has Whittier, from this mountain outlook, sung
of the Merrimack:
"O child of that white-crested mountain whose springs
Gush forth in the shade of the cliff-eagle's wings,
Down whose slopes to the lowlands thy cold waters shine,
Leaping gray walls of rock, flashing through the dwarf pine.
"From that cloud-curtained cradle, so cold and so lone,
From the arms of that wintry-locked mother of stone,
By hills hung with forests, through vales wide and free,
Thy mountain-born brightness glanced down to the sea."
GOING DOWN EAST.
XVIII.
GOING DOWN EAST.
Salisbury, Hampton and Rye Beaches -- Portsmouth -- Kittery
-- Newcastle Island -- Wentworth House -- Isles of Shoals
-- Appledore -- Star Island -- Pirates' Haunts -- Boon
Island -- Nottingham Wreck -- Agamenticus -- York Beach --
Cape Neddick -- Wells -- Kennebunk River -- Saco River --
Biddeford and Saco -- Old Orchard -- Scarborough -- Casco
Bay -- Portland -- Cape Elizabeth -- "Enterprise" and
"Boxer" Fight -- Sebago Lake -- Poland Springs --
Androscoggin River -- Rumford Falls -- Livermore Falls --
Lewiston Falls -- Brunswick -- Bowdoin College -- Merry
Meeting Bay -- Kennebec River -- Moosehead Lake -- Mount
Kineo -- Norridgewock -- Mogg Megone -- Father Rale --
Skowhegan Falls -- Taconic Falls -- Waterville -- Augusta
-- Lumber and Ice -- Bath -- Sheepscott Bay -- Monhegan --
Pemaquid -- Fort Frederick -- Wiscasset -- Penobscot River
-- Norumbega -- Sieur de Monts -- Acadia -- Pentagoet --
Baron de Castine -- The Tarratines -- Muscongus -- Camden
Mountains -- Rockland -- Islesboro' -- Penobscot
Archipelago -- Belfast -- Bucksport -- Bangor -- Mount
Desert Island -- Bar Harbor -- Somes' Sound -- Fogs --
Mount Desert Rock -- Passamaquoddy Bay -- Grand Manan --
Quoddy Head -- Lubec -- Campobello -- Eastport -- St. Croix
River -- Calais and St. Stephen -- New Brunswick -- Bay of
Fundy -- High Tides -- St. John City -- Madame La Tour --
River St. John -- The Reversible Cataract -- Grand Falls --
Tobique River -- Pokiok River -- Frederickton --
Maugerville -- Gagetown -- Kennebecasis Bay -- Digby Gut --
Annapolis Basin -- Digby Wharf -- Yarmouth -- Annapolis
Royal -- Basin of Minas -- Land of Evangeline -- Grand Pré
-- Cape Blomidon -- The Acadian Removal -- Cape Split --
Glooscap -- Chignecto Ship Railway -- Windsor -- Sam Slick
-- The Flying Bluenose -- Halifax -- Chebucto -- Seal
Island -- Tusket River -- Guysborough -- Cape Canso --
Sable Island -- Truro -- Pictou -- Prince Edward Island --
Charlottetown -- Summerside -- Canso Strait -- Cape Breton
Island -- The Arm of Gold -- Isle Madame -- St. Peter's
Inlet -- The Bras d'Or Lakes -- Baddeck -- Sydney --
Spanish Bay -- Cape Breton -- English Port -- Louisbourg --
The Great Acadian Fortress -- Its Two Surrenders -- Its
Destruction -- Magdalen Islands -- Gannet Rock -- Deadman's
Isle -- Tom Moore's Poem.
NEWBURYPORT TO PORTSMOUTH.
We will start on a journey towards the rising sun, searching for the
elusive region known as "Down East." Most people recognize this as the
country beyond New York, but when they inquire for it among the
Connecticut Yankees they are always pointed onward. Likewise in
Boston, the true "Down East" is said to be farther along the coast.
Pass the granite headland of Cape Ann, and it is still beyond. Samuel
Adams Drake tells of asking the momentous question of a Maine
fisherman getting up his sail on the Penobscot: "Whither bound?"
Promptly came the reply: "Sir, to you--Down East." Thus the mythical
land is ever elusive, and finally gets away off among the "Blue Noses"
of the Canadian maritime provinces. We cross the Merrimack from
Newburyport in searching for it, and enter the New Hampshire coast
border town of Seabrook, where the people are known as the
"Algerines," and where salt-marshes, winding streams, forests and
rocks vary the view with long, sandy beaches out on the ocean front,
having hotels and cottages scattered along them. Here are noted
resorts--Salisbury Beach, Hampton Beach and Rye Beach--all crowded
with summer visitors. For over two centuries on a certain day in
August, the New Hampshire people have visited Salisbury Beach by
thousands, to keep up an ancient custom. Here Whittier pitched his
_Tent on the Beach_ he has so graphically described. It was at Hampton
village in 1737, that occurred the parley which resulted in giving the
infant colony of New Hampshire its narrow border of seacoast.
Massachusetts had settled this region, and that powerful province was
bound to possess it, though the King had made an adverse grant. Into
Hampton rode in great state the Governor of Massachusetts at the head
of his Legislature, and escorted by five troops of horse, formally
demanding possession of the maritime townships. He met the Governor of
New Hampshire in the George Tavern, and the demand was refused. The
latter sent a plaintive appeal to the King, declaring that "the vast,
opulent and overgrown province of Massachusetts was devouring the
poor, little, loyal, distressed province of New Hampshire." The royal
heart was touched and the King commanded Massachusetts to surrender
her claim to two tiers of townships, twenty-eight in number, thus
giving New Hampshire her present scant eighteen miles of coast-line.
Rye Beach is the most popular of these seashore resorts, and not far
beyond is Piscataqua River, the New Hampshire eastern boundary.
Here is the quaint and quiet old town of Portsmouth, three miles from
the sea, and having about ten thousand people. Opposite, on
Continental Island, adjoining the Maine shore, is the Kittery Navy
Yard, where the warship "Kearsarge" was built. Commerce has about
surrendered to the superior attractions of a summer resort at
Portsmouth, and the comfortable old dwellings in their extensive
gardens show the wealth accumulated by bygone generations. To this
place originally came the "founder of New Hampshire," Captain Mason,
who had been the Governor of the Southsea Castle in Portsmouth harbor,
England, and at his suggestion, the settlement, originally called
Strawberry Bank, from the abundance of wild strawberries, was named
Portsmouth. The Piscataqua is formed above by the union of the Salmon
Falls and Cocheco Rivers, both admirable water-powers, serving large
factories, and the whole region adjacent to Portsmouth harbor is
bordered by islands and interlaced with waterways, some of them yet
displaying the remains of the colonial defensive forts. At Kittery
Point, near the Navy Yard, was born and is buried the greatest man of
colonial fame in that region, Sir William Pepperell, the famous leader
of the Puritan expedition that captured Louisbourg from the French in
1745. The noted "Mrs. Partington," B. P. Shillaber, was born in
Portsmouth in 1814.
Adjoining the harbor, and with a broad beach facing the sea, is
Newcastle Island, incorporated for the annual fee of three
peppercorns, by King William III. and Queen Mary in the seventeenth
century. Here lived in semi-regal state the Wentworths, who were the
colonial governors, their memory now preserved by the vast modern
Wentworth Hotel, whose colossal proportions are visible far over land
and sea. The old Wentworth House at Little Harbor, wherein was held
the provincial court, still remains--an irregular, quaint but
picturesque building--its most noted occupant having been the courtly
and gouty old Governor Benning Wentworth, who named Bennington in
Vermont, and whose wedding on his sixtieth birthday has given
Longfellow one of his most striking themes, the "Poet's Tale" at _The
Wayside Inn_. The poet tells of the appearance one day in Queen
Street, Portsmouth, of Martha Hilton,
"A little girl,
Barefooted, ragged, with neglected hair,
Eyes full of laughter, neck and shoulders bare,
A thin slip of a girl, like a new moon,
Sure to be rounded into beauty soon,
A creature men would worship and adore,
Though now, in mean habiliments, she bore
A pail of water, dripping, through the street,
And bathing, as she went, her naked feet."
The buxom landlady at the inn, "Mistress Stavers in her furbelows,"
felt called upon to give her sharp reproof:
"'O Martha Hilton! Fie! how dare you go
About the town half-dressed, and looking so!'
At which the gypsy laughed, and straight replied:
'No matter how I look; I yet shall ride
In my own chariot, ma'am.'"
The old Governor was a widower and childless, and in course of time
Martha came to be employed at Wentworth House as maid-of-all-work, not
wholly unobserved by him, as the sequel proved. He arranged a feast
for his sixtieth birthday, and all the great people of the colony were
at his table.
"When they had drunk the King, with many a cheer,
The Governor whispered in a servant's ear,
Who disappeared, and presently there stood
Within the room, in perfect womanhood,
A maiden, modest and yet self possessed,
Youthful and beautiful, and simply dressed.
Can this be Martha Hilton? It must be!
Yes, Martha Hilton, and no other she!
Dowered with the beauty of her twenty years,
How lady-like, how queen-like she appears;
The pale, thin crescent of the days gone by
Is Dian now in all her majesty!
Yet scarce a guest perceived that she was there
Until the Governor, rising from his chair,
Played slightly with his ruffles, then looked down,
And said unto the Reverend Arthur Brown:
'This is my birthday; it shall likewise be
My wedding day; and you shall marry me!'
"The listening guests were greatly mystified,
None more so than the rector, who replied:
'Marry you? Yes, that were a pleasant task,
Your Excellency; but to whom? I ask.'
The Governor answered: 'To this lady here;'
And beckoned Martha Hilton to draw near.
She came, and stood, all blushes, at his side.
The rector paused. The impatient Governor cried:
'This is the lady; do you hesitate?
Then I command you as chief magistrate.'
The rector read the service loud and clear:
'Dearly beloved, we are gathered here,'
And so on to the end. At his command,
On the fourth finger of her fair left hand
The Governor placed the ring; and that was all:
Martha was Lady Wentworth of the Hall!"
THE ISLES OF SHOALS.
Out in the Atlantic Ocean, six miles off the harbor entrance, and ten
miles from Portsmouth, is one of the strangest places existing, the
collection of crags and reefs known as the Isles of Shoals, their dim
and shadowy outline lying like a cloud along the edge of the horizon.
There are nine islands in the group, the chief being Appledore, rising
from the sea much like a hog's back, and hence the original name of
Hog Island. It covers about four hundred acres, and the whole group
does not have much over six hundred acres. Star Island is smaller;
Haley's or Smutty Nose, with Malaga and Cedar, are connected by a sort
of breakwater; and there are four little islets--Duck, White's,
Seavey's and Londoner's--and upon White Island is the lighthouse for
the group, with a revolving light of alternating red and white
flashes, elevated eighty-seven feet and visible fifteen miles at sea.
A covered way leads back over the crags from the tower to the
keeper's cottage. To this light there come answering signals from the
Whale's Back Light at the Piscataqua entrance, from solitary Boon
Island out at sea to the northward, and from the twin beacons of
Thatcher's Island off Cape Ann to the south. As darkness falls, one
after another these beacons blaze out as so many guiding stars across
the waters. One of the noted sayings of John Quincy Adams was that he
never saw these coast lights in the evening without recalling the
welcoming light which Columbus said he saw flashing from the shore,
when he discovered the New World.
"I lit the lamps in the lighthouse tower,
For the sun dropped down and the day was dead;
They shone like a brilliant clustered flower,
Two golden and five red."
The Isles of Shoals are a remarkable formation--rugged ledges of rock
out in the ocean bearing scarcely any vegetation; and on some of them
not a blade of grass is seen. Four islands stretching in a line make
the outside of the strange group--bare reefs, with water-worn, flinty
surfaces, against which the sea beats. Not a tree grew anywhere until
a little one was planted on Appledore, in front of the hotel, and
another dwarf was coaxed to grow in the little old graveyard on Star
Island. Their best vegetation was low huckleberry bushes, until
someone thought of gathering soil enough to make grass patches for a
cow or two. The utter desolation of these rocks, thus cast off
apparently from the rest of the world, can hardly be realized, yet
they have their admirers. Celia Thaxter, the poetess, was the daughter
of the White's Island lightkeeper, and to her glowing pen much of
their fame is due. She died on Appledore in 1894. The curious name of
these islands first appears in the log of their discoverer, Champlain,
who coasted along here in 1605. They were always prolific fishery
grounds, and the name seems to have been given them from "the shoaling
or schooling of the fish around them." In a deed from the Indians in
1629 they are called the Isles of Shoals. Captain John Smith visited
and described them in 1614, and with his customary audacity tried to
name them "Smith's Islands," but without success. The boundary-line
dividing Maine and New Hampshire passes through the group between Star
and Appledore. The peculiar grouping makes a good harbor between these
two, opening westward towards the mainland, and amply protected from
the sea by the smaller islands outside. These rugged crags resemble
the bald and rounded peaks of a sunken volcano thrust upward from the
sea, with this little harbor forming its crater. When Nathaniel
Hawthorne visited them, he wrote: "As much as anything else, it seems
as if some of the massive materials of the world remained superfluous
after the Creator had finished, and were carelessly thrown down here,
where the millionth part of them emerge from the sea, and in the
course of thousands of years have become partially bestrewn with a
little soil." Their savagery during violent storms, when surrounded by
surf and exposed to the ocean's wildest fury, becomes almost
overwhelming, and they actually seem to reel beneath the feet.
Star Island originally had a village of fishermen, until they were
sent away to make room for the summer hotel. It was the town of
Gosport, and its little church and tiny bell-tower are visible from
afar over the water. The original church was built of timbers from the
wreck of a Spanish vessel in 1685, and the present little stone church
is as old as the nineteenth century. It had several faithful pastors,
who were buried on the island, among them Rev. John Brook, of whom the
quaint historian Cotton Mather tells the anecdote illustrating the
efficacy of prayer: A child lay sick and so nearly dead those present
believed it had actually expired, "but Mr. Brook, perceiving some life
in it, goes to prayer, and in his prayer used this expression: 'Lord,
wilt thou not grant some sign before we leave prayer that thou wilt
spare and heal this child? We cannot leave thee till we have it.' The
child sneezed immediately." On the highest part of Star Island is the
broken monument to John Smith, put up by some of his admirers not long
ago, bearing the three Moslem heads representing the Turks he had
slain, but vandals have ruined it. The diminutive fort defending Star
Island in colonial times has been abandoned more than a century, and
nestling beneath it is the old graveyard, part of the walls remaining,
and a few dilapidated gravestones. All the original inhabitants of the
island are dead, their descendants scattered, and fashionable
pleasuring now dominates this reef and its restless waters.
As might be expected, a place like these islands was a favorite haunt
for pirates in the colonial days. Around them cruised Captain Kidd,
the notorious Blackbeard, and Hawkins, Phillips, Low, Ponad, and other
famous pirates, and in fact the ghost of one of Kidd's men is said to
still haunt Appledore. Many and bold were the gentry who in those days
hoisted the "Jolly Roger" flag, with its grinning skull and
cross-bones, and cruised in this picturesque region for glory and
plunder. It was near the route between Boston and the Provinces and to
Europe, and hence the valuable prey that allured them. Here sailed
Captain Teach of ferocious countenance, piercing black eyes and
enormous beard, who came to be familiarly known and feared as
"Blackbeard." He was said to be "in league with the Devil and the
Governor of North Carolina," and had an uncomfortable habit of firing
loaded pistols in the dark, without caring much who got hit. In fact,
it is recorded he once told his trusty crew he had to kill a man
occasionally merely to prove he was captain. He also kept a diary,
making characteristic entries, such as these: "Rum all out; our
company somewhat sober; rogues a-plotting; confusion among us; so I
looked for a prize." And this next day: "Took a prize with a great
deal of liquor on board; so kept the ship's company hot, and all went
well again." Blackbeard is supposed to have buried treasures on these
islands, and the fishermen tell how they have seen the ghost of his
mistress, gazing intently seaward, on a low, projecting point of White
Island, a tall and shapely figure wrapped in a long cloak. Blackbeard
ruled these waters until Lieutenant Maynard, with two armed sloops,
went after him, captured his ship, met him in single combat, and after
a hand-to-hand fight, in which both received fearful wounds, finally
pinned the pirate to the deck with his dagger, closing his interesting
career.
Captain Kidd, who sailed in these parts, was not so ferocious as
Blackbeard. It is said that at first he always swore-in his crew on
the Bible, but afterwards finding this interfered with business, he
buried his Bible in the sand. Captain Low captured a fishing-smack off
these islands, but disappointed of booty, had the crew flogged, and
then gave each man the alternative of being hanged or of three times
vigorously cursing old Cotton Mather, which latter, it is recorded,
"all did with alacrity." It is probable this punishment was inflicted
by the pirate because it was the custom of the Puritan clergymen,
when pirates were condemned, to have them brought into church, and as
a proper preliminary to the hanging, preach long and powerful sermons
to them on the enormity of their crimes and the torments awaiting in
the next world. This same Captain Low is said to have once captured a
Virginia vessel, and was so pleased with her captain that he invited
him to share a bowl of punch. The Virginian, however, demurred, having
scruples about drinking with a pirate, whereupon Low presented a
cocked pistol to his ear and a glass of punch to his mouth, pleasantly
remarking: "Either take one or the other." The captain took punch.
Another rover of the seas, Phillips, captured the Dolphin, a
fishing-vessel, and made all her crew turn pirates. John Fillmore, one
of them, started a mutiny, killed Phillips, and took the Dolphin back
to Boston. His great-great-grandson was President Millard Fillmore.
There was also at one time a famous woman pirate in this region--Anne
Bonney, an Irish girl from Cork, who fell in love with Captain
Rockham, a pirate, who was afterwards captured and hanged. Before the
capture she fought bravely, and, as she expressed it, "was one of the
last men left upon the deck." There was much that was fascinating in
the desperate careers of the lawless buccaneers who swept the New
England coasts in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. They
were for years masters of the ocean, and they even sent 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."
All around the Isles of Shoals, when the sun sinks and twilight
comes--
"From the dim headlands many a lighthouse gleams,
The street lamps of the ocean."
Far away to the northeast a single white star appears eleven miles
off, on the solitary rock of Boon Island, out in mid-ocean, where not
a pound of soil exists, excepting what has been carried there. One of
the worst wrecks of modern times occurred on this rock before the
lighthouse was built. The "Nottingham," from London, was driven
ashore, the crew with difficulty gaining the island when the ship
broke up. They had no food; day by day their sufferings from cold and
hunger increased; the mainland was in full view and they built a raft
of pieces of wreck to try and get there, but it was swamped; they
signalled passing vessels, but could not attract attention. Gradually
they sank into hopelessness, but thought to make a final effort by
constructing another rude raft, on which two of them tried to reach
the shore. It too was wrecked, being afterwards found on the beach
with a dead man alongside. Then hope entirely failed them, and to
sustain life they became cannibals, living on the body of the ship's
carpenter, sparingly doled out to them by the captain. Eventually the
survivors were rescued, the wrecked raft being their preserver. When
it was found, the people on shore started a search for the builders,
and they were discovered and taken off the island, after twenty-four
days of starvation. Then the lighthouse was built on Boon Island, and
its steady white star gleams in nightly warning:
"Steadfast, serene, immovable, the same
Year after year, through all the silent night,
Burns on for evermore that quenchless flame,
Shines on that inextinguishable light!
"A new Prometheus chained upon the rock,
Still grasping in his hand the fire of Jove,
It does not hear the cry nor heed the shock,
But hails the mariner with words of love.
"'Sail on!' it says, 'sail on, ye stately ships!
And with your floating bridge the ocean span;
Be mine to guard this light from all eclipse;
Be yours to bring man nearer unto man!'"
MOUNT AGAMENTICUS TO OLD ORCHARD.
Beyond the Piscataqua River is the famous "Pine-Tree State," noted for
its noble forests and its many splendid havens. This is Whittier's
"hundred-harbored Maine," and such are the sinuosities of its
remarkable coast, that while its whole distance from Kittery Point to
Quoddy Head is two hundred and seventy-eight miles, the actual length
of the shore-line stretches to twenty-five hundred miles, and if
straightened out would reach across the Atlantic. The great landmark
of this coast beyond Kittery, standing in gloomy isolation down by the
shore, is the "sailor's mountain," Agamenticus, rising six hundred and
seventy-three feet, a sentinel visible far out at sea. It is a
solitary eminence, lifted high above the surrounding country and
having three summits of almost equal altitude, the sides clothed with
dark forests. This graceful and imposing mountain gave James Russell
Lowell an attractive theme in his _Pictures from Appledore_:
"He glowers there to the north of us,
Wrapt in his mantle of blue haze,
Unconvertibly savage, and scorns to take
The white man's baptism on his ways.
Him first on shore the coaster divines
Through the early gray, and sees him shake
The morning mist from his scalplock of pines;
Him first the skipper makes out in the west
Ere the earliest sunstreak shoots tremulous,
Plashing with orange the palpitant lines
Of mutable billow, crest after crest,
And murmurs 'Agamenticus!'
As if it were the name of a saint."
Almost under the shadow of the mountain is the quiet old town of York,
the "ancient city of Agamenticus," founded by Sir Ferdinando Gorgues
in the early seventeenth century as Gorgeana, the place of first
settlement in Maine. Now it is a summer-resort, with York Beach
stretching along the coast, having Cape Neddick at its northern end
thrust out into the sea, with the curious rocky islet of the Nubble,
and surmounting lighthouse, off its extremity. Four miles beyond,
there projects the frowning promontory of the Bald Head Cliff and its
lofty Pulpit Rock, an almost perpendicular wall rising ninety feet,
with the breakers beating at its base. Farther along, the coast is a
succession of magnificent beaches all the way to Casco Bay, and the
broad road they furnish is the chief highway. Wells is a popular
summer resort, and beyond it the charming little Kennebunk River comes
down through the hills and woods and over falls, past Kennebunkport to
the sea. Then the broader Saco River is reached, its ample current
drawn from the White Mountains, plunging down a cataract of fifty-five
feet around which are gathered the mills of the twin towns of
Biddeford and Saco, having the river between them, and a population of
over twenty thousand. Their steeples rise above the trees, and one of
these, a French Catholic church in Biddeford, has little trees growing
out of its spire. Sawmills and cotton-mills largely use the ample
power of the Saco Falls. The beach fronting Saco gradually dissolves
into the noted Old Orchard Beach, stretching nearly ten miles to
Scarborough River, the finest beach in New England, over three hundred
feet wide and named from an apple orchard that once stood there, of
which the last ancient tree died before the Revolution. There are
numerous hotels and boarding-houses scattered along this broad beach,
and its people completed in 1898 one of the longest ocean piers
existing, which extends nearly two thousand feet into the sea.
Scarborough Beach is beyond, and around the broad end of Cape
Elizabeth is the entrance to Casco Bay, marked by the "Two Lights" on
the eastern extremity of the cape, these powerful white beacons being
about nine hundred feet apart. Almost under their shadow, in 1862, the
Allan Line steamer "Bohemian" was wrecked with fearful loss of life.
Within Casco Bay is an archipelago of over three hundred and fifty
islands, stretching eastward for twenty miles to the mouth of the
Kennebec. Many of these islands are favorite summer resorts, and their
surrounding waters are always haunts for yachts, the bay being an
admirable yachting ground.
PORTLAND.
The city of Portland, with over forty thousand people, is the
metropolis of Maine and the winter port of Canada, which has to use it
when the river St. Lawrence is frozen. It is built upon an elevated
and hilly peninsula projecting eastwardly into Casco Bay, and having
commanding eminences at each extremity,--the western being Bramhall's
Hill and the eastern Munjoy's Hill,--spacious promenades having been
made around both for outlooks. The city being almost surrounded by
water, and the bold shores of the bay enclosing so many beautiful
tree-clad islands, there are magnificent views in every direction.
The streets are finely shaded, mostly with elms, so that it is often
called the "Forest City." This was the Indian land of Machigonne, to
which the English first came in 1632, and there yet remain some
stately trees of that time, which are among the charms of the pleasant
park of the Deering Oaks at the West End, from which State Street
leads into the best residential section, bordered by double rows of
elms, making a grand overarching bower. Here, in a circle at the
intersection of Congress Street, is an impressive bronze statue of
Longfellow, who was born in Portland in 1807, the poet sitting
meditatively in his chair. Among the other distinguished citizens have
been Commodore Edward Preble, Neal Dow, N. P. Willis, Mrs. Parton
(Fanny Fern) and Thomas B. Reed, who long represented Portland in
Congress. The city has an air of comfort, and its broad-fronted,
vine-covered homes look enticing. From its hills the outlook is
superb, particularly that from the Eastern Promenade encircling
Munjoy's Hill, where the view is over Casco Bay and its many arms and
forest-fringed rocky islands. On the eastern side, Falmouth Foreside
stretches out to the distant ocean, while the western shore is the
broad peninsula terminating in Cape Elizabeth. This hill has a
commanding prospect over one of the most bewitching scenes in
nature,--the island-studded Casco Bay, having the famous Cushing's
Island at the outer verge of the archipelago protecting most of the
harbor from the ocean waves. Upon other islands down the bay are three
old forts, two of them abandoned, while the flag floats over the more
modern works of Fort Preble. Portland was originally called Falmouth,
not receiving the present name till 1786. In a beautiful spot on
Munjoy's Hill is the monument to the founder, its inscription being
"George Cheeves, Founder of Portland, 1699." Upon this hill is the old
cemetery containing Preble's grave. He commanded the American squadron
in the war against Tripoli in 1803, and died in Portland in 1807. Also
in this cemetery rest alongside each other two noted naval officers of
the War of 1812-14 with England--Burrows and Blythe. They commanded
rival warships, the American "Enterprise" and the British "Boxer,"
that fought on Sunday, September 5, 1814, off Pemaquid Point, near the
mouth of the Kennebec, the adjacent shores being covered with
spectators. The "Enterprise" captured the "Boxer" and brought her a
prize into Portland harbor. Both commanders were killed in the fight,
and their bodies were brought ashore, each wrapped in the flag he had
so bravely served, and the same honors were paid both in the double
funeral. Longfellow recalls this as one of the memories of his youth:
"I remember the sea-fight far away,
How it thundered o'er the tide!
And the dead captains, as they lay
In their graves, o'erlooking the tranquil bay,
Where they in battle died."
[Illustration: _House of "The Pearl of Orr's Island," Casco Bay, Me._]
THE ANDROSCOGGIN.
Maine has more than fifteen hundred lakes, scattered everywhere
through its extensive forests. Seventeen miles northwest of Portland
is Sebago Lake, one of the most attractive, an islet-dotted expanse,
fourteen miles long and ten miles wide, its Indian name meaning "the
stretch of water." Into it flows the rapid and devious Songo River,
discharging Long Lake, a little over two miles distant, but the boat
journey on the river to that lake is for six miles and around
twenty-seven bends. Thirty-eight miles northwest of Portland is Poland
Springs, the chief inland watering-place of Maine, with pure air, the
finest waters and large hotels. To the northward the Androscoggin
River, flowing from the flanks of the White Mountains, sweeps
eastwardly across the State, and then turns southward to unite its
current with the Kennebec in Merry Meeting Bay. Not far from the New
Hampshire boundary it pours down the Rumford Falls, one of the finest
of cataracts, the river making three or four leaps over ragged,
granite ledges, aggregating one hundred and sixty feet descent, the
final fall being nearly seventy feet, making a great roaring, heard
for a long distance. Here is a town of textile and paper-mills, with
three thousand people. Having turned to the southward, the river comes
to the Livermore Falls, another manufacturing village on the Indian
domain of Rockomeka, or the "great corn land." Here were born the
famous brothers Israel, Elihu B. and Cadwalader C. Washburne, who were
so long in the public service, representing Maine, Illinois and
Wisconsin. A handsome Gothic public library built of granite has been
erected as their memorial. Farther along is Leeds, the birthplace of
General Oliver O. Howard, and then some distance below the river
plunges down the Lewiston Falls of fifty-two feet at the second city
in Maine, the towns of Auburn and Lewiston having twenty-five thousand
population, chiefly employed in the manufacture of textiles, there
being large numbers of French Canadians in the mills. Bates College,
with two hundred students, is one of the chief buildings of Lewiston.
Eastward from Casco Bay to the Androscoggin is a rough wooded country
becoming, however, rather more level as the river is approached. The
Androscoggin having come down from the north, sweeps around to the
northeast to enter Merry Meeting Bay, and at the bend, about thirty
miles from Portland, is Brunswick, at the head of tidewater, with over
six thousand population, largely employed in its mills. The river
falls forty-one feet here in three separate cataracts, giving an
enormous water-power. This was the Indian Pejepscot, where the English
built Fort George in 1715, known as "the key of Western Maine." The
city is chiefly noted now as the seat of Bowdoin College, the chief
educational institution of Maine, incorporated in 1794, and opened in
1802 with an endowment by the State. It has nearly four hundred
students and attractive buildings, the most conspicuous one being
surmounted by twin spires, which are seen from afar in approaching the
town, rising above the trees with a thick growth of pines behind them.
This college had President Franklin Pierce, Hawthorne, Longfellow and
Chief Justice Fuller among its graduates, and Longfellow was its
professor of modern languages until 1835, when he was called to
Harvard. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ in Brunswick
in 1851-2, when her husband was in the Bowdoin College faculty. Pierre
Baudouin, a Huguenot refugee from La Rochelle, came to Portland in
1687; and his grandson, who was Governor of Massachusetts in 1785-6,
had his name given the college, the great-grandson, James Bowdoin 2nd,
the noted diplomatist, having been most liberal in his gifts to it.
Beyond Brunswick the Androscoggin broadens into Merry Meeting Bay,
which is finally absorbed by the Kennebec.
THE KENNEBEC.
The Kennebec River, the Indian "large water place," is one of the
greatest streams of Maine, having its source in its largest lake,
Moosehead, surrounded by forests. This lake is at an elevation of over
a thousand feet, is thirty-five miles long, and has a surface of two
hundred and twenty square miles. The shores are generally monotonous,
excepting where the long peninsula of Mount Kineo is projected from
the eastern side so far into the lake as to narrow it to little more
than a mile width. Mount Kineo is nine hundred feet high, rising
abruptly on the south and east, but sloping gradually to the water on
the other sides. To the northeast, Spencer Mountain is seen rising
four thousand feet, with Katahdin, the Indian "greatest mountain," in
the distance. This magnificent summit, the highest in Maine, rises
nearly fifty-four hundred feet. All about Moosehead Lake and far to
the northward over the Canadian border is a vast forest wilderness,
full of lakes and streams, visited chiefly by the timber-cutters and
sportsmen, and one of the favorite hunting and angling regions of the
country. From the southwestern extremity of the lake the Kennebec
River flows out towards the sea, and in a winding course of a hundred
miles descends a thousand feet of rapids and cataracts, until it
reaches the tidal level at Augusta. It narrows at Solon to only forty
feet as it goes over the Carrituck Falls of twenty feet. Then it
passes Old Point and comes to Norridgewock, where several ancient elms
of enormous size border the street along the river bank. This is the
scene of Whittier's poem of _Mogg Megone_, and along here lived the
ancient Norridgewocks. At Old Point was their chief town, and as early
as 1610 French missionary priests sent out from Quebec settled among
them, the famous Jesuit, Sebastian Rale, coming about 1670 and living
there over forty years, being not only the spiritual but finally the
political head of the tribe. He was a man of high culture, and had
been professor of Greek at the College of Nismes, in France. The tribe
belonged to the Canabis branch of the Abenaquis nation, and he
prepared a complete dictionary of their language (now preserved in
Harvard University), which he described as "a powerful and flexible
language--the Greek of America."
In the early eighteenth century wars broke out between these Indians
under the French flag and the Puritans of New England. It is said that
Father Rale had a superb consecrated banner floating before his
church, emblazoned with the cross, and a bow and sheaf of arrows. This
was often borne as a crusading flag against the Puritan border
villages. Norridgewock was destroyed by a sudden raid in 1705, and
peace following, an envoy was sent to Boston to demand an indemnity,
and also that workmen be sent to rebuild the church. Both were
promised on condition that they would accept a Puritan pastor, but
this was declined. The Indians rebuilt their village, and it was again
destroyed by a plundering raid in 1722, and in revenge they then made
a fearful ravaging expedition in which the Maine coast towns paid
dearly. The English seacoast colonists consequently decided that for
protection Norridgewock must be taken and the tribe driven away, a
price being set upon Rale's head. In August, 1724, a strong party of
New England rangers marched secretly and swiftly, and, before their
presence was known, had surrounded the village and began firing
through the wigwams. A few Indians escaped, but nearly the whole
tribe--men, women and children--were massacred. Charlevoix writes of
it that "the noise and tumult gave Père Rale notice of the danger his
converts were in, and he fearlessly showed himself to the enemy,
hoping to draw all their attention to himself, and to secure the
safety of his flock at the peril of his life. He was not disappointed.
As soon as he appeared the English set up a great shout, which was
followed by a shower of shot, when he fell dead near to the cross
which he had erected in the midst of the village. Seven chiefs, who
sheltered his body with their own, fell around him." His mutilated
body was afterwards found at the foot of the cross and buried there.
The place lay desolate for a half-century, when English settlers came
in 1773, and in 1833 a granite memorial obelisk was erected on the
site of the ancient church. Thus Whittier describes the tragedy:
"Fearfully over the Jesuit's face,
Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace,
Like swift cloud shadows, each other chase.
One instant, his fingers grasp his knife,
For a last vain struggle for cherished life,--
The next, he hurls the blade away,
And kneels at his altar's foot to pray;
Over his beads his fingers stray,
And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud
On the Virgin and her Son;
For terrible thoughts his memory crowd
Of evils seen and done,--
Of scalps brought home by his savage flock
From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock
In the Church's service won.
"Through the chapel's narrow doors,
And through each window in the walls,
Round the priest and warrior pours
The deadly shower of English balls.
Low on his cross the Jesuit falls:
While at his side the Norridgewock
With failing breath essays to mock
And menace yet the hated foe,--
Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro
Exultingly before their eyes,--
Till cleft and torn by shot and blow,
Defiant still, he dies."
The Kennebec, turning grandly to the eastward, five miles below pours
over the falls of Skowhegan, descending twenty-eight feet upon rough
ledges, having a picturesque island ending at the crest of the
cataract, with the stream beyond compressed within the high, rocky
walls of a canyon. Here are numerous factories and a population of six
thousand. Eighteen miles beyond, the river, having resumed its
southern course, tumbles down the Taconic Falls at Waterville, a town
of seven thousand people and extensive cotton-mills, also having the
Colby College of the Baptist Church where General Benjamin F. Butler
was a student. Farther down the Kennebec are the ruins of Fort
Halifax, near the confluence with Sebasticook River, draining various
lakes to the northeastward. This was one of the chain of forts built
in the middle eighteenth century to defend the Puritan coast towns
from French and Indian raids, and large Indian settlements formerly
occupied the broad intervales in the neighborhood. Twenty miles below
Waterville is Augusta, the Maine capital, situate at the head of
navigation, the city being beautifully located upon the high hills and
their slopes bordering the river. Just above the town is the great
Kennebec dam, built at an expense of $300,000 to make an admirable
water-power, and rising fifteen feet above high water. Here are over
ten thousand people, among whom lived for many years James G. Blaine,
who died in 1893. There are large textile factories giving employment
to the inhabitants, and the chief building is the State House, of
white granite, fronted by a Doric colonnade, standing upon a high hill
and surmounted by a graceful dome. Across the Kennebec is the fine
granite Insane Hospital in extensive ornamental grounds, while down by
the bank are the remains of Fort Western, built as a defensive outpost
in 1754, being then surrounded by palisaded outworks garnished with
towers. It was here that Benedict Arnold gathered his expedition
against Quebec in 1775, going up the Kennebec, crossing the border
wilderness and enduring the greatest hardships, before he appeared
like an apparition with his army of gaunt heroes under the walls of
that fortress.
Below Augusta is the quiet town of Hallowell, and then Gardiner, and
beyond, the Kennebec spreads out in the broad expanse of Merry Meeting
Bay, where it receives the Androscoggin coming up from the southwest.
Along here are seen to perfection the two great crops of these
rivers--the lumber and the ice. The largest icehouses in existence
line the banks, and the prolific ice-crop of these pure waters, thus
gathered by the millions of tons, is shipped by sea from Gardiner and
Bath throughout the coast and over to Europe. The people seem to saw
logs all summer and cut ice all winter. The river next passes Bath,
formerly a great ship-building port, and still doing much work in the
construction of steel vessels, though the population has rather
decreased of late years. The town, with its front of shipyards and
kindred industries, fringes the western river-bank for two or three
miles, and on either hand the rocky shores slope steeply down to the
water. A clergyman from Salem bought this domain in 1660 from
Damarine, the old sachem of Sagadahoc, whom the whites called Robin
Hood, but the place did not grow much until after the Revolution, when
extensive shipbuilding began. It is about thirteen miles from the
sea, the Kennebec entering the Atlantic through Sheepscott Bay, an
irregular indentation of the coast studded with many attractive
islands. At Bath, more than anywhere else in New England, has been
practically realized Longfellow's invocation:
"Build me straight, O worthy master!
Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!"
ANCIENT PEMAQUID.
Eastward from the Kennebec the long peninsula of Pemaquid Point
stretches to the sea, between John's Bay and Muscongus Bay, and far
out beyond it, off the western entrance to Penobscot Bay, is Monhegan,
the most famous island on the New England coast. It is twelve miles
off the Point, and the surface rises into highlands. Monhegan appears
upon the earliest charts made by the first navigators, Champlain
naming it in 1604 and Weymouth coming there the next year to trade
with the Indians of Pemaquid before he ascended the great river, which
he said was called Norumbega, and about which there was long so much
mystery and wonder in Europe. Smith was there in 1614, it was
colonized in 1618, in 1621 it sent succor to the starving Pilgrims at
Plymouth, and in 1626 two proprietors bought the island for £50. It
had a stirring colonial history, and on account of its location its
grand flashing beacon-light is a landmark for the mariners coasting
along Maine or entering the Penobscot. Yet it has barely a hundred
people to-day, mostly fishermen, though its isolation has manifest
advantages, for it is said to have no public officials, and to be the
one place where there are no taxes. In fair sight of each other, over
the blue sea, are the highlands of Monhegan and the rocks and coves of
Pemaquid Point, the great stronghold of early British colonial power
in Maine. Rival French and English grants covered the whole of Maine,
and at the outstart the English took possession of the Kennebec, and
the French of the Penobscot. The colonists were in almost constant
enmity, as also were the Indians upon the two rivers, the warfare
continuing a hundred and fifty years, until after the Revolution. The
English made Pemaquid Point their fortified outpost, while the French
established old Fort Pentagoet, afterwards Castine, as their
stronghold on the Penobscot. The earliest settlement at the mouth of
the Kennebec was made in 1607 by Chief Justice George Popham, who came
there with one hundred and twenty colonists in two ships, named the
"Mary and John" and the "Gift of God." They founded Fort St. George,
and built the first vessel on the Kennebec, the "Virginia" of thirty
tons, but Popham dying the next year, they became discouraged and
abandoned the colony.
Pemaquid saw constant disturbances. Weymouth, when he traded there in
1605, kidnapped several Indians and carried them back to England. The
fierce Abenaquis from Penobscot Bay attacked the place in 1615 and
massacred all the Wawenock Indians who lived there. Then the old
Sagamore Samoset appeared upon the scene, the same who welcomed the
Pilgrims to Plymouth. He lived near Pemaquid, and told them at
Plymouth his home was distant "a daye's sayle with a great wind, and
five dayes by land." He sold Pemaquid to the first English colonists
in 1625 by deed, his sign manual upon it being a bended bow with an
arrow fitted to the string, ready to shoot. They saw the strategic
importance of the place and built a small fort in 1630. Then a pirate
came along, captured and plundered the settlement, holding it until an
armed ship from Massachusetts recaptured it in 1635, the pirate being
hanged. Then stronger forts were built, and Fort Charles was
constructed in 1674, but in King Philip's War the French and Indians
attacked it, driving out the people, who escaped by boats to Monhegan.
Again, in 1689, the Abenaquis from old Pentagoet, under their chief
Madockawando, captured it with great slaughter, destroying the works.
The English in 1693 once more took possession, this time building a
stone fort regarded as impregnable and said to be the finest work then
in New England. French frigates soon attacked it and were repulsed,
and its fame was great throughout the colonies. But the French and
the Abenaquis were bound to defeat its possessors, and in 1696 the
former with a fleet and the latter under Baron de Castine again
attacked, and captured it with a horrible massacre, all the survivors
being carried into captivity. The English did not reoccupy the Point
for some time, but in 1724 they repaired the ruined fort, and deciding
that a place of so much importance must be held at all hazards, in
1730 Fort Frederick, the great defensive work of Pemaquid, was built,
and a town grew around it. The French and Indians made unsuccessful
attacks in 1745, and again in 1747. Thus fiercely raged the battle
between the rival possessors of the Penobscot and the Kennebec, and
the ruins of this last and greatest work, Fort Frederick, have been
the place where for years the antiquarians have been delving for
relics, much as they do in Pompeii. It was an extensive exterior
fortress with an interior citadel, located upon a slope rising from a
rocky shore and controlling the approach from the sea. A high rock in
the southeastern angle, forming part of the magazine, is the most
prominent portion of the ruins. A martello tower stood in front on the
sea-beach, but is now pulverized into broken fragments. A graveyard,
several paved streets, and cellars of buildings have been disclosed.
The final destruction of Fort Frederick was by the Americans in the
Revolution, to prevent its becoming a British stronghold, and its last
battle was in 1814, when a force in boats from a British frigate
attacked the Point, but were repulsed with heavy loss. Its present
condition is thus described in the mournful ballad of _Pemaquid_:
"The restless sea resounds along the shore,
The light land breeze flows outward with a sigh,
And each to each seems chanting evermore
A mournful memory of the days gone by.
"Here, where they lived, all holy thoughts revive,
Of patient striving, and of faith held fast;
Here, where they died, their buried records live,
Silent they speak from out the shadowy past."
THE PENOBSCOT.
The peninsula between the Kennebec and the Penobscot River is
traversed by a railway route through the forests of Lincoln and Knox
Counties, named after two famous Revolutionary Generals. It crosses
the Sheepscott and St. George Rivers and skirts the head of Muscongus
Bay, amid a goodly crop of rocks, passing Wiscasset, Damariscotta
(near the lake of that name, which got its title from the old Indian
chief, Damarine), Waldeboro' and Thomaston to Rockland, upon the
deeply indented Owl's Head Bay looking out upon the Penobscot. This
peninsula is serrated by more of the numerous bays and havens of which
Whittier sings:
"From gray sea-fog, from icy drift,
From peril and from pain,
The homebound fisher greets thy lights,
O hundred-harbored Maine!"
We have now come to the chief river of Maine, the Penobscot, draining
the larger portion of its enormous forests, and emptying into the
ocean through a vast estuary, which is the greatest of the many bays
upon this rugged coast. Three centuries ago this was the fabulous
river of Norumbega, enclosing unknown treasures and a mysterious city,
as weirdly described by the Spaniards and Portuguese, who were the
first visitors to the prolific fishing-grounds of America. At that
time Europe knew of no river that was its equal, and no bay with such
broad surface and enormous tidal flow. Hence many were the tales about
wonderful Norumbega. The Penobscot estuary, with its connecting
waters, embraces an archipelago said to contain five hundred islands,
making a large portion of the Maine coast, which in many respects is
the most remarkable in the country. It is jagged and uneven, seamed
with deep inlets and guarded by craggy headlands, projecting far out
into the ocean, while between are myriads of rocky and in many cases
romantic islands. This coast is composed almost wholly of granites,
syenites and other metamorphic rocks that have been deeply scraped and
grooved ages ago by the huge glacier which, descending from Greenland
and extending far into the sea, was of such vast thickness and
ponderous weight as to plough out these immense valleys and ravines in
the granite floor. The chief of these ridges and furrows lie almost
north and south, so that the Maine shore-line is a series of long,
rocky peninsulas separated by deep and elongated bays, having within
and beyond them myriads of long islands and sunken ledges, with the
same general southern trend as the mainland. Large rocks and boulders
are also strewn over the land and upon the bottom of the sea, where
they have been left by the receding glacier. These fragments are piled
in enormous quantities in various places, many of the well-known
fishing-banks, such as George's Shoals, being glacial deposits. These
rocks and sunken ledges are covered with marine animals, making the
favorite food of many of the most important food-fishes. The Penobscot
from its source to the sea flows about three hundred miles. The wide
bay and wedge-shape of the lower river, by gathering so large a flow
of tidal waters, which are suddenly compressed at the Narrows just
below Bucksport, make a rapidly-rushing tide, and an ebb and flow
rising seventeen feet at Bangor, sixteen miles above. When Weymouth
came in 1605 he set up a cross near where Belfast now stands, on the
western shore of the bay, and took possession for England, and he
marvelled greatly at what he saw, writing home that "many who had been
travellers in sundry countries and in most famous rivers affirmed them
not comparable to this--the most beautiful, rich, large, secure
harboring river that the world affordeth." The Indians whom he found
on its shores were the Tarratines, an Abenaquis tribe, who inhabited
all that part of Maine. The Jesuit missionaries early came among them
from Canada, and they were firm friends of the French. They called the
great river Pentagoet, or "the stream where there are rapids," while
its shores were the Penobscot, meaning "where the land is covered with
rocks."
PENTAGOET AND CASTINE.
Pierre du Guast, Sieur de Monts, as a reward for his faithfulness, was
given, in 1602, by the French King Henry of Navarre, a grant of all
America from the 40th to the 46th parallels of latitude. He came out
and founded a colony on Passamaquoddy Bay, and finding that the
Indians called the region Acadie, or the "land of plenty," he named
his domain Acadia. The French afterwards extended their explorations
westward along the Maine coast, claiming under this grant, and this
was the source of the many subsequent conflicts. Coming into Penobscot
Bay, they made their outpost and stronghold upon the peninsula of
Pentagoet on its eastern shore, marking the western limit of Acadia.
Their famous old Fort Pentagoet, from which the French and Indian
raiders for more than a century swooped down upon the English border
settlements, is now the pleasant summer resort of Castine. Originally,
the English from Plymouth established a trading-post there, but the
French captured it, and then in the French religious conflicts it was
alternately held by the Catholic and Huguenot chieftains sent out to
rule Acadia. Sometimes pirates took it, and once some bold Dutchmen
came up from New York and were its captors. But the French held it for
a full century, though repeatedly attacked, until just before the
Revolution, when the English conquered and held it throughout that
war, again seizing it in the War of 1812. This noted old fort was
captured and scarred in wars resulting in no less than five different
national occupations. The present name is derived from Baron Castine,
who came with his French regiment to Acadia, and gave Pentagoet its
great romance. He was Vincent, Baron de St. Castine, lord of Oléron in
the French Pyrenees, who arrived in 1667, and inspired by a chivalrous
desire to extend the Catholic religion among the Indians, went into
the wilderness to live among the fierce Tarratines. As Longfellow
tells it in the Student's Tale at _The Wayside Inn_:
"Baron Castine of St. Castine
Has left his château in the Pyrenees
And sailed across the Western seas."
Pentagoet then was a populous town ruled by the Sachem Madockawando,
and the young Baron, tarrying there, soon found friends among the
Indians. The sachem had a susceptible daughter, and this dusky belle,
captivated by the courtly graces of the handsome Baron, fell in love:
"For man is fire, and woman is tow,
And the Somebody comes and begins to blow."
The usual results followed, so that it was not long before--
"Lo! the young Baron of St. Castine,
Swift as the wind is, and as wild,
Has married a dusky Tarratine,
Has married Madocawando's child!"
This marriage made him one of the tribe, and he soon became their
leader. The restless and warlike Indians almost worshipped the
chivalrous young Frenchman; he was their apostle, and led them in
repeated raids against their English and Indian foes. But ultimately
tiring of this roving life in the forests, he returned to "his château
in the Pyrenees," taking his Indian bride along. They were welcomed
with surprise and admiration:
"Down in the village day by day
The people gossip in their way,
And stare to see the Baroness pass
On Sunday morning to early mass;
And when she kneeleth down to pray,
They wonder, and whisper together, and say,
'Surely this is no heathen lass!'
And in course of time they learn to bless
The Baron and the Baroness.
"And in course of time the curate learns
A secret so dreadful, that by turns
He is ice and fire, he freezes and burns.
The Baron at confession hath said,
That though this woman be his wife,
He hath wed her as the Indians wed,
He hath bought her for a gun and a knife!"
Then there was trouble, but it seems to have been soon cured by a
Christian wedding:
"The choir is singing the matin song,
The doors of the church are opened wide,
The people crowd, and press and throng,
To see the bridegroom and the bride.
They enter and pass along the nave;
They stand upon the father's 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,
And Baron Castine of St. Castine
Hath come at last to his own again."
In course of time the son of the Baron by his Tarratine princess
became chief of the tribe and ruled it until in a raid in 1721 he was
captured by the English and taken to Boston. When brought before the
Council there for trial he wore his French uniform, and was accused of
attending an Abenaqui council-fire. He sturdily replied, "I am an
Abenaqui 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 dress I now wear is one becoming my rank and birth as
an officer of the Most Christian King of France, my master." After
being held prisoner several months, he was released, and finally also
returned to the ancestral château in the Pyrenees. His lineal
descendants are still at the head of the tribe, which has dwindled to
almost nothing. Pentagoet honoring the memory, afterwards became
Castine. Remains of the old fort and batteries are preserved, and a
miniature earthwork commands the harbor. The Tarratines and all the
Abenaqui tribes were firm friends of the Americans in the Revolution;
there are remnants of them in Canada, but the best preserved is the
Indian settlement on Indian Island, in the Penobscot River, above
Bangor. For fealty in the Revolution they were given a reservation,
where a few hundred descendants now live in a village around their
church, having a town hall and schools, with books printed in their
own Abenaqui language, and ruled by their tribal officials. This last
remnant of a warlike nation with such an interesting history gets a
modest subsistence by catching fish and lobsters, and rafting logs on
their great river of Norumbega.
ASCENDING THE PENOBSCOT.
The Penobscot drains an immense territory covered with pine, spruce
and hemlock forests. Two hundred millions of feet of lumber will be
floated down it in a single season. Its bold western bay shore rises
into the Camden Mountains, and both sides of the bay were embraced
for thirty miles in the Muscongus Patent, a grant of King George I.
which came to the colonial Governor Samuel Waldo, of Massachusetts,
and afterwards, by descent through his wife, to General Henry Knox.
Thus Knox became the Patroon of Penobscot Bay, building a palace at
Thomaston, where he lived in baronial state and spent so much money in
princely hospitality that he bankrupted himself and almost ruined his
Revolutionary compatriot, General Lincoln, who became involved with
him. On this western shore, Rockland, with nine thousand people, is a
town of sea-captains, fishermen and lime-burners, its rocks making the
best lime of the district, and a hundred kilns illuminating the hills
at night. Adjacent are Dix Island, and to the southward Vinalhaven
Island, producing fine granites shipped abroad for building. To the
northward is Camden, under the shadow of Mount Megunticook, its two
peaks rising fourteen hundred feet above the harbor. Out in front is
an archipelago of pretty islands, the chief being "the insular town of
Islesboro," stretching about thirteen miles along the centre of
Penobscot Bay, its ten square miles of irregular contour having of
late developed into a region of cottages built in all the pleasant
places and making a very popular resort. To the northeastward the
massive Blue Hill stands up an isolated guardian behind the peninsula
of Castine, where the attractive white houses are spread over the
broad and sloping point enclosing its deep harbor, and its
church-spire rises sharply among the trees. In the eastern archipelago
of Penobscot Bay are the Fox Island group of about one hundred and
fifty islands, and the larger islands of North Haven and Vinalhaven
are to the southward, beyond which are the shores of Cape Rosier,
making the eastern border of the bay, while through a vista looms up
the distant Isle au Haut, an outer guardian upon the ocean's edge. At
the eastern horizon behind the cape rise the hazy, bisected,
round-topped peaks of Mount Desert, thirty miles away.
Belfast is another maritime town of Penobscot Bay on a deeply-indented
harbor under the shadow of the Camden Hills, the place where Weymouth
in 1605 landed and set up the cross. It was settled and named by
Scotch-Irish Presbyterians in 1770, and it looks out pleasantly across
the broad bay upon Castine. Above are Searsport and Fort Point, with
the ruins of the colonial Fort Pownall, and then the river is quickly
contracted into the Narrows, where the swift tides run at Bucksport.
The upper river is sinuous and picturesque, and at the head of
navigation, sixty miles from the sea, is Bangor, with twenty thousand
people, finely located on commanding hills, its chief industry being
the sawing and shipment of lumber. The sawmills line the shores and
the log-booms extend for miles along the river. The chief assembly
room of the city is the Norumbega Hall, and there also is a
Theological Seminary of high standing. It is said that the settlement,
which had languished during the Revolution, in 1791 ordered Rev. Seth
Noble, its representative in the Legislature, to have it incorporated
under the name of Sunbury, but he, being very fond of the old tune of
Bangor, wrote that name inadvertently, and it thus was given the town.
Thirteen miles northward is Oldtown, another great gathering-place for
logs and sawmills, and having the Tarratine Indian settlement on the
island in mid-stream. The Penobscot River receives various tributaries
above, which drain the extensive northern forests of Maine--the
Piscataquis coming from the westward, the Mattawamkeag from the
northeast, and the Seboois. The main stream rises near the western
Canada border of Maine and flows eastward into Chesuncook Lake, whence
its general course to the sea is southeast and south. The river thus
drains a broad basin, embracing myriads of lakes in the northern Maine
forests, and it has an enormous water-power, as yet only partially
utilized.
MOUNT DESERT ISLAND.
Beyond the archipelago, eastward from the Penobscot estuary, is the
noted island, presenting the only land along the Atlantic coast where
high mountains are in close proximity to the sea. It appears to-day
just at it did to Champlain when he first saw it in September, 1604,
and, being impressed with its craggy, desolate summits, named it the
_Isle des Monts déserts_, the "Island of Desert Mountains." He then
wrote of it, "The land is very high, intersected by passes, appearing
from the sea like seven or eight mountains ranged near each other; the
summits of the greater part of these are bare of trees, because they
are nothing but rocks." In approaching from the southwestward by sea,
the distant gray recumbent elephant that has been lying at the horizon
gradually resolves its two rounded summits into different peaks; but
the finer approach is rather from the northward by the railway route,
which is the one most travelled. The quick advance of the train
unfolds the separate mountain peaks, and the whole range is well
displayed, there being apparently eight eminences, but upon coming
nearer, others seem to detach themselves. Green Mountain is the
highest, rising over fifteen hundred feet, near the eastern side,
while Western Mountain terminates the range on the other side, and at
the eastern verge is Newport Mountain, having the fashionable
settlement of Bar Harbor at its northern base. There are several
beautiful lakes high up among these peaks, the chief being Eagle Lake.
Beech and Dog Mountains have peculiarities of outline, and a wider
opening between two ponderous peaks shows where the sea has driven-in
the strange and deeply carved inlet of Somes' Sound, six miles from
the southern side, to almost bisect the island. Hung closely upon the
coast of Maine, in Frenchman Bay, this noted island, the ancient
Indian Pemetic, is about fifteen miles long, of varying width, and
covers a hundred square miles. It has many picturesque features, its
mountains, which run in roughly parallel ridges north and south,
separated by narrow trough-like valleys, displaying thirteen distinct
eminences, the eastern summits being the highest, and terminating
generally at or near the water's edge on that side in precipitous
cliffs, with the waves dashing against their bases. Upon the
southeastern coast, fronting the ocean, as a fitting termination to
the grand scenery of these mountain-ranges, the border of the Atlantic
is a galaxy of stupendous cliffs, the two most remarkable being of
national fame--Schooner Head and Great Head--the full force of old
ocean driving against their massive rocky buttresses. Schooner Head
has a surface of white rock on its face, which when seen from the sea
is fancied to resemble the sails of a small vessel, apparently moving
in front of the giant cliff. Great Head, two miles southward, is an
abrupt projecting mass of rock, the grim and bold escarpment having
deep gashes across the base, evidently worn by the waves. It is the
highest headland on the island. Castle Head is a perpendicular
columned mass, appearing like a colossal, castellated doorway, flanked
by square towers.
[Illustration: _Along the Coast at Bar Harbor, Me._]
For more than a century after Champlain first looked upon this island,
the French made ineffectual attempts at settlement, but it was
not until 1761 that any one succeeded in establishing a permanent
home. Then old Abraham Somes, a hardy mariner from Cape Ann, came
along, and entering the Sound that bears his name, settled on the
shore, and his descendant is said to still keep the inn at Somesville
on the very spot of his earliest colonization. After the little colony
was planted, the cultivation of the cranberry and the gathering of
blueberries kept the people alive, these being almost the only
food-products raised in the moderate allowance of soil allotted the
island. The population grew but slowly, though artists and summer
saunterers came this way, and about 1860 it began to attract the
pleasure-seekers. When the island, in its early government, was
divided into towns, the eastern portion was called, with a little
irony, Eden. Bar Harbor, an indentation of Frenchman Bay, having a bar
uncovered at low tide, which named it, being easy of access, the
village of East Eden on its shores became the fashionable resort. It
has a charming outlook over the bay, with its fleets of gaily-bannered
yachts and canoes and the enclosing Porcupine Islands, but there is
not much natural attractiveness. It is a town of summer hotels and
boarding-houses, built upon what was a treeless plain, the outskirts
being a galaxy of cottages, many of great pretensions. Here will
congregate ten to twenty thousand visitors in the season, and Bar
Harbor has become one of the most fashionable resorts on the Atlantic
coast. Its bane, however, is the fog, a frequent sojourner in the
summer, though even fogs, in their way, have charms. There are days
that it lies in banks upon the sea, with only occasional incursions
upon the shore, when under a shining sun the mist creeps over the
water and finally blots out the landscape. But light breezes and warm
sunshine then soon disperse it and the view reappears. The fog-rifts
are wonderful picture-makers. Sometimes the mist obscures the sea and
lower shores of the attendant islands, leaving a narrow fringe of
tree-tops resting against the horizon, as if suspended in mid-air.
Often a yacht sails through the fog, looking like a colossal ghost,
when suddenly its sails flash out in the sunlight like huge wings.
Thus the mist paints dissolving views, so that the fogs of Mount
Desert become an attraction, and occasionally through them appears the
famed mirage which Whittier describes:
"Sometimes in calms of closing day
They watched the spectral mirage play;
Saw low, far islands looming tall and high,
And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky."
Somes Sound has off its entrance on the southern side of Mount Desert,
the group of Cranberry Islands with a lighthouse on Baker's Island,
the outermost of the cluster. These make a picturesque outlook for the
summer settlements which have grown around the spacious indentations
of North East Harbor and South West Harbor, on either side of the
entrance to the Sound. To the eastward is another indentation in the
southern coast, Seal Harbor, also a popular resort, having one of the
finest beaches on the island. The five high rocky Porcupine Islands
partially enclosing Bar Harbor get their names from their bristling
crests of pines and spruces, one of them, the Bald Porcupine, having
some stupendous cliffs. The visits to the cliffs along the shores and
the ascent of the mountains are the chief excursions from Bar Harbor.
Four miles southward is the summit of Green Mountain, its sides being
rugged, and the charming Eagle Lake to the westward nestling among the
mountain peaks. The view from the top is fine, over the deeply-cut
Somes Sound, penetrating almost through the island, and the grand
expanse of Maine coast, seen, with its many bays and islands,
stretching from the Penobscot northeast to Quoddy Head. All around to
the southward and eastward spreads the open ocean bounded by the
horizon, and like a speck, to the south-southeast, twenty miles away,
is the lighthouse upon the bleak crag known as Mount Desert Rock, far
out at sea, the most remote beacon, in its distant isolation, upon the
New England coast.
ENTERING THE MARITIME PROVINCES.
The Maine coast beyond Mount Desert has more deep harbors and long
peninsulas. Here are Englishman's Bay, Machias Bay, Cutler Harbor and
others, and finally Passamaquoddy Bay, opening into the Bay of Fundy.
Grand Manan Island lies off this Bay, the first land of the British
Maritime Provinces, twenty-two miles long and distant about nine miles
from the coast of Maine, the frowning yet attractive precipices of its
western verge rising four hundred feet. Over opposite in Maine, as the
strait between the two narrows, are dark, storm-worn crags, which end
with a promontory bearing a conspicuously red and white-striped
lighthouse tower. This is the termination of the coast of Maine and of
the United States at Quoddy Head, and the entrance to St. Croix River
to the northward, the boundary between New England and the Canadian
Province of New Brunswick. Quoddy Head is a long peninsula, with
Campobello Island directly in front. Just beyond is another peninsula,
bearing a village of white cottages, rising on the slopes of a high
rounded hill having a church with a tall spire perched upon its
pinnacle. This is Lubec, the easternmost town of the United States.
Out in front upon Campobello lived for many years the eccentric old
sailor, William Fitzwilliam Owen, a retired British Admiral, who built
there on the rocks a regulation "quarter-deck" of a man-of-war,
whereon he solemnly promenaded in full uniform and issued orders to a
mythical crew. Finally he died, and as he had desired, was buried by
candlelight in the churchyard of the little chapel he had built on
the island. Campobello is now a summer resort, with numerous hotels
and cottages. All these waters are filled with wicker-work fish-weirs,
wherein are caught the herring supplying the Eastport sardine-packing
establishments. This is another town of white houses on an island
adjoining the mainland, having a little fort and a prominent display
of the sardine-factories in front, with a background of fir-clad hills
in Maine.
St. Croix River falling into Passamaquoddy Bay is, for its whole
length of one hundred and twenty-five miles, the national boundary.
Upon Neutral Island near its mouth was made the first unfortunate
settlement of Acadie by the Sieur De Monts in 1604. He named both the
island and river St. Croix because, just above, various bends of the
river and its branches form a cross. The St. Croix discharges the
noted Schoodic Lakes far up in the forest on the boundary, which have
become a favorite resort of sportsmen and anglers. It brings down many
logs, and the sawmills have made the prosperity of the twin towns of
Calais and St. Stephen on its banks, which represent the two nations,
and being very friendly, are connected by a bridge. Upon a peninsula
near the mouth of the river is St. Andrews, in New Brunswick, which
like most other places in this pleasant region is developing into a
summer resort. When De Monts came and landed, he named the country
Acadie because that was what the Indians called it. The Indians,
however, in pronouncing it made the sound like "a-quoddy," and from
this is derived Passamaquoddy, the name of the bay into which the St.
Croix flows, the word _Pesmo-acadie_ meaning the "pollock place of
plenty," as these fish were prolific there. It is at North Perry in
Maine, a village on the western verge of the bay and between Eastport
and Calais, that the Government has erected the obelisk marking the
forty-fifth parallel of north latitude, midway between the equator and
the pole.
The Canadian Province of New Brunswick into which we have now come in
the journey "Down East" is described as "a region of ships, of pine
trees, salmon, deals, hemlock bark and most excellent red granite."
The first impression upon entering it is made by the highways, where
the change from the United States to the British methods is shown in
the reversal of the usual "rule of the road," from right to left. The
vehicles all "keep to the left," and hence the appropriate proverb:
"The rule of the road is a parodox quite,
In driving your carriage along,
If you keep to the left you are sure to go right,
If you keep to the right you go wrong."
We have also got into the region of the Bay of Fundy, the Portuguese
_Bayo Fondo_, or "deep bay," with its high tides. This huge inlet of
the Atlantic is about one hundred and seventy miles long, thrust up
between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, stretching from thirty to
fifty miles wide between them. Its eastern extremity branches into two
arms, the northern, Chignecto Bay, about thirty miles long, and the
southern, Minas Channel, opening into the Minas Basin. Besides the St.
Croix, this bay also receives St. John River, the greatest in the
Maritime Provinces. The bay is remarkable for its tides, which are
probably the highest in the world, owing to the concentration of the
tidal wave by the approach of the shores and the gradual shoaling of
the bottom. The very moderate tides of the Massachusetts coast
increase to about nine feet rise at the mouth of the Kennebec. The
configuration of the Maine coast to the northeast further increases
this to fifteen or twenty feet rise at Eastport. Beyond this the Bay
of Fundy is a complete _cul-de-sac_, and the farther the tide gets in
the higher it rises. In St. John harbor it becomes twenty-one to
twenty-three feet, and farther up it is greater, in Minas Basin the
rise reaching forty feet, and in Chignecto Bay, near the upper
extremity, sixty feet. These tremendous tides cause peculiar
phenomena; they make the rivers seem to actually run up-hill at times,
while the tidal "bore" or wall of water, which is the advance of the
flood, moves up the streams and across the extensive mudflats with the
speed of a railway train, often catching the unsuspecting who may be
wandering over them. The elaborate wharves made for boat-landings are
built up like three-story houses, with different floor-levels, so as
to enable the vessels to get alongside at all stages of the tide.
THE CITY OF ST. JOHN.
Upon St. John's Day, June 24, 1604, De Monts piloted by Champlain,
coasting along the monotonous forest-clad shores of New Brunswick,
sailed into the mouth of the River St. John, and named it in memory of
the day of its discovery. Off the entrance is Partridge Island, now
surmounted by a lighthouse and what is said to be the most powerful
fog-siren in the world, whose hoarse blasts can be heard thirty miles
away, a necessity in this region, where fogs prevail so generally.
From the Negro Head, a high hill on the western shore, a breakwater
extends across the harbor entrance, and within is the city covering
the hills running down to the water as the inner harbor curves toward
the westward. Timber being the great export, lumber-piles and
timber-ships fill the wharves, sawdust floats on the water, and
vessels are anchored out in the stream loading deals from lighters.
De Monts found some Micmac Indians at St. John, but he did not remain
there, and it was not until 1634 when Claude de St. Estienne, Sieur de
la Tour, a Huguenot who had been granted Acadie by King Charles I. of
England, came out with his son and built a fort at the mouth of St.
John River, the son Charles de la Tour for some years afterwards
holding it and enjoying a lucrative trade. The French King, however,
had made a rival grant of Acadie, which had come into possession of
Charles de Menon, Sieur d'Aulnay Charnisay, who made a settlement at
Annapolis Royal over in Nova Scotia, where De Monts took the remnant
of his unfortunate colony from St. Croix River. D'Aulnay envied La
Tour his prosperity, provoked a quarrel, accused him of treason, and
finally came over and blockaded the mouth of the St. John with six
ships. La Tour, anticipating this attack, had implored aid from the
Huguenots in France, and they sent out the ship "Clement" with one
hundred and forty men, which remained in the offing. One cloudy night
La Tour and his wife slipped out of the harbor on the ebb tide in a
boat and got aboard the ship, which carried them to Boston, where
additional help was sought. Old Cotton Mather records that the
Puritans hearkened unto him and searched the Scriptures to see if
there was Divine sanction for interference in a French quarrel. They
found sundry texts that were interpreted as possibly forbidding such
action, but they nevertheless concluded "it was as lawful for them to
give La Tour succor as it was for Joshua to aid the Gideonites against
the rest of the Canaanites, or for Jehoshaphat to aid Jehoram against
Moab." So they quickly started five Massachusetts ships that way, with
which La Tour raised the blockade and drove D'Aulnay across the Bay
of Fundy back to his own post of Annapolis Royal. D'Aulnay did not
rest content under defeat, however, but two years later again attacked
the fort. Two spies, who had gained entrance in the disguise of monks,
informed him La Tour was absent, the fort being under command of his
wife. Expecting easy victory, he ordered an assault, but was met by
Madame La Tour at the head of the little garrison and defeated with
heavy loss. He awaited another opportunity, and in 1647 when La Tour
was away on a trading expedition, leaving but a small force, he again
attacked. During three days his assaults were repulsed, but a
treacherous sentry admitted the enemy within the fort. Even then the
brave woman fought with such intrepidity that she was given her own
terms of capitulation. No sooner had she surrendered, however, than
D'Aulnay violated his agreement and hanged the garrison, compelling
Madame La Tour to witness it with a halter around her neck. This so
preyed upon her mind that a few days afterwards she died of a broken
heart. Whittier has woven this story into his romantic poem _St.
John_, describing La Tour returning to the fort and expecting his
wife's greeting, but instead he found its walls shattered and the
buildings burnt. A priest appearing, La Tour seizes him, demanding an
explanation, and thus spoke the priest:
"'No wolf, Lord of Estienne, has ravaged thy hall,
But thy red-handed rival, with fire, steel and ball!
On an errand of mercy, I hitherward came,
While the walls of thy castle yet spouted with flame.
"'Pentagoet's dark vessels were moored in the bay,
Grim sea-lions roaring aloud for their prey.'
'But what of my lady?' cried Charles of Estienne:
'On the shot-crumbled turret, thy lady was seen:
"'Half-veiled in the smoke-cloud, her hand grasped thy pennon,
While her dark tresses swayed in the hot breath of cannon!
But woe to the heretic, evermore woe!
When the son of the Church and the Cross is his foe!
"'In the track of the shell, in the path of the ball,
Pentagoet swept over the breach of the wall!
Steel to steel, gun to gun, one moment--and then
Alone stood the victor, alone with his men!
"'Of its sturdy defenders, thy lady alone
Saw the cross-blazoned banner float over St. John.'
'Let the dastard look to it,' cried fiery Estienne,
'Were D'Aulnay King Louis, I'd free her again.'
"'Alas for thy lady! No service from thee
Is needed by her whom the Lord hath set free:
Nine days in stern silence her thraldom she bore,
But the tenth morning came, and Death opened her door!'"
La Tour returned, but hardly in the manner justifying the revenge
indicated in the poem. D'Aulnay died shortly afterwards, whereupon La
Tour recaptured his fort and domain in 1653, but not at the head of an
army, diplomatically accomplishing his victory by marrying D'Aulnay's
widow. This post was known as Fort La Tour until the British conquest
in the eighteenth century, when it was changed to Fort Frederick. It
then became a fishing station, and was plundered in the Revolution.
Afterwards, in 1783, about ten thousand exiled tories from the United
States were landed there, this being the "Landing of the Loyalists"
commemorated on May 18th as the founding of St. John, the charter
dating from that day in 1785. Benedict Arnold was one of these
refugees, he living in St. John for several years from 1786. A
Monument in King Square commemorates the landing of the loyalists and
the grant of the charter. Being built largely of wood, the city
suffered from many disastrous fires, the worst being in June, 1877,
when one-third of the place was burnt, involving a loss of over
sixteen hundred buildings and nearly $30,000,000. St. John rose from
the ruins with great vitality, the new construction being largely of
brick and stone. The population now exceeds forty thousand.
THE RIVER ST. JOHN.
The great curiosity of St. John is the "reversible cataract" in the
river, caused in the gorge just west of the city by the enormous tides
of the Bay of Fundy. The great river above the city is a wide estuary,
but before entering the harbor it is compressed into a short, deep and
narrow gorge, barely one hundred and fifty yards wide in some places,
and obstructed by several rocky islets. As this is the best
crossing-place, two bridges are thrown side by side over the chasm,
one for a railway and the other for a street, resting upon the
limestone cliffs a hundred feet above the water. As the tide ebbs and
flows, the rushing river currents make the reversible cataract, almost
under the bridges, with the water pouring down both ways at different
tidal stages. Through this contracted pass the entire current of the
vast St. John valley finds its outlet to the sea. When the ebb tide
quickly empties the harbor below, the accumulated river waters cannot
get into the gorge fast enough to reduce as rapidly the level of the
broad basin above, and they consequently rush down, a cataract,
swelling sometimes to ten or twelve feet at the upper entrance to the
gorge, and make whirling, seething rapids below. When the tide turns,
this outflow is gradually checked by the rise in the harbor, but soon
the tremendous incoming flood from the Bay of Fundy overpowers the
river current, fills up the gorge, and rapidly rising in the gorge
rushes inward to the broad basin, thus making the cataract fall the
other way. Twice every day this ever-changing contest is fought, and
were it not for the obstruction made by this narrow, rocky gateway,
these enormous tides would rush along in full force and overflow a
large surface of the very low-lying interior of New Brunswick. The
river makes a sharp bend just at the outlet of the gorge, turning from
south to northeast around a rocky cape protruding far into the stream;
then it broadens out into a rounded bay, and a short distance beyond
sharply bends again into the harbor of St. John. Vessels are taken
through the gorge at proper tidal stages, guided by tugs and floating
at high speed with the rushing current. This is one of the most
remarkable exhibitions made of the curious influence of these enormous
Bay of Fundy tides.
The River St. John, flowing out of the vast forests of Maine,
stretches four hundred and fifty miles from its sources to the sea.
The Micmac Indians of its upper reaches called it Ouangondie, while
the Etechemins of the lower waters and the St. Croix valley named it
Looshtook, or the "Long River." Its sources interlock in the Maine
forests, at two thousand feet elevation, with those of the Penobscot
flowing south and the Chaudiere flowing north to the St. Lawrence,
near Quebec. At first the St. John flows northwest, then east and
southeast to its Grand Falls, then by a winding southern course to the
Bay of Fundy. For a long distance its upper waters are the national
boundary between Maine and Canada. It receives several large
tributaries and drains a valley embracing seventeen millions of acres.
The immense forest wilderness of Maine, wherein are the sources of
these streams, is seven times the size of the famous "Black Forest" of
Germany. Upon the upper St. John waters are various villages of French
Acadians, the descendants of those who were driven out of Nova Scotia
in the eighteenth century. It receives the Allegash, St. Francis,
Madawaska, Grand and St. Leonard's Rivers, and thus comes to its
cataract with augmented waters--the Grand Falls. Above, the stream
expands into a broad basin, flowing from which its enormous current is
compressed into a narrow rock-bound canyon, and after running down a
moderate incline suddenly plunges over the front and sides of an
abyss. This is about sixty feet deep and formed of slate, the water
falling into the cauldron below, and also over the outer ledges in
minor cascades. Then, with lightning rapidity the foaming current
dashes through another canyon of two hundred and fifty feet width for
three-fourths of a mile, the walls, of dark, rugged rock, being one
hundred and fifty feet high. Within this terrific chasm there is a
descent of sixty feet more, in which the waters do not rush along as
in the rapids below Niagara, but are actually belched and volleyed
forth, as if shot out of ten thousand great guns, with enormous
boiling masses hurled into the air and huge waves leaping high against
the enclosing cliffs. This ungovernable fury continues throughout most
of the passage, the stream at times heaping itself all on one side,
and giving brief glimpses of the rocky bed of the chasm. Finally an
immense frothy cataract flows over into a lower basin, said to be
unfathomable, where the stream becomes tranquil and then goes along
peacefully between its farther banks. Majestic scenery surrounds
these Grand Falls, there being high mountains in all directions.
Like all great cataracts, this one has its romance and tragedy.
Alongside the final unfathomable basin rises a towering precipice two
hundred feet high, its perpendicular wall as smooth as glass. Down it
the ancient Micmacs hurled their captives taken in war. The implacable
foes of these Micmacs, as of all the tribes allied to the French, were
the New York Iroquois, and particularly the Mohawks. Once a party of
Mohawks penetrated all the way to this remote region, surprising and
capturing a Micmac village with a fearful massacre. One young squaw,
who promised obedience, they spared, because they wanted her to guide
them down the river. She was put in the foremost canoe, and the
fatigued Mohawks lashed their canoes together to float with the
current in the night, and then went to sleep. The girl was to guide
them to a safe landing above the cataract, so they could land and next
day go around the portage. She steered them into the mid-stream
current instead, and dropping quietly overboard swam ashore. They
floated to the brink of the cataract, and when its thunders awoke
them, too late for safety, the whole party were swept over and
perished. This was the last Mohawk invasion of the region. Twenty
miles below, the Tobique River comes into the St. John, and is
regarded as the most picturesque stream in New Brunswick, being noted
for its lumber camps and good angling. Here is Andover, a little
village supplying the lumbermen, and also Florenceville and Woodstock,
with busy sawmills. For miles the river shores are lofty and bold,
affording charming scenery. The Meduxnekeag flows in from the Maine
forests, bringing down many logs, and below the Meduntic Rapids are
passed. Then the Pokiok, its Indian name meaning the "dreadful place,"
flows to the St. John through a sombre and magnificent gorge four
hundred yards long, very deep and only twenty-five feet wide. The
little river, after plunging down a cataract of forty feet, rushes
over the successive ledges of this remarkable pass until it reaches
the St. John. For a long distance the great river passes villages
originally settled by disbanded British troops after the Revolution
and now peopled by their descendants, and then it winds through the
pastoral district of Aukpaque, which was held by Americans within New
Brunswick for two years after the Revolution began, they finally
retreating in 1777 over the border into the wilderness of Maine, and
reaching the coast at Machias. Seven miles below is Frederickton, the
New Brunswick capital, a small city, quiet and restful, with broad
streets lined by old shade trees, and covering a good deal of level
land adjoining the river. It has a fine Parliament House, a small but
attractive Cathedral, with a spire one hundred and eighty feet high,
and on the hills back of the town is the University of New Brunswick.
The Nashwaak River flows in opposite among sawmills and cotton-mills,
and there was the old French Fort Nashwaak where the Chevalier de
Villebon, who was sent in 1690 to govern Acadie, fixed his capital
(removing it from Annapolis Royal), and used to fit out expeditions
against the Puritans in New England, they attacking him once in
retaliation, but being beaten off. The St. John passes through a
pleasant intervale below, the garden-spot of the Province, where at
Maugerville was the earliest English settlement on the river,
colonized from New England in 1763, after the French surrender of
Canada. Then the St. John receives Jemseg River, the outlet of Grand
Lake, where a French fort was built as early as 1640 and was fought
about for more than a century. This is a deep, slow-winding stream in
a region of perfect repose, having opposite its outlet Gagetown, a
pretty place with a few hundred people, and said to be the most
slumbrous village of all this sleepy region:
"Oh, so drowsy! in a daze,
Sleeping mid the golden haze;
With its one white row of street
Carpeted so green and sweet,
And the loungers smoking, still,
Over gate and window sill;
Nothing coming, nothing going,
Locusts grating, one cock crowing,
Few things moving up or down;
All things drowsy--Drowsytown!"
The St. John below is much like a broad and placid lake flowing
through a pastoral country, having long tributary lakes and bays,
including the extensive and attractive Kennebecasis, which is the
favorite rural resort of the St. John people and the scene of their
aquatic sports. The river farther down broadens into Grand Bay, and
then passing the narrow gorge of the "reversible cataract," makes the
expansive harbor of St. John, and is ultimately swallowed up by the
Bay of Fundy.
ANNAPOLIS AND MINAS BASINS.
From St. John River across the Bay of Fundy to Digby Gut in Nova
Scotia is forty-five miles. For one hundred and thirty miles, the
North Mountain Ridge, elevated six hundred feet, stretches along the
bay upon the Nova Scotia shore, sharply notched down at Digby Gut, the
entrance to Annapolis Basin. This strait, barely a half-mile wide, is
cut two miles through the mountain ridge, having a tidal current of
six miles an hour, and within is a magnificent salt-water lake,
surrounded by forests sloping up the hillsides, and one of the
pleasantest sheets of water in the world. It is no wonder that De
Monts, when his colonists abandoned the dreary island in St. Croix
River, sought refuge here, and that his companion, Baron de
Poutrincourt, obtained a grant for the region. It is one of the most
attractive parts of Acadia, and as the old song has it:
"This is Acadia--this the land
That weary souls have sighed for;
This is Acadia--this the land
Heroic hearts have died for."
Digby is within the Gut, fronted by a long and tall wooden wharf that
has to deal with fifty feet of tide, its end being an enormous square
timber crib, built up like a four-story house. The town is noted for
luscious cherries and for "Digby Chickens," the most prized brand of
herrings cured by the "Blue-noses," and it has also developed into
quite an attractive watering-place. To the southwestward a railway
runs to Yarmouth, at the western extremity of Nova Scotia, a small but
very busy port, having steamer lines in various directions. To the
northeastward Annapolis Basin stretches sixteen miles between the
enclosing hills, gradually narrowing towards the extremity. Here, on
the lowlands adjoining Annapolis River, is the quaint little town of
Annapolis Royal and the extensive ramparts of the ancient fort that
guarded it, covering some thirty acres. This was the original French
capital of Acadia, and the first permanent settlement made by
Europeans in America north of St. Augustine, De Monts founding the
colony in 1605. He named it Port Royal, but the English Puritans a
century later changed this, in honor of their "good Queen Anne," to
Annapolis Royal. Almost from the first settlement to the final capture
by the Puritan expedition from Boston in 1710, its history was a tale
of battles, sieges and captures by many chieftains of the rival
nations. As the Marquis of Lorne in his Canadian book describes it:
"This is the story which is repeated with varying incidents through
all the long-drawn coasts of the old Acadia. We see, first, the forest
village of the Red Indians, with its stockades and patches of maize
around it; then the landing from the ships, under the white flag sown
with golden lilies, of armored arquebussiers and spearsmen; the
skirmishing and the successful French settlement; to be followed by
the coming of other ships, with the red cross floating over the
high-built sterns, and then the final conflict and the victory of the
British arms." Now everything is peaceful, and the people raise
immense crops of the most attractive apples for shipment to Europe.
East of Annapolis is the "Garden of Nova Scotia." The long ridge of
the North Mountain on the coast screens it from the cold winds and
fogs, while the parallel ridge of the South Mountain stretches for
eighty miles, and between these noble ranges, which are described as
"most gracefully moulded," is a broad and rich intervale extending to
the Basin of Minas and the land of Evangeline, which Longfellow has
made so sadly poetical. Good crops of hay grow on the fertile red
soils, which the farmers gather with their slowly-plodding ox-teams;
and of this region the poet sang mournfully:
"This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,
Bearded with moss, and in garments green, indistinct in the twilight,
Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic,
Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms,
Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate, answers the wail of the forest."
To-day, however, "the murmuring pines and the hemlocks" are not there,
excepting in stunted growth in occasional thickets, the land being
meadow and grain fields, with many orchards. Upon a low-lying
peninsula, washed by the placid waters of the Basin of Minas, is the
"Great Meadow," the Grand Pré of the unfortunate Acadians, where in
that early time they had reclaimed from the enormous tides some three
square miles of land, while south of the meadow, on somewhat higher
ground, was their little village. Beyond it the dark North Mountain
ridge stretches to the promontory of Cape Blomidon, dropping off
abruptly six hundred feet into the Basin of Minas. The contented
French lived secluded lives here, avoiding much of the ravages of the
wars raging elsewhere around the Bay of Fundy, and when France ceded
Nova Scotia to England in 1713 they numbered about two thousand. They
took the oaths of loyalty to the British crown, but in the subsequent
French and Indian wars there was much disaffection, and it was
determined in 1755 to remove all the French who lived around the Bay
of Fundy, numbering some eight thousand, so that a loyal British
population might replace them. In September the embarkation began from
Grand Pré, one hundred and sixty young men being ordered aboard ship.
They slowly marched from the church to the shore between ranks of the
women and children, who, kneeling, prayed for blessings upon them,
they also praying and weeping and singing hymns. The old men were sent
next, but the wives and children were kept till other ships arrived.
These wretched people were herded together near the sea, without
proper food, raiment or shelter for weeks, until the transports came,
and it was December before the last of them had embarked. In one
locality a hundred men fled to the woods, and soldiers were sent to
hunt them, often shooting them down. Many in various places managed to
escape, some getting to St. John River, while not a few went to
Quebec, and others found refuge in Indian wigwams in the forests.
There were seven thousand, however, carried on shipboard from the Bay
of Fundy to the various British colonies from New Hampshire to
Georgia, being landed without resources and having generally to
subsist on charity. To prevent their returning, all the French
villages around the Bay of Fundy were laid waste and their homes
ruined. In the Minas district two hundred and fifty houses and a
larger number of barns were burnt. Edmund Burke in the British
Parliament cried out against this treatment, saying: "We did, in my
opinion, most inhumanly, and upon pretences that, in the eye of an
honest man, are not worth a farthing, root out this poor, innocent,
deserving people, whom our utter inability to govern or to reconcile
gave us no sort of right to extirpate." The sad story of Grand Pré and
of Evangeline was historic before Longfellow's day, but he made it
immortal.
MINAS TO HALIFAX.
The Basin of Minas, in the Micmac Indian tradition, was the
beaver-pond and favorite abiding-place of their divinity, Glooscap. On
the great promontory of Cape Blomidon, which stretches northward to
enclose the Basin on its western side, he had his home. The ridge of
the cape turns sharply to the westward and ends in Cape Split,
alongside the Minas Channel. This formation has been compared to the
curved handle of a huge walking-stick, the long North Mountain
stretching far away being the stick. The Micmacs tell us that this
ridge, now bent around to the westward, was Glooscap's beaver-dam,
which he beneficently swung open, so that the surplus waters might run
out and not overflow the meadows around the Basin of Minas. In
swinging it around, however, the terminal cliff of Cape Split was
broken off, and now rises in a promontory four hundred feet high just
beyond the main ridge. Glooscap, we are told, began a conflict in the
Basin with the Great Beaver, and threw at him the five vast rocks now
known as the Five Islands on the northern shore to the eastward of
Parrsboro'. The Beaver was chased out of the Basin, westward through
the Minas Channel, and as a parting salute Glooscap threw his kettle
at him, which overturning, became Spencer's Island, on the northern
shore beyond Cape Split. The enormous tides run through the Minas
Channel at eight miles an hour, and they helped to drive the Great
Beaver over to St. John, where Glooscap finally conquered and killed
him.
The formation around the head of the Bay of Fundy is largely of rich
and fertile red lowlands, marsh and meadow, much of it being reclaimed
by dyking. The same formation is carried over the Chignecto isthmus,
east of the bay, where the Nova Scotia Peninsula is joined to the
mainland. This is only seventeen miles wide, and across it has been
projected the "Chignecto Ship Railway," designed to shorten by about
five hundred miles the passage of vessels around the Nova Scotia
Peninsula into the St. Lawrence. It is a system of railway tracks on
which the design was to carry ships over the isthmus. Vessels of two
thousand tons were to be lifted out of the water, placed in a huge
cradle, and drawn across by locomotives. The project, estimated as
costing $5,000,000, was stopped in partial completion for want of
funds. On the meadow land to the southward of the Basin of Minas is
Windsor on the Avon, a small shipping town, in which the most famous
building near the river is a broad and oddly-constructed one-story
house, called the Clifton Mansion, which was the home of the author of
_Sam Slick_--Judge Thomas C. Haliburton, a native of Windsor, who died
in 1865. Beyond is Ardoise Mountain, rising seven hundred feet and
having on its northern verge the great Aylesford sand-plain whereof
_Sam Slick_ says: "Plain folks call it, in a gin'ral way, the Devil's
Goose Pasture. It is thirteen miles long and seven miles wide; it
ain't just drifting sands, but it's all but that, it's so barren. It's
uneven or wavy, like the swell of the sea in a calm, and it's covered
with short, thin, dry, coarse grass, and dotted here and there with a
half-starved birch and a stunted, misshapen spruce. It is just about
as silent and lonesome and desolate a place as you would wish to see.
All that country thereabout, as I have heard tell when I was a boy,
was once owned by the Lord, the king and the devil. The glebe-lands
belonged to the first, the ungranted wilderness-lands to the second,
and the sand-plain fell to the share of the last--and people do say
the old gentleman was rather done in the division, but that is neither
here nor there--and so it is called to this day the Devil's Goose
Pasture." Over this sand-plain and the rocky, desolate ridge beyond,
runs the great railway train of the Provinces, on the route between
St. John and Halifax--dignified by the title of the "Flying Bluenose."
It crosses the bleak flanks of Ardoise Mountain and Mount Uniacke,
with its gold mines, through a region which the local chronicler
describes as having "admirable facilities for the pasturage of goats
and the procuring of ballast for breakwaters;" and then comes to the
pleasant shores of Bedford Basin, running several miles along its
beautiful western bank down to Halifax harbor.
THE GREAT BRITISH-AMERICAN FORTRESS.
The city of Halifax is the stronghold of British power in North
America, and is said to be, with the exception of Gibraltar, the best
fortified outpost of the British empire. It is a fortress and naval
station of magnificent development upon an unrivalled harbor. This is
an arm of the sea, thrust for sixteen miles up into the land, and the
Indians called it Chebucto, meaning the "chief haven." A thousand
ships can be accommodated on its spacious anchorages. Its Northwest
Arm, a narrow waterway opening on the western shore just inside the
entrance, makes a long peninsula with water on either side, which in
the centre rises into Citadel Hill, two hundred and fifty-six feet
high. Upon its eastern slopes, running down to the harbor and
spreading two or three miles along it, is the narrow and elongated
town, having the Queen's Dockyard at the northern end. Covering the
broad hilltop is the spacious granite Citadel of Fort George, its
green slopes, covered with luxuriant grass, being now devoted to the
peaceful usefulness of a cow-pasture. Along the harbor and across in
the suburb of Dartmouth are the streets and buildings of the town,
containing forty thousand people. To the southward is the modern
green-covered Fort Charlotte on St. George's Island, commanding the
entrance and looking not unlike a sugar-loaf hat, and both shores are
lined with powerful batteries and forts that make the position
impregnable. The Citadel was begun by the Duke of Kent, Queen
Victoria's father, when he commanded the British forces in Canada in
the latter part of the eighteenth century, and it has since been
enlarged and strengthened. At the entrance gate, grim memorials of the
past, are mounted two old mortars, captured at the downfall of
Louisbourg, on Cape Breton, in 1758.
Halifax did not have an early settlement, though in the Colonial times
the French came into Chebucto to refit their ships. The Massachusetts
Puritans, who had long been fighting the French and Indians, first
recognized its importance, and in 1748 they sent a petition to
Parliament urging the establishment of a post there, and $200,000 was
voted for a colonizing expedition, of which the English "Lords of
Trade," George Montagu, Earl of Halifax, being the chief, took charge,
hoping for commercial as well as military advantage. Lord Edward
Cornwallis commanded the expedition, which brought twenty-five
hundred colonists, largely disbanded soldiers, into Chebucto, landing
June 21, 1749, and founding Halifax, named in honor of the Chief Lord
of Trade. They were soon attacked by the French and Indians, the
suburbs being burnt, and they were harassed in many ways, leading to
the erection of stockades and forts for defense; but they held the
place, and it was the control of this fine harbor which finally
enabled the British to secure Canada. The fleets and armies were
concentrated here that took and destroyed the famous fortress of
Louisbourg, which, with Quebec, held the Dominion for the French, and
here was also organized the subsequent expedition under Wolfe that
captured Quebec and ended a century and a half of warfare by the
cession of Canada to England. In the American Revolution, Halifax was
a chief base of the British operations, and when that war ended, large
numbers of American loyalists exiled themselves to Halifax. There is
now maintained a garrison of two thousand men and a strong fleet at
Halifax, and the sailor and the soldier are picturesque features of
the streets. The city has pleasant parks and suburbs, but everything
is subordinated to the grim necessities of the fortress, although in
all its noted career Halifax has never been the scene of actual
warfare.
The Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia is indented by numerous bays that
are good harbors, most of them having small towns and fishery
stations. The western portal of Halifax harbor is Chebucto Head and
Cape Sambro, with dangerous shoals beyond. There have been many
serious wrecks in steering for this entrance during fogs, one of the
most awful being the loss of the steamship "Atlantic" in 1873, when
five hundred and thirty-five persons were drowned. Westward from
Sambro are the broad St. Margaret's and Mahone Bays, and beyond,
Lunenburg on its spacious harbor, a shipping and fishery town of four
thousand people. To the westward are Bridgewater, Liverpool and
Shelburne, with Cape Sable Island at the southwestern extremity of
Nova Scotia, having behind it Barrington within a deep harbor. Off
shore is Seal Island, with its great white guiding light, this being
called, from its position, the "Elbow of the Bay of Fundy," and then
around the "Elbow" is reached the broad estuary of the Tusket River
and the beautiful archipelago of the Tusket Islands. The Tusket is one
of the noted angling and sporting districts of the Province, this
river draining a large part of the lake region of southwestern Nova
Scotia, and having a succession of lakes connected by rapids and
carrying a large amount of water down to the sea. There are eighty of
these lakes of varying sizes. The salmon in the spring run up
numerously, and the trout seek the cool recesses of the forests, while
the rapids, the many islands and the charming woodlands are all
attractive. In the archipelago of the estuary are some three hundred
islands, the group extending out into the sea and having the powerful
tidal currents flowing through their tortuous passages with the
greatest velocity. These islands vary from small and barren rocks up
to larger ones rising grandly from the water and thickly covered with
trees, the channels between being narrow and deep. Among these islands
are some of the best lobster fisheries in America.
Eastward from Halifax are more deep bays and good harbors, but the
shores are only sparsely peopled, being mostly a wilderness yet to be
permanently occupied, though the venturesome fishermen have their huts
dropped about in pleasant nooks. Here are Musquidoboit and Ship
harbors, with Sherbrooke village in Isaac's harbor. Beyond, the long
projecting peninsula of Guysborough terminates in the famous Cape
Canso, the eastern extremity of Nova Scotia. This peninsula was named
in honor of Sir Guy Carleton, and has the deep indentation of
Chedabucto Bay on its northern side. Here is a village of a few
hundred sailors and fishermen, where the French had a fort in the
seventeenth century, until the Puritans under Sir William Phips came
from Boston in 1690, drove them out and burnt it. Off this coast and
ninety miles out at sea to the southward is the dreaded Sable Island,
a long and narrow sandspit without trees, producing nothing but salt
grass and cranberries. A lighthouse stands at either end, and there
are three flagstaffs for signals at intervals between them, with also
a life-saving station, and the bleaching bones of many a wreck
imbedded in the sands. It has few visitors, excepting those who are
cast away, and everyone avoids it. Yet, strangely enough, the first
American explorers were infatuated with the idea of planting a colony
on this bleak and barren sandbar, and its history has mainly been a
record of wrecks. Cabot originally saw this island, and in 1508 the
first futile attempt was made to settle it, the colony being soon
abandoned, though some live-stock were left there. Sir Humphrey
Gilbert in 1583 lost his ship "Delight" here, with a hundred men, and
going home on her consort, he lost his own life on the Azores. It was
on this fateful voyage that Sir Humphrey, on his storm-tossed vessel
"Squirrel," sweeping past the other, shouted to her crew: "Courage, my
lads, we are as near Heaven by sea as by land." In 1598 a colony of
forty French convicts was placed on the island and forgotten for seven
years, when they were hunted up and twelve survivors found, whom the
King pardoned, and they were then carried back to France dressed in
seal-skins and described as "gaunt, squalid and long-bearded." This
seems to have ended the attempts to colonize Sable Island. The
Spaniards sent out an expedition to settle Cape Breton, but the fleet
was dashed to pieces on this island. The great French Armada, sailing
to punish the Puritans for capturing Louisbourg, suffered severely on
its shoals. The French afterwards lost there the frigate
"L'Africaine," and later the steamer "Georgia" was wrecked. It is a
long, narrow island, bent in the form of a bow, spreading twenty-six
miles including the terminating bars, and nowhere over a mile wide. A
long, shallow lake extends for thirteen miles in the centre. There is
the French Garden, the traditionary spot where the convicts suffered
during their exile, and a graveyard where the shipwrecked are buried.
Wild ponies gallop about, the descendants of those left by the first
settlers, seals bask on the sands, and ducks swim the lake. Such
to-day is Sable Island.
PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND.
From Halifax a railroad leads northward across Nova Scotia to Pictou.
It passes through the gold-digging regions of Waverley, Oldham and
Renfrew, then over the rich red soils of the head of the Bay of Fundy
and down the Shubenacadie River, meaning the "place of wild potatoes,"
and reaches Truro, an active manufacturing town of over five thousand
people near the head of Cobequid Bay. Beyond, through forests and
hills, it crosses the peninsula to the Pictou coal-fields and comes
out on Northumberland Strait at Pictou harbor. The coal is sent here
for shipment, the name having come from the Indian word _Pictook_,
meaning "bubbling or gas exploding," in allusion to the boiling of the
waters near the coal-beds. Over across the Strait is Prince Edward
Island, its red bluff shores along the edge of the horizon surmounted
by a fringe of green foliage. The Micmacs recognized its peculiarity,
calling it Epayquit, or "Anchored on the Wave." It is one hundred and
thirty miles long and rather narrow, having deep bays, sometimes
almost bisecting the island. The surface is low and undulating, with
fertile soils mostly derived from the old red sandstone. The French
first called it the Isle de St. Jean, but after the cession to England
an effort was made to call it New Ireland, as Nova Scotia was New
Scotland, and finally in 1800 it was given the present name in honor
of Queen Victoria's father. It raises horses, oats, eggs and potatoes,
and relatively to size is the best populated of all the Maritime
Provinces. Charlottetown, inside of Hillsborough Bay,--called
popularly "Ch-town," for short,--is the capital, a quiet place with
about eleven thousand population, the Parliament House being its best
building. A narrow-gauge railway is constructed through the island,
near its western terminal being Summerside, on Bedeque Bay, where
there is a little trade and three thousand people, probably its most
active port.
THE ARM OF GOLD.
The eastern boundary of Nova Scotia is the Canso Strait, separating it
from Cape Breton Island. At Canso, its southern entrance, various
Atlantic cables are landed, while others go off southward to New
York. This strait is a picturesque waterway, fifteen miles long and
about a mile wide, a highway of commerce for the shipping desirous of
avoiding the long passage around Cape Breton, and it is called by its
admirers "The Golden Gate of the St. Lawrence Gulf." The geologists
describe it as a narrow transverse valley excavated by the powerful
currents of the drift period. As it leads directly from the Atlantic
Ocean into the Gulf, more vessels are said to pass it than any other
strait excepting Gibraltar. It has several villages upon the shores,
mainly with Scottish inhabitants, the chief being Port Hawkesbury,
Port Mulgrave and Port Hastings, the latter a point for gypsum export.
Cape Breton Island is about one hundred miles long and eighty miles
wide, its greatest natural feature being the famous "Arm of Gold,"
thus named in admiration by the early French explorers. Nearly
one-half the surface of the island is occupied by the lakes and swamps
of this "Bras d'Or," an extensive and almost tideless inland sea of
salt water, ramifying with deep bays and long arms through the centre,
having two large openings into the sea at its northeastern end, and
almost communicating with the Atlantic on its southwestern corner.
This "Arm of Gold" has fine scenery, and presents within the rocky
confines of the island a large lake, the Great Bras d'Or, where the
mariner gets almost out of sight of land. To the southward of Cape
Breton Island is Arichat, or the Isle Madame, having the Lennox
Passage between, this Isle being inhabited by a colony of French
Acadian fishermen. Originally this region was colonized by the Count
de Fronsac, Sieur Denys, the first French Governor of Cape Breton, in
whose honor they always called the Canso Strait the Passage Fronsac,
though since then its present title was adopted, being derived from
the Micmac name of Camsoke, meaning "facing the frowning cliffs." Each
little French settlement here, as on the St. Lawrence, has the white
cottages clustering around the church with the tall spire, and the
curé's house not far away, usually the most elaborate in the
settlement. From the Lennox Passage a short canal has been cut through
the rocks into the southwestern extremity of the Bras d'Or, thus
actually dividing Cape Breton into two islands.
The village of "St. Peter at the Gate" is passed, and the lake entered
at St. Peter's Inlet, a beautiful waterway filled with islands making
narrow winding channels. Several of these islands are a Government
reservation for a remnant of the Micmacs, and they have a small white
church upon Chapel Island, where they gather from all parts of Cape
Breton for their annual festival on St. Anne's Day. Beyond, the Great
Bras d'Or broadens, an inland sea, the opposite shore almost out of
vision, for the lake is eighteen miles across and fully fifty miles
long. The banks come together at the Grand Narrows, making the
contracted Strait of Barra, and then they expand again into another
lake, neither so long nor so wide, the Little Bras d'Or to the
northeastward, but still nearly fifty miles long, including its
northeastern prolongation of St. Andrew Channel. This in turn opens by
a wider strait into yet another lake to the northward, upon the
farther shore of which is Baddeck. To the westward this lake spreads
into St. Patrick's Channel, and to the northeastward there are thrust
out in parallel lines the two "Arms of Gold" connecting with the sea.
An island over thirty miles long and varying in width separates these
two curious arms. These strangely-fashioned lakes present varied
scenery; the shores in some places are low meadows, in others
gently-swelling hills, and elsewhere they rise into forest-clad
mountains. In the pellucid waters swim jelly-fish of exquisite tints.
The atmosphere blends the outlines and colors so well that it smoothes
the roughness of the wilder regions, and casts a softness over the
scene which adds to its charms. Beyond the bordering mountains, to the
northward, is a dreary and almost uninhabited table-land stretching to
the Atlantic Ocean, where the long projection of remote Cape North
stands in silent grandeur within seventy-five miles of Newfoundland.
Upon the verge of the northern Bras d'Or Lake, in a charming
situation, is the little town of Baddeck, its houses scattered over
the sloping hillsides and the church spires rising among the trees. A
pretty island stands out in front as a protective breakwater, for
storms often sweep wildly across the broad waters. This is the chief
settlement of the lake district, the Highland Scottish inhabitants
having twisted its present name out of the original French title of
Bedique, there being a population of about one thousand. At the
eastern extremity of Cape Breton Island, on an inlet from the
Atlantic, and near the terminating arms of the Bras d'Or, is the
coal-shipping port of Sydney, with a population of twenty-five
hundred, though excepting coal-piers and colliers there is not much
there to see. This is the port for the Sydney coal-fields, covering
nearly three hundred square miles of the island, and the
mine-galleries being prolonged in various places under the ocean.
These were the first coal deposits worked in America, the French
having got coal out of them in the seventeenth century. They are now
all controlled by the wealthy Dominion Coal Company of Boston. Sydney,
C. B., is a seaport known from its coaling facilities throughout the
world, and while prosaic enough now, it saw stirring scenes in the
Colonial times. The early name for its admirable harbor was Spanish
Bay, because Spanish fishermen gathered there. It was a favorite
anchorage for both French and English fleets in their preparations, as
the tide of battle turned, for attacking New England or Acadia in the
long struggle for supremacy. In 1696 the French assembled in Spanish
Bay for a foray upon Pemaquid. In 1711 Admiral Hovenden Walker,
returning from his unsuccessful expedition against Quebec, his ships
having been dispersed by a storm, collected in this capacious
roadstead the most formidable fleet it had seen, forty-two vessels.
The doughty British Admiral felt so good about it that he set up on
shore a large signboard made by his carpenters, whereon was inscribed
a pompous proclamation claiming possession of the whole country in
honor of his sovereign Queen Anne. The French soon came along,
however, and smashed his signboard, built their fortress of
Louisbourg, and there was a half-century of warfare before the
proclamation was made good and England had undisputed possession. The
settlement on Spanish Bay was not named after Lord Sydney and made the
Cape Breton capital until 1784, when exiled loyalists came from the
United States to inhabit it.
THE GREAT ACADIAN FORTRESS.
Upon the seacoast, twenty-five miles southeast of Sydney, is a low
headland with a dark rocky island in the offing. This headland is Cape
Breton, originally named for the Breton French fishermen who
frequented it, and it in turn named Cape Breton Island. Just west of
Cape Breton is an admirable harbor which, being frequented in the
early days by English fishermen, the French named the _Havre aux
Anglais_, or the "English Port." Upon Point Rochefort, on its western
side, stood the famous French fortress and town of Louisbourg, which
was called "the Dunkirk of America." While grass-grown ruins and some
of the ramparts are still traceable, and visitors find relics, yet
little is left of this great fortress, once regarded as the "Key to
New France," or of the populous French town on the harbor which in the
eighteenth century had a trade of the first importance. It was twice
captured, after remarkable sieges and battles of world-wide renown,
causing the most profound sensations at the time, and now absolutely
nothing is left of the original place but an old graveyard on the
point, where French and English dust commingle in peace under a mantle
of dark greensward. There is at present a settlement of about a
thousand people around the harbor, mainly engaged in the fisheries.
The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 transferred Newfoundland and Acadia from
France to England, but the French held Cape Breton Island, and many of
their refugees came hither. It was not long before the French King,
Louis XIV., stirred by Admiral Walker's proclamation and anxious about
Canada, determined to fortify the "English Port" and make a commercial
depot there, and in 1714 the plan was laid out, the name being changed
to Louisbourg. In 1720 work began on a prodigious scale, the intention
being to make it the leading fortress in America, and for more than
twenty years France devoted its energy and resources to the completion
of the stupendous fortifications, attracting inhabitants to the place
by bounties, and creating a brisk trade by sea which soon drew
inhabitants for a large town. When completed, this town stood upon the
neck of land on the southwest side of the harbor enclosed by stone
walls having a circuit of nearly three miles. These walls were
thirty-six feet high and forty feet thick at the base, with a ditch
outside eighty feet wide. The fortress was constructed in the first
system of the noted French engineer, Vauban, and required a large
garrison. A battery of thirty guns was located on Goat Island, at the
harbor entrance, and at the bottom of the harbor opposite the entrance
was another, the Royal Battery, also of thirty guns. The land and
harbor sides of the town were defended by ramparts and bastions on
which eighty guns were mounted, the land side also having a deep moat
and projecting bastions, the West Gate on that side being overlooked
by a battery of sixteen guns. There was a ponderous Citadel, and in
the centre of the town the stately stone church of St. John de Dieu,
with attendant nunnery and hospitals. The streets crossed at right
angles, and five gates in the walls on the harbor side communicated
with the wharves. Such was the greatest stronghold in North America in
1745, the famous Louisbourg fortress.
The people of New England, whose commerce was being preyed upon by
privateers which found refuge in its harbor, and whose frontiers were
harassed by forays thence directed, we are told by the historian,
"looked with awe upon the sombre walls of Louisbourg, whose towers
rose like giants above the northern seas." But the Puritans were not
wont to lie still under such inflictions, nor to confine their efforts
to prayers alone. Massachusetts planned an attack, and the command of
the expedition was given William Pepperell of Kittery, a merchant
ignorant of the art of war. Then followed one of the most
extraordinary events in history. A fleet of about a hundred vessels
carried a force of forty-one hundred undisciplined militia upon a
Puritan crusade, which was started with religious services, the
eloquent preacher, George Whitefield, imploring a blessing and giving
them the motto, _Nil desperandum, Christo duce_. They rendezvoused at
Canso, meeting there Commodore Warren and the British West Indian
fleet by arrangement, and landing at Gabarus Bay, west of Louisbourg,
April 30, 1745. They did not know much about war, but they set fire to
some storehouses, and the black smoke drove down in such volumes upon
the Royal Battery at the bottom of the harbor that its scared French
defenders spiked the guns and fled in the night. The Puritans took
possession, beat off the French who attacked them, got smiths at work,
who drilled out the spikes, and soon from this, the key to the
position, they turned the guns upon the town. Then began a regular
siege, though most unscientific in manner. They captured a French ship
with stores and reinforcements, and by June had breached the walls
twenty-four feet at the King's Bastion, dismounted all the neighboring
guns, made the Goat Island Battery untenable, and ruined the town by
showers of bombs and red-hot balls. Upon June 15th the British fleet
of ten ships was drawn up off the harbor entrance for an attack, and
the land forces were arrayed to assault the West Gate, when the French
commander, knowing he could hold out no longer, decided to surrender,
and on June 17th, the forty-ninth day of the siege, he capitulated.
Thus the grand fortress fell, as the Puritan historian describes it,
upon the attack of "four thousand undisciplined militia or volunteers,
officered by men who had, with one or two exceptions, never seen a
shot fired in anger in all their lives, encamped in an open country
and sadly deficient in suitable artillery." He continues: "As the
troops, entering the fortress, beheld the strength of the place, their
hearts for the first time sank within them. 'God has gone out of his
way,' said they, 'in a remarkable and most miraculous manner, to
incline the hearts of the French to give up and deliver this strong
city into our hands.'" The capture was the marvel of the time, and
caused the greatest rejoicings throughout the British Empire; while
Pepperell, who was made a Baronet, attributed his success, not to the
guns nor the ships, but to the constant prayers of New England, daily
arising from every village in behalf of the absent army. This victory
at Louisbourg gave them an experience to which is attributed the
American success at Bunker Hill thirty years afterwards. Colonel
Gridley, who planned Pepperell's batteries, is said to have laid out
the hastily constructed entrenchments on Bunker Hill, and the same old
drums that beat in the siege of Louisbourg were at Bunker Hill, the
spirit which this great victory imparted to the Yankee soldiers having
never deteriorated.
The French were terribly chagrined at the loss of their great
fortress, and in 1746 they sent out the "French Armada" of seventy
ships under the Duc d'Anville, instructed to "occupy Louisbourg,
reduce Nova Scotia, destroy Boston, and ravage the coast of New
England." But storms wrecked and dispersed the fleet, and the vexed
and disappointed commander died of apoplexy, his Vice-Admiral killing
himself. Then a second expedition of forty-four ships was sent under
La Jonquiere to retake Louisbourg, but the English squadrons attacked
and destroyed this fleet off Cape Finisterre, Admirals Warren and
Anson gaining one of the greatest British naval victories of the
eighteenth century. The fortress which thus could not be retaken by
arms was, however, to the general astonishment, surrendered back to
France by diplomacy. The peace of Aix la Chapelle in 1748 ended the
war by restoring Louisbourg and Cape Breton Island to France, and the
historian bluntly records that "after four years of warfare in all
parts of the world, after all the waste of blood and treasure, the war
ended just where it began." France then rebuilt, improved and
strengthened the idolized fortress, sending it a powerful garrison.
War was renewed in 1755,--the terrible French and Indian War. Halifax
was then the base of British-American operations, and fleets soon
blockaded Louisbourg. The French had twelve warships in the harbor and
ten thousand men in the garrison, but the British, bewailing the
shortsightedness that gave it up by treaty, were bound to retake it at
all hazards. They sent a fleet of one hundred and fifty-six warships
and transports from Spithead, the most powerful England had down to
that time assembled, carrying thirteen thousand six hundred men, with
Admiral Boscawen commanding the navy and General Amherst the army, the
immortal Wolfe being one of the brigadiers. Rendezvousing at Halifax,
this great force sailed against Louisbourg May 28, 1758, the troops
landing at Gabarus Bay, and beginning the attack June 8th, with Wolfe
leading. The French commander sank five of his warships to blockade
the harbor entrance. Wolfe closely followed Pepperell's method, got
batteries in position to bombard the city, and silenced the Goat
Island Battery by his tremendous cannonade. In time he had destroyed
the West Gate, the Citadel and barracks, and burnt three of the French
ships by his red-hot balls. Two more ships ran out of the harbor in a
fog to escape, and one was captured. Two French frigates alone
remained, and a daring attack in boats was made on these, and both
were destroyed. Breaches were rent in the walls, so that the place
became untenable, and finally, after forty-eight days of terrific
siege, Louisbourg, on July 26th, again surrendered to the British.
Then more rejoicings came throughout the Empire, Wolfe was made a
Major General, and the gain to ocean commerce by the downfall of the
fortress, which had been a refuge for privateers, was seen in an
immediate decline in marine insurance rates from thirty to twelve per
cent. The next year the great British fleet and army sailed away from
Louisbourg under Wolfe for the capture of Quebec and the final
conquest of Canada. Then went forth the edict of the conqueror that
the famous French fortress should be utterly destroyed. It was found
as a seaport to be inferior to Halifax, where the admirable harbor is
never closed by ice, and where the forts could make the place
impregnable. The Louisbourg garrison was withdrawn, and the people
scattered, many going to Sydney. All the guns, stores and everything
valuable went to Halifax. In 1760 a corps of sappers and miners
worked six months, demolishing the fortifications and buildings,
overthrowing the walls and glacis into the ditches, leaving nothing
standing but a few small half-ruined private houses, and thus the
proud Acadian fortress was humbled into heaps of rubbish. The merciful
hand of time, left to complete the ruin, has during the centuries
healed most of the ghastly wounds with its generous mantle of
greensward, and the neighboring ocean sounds along the low shores the
eternal requiem of proud Louisbourg.
THE MAGDALEN ISLANDS.
We have come to the uttermost verge of the Continent in quest of "Down
East," and find it elusive and still beyond us. There is yet the
remote island of Newfoundland, and we are pointed thither as still
"Down East." To the northward, lying in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are
the group of Magdalen Islands, where a steamer calls once a week,
sailing from Pictou, these probably being about as far away as one
would wish to go in his search. There are thirteen in the group, sixty
miles off the extremity of Cape Breton Island, the bleak Cape North.
Acadian fishermen live there, the population being about three
thousand, and New England fishery fleets visit them for cod, mackerel
and seals, with lobsters and sea-trout also abundant, so that these
islands have come to be called in the Provinces the "Kingdom of Fish."
Amherst Island is the chief, having the village and Custom House, the
surface of this and other islands rising in high hills seen from afar.
Coffin Island is the largest of the group, named after Admiral Sir
Isaac Coffin, the original owner. Coffin was a native of Boston, and
in colonial times a distinguished British naval officer. When he was a
Captain he took Governor General Lord Dorchester to Canada in his
frigate, and designing to enter the St. Lawrence, a furious storm
arose. With skill he saved his vessel by managing to get under the lee
of these islands, which broke the force of the gale, and Lord
Dorchester in gratitude procured the grant of the group for Coffin.
There are also the Bird Isles, two bare rocks of sandstone, the
principal one called the Gannet Rock. These are haunted by immense
numbers of sea-birds, whose eggs the islanders gather. The surf dashes
violently against the gaunt rocks on all sides, and they have been
visited by the greatest naturalists of the world, who found them a
most interesting study. A lighthouse is erected on one of them.
Charlevoix, in 1720, recorded his visit here, and his wonder how "in
such a multitude of nests every bird immediately finds her own." It is
also recorded of this remote region that it, too, is a colonizer, the
people of the Magdalen Islands having established three small but
prosperous colonies over on the Labrador shore. Outlying the group to
the westward, eight miles from Amherst, is the desolate rock,
resembling a corpse prepared for burial, known as Deadman's Isle. Tom
Moore sailed past this gruesome place in 1804, and wrote the poem
making it famous:
"There lieth a wreck on the dismal shore
Of cold and pitiless Labrador,
Where, under the moon, upon mounts of frost,
Full many a mariner's bones are tossed.
"Yon shadowy bark hath been to that wreck,
And the dim blue fire that lights her deck
Doth play on as pale and livid a crew
As ever yet drank the churchyard dew.
"To Deadman's Isle in the eye of the blast,
To Deadman's Isle she speeds her fast;
By skeleton shapes her sails are furled,
And the hand that steers is not of this world."
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