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:

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:

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,

The buxom landlady at the inn, "Mistress Stavers in her furbelows," felt called upon to give her sharp reproof:

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.

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.

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:

All around the Isles of Shoals, when the sun sinks and twilight comes—

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:

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:

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:

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: