CASTINE.
"A wind came up out of the sea,
And said, 'O mists, make room for me.'"
Longfellow.
Whoever has turned over the pages of early New England history can not fail to have had his curiosity piqued by the relations of old French writers respecting this extreme outpost of French empire in America. The traditions of the existence of an ancient and populous city, going far beyond any English attempt in this corner of the continent, are of themselves sufficient to excite the ardent pursuit of an antiquary, and to set all the busy hives of historical searchers in a buzz of excitement.
That scoffer, Lescarbot, would dispose of the ancient city of Norumbega as Voltaire would have disposed of the Christian religion—with a sarcasm; but, if there be truth in the apothegm that "seeing is believing," the forerunners of Champlain came, saw, and made a note of it. "Now," says the advocate, "if that beautiful city was ever in nature, I should like to know who demolished it; for there are only a few cabins here and there, made of poles and covered with the bark of trees or skins; and both habitation and river are called Pemptegoet, and not Agguncia."[19]
I approached the famed river in a dense fog, in which the steamer cautiously threaded her way. Earth, sky, and water were equally indistinguishable. A volume of pent steam gushing from the pipes hoarsely trumpeted our approach, and then streamed in a snow-white plume over the taffrail, and was lost in the surrounding obscurity. The decks were wet with the damps of the morning; the few passengers stirring seemed lifeless and unsocial. Here and there, as we floated in the midst of this cloud, the paddles impatiently beating the water, were visible the topmasts of vessels at anchor, though in the dimness they seemed wonderfully like the protruding spars of so many sunken craft. Hails or voices from them sounded preternaturally loud and distinct, as also did the noise of oars in fog-bewildered boats. The blast of a fog-horn near or far occasionally sounded a hoarse refrain to the warning that issued from the brazen throat of the Titan chained in our galley.
At this instant the sun emerging from his dip into the sea, glowing with power, put the mists to flight. First they parted on each side of a broad pathway in which sky and water re-appeared. Then, before brighter gleams, they overthrew and trampled upon each other in disorderly rout. A few scattered remnants drifted into upper air and vanished; other masses clung to the shores as if inclined still to dispute the field. Owl's Head light-house came out at the call of the enchanter, blinking its drowsy eyes; then sunlit steeples and lofty spars glanced up and out of the fog-cloud that enveloped the city of Rockland.
The vicinity of a town had been announced by cock-crowing, the rattling of wheels, or occasional sound of a bell from some church-tower; but all these sounds seemed to heighten the illusions produced by the fog, and to endow its impalpable mass with ghostly life. Vessels under sail appeared weird and spectral—phantom ships, that came into view for a moment and dissolved an instant after—masts, shrouds, and canvas melting away—
"As clouds with clouds embrace."
Rockland is a busy and enterprising place in the inchoate condition of comparative newness, and of the hurry that postpones all improvements not of immediate utility. Until 1848 it had no place on the map. Back of the settled portion of Rockland is a range of dark green hills, with the easy slopes and smooth contours of a limestone region. I know not if Rockland will ever be finished, for it is continually disemboweling itself, coining its rock foundations, until perchance it may some day be left without a leg to stand on.
Penobscot Bay is magnificent in a clear day. The fastidious De Monts surveyed and passed it by. Singularly enough, the French, who searched the New England coast from time to time in quest of a milder climate and more fertile soil than that of Canada, were at last compelled to abide by their first discoveries, and inhabit a region sterile and inhospitable by comparison. Had it fallen out otherwise, Quebecs and Louisburgs might have bristled along her sea-coast, if not have changed her political destiny.
Maine has her forests, her townships of lime, her granite islands, her seas of ice—all, beyond dispute, raw products. Fleets detach themselves from the banks of the Penobscot and float every year away.
"One goes abroad for merchandise and trading,
Another stays to keep his country from invading,
A third is coming home with rich and wealthy lading.
Halloo! my fancie, whither wilt thou go?"
The sumptuous structures we erect of her granite are only so many monuments to Maine. I have seen, on the other side of the continent, a town wholly built of Maine lumber. While Boston was yet smoking, her neighbor was getting ready the lumber and granite to rebuild her better than ever. So these great rivers become as mere mill-streams in the broader sense, and, at need, a telegraphic order for a town or a fleet would be promptly filled.
There is no corner, however remote, into which Maine enterprise does not penetrate. The spirit of adventure and speculation has pushed its commerce everywhere. With a deck-load of lumber, some shingles, or barrels of lime, schooners of a few tons burden, and manned with three or four hands, may be met with hundreds of miles at sea, steering boldly on in search of a buyer. An English writer narrates his surprise at seeing in the latitude of Hatteras, at the very height of a terrific storm, when the sea, wreathed with foam, was rolling before the gale, one of these buoyant little vessels scudding like a spirit through the mingling tempest, with steady sail and dry decks, toward the distant Bahamas.
Rockland was formerly a part of Thomaston,[20] and is upon ground anciently covered by the Muscongus, or Waldo patent, which passed through the ownership of some personages celebrated in their day. A very brief résumé of this truly seignorial possession will assist the reader in forming some idea of the state of the old colonial magnates. It will also account to him for the names of the counties of Knox and Lincoln.
Prior to the French Revolution there were distinctions in society afterward unknown, the vestiges of colonial relations. Men in office, the wealthy, and above all, those who laid claim to good descent, were the gentry in the country. Habits of life and personal adornment were outward indications of superiority. The Revolution drove the larger number of this class into exile, but there still continued to be, on the patriots' side, well-defined ranks of society. There was also a class who held large landed estates, in imitation of the great proprietors of England. These persons formed a country gentry, and were the great men of their respective counties. They held civil and military offices, and were members of the Great and General Court.
The Muscongus patent was granted by the Council of Plymouth, in 1630, to John Beauchamp of London, and John Leverett of Boston, England. It embraced a tract thirty miles square, extending between the Muscongus and Penobscot, being limited on the west and north by the Kennebec patent, mentioned hereafter as granted to our colony of Plymouth. Besides Rockland and Thomaston, the towns of Belfast, Camden, Warren, and Waldoboro are within its former bounds. In 1719 the Muscongus grant was divided for the purpose of settlement into ten shares, the ten proprietors assigning two-thirds of it to twenty associates. I have examined the stiff black-letter parchment of 1719, and glanced at its pompous formalities. At this time there was not a house between Georgetown and Annapolis, except on Damariscove Island.[21]
GENERAL HENRY KNOX.
The Waldo family became in time the largest owners of the patent. Samuel Waldo, the brigadier, was the intimate friend of Sir William Pepperell, with whom he had served at Louisburg. They were born in the same year, and died at nearly the same time. Their friendship was to have perpetuated itself by a match between Hannah, the brigadier's daughter, and Andrew, the son of Sir William. After a deal of courtly correspondence that plainly enough foreshadows the bitter disappointment of the old friends, Hannah refused to marry Andrew, the scape-grace. In six weeks she gave her hand, a pretty one, 'tis said, to Thomas Flucker, and with it went a nice large slice of the patent. Flucker became the last secretary, under crown rule, of Massachusetts. He decamped with his friends the royalists, in 1776, but his daughter, Lucy, remained behind, for she had given her heart to Henry Knox, the handsome young book-seller of colonial Boston, the trusted friend whom Washington caressed with tears when parting from his comrades of the deathless little army of '76.
The old brigadier fell dead of apoplexy at the feet of Governor Pownall, while in the act of pointing out to him the boundary of his lands. Mrs. Knox, the artillerist's wife, inherited a portion of the Waldo patent, and her husband, after the Revolution, acquired the residue by purchase. Here his troubles began; but I can not enter upon them. He built an elegant mansion at Thomaston, which he called Montpelier.[22] The house has been demolished by the demands of the railway, for which one of its outbuildings now serves as a station.
GENERAL BENJAMIN LINCOLN.
General Knox involved in his personal difficulties his old comrade, General Lincoln, though not quite so badly as Mr. Jefferson would make it appear in his letter to Mr. Madison, in which he says, "He took in General Lincoln for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which breaks him." The same writer has also recorded his opinion that Knox was a fool; but the resentments of Mr. Jefferson are known to have outrun his understanding. Through the embarrassments incurred by his friendship, General Lincoln became interested in the Waldo patent.
Lincoln was about five feet nine, so extremely corpulent as to seem much shorter than he really was. He wore his hair unpowdered, combed back from his forehead, and gathered in a long cue. He had a full, round face, light complexion, and blue eyes. His dress was usually a blue coat, and buff small-clothes. An enormous cocked hat, as indispensable to an old officer of the Revolution as to the Little Corporal, or as the capital to the Corinthian column, completed his attire. He had been wounded in the leg in the battles with Burgoyne, and always wore boots to conceal the deformity, as Knox concealed his mutilated hand in a handkerchief.
This old soldier, Lincoln, who had passed very creditably through the Revolution, was, like the fat boy in "Pickwick," afflicted with somnolency. In the old Hingham church, in conversation at table, and it is affirmed also while driving himself in a chaise, he would fall sound asleep. During his campaign against Shays and the Massachusetts insurgents of 1786, he snored and dictated between sentences. He considered this an infirmity, and his friends never ventured to speak to him of it.
Another charming picture is the approach to the Camden Hills. I saw their summits peering above fog-drifts, flung like scarfs of gossamer across their breasts. Heavier masses sailed along the valleys, presenting a series of ever-shifting, ever-dissolving views, dim and mysterious, with transient glimpses of church-spires and white cottages, or of the tops of trees curiously skirting a fog-bank. Sometimes you caught the warm color of the new-mown hill-sides, or the outlines of nearer and greener swells. These hills are a noted landmark for seamen, and the last object visible at sea in leaving the Penobscot. The highest of the Megunticook peaks rises more than fourteen hundred feet, commanding an unsurpassed view of the bay.
After touching at Camden, the steamer continued her voyage. The menial warmth of the sun, with the beauty of the panorama unrolled before them, had brought the passengers to the deck to gaze and admire. I chanced on one family group making a lunch off a dry-salted fish and crackers, the females eating with good appetites. Near by was a German, breakfasting on a hard-boiled egg and a thick slice of black bread. My own compatriots preferred the most indigestible of pies and tarts, with pea-nuts à discretion. Relics of these repasts were scattered about the decks. The good-humor and jollity that had returned with a few rays of sunshine led me to think on the depression caused by the long nights of an Arctic winter, as related by Franklin, Parry, Kane, and Hayes. A greeting to the sun! May he never cease to shine where I walk or lie!
Driving her sharp prow onward, the boat soon entered Belfast Bay. Many vessels, some of them fully rigged for sea, were on the stocks in the ship-yards of Belfast. The Duke of Rochefoucauld Liancourt, during his visit in 1797, noticed that some houses were painted. The town then contained the only church in the Waldo patent. As might be inferred, the name is from Belfast, Ireland![23]
FORT POINT.
The bay begins to contract above Camden, bringing its shores within the meaning of a noble river. Indeed, as far as I ascended it, the Penobscot will not lose by comparison with the Hudson. The river is considered to begin at Fort Point, the site of Governor Pownall's fort. Above the flow of tidewater its volume decreases, for the Penobscot does not drain an extensive region like the St. Lawrence, nor has it such a reservoir at its source as the Kennebec. At Orphan Island the river divides into two channels, making a narrow pass of extreme beauty and picturesqueness between the island and the western shore. Nowhere else, except in the Vineyard Sound, have I seen such a movement of shipping as here. A fleet of coasters were standing wing and wing through the Narrows. Tow-boats, dragging as many as a dozen heavy-laden lumbermen outward-bound, came puffing down the stream. As they entered the broad reach near Fort Point, one vessel after another hoisted sail and dashed down the bay. The Narrows are commanded by Fort Knox, opposite Bucksport.[24]
In coming out of Belfast we approached Brigadier's Island, from which the forest had wholly disappeared. General Knox, whose patent covered all islands within three miles of the shore, offered three thousand dollars to the seven farmers who then occupied it, in land and ready money, to relinquish their possession. Vessels were formerly built on the island, and it was famous for its plentiful supplies of salmon. In old times a family usually took from ten to sixty barrels in a season, which brought in market eight dollars the barrel. The fish were speared or taken in nets. Owners of jutting points made great captures.
The shores of the river are seen fringed with weirs. Salmon, shad, alewives, and smelts are taken in proper season, the crops of the sea succeeding each other with the same certainty as those of the land. Before the beginning of the century salmon had ceased to be numerous. Their scarcity was imputed to the Penobscot Indians, who destroyed them by fishing every day in the year, including Sundays. This king among fishes formerly frequented the Kennebec, the Merrimac, and were even taken in Ipswich River, and the small streams flowing into Massachusetts Bay.
From Belfast I crossed the bay by Islesboro to Castine. I confess I looked upon this famous peninsula, crowned with a fortress, furrowed with the intrenchments of forgotten wars, deserted by a commerce once considerable, little frequented by the present generation, with an interest hardly inferior to that stimulated by the associations of any spot of ground in New England.
The peninsula of Castine presents to view two eminences with regular outlines, of which the westernmost is the most commanding. Both are smoothly rounded, and have steep though not difficult ascents. The present town is built along the base and climbs the declivity of the eastern hill, its principal street conducting from the water straight up to its crest, surmounted by the still solid ramparts of Fort George. The long occupation of the peninsula has nearly denuded it of trees. Its external aspects belong rather to the milder types of inland scenery than to the rugged grandeur of the near sea-coast.
Passing by a bold promontory, on which the light-tower stands, the tide carries you swiftly through the Narrows to the anchorage before the town. Ships of any class may be carried into Castine, while its adjacent waters would furnish snug harbors for fleets. You have seen, as you glided by the shores, traces, more or less distinct, of the sovereignty of Louis XIV., of George III., and of the republic of the United States. Puritans and Jesuits, Huguenots and Papists, kings and commons, have all schemed and striven for the possession of this little corner of land. Richelieu, Mazarin, and Colbert have plotted for it; Thurloe, Clarendon, and Bolingbroke have counter-plotted. It has been fought over no end of times, conquered and reconquered, and is now of no more political consequence than the distant peak of Katahdin.
There is very little appearance of business about Castine. It is delightfully lethargic. Few old houses of earlier date than the Revolution remain to give the place a character of antiquity conformable with its history. Nevertheless, there are pleasant mansions, and cool, well-shaded by-ways, quiet and still, in which the echo of your own footfall is the only audible sound. The peninsula, which the inhabitants call the "Neck," in distinction from the larger fraction of the town, is of small extent. You may ramble all over it in an afternoon.[25]
If it is a good maxim to sleep on a weighty matter, so it is well to dine before forming a judgment of a place you are visiting for the first time. Having broken bread and tasted salt, you believe yourself to have acquired some of the rights of citizenship; and if you have dined well, are not indisposed to regard all you may see with a genial and not too critical an eye. Upon this conviction I acted.
At the tavern, the speech of the girl who waited on the table was impeded by the gum she was chewing. While she was repeating the carte, the only words I was able to distinguish were, "Raw fish and clams." As I am not partial to either, I admit I was a little disconcerted, until a young man at my elbow interpreted, sotto voce, the jargon into "Corned fish and roast lamb." At intervals in the repast, the waiting-girl would run into the parlor and beat the keys of the piano, until recalled by energetic pounding upon the table with the haft of a knife. Below stairs I was present at a friendly altercation between the landlord and maid of all work, as to whether the towel for common use had been hanging a week or only six days. But "travelers," says Touchstone, "must be content;" and he was no fool though he wore motley.
I ascended the hill above the town on which the Normal School is situated, and in a few moments stood on the parapet of Fort George. And perhaps in no part of New England can a more beautiful and extensive view be had with so little trouble. It was simply enchanting. Such a combination of land and water is seldom embraced within a single coup d'œil. The vision is bounded by those portals of the bay, the Camden range on the south-west, and the heights of Mount Desert in the east. A little north of east is the solitary Blue Hill, with the windings and broad reaches of water by which Castine proper is nearly isolated from the main-land. Turning still northward, and now with your back to the town, you perceive Old Fort Point, where, in 1759 Governor Pownall built a work to command the entrance to the river. Farther to the westward is Brigadier's Island, and the bay expanding three leagues over to Belfast.
VIEW FROM FORT GEORGE.
Fort George, a square, bastioned work, is the best preserved earth-work of its years in New England. A few hours would put it in a very tolerable condition of defense. The moat, excavated down to the solid rock, is intact; the esplanade hardly broken in outline. The position of the barracks, magazine, and guard-house may be easily traced on the parade, though no buildings now remain inside the fortress. The approach on three sides is by a steep ascent; especially is this the case on the side of the town. Each bastion was pierced with four embrasures. The position was of great strength, and would have been an ugly place to carry by escalade. A matter of a few hours once determined the ownership of Castine for England or the Colonies in arms.
Now let us take a walk over to the more elevated summit west of Fort George. Here are also evidences of military occupation in fast-perishing embankments and heaps of beach pebbles. What are left of the lines look over toward the English fort and the cove between it and the main-land. A broad, level plateau of greensward extends between the two summits, over which neither you nor I would have liked to walk in the teeth of rattling volleys of musketry. Yet such things have been on this very hill-top.
The story of these fortifications is drawn from one of the most disgraceful chapters of the Revolutionary war. It is of a well-conceived enterprise brought to a disastrous issue through incapacity, discord, and blundering. There are no longer susceptibilities to be wounded by the relation, though for many years after the event it was seldom spoken of save with mingled shame and indignation. Little enough is said of it in the newspapers of the time, for it was a terrible blow to Massachusetts pride, and struck home.
In June, 1779, Colonel Francis M'Lean was sent from Halifax with nine hundred men to seize and fortify the peninsula, then generally known as Penobscot.[26] He landed on the 12th of June, and with the energy and decision of a good soldier began the work of establishing himself firmly in his position.
SIR JOHN MOORE.
In the British ranks was one notable combatant, Captain John Moore, of the Fifty-first foot, who fell under the walls of Corunna while commanding the British army in Spain. As his military career began in America, I may narrate an incident illustrating his remarkable popularity with his soldiers. In 1799, at Egmont-op-zee, the Ninety-second fiercely charged a French brigade. A terrific mélée ensued, in which the French were forced to retreat. In the midst of the combat two soldiers of the Ninety-second discovered General Moore lying on his face, apparently dead; for he was wounded and unconscious. "Here is the general; let us take him away," said one of them, and, suiting the action to the word, they bore him to the rear. The general offered a reward of twenty pounds; but could never discover either of the soldiers who had aided him. Moore's death inspired Wolfe's admired lines, pronounced by Lord Byron "the most perfect ode in the language:"
"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried."
"Moore," said Napoleon, "was a brave soldier, an excellent officer, and a man of talent. He made a few mistakes, inseparable, perhaps, from the difficulties with which he was surrounded." Being reminded that Moore was always in the front of battle, and generally unfortunate enough to be wounded, he added, "Ah! it is necessary sometimes. He died gloriously; he died like a soldier."
FORT GRIFFITH.
Great alarm was produced by M'Lean's bold dash. Immediate application was made to Massachusetts, of which Maine still formed a part, for aid to expel the invader. Hancock was then governor. General Gates commanded the Eastern Department, with head-quarters at Providence. The Massachusetts rulers put their heads together, and, thinking on the brilliant achievement of their fathers at Louisburg in 1745, resolved to emulate it. They raised a large land and naval force with the utmost expedition, laying an embargo for forty days in order to man their fleet with sailors. General Gates was neither consulted nor applied to for the Continental troops under his orders.[27]
The Massachusetts armament appeared off Penobscot on the 25th of July. The army was commanded by Solomon Lovell, the fleet by Captain Saltonstall, of the Warren, a fine new Continental frigate of thirty-two guns. Peleg Wadsworth was second in command to Lovell; Paul Revere, whom Longfellow has immortalized, had charge of the artillery. The land forces did not number more than twelve hundred men, but might be augmented to fifteen hundred or more with marines from the fleet. These troops were militia, and had only once paraded together under arms. The flotilla was formidable in appearance and in the number of guns it carried, but lacked unity and discipline quite as much as the army. Plenty of courage and plenty of means do not make soldiers or win battles.
M'Lean had received intelligence of the sailing of the Massachusetts armada. His fort was not yet capable of defense. Two bastions were not begun; the two remaining, with the curtains, had not been raised more than four or five feet, and he had not a single gun mounted. Captain Mowatt of detestable memory,[28] with three British vessels of small force, was in the harbor. He took a position to prevent a landing on the south side of the peninsula. A deep trench was cut across the isthmus connecting with the main-land, securing that passage. No landing could be effected except beneath the precipice, two hundred feet high, on the west. M'Lean dispatched a messenger to Halifax, and redoubled his efforts to strengthen his fort.
On the third day after their arrival the Americans succeeded in landing, and, after a gallant fight, gained the heights. This action—an augury, it would seem, of good success to the assailants, for the enemy had every advantage of position and knowledge of the ground—is the single crumb of comfort to be drawn from the annals of the expedition. Captain Moore was in this affair.
FORT GEORGE.
Instead of pursuing his advantage, General Lovell took a position within seven hundred and fifty yards of the enemy's works, and began to intrench. There was fatal disagreement between the general and Saltonstall. The sum of the matter was that Lovell, fearing to attack with his present force, sent to Boston for re-enforcements. Then General Gates was applied to for help. Two weeks passed in regular approaches on Lovell's part, and in exertions by M'Lean to render his fort impregnable. At the end of this time, Sir George Collier arrived from New York with a fleet, and raised the siege. General Lovell says the army under his orders had very short notice of the arrival of this force, by reason of a fog that prevented its being seen until its near approach. The land forces succeeded in gaining the western shore of the river at various points, but had then to make their way through a wilderness to the settlements on the Kennebec. The fleet of Saltonstall was either destroyed or captured.
It was not long after the complete dispersion of the ill-starred Penobscot expedition that General Peleg Wadsworth succeeded in entering the British fort on the hill at Bagaduce. He had more difficulty in leaving it.
After the disbanding of his militia, the general made his quarters at Thomaston, where he lived with his wife in apparent security. A young lady named Fenno and a guard of six militia-men completed his garrison. General Campbell, commanding at Bagaduce, was well informed of Wadsworth's defenseless condition, and resolved to send him an invitation to come and reside in the fortress. A lieutenant and twenty-five men arrived at dead of night with the message at Wadsworth's house. The sentinel challenged and fled. General Wadsworth defended himself with Spartan bravery. Armed with a brace of pistols, a fusee, and a blunderbuss, he fought his assailants away from his windows and the door, through which they had followed the retreating sentinel. In his shirt, with his bayonet only, he disdained to yield for some time longer, until a shot disabled his left arm. Then, with five or six men lying wounded around him, the windows shattered, and the house on fire, Peleg Wadsworth was able to say, "I surrender." They took him, exhausted with his exertions and benumbed with cold, to the fort, where he was kept close prisoner. Some time after, Major Burton, who had served with the general, was also made prisoner, and lodged in the same room with him. Wadsworth applied for a parole. It was refused. Governor Hancock sent a cartel with an offer of exchange. It was denied. One day he was visited by Miss Fenno, who in five words gave him to know he was to be detained till the end of the war. Peleg Wadsworth then resolved to escape.
The prisoners were confined in a room of the officers' quarters, the window grated, the door provided with a sash, through which the sentinel, constantly on duty in the passage, could look into the room as he paced on his round. At either end of this passage was a door, opening upon the parade of the fort, at which other sentinels were posted. At sunset the gates were closed, and the number of sentinels on the parapet increased. A picket was also stationed at the narrow isthmus connecting with the main-land.
These were not all the difficulties in their way. Supposing them able to pass the sentinels in the passage and at the outer door of their quarters, they must then cross the open space and ascend the wall under the eye of the guards posted on the parapet. Admitting the summit of the rampart gained, the exterior wall was defended with strong pickets driven obliquely into the earthen wall of the fort. From this point was a sheer descent of twenty feet to the bottom of the ditch. Arrived here, the fugitives must ascend the counterscarp, and cross the chevaux-de-frise with which it was furnished. They were then without the fortress, with no possible means of gaining their freedom except by water. To elude the picket at the Neck was not to be thought of.
The prisoners' room was ceiled with pine boards. Upon some pretext they procured a gimlet of a servant, with which they perforated a board so as to make an aperture sufficiently large to admit the body of a man. The interstices were cut through with a penknife, leaving the corners intact until the moment for action should arrive. They then filled the holes with bread, and carefully removed the dust from the floor. This work had to be executed while the sentinel traversed a distance equal to twice the depth of their own room. The prisoners paced their floor, keeping step with the sentry; and as soon as he had passed by, Burton, who was the taller, and could reach the ceiling, commenced work, while Wadsworth walked on. On the approach of the soldier Burton quickly rejoined his companion. Three weeks were required to execute this task. Each was provided with a blanket and a strong staff, sharpened at the end. For food they kept their crusts and dried bits of their meat. They waited until one night when a violent thunder-storm swept over the peninsula. It became intensely dark. The rain fell in torrents upon the roof of the barracks. The moment for action had come.
The prisoners undressed themselves as usual, and went to bed, observed by the sentinel. They then extinguished their candle, and quickly arose. Their plan was to gain the vacant space above their room, creeping along the joists until they reached the passage next beyond, which they knew to be unguarded. Thence they were to make their way to the north bastion, acting as circumstances might determine.
Burton was the first to pass through the opening. He had advanced but a little way before he encountered a flock of fowls, whose roost he had invaded. Wadsworth listened with breathless anxiety to the cackling that apprised him for the first time of this new danger. At length it ceased without having attracted the attention of the guards, and the general with difficulty ascended in his turn. He passed over the distance to the gallery unnoticed, and gained the outside by the door that Burton had left open. Feeling his way along the wall of the barracks to the western side, he made a bold push for the embankment, gaining the rampart by an oblique path. At this moment the door of the guard-house was flung open, and a voice exclaimed, "Relief, turn out!" Fortunately the guard passed without seeing the fugitive. He reached the bastion agreed upon as a rendezvous, but Burton was not there. No time was to be lost. Securing his blanket to a picket, he lowered himself as far as it would permit, and dropped without accident into the ditch. From here he passed softly out by the water-course, and stood in the open air without the fort. It being low tide, the general waded the cove to the main-land, and made the best of his way up the river. In the morning he was rejoined by his companion, and both, after exertions that exacted all their fortitude, gained the opposite shore of the Penobscot in safety. Their evasion is like a romance of the Bastile in the day of Richelieu.
The gallant old general removed to Falmouth, now Portland. One of his sons, an intrepid spirit, was killed by the explosion of a fire-ship before Tripoli, in which he was a volunteer. A daughter married Hon. Stephen Longfellow, of Portland, father of the poet.
When the corps d'armée of Rochambeau was at Newport, the French general conceived the idea of sending an expedition to recapture Penobscot, and solicited the consent of Washington to do so. The French officers much preferred acting on an independent line, but the proposal was wisely negatived by the commander in chief. The man to whom Rochambeau expected to intrust the naval operations was La Peyrouse, the distinguished but ill-fated navigator.
Other earth-works besides those already mentioned may be traced. Two small batteries that guarded the approaches on the side of the cove are distinct. Some of these works were renovated during the reoccupation of Castine by the British in 1812. Others seen on the shores of the harbor are of more recent date.
A speaking reminder of by-gone strife is an old cannon, lying on the greensward under the walls of Fort George, of whose grim muzzle school-girls were wont to make a post-office. There was poetry in the conceit. Never before had it been so delicately charged, though I have known a perfumed billet-doux do more damage than this fellow, double-shotted and at point-blank, might effect.
RUINS OF FORT PENTAGOËT, CASTINE
[CHAPTER V.]
CASTINE—continued.
"Baron Castine of St. Castine
Has left his château in the Pyrenees,
And sailed across the western seas."
Longfellow.
I confess I would rather stand in presence of the Pyramids, or walk in the streets of buried Pompeii, than assist at the unwrapping of many fleshless bodies. No other medium than the material eye can grasp a fact with the same distinctness. It becomes rooted, and you may hang your legends or traditions on its branches. It is true there is a class who journey from Dan to Beersheba, finding all barren; but the average American, though far from unappreciative, too often makes a business of his recreation, and devours in an hour what might be viewed with advantage in a week or a month.
After this frank declaration, the reader will not expect me to hurry him through a place that contains so much of the crust of antiquity as Castine, and is linked in with the Old-world chronicles of a period of surpassing interest, both in history and romance.
Very little of the fort of the Baron Castin and his predecessors, yet enough to reward the research of the stranger, is to be seen on the margin of the shore of the harbor, less than half a mile from the central portion of the town. The grass-grown ramparts have sunk too low to be distinguished from the water in passing, but are evident to a person standing on the ground itself. Not many years will elapse before these indistinct traces are wholly obliterated.[29]
The bank here is not much elevated above high-water mark, while at the wharves it rises to a higher level, and is ascended by stairs. The old fort was placed near the narrowest part of the harbor, with a firm pebbly beach before it. Small boats may land directly under the walls of the work at high tide, or lie protected by the curvature of the shore from the heavy seas rolling in from the outer harbor. The high hills over which we were rambling in the preceding chapter ward off the northern winds.
A portion of the ground covered by old Fort Pentagoët is now occupied by buildings, a barn standing within the circumvallation, and the dwelling of Mr. Webb between the shore and the road. A little stream of sweet water trickles along the south-west face of the work, and then loses itself among the pebbles of the beach.
Fort Pentagoët, at its rendition by Sir Thomas Temple, in 1670, after the treaty of Breda, was a rectangular work with four bastions. The height of the curtains within was eight feet. On entering the fort a corps de garde, twelve paces long and six broad, stood at the left, with a logis, or quarter, on the opposite side of the entrance. On the left side were also two store-houses, each thirty-six paces long by twelve in breadth, covered with shingles. Underneath the store-houses was a cellar of about half their extent, in which a well had been sunk. Above the entrance was a turret, built of timber, plastered with clay, and furnished with a bell. At the right hand was a barrack of the same length and breadth as the store-houses, and built of stone. Sixty paces from the fort was a cabin of planks, in which the cattle were housed; and at some distance farther was a garden in good condition, having fruit-trees. There were mounted on the ramparts six six-pounder and two four-pounder iron cannon, with two culverins. Six other pieces were lying, useless and dismounted, on the parapet. Overlooking the sea and detached from the fort was a platform, with two iron eight-pounders in position.
The occupant of the nearest house told me an oven constructed of flat slate-stones was discovered in an angle of the work; also that shot had been picked up on the beach, and a tomahawk, and stone pipe taken from the well. The whole ground has been explored with the divining-rod, as well within as without the fort, for treasure-trove; though little or nothing rewarded the search, except the discovery of a subterranean passage opening at the shore.
These examinations were no doubt whetted by an extraordinary piece of good luck that befell farmer Stephen Grindle, while hauling wood from a rocky hill-side on the point at the second narrows of Bagaduce River, about six miles from Castine peninsula. In 1840 this worthy husbandman saw a shining object lying in the track of his oxen. He stooped and picked up a silver coin, as bright as if struck within a twelvemonth. On looking at the date, he found it to be two hundred years old. Farther search was rewarded by the discovery of several other pieces. A fall of snow interrupted the farmer's investigations until the next spring, when, in or near an old trail leading across the point, frequented by the Indians from immemorial time, some seven hundred coins of the nominal value of four hundred dollars were unearthed near the surface. All the pieces were of silver.
PINE-TREE SHILLING.
The honest farmer kept his own counsel, using his treasure from time to time to pay his store bills in the town, dollar for dollar, accounting one of Master Hull's pine-tree shillings at a shilling. The storekeepers readily accepted the exchange at the farmer's valuation; but the possession of such a priceless collection was soon betrayed by its circulation abroad.
Dr. Joseph L. Stevens, the esteemed antiquary of Castine, of whom I had these particulars, exhibited to me a number of the coins. They would have made a numismatist's mouth water. French écus, Portuguese and Spanish pieces-of-eight, Bremen dollars, piasters, and cob-money,[30] clipped and battered, with illegible dates, but melodious ring, chinked in better fellowship than the sovereigns whose effigies they bore had lived in. A single gold coin, the only one found in the neighborhood of Castine, was picked up on the beach opposite the fort.[31]
The theory of the presence of so large a sum on the spot where it was found is that when Castin was driven from the fort by Colonel Church, in 1704, these coins were left by some of his party in their retreat, where they remained undiscovered for more than a century and a quarter. Or it may have been the hoard of one of the two countrymen of Castin, who, he says, were living two miles from him in 1687.
The detail of old Fort Pentagoët just given is believed to describe the place as it had existed since 1654, when captured by the colony forces of Massachusetts. General Sedgwick then spoke of it as "a small fort, yet very strong, and a very well composed peese, with eight peese of ordnance, one brass, three murtherers, about eighteen barrels of powder, and eighteen men in garrison."[32]
It would require a volume to set forth in extenso the annals of these mounds, scarce lifted above the surface of the surrounding plateau. But to arouse the reader's curiosity without an endeavor to gratify it were indeed churlish. I submit, therefore, with the brevity, and I hope also the simplicity, that should characterize the historic style, the essence of the matter as it has dropped from my alembic.
The reader is referred to what is already narrated of Norumbega for the earliest knowledge of the Penobscot by white men. The first vessel that ascended the river was probably the bark of Du Guast, Sieur de Monts, in the year 1604. De Poutrincourt was there in the year 1606.[33]
No establishment appears to have been begun on the Bagaduce peninsula until our colonists of New Plymouth fixed upon it for the site of a trading-post, about 1629.[34] Here they erected a house, defended, probably, after the fashion of the time, with palisades, loop-holed for musketry. They were a long way from home, and had need to keep a wary eye abroad. Governor Bradford mentions that the house was robbed by some "Isle of Rhé gentlemen" in 1632.
The Plymouth people kept possession until 1635, when they were dispossessed by an expedition sent from La Have, in Acadia, commanded by the Chevalier Charles de Menou, or, as he is usually styled, D'Aulnay Charnisay. The chevalier's orders from Razilly, who had then the general command in Canada, were to expel all the English as far as Pemaquid.
Plymouth Colony endeavored to retake the place by force. A large ship for that day, the Hope, of Ipswich, England, Girling commander, was fitted out, and attacked the post in such a disorderly, unskillful manner that Girling expended his ammunition before having made the least impression. Standish, the redoubtable, was there in a small bark, fuming at the incompetency of the commander of the Hope, who had been hired to do the job for so much beaver if he succeeded, nothing if he failed. Standish, with the beaver, returned to Plymouth, after sending Girling a new supply of powder from Pemaquid; but no further effort is known to have been made to reduce the place.
The Pilgrims then turned to their natural allies, the Puritans of the Bay; but, as Rochefoucauld cunningly says, there is something in the misfortunes of our friends that does not displease us. They got smooth speeches in plenty, but no help. It is curious to observe that at this time the two colonies combined were too weak to raise and equip a hundred soldiers on a sudden call. So the French remained in possession until 1654.
An attempt was made by Plymouth Colony to liberate their men captured at Penobscot. Isaac Allerton was sent to demand them of La Tour who in haughty terms refused to deliver them up, saying all the country from Cape Sable to Cape Cod belonged to the king, his master, and if the English persisted in trading east of Pemaquid he would capture them.
"Will monseigneur deign to show me his commission?"
The chevalier laid his hand significantly on his sword-hilt. "This," said he, "is my commission."
I have mentioned three Frenchmen: Sir Isaac de Razilly, a soldier of the monastic order of Malta; La Tour, a heretic; and D'Aulnay, a zealous papist.
Razilly's commission is dated at St. Germain en Laye, May 10th, 1632. He was to take possession of Port Royal, so named by De Monts, from its glorious harbor, and ceded to France under the treaty of 1629. This was the year after the taking of La Rochelle; so that we are now in the times of the great cardinal and his puissant adversary, Buckingham. The knight of Malta was so well pleased with Acadia that he craved permission of the grand master to remain in the country. He was recalled, with a reminder of the subjection exacted by that semi-military, semi-ecclesiastical body of its members. Hutchinson says he died soon after 1635. There is evidence he was alive in 1636.
In 1638 Louis XIII. addressed the following letter to D'Aulnay: "You are my lieutenant-general in the country of the Etchemins, from the middle of the main-land of Frenchman's Bay to the district of Canceaux. Thus you may not change any regulation in the establishment on the River St. John made by the said Sieur De la Tour, etc."[35] Three years afterward the king sent his commands to La Tour to return to France immediately; if he refused, D'Aulnay was ordered to seize his person.
Whether the death of Louis, and also of his Eminence, at this time diverted the danger with which La Tour was threatened, is a matter of conjecture. D'Aulnay, however, had possessed himself, in 1643, of La Tour's fort, and the latter was a suppliant to the English at Boston for aid to displace his adversary. He obtained it, and recovered his own again, but was unable to eject D'Aulnay from Penobscot. A second attempt, also unsuccessful, was made the following year. The treaty between Governor Endicott and La Tour in this year was afterward ratified by the United Colonies.
In 1645 D'Aulnay was in France, receiving the thanks of the king and queen-mother for his zeal in preserving Acadia from the treasonable designs of La Tour. The next year a treaty of peace was concluded at Boston between the English and D'Aulnay; and in 1647, the king granted him letters patent of lieutenant-general from the St. Lawrence to Acadia. He died May 24th, 1650, from freezing, while out in the bay with his valet in a canoe. La Tour finished by marrying the widow of D'Aulnay, thus composing, and forever, his feud with the husband.[36]
For some years quiet reigned in the peninsula, or until 1654, when an expedition was fitted out by Massachusetts against Stuyvesant and the Dutch at Manhattan. Peace having been concluded before it was in readiness, the Puritans, with true thrift, launched their armament against the unsuspecting Mounseers of Penobscot. Although peace also existed between Cromwell and Louis, the expenditure of much money without some gain was not to be thought of in the Bay. For a pretext, they had always the old grudge of prior right, going back to Elizabeth's patent of 1578 to Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
Robert Sedgwick and John Leverett were two as marked men as could be found in New England. They sailed from Nantasket on the 4th of July, 1654, with three ships, a ketch, and two hundred soldiers of Old and New England. Port Royal, the fort on St. John's River, and Penobscot, were all captured. Afterward they served the Protector in England. Sedgwick was chosen by Cromwell to command his insubordinate and starving army at Jamaica, and died, it is said, of a broken heart, from the weight of responsibility imposed on him.
Although the King of France testified great displeasure because the forts in Acadia were not restored to him, Cromwell continued to hold them fast, nor were they given up until after the treaty of Breda, when Pentagoët, in 1669-'70, was delivered by Sir Thomas Temple to M. De Grand Fontaine, who, in 1673, turned over the command to M. De Chambly.
COLBERT.
On the 10th of August, 1674, M. De Chambly was assaulted by a buccaneer that had touched at Boston, where an English pilot, as M. De Frontenac says, was taken on board. An Englishman, who had been four days in the place in disguise, gave the pirates every assistance.[37] They landed one hundred and ten men, and fell with fury on the little garrison of thirty badly armed and disaffected Frenchmen. After sustaining the onset for an hour, M. De Chambly fell, shot through the body. His ensign was also struck down, when the fort surrendered at discretion. The sea-robbers pillaged the fort, carried off the cannon, and conducted the Sieur De Chambly to Boston, along with M. De Marson, whom they took in the River St. John. Chambly was put to ransom of a thousand beaver-skins. Colbert, then minister, expressed his surprise to Frontenac that the forts of Pentagoët and Gemisée had been taken and pillaged by a freebooter. No rupture then existed between the crowns of England and France.
Another subject of Louis le Grand now raps with his sword-hilt for admission to our gallant company of noble French gentlemen who have followed the lead of De Monts into the wilds of Acadia. Baron La Hontan, writing in 1683, says, "The Baron St. Castin, a gentleman of Oleron, in Bearne, having lived among the Abenaquis after the savage way for above twenty years, is so much respected by the savages that they look upon him as their tutelar god."
Vincent, Baron St. Castin, came to America with his regiment about 1665. He was ensign in the regiment Carignan, of which Henry de Chapelas was colonel. Chambly and Sorel, who were his comrades, have also left their names impressed on the map of New France. The regiment was disbanded, the governor-general allowing each officer three or four leagues' extent of good land, with as much depth as they pleased. The officers, in turn, gave their soldiers as much ground as they wished upon payment of a crown per arpent by way of fief.[38] Chambly we have seen in command at Pentagoët in 1673. Castin appears to have plunged into the wilderness, making his abode with the fierce Abenaquis.
The young Bearnese soon acquired a wonderful ascendency among them. He mastered their language, and received, after the savage's romantic fashion, the hand of a princess of the nation, the daughter of Madocawando, the implacable foe of the English. They made him their great chief, or leader, and at his summons all the warriors of the Abenaquis gathered around him. Exercising a regal power in his forest dominions, he no doubt felt every inch a chieftain. The French governors courted him; the English feared and hated him. In 1696, with Iberville, he overran their stronghold at Pemaquid. He fought at Port Royal in 1706, and again in 1707, receiving a wound there. He was, says M. Denonville, of a daring and enterprising character, thirsting for distinction. In 1702 he proposed a descent on Boston, to be made in winter by a competent land and naval force. Magazines were to be formed at Piscataqua and Marblehead.
It is known that some earlier passages of Castin's life in Acadia were not free from reproach. Denonville,[39] in recommending him to Louvois as the proper person to succeed M. Perrot at Port Royal ("si M. Perrot degoutait de son gouvernment"), admits he had been addicted in the past to riot and debauchery; "but," continues the viceroy, "I am assured that he is now quite reformed, and has very proper sentiments on the subject." Perrot, jealous of Castin, put him in arrest for six weeks for some foolish affair among the filles of Port Royal.
"For man is fire and woman is tow,
And the Somebody comes and begins to blow."
In 1686 Castin was at Pentagoët. The place must have fallen into sad neglect, for the Governor of Canada made its fortification and advantages the subject of a memoir to his Government. It became the rendezvous for projects against New England. Quebec was not difficult of access by river and land to Castin's fleet Abenaquis. Port Royal was within supporting distance. The Indians interposed a barrier between English aggression and the French settlements. They were the weapon freely used by all the French rulers until, from long service, it became blunted and unserviceable. They were then left to shift for themselves.
Here Castin continued with his dusky wife and brethren, although he had inherited an income of five million livres while in Acadia. By degrees he had likewise amassed a fortune of two or three hundred thousand crowns "in good dry gold;" but the only use he made of it was to buy presents for his fellow-savages, who, upon their return from the hunt, repaid him with usury in beaver-skins and peltries.[40] In 1688 his trading-house was plundered by the English. It is said he died in America, but of this I have not the evidence.
Vincent de Castin never changed his wife, as the Indian customs permitted, wishing, it is supposed, by his example to impress upon them the sanctity of marriage as a part of the Christian religion. He had several daughters all of whom were well married to Frenchmen, and had good dowries; one was captured by Colonel Church in 1704. He had also a son.
In 1721, during what was known as Lovewell's war, in which Mather intimates, with many nods and winks set down in print, the English were the aggressors, Castin the younger was kidnaped, and carried to Boston a prisoner. His offense was in attending a council of the Abenaquis in his capacity of chief. He was brought before the council and interrogated. His mien was frank and fearless. In his uniform of a French officer, he stood with true Indian sang froid in the presence of men who he knew were able to deal heavy blows.
"I am," said he, "an Abenaquis by my mother. All my life has been passed among the nation that has made me chief and commander over it. I could not be absent from a council where the interests of my brethren were to be discussed. The Governor of Canada sent me no orders. The dress I now wear is not a uniform, but one becoming my rank and birth as an officer in the troops of the most Christian king, my master."
The young baron was placed in the custody of the sheriff of Middlesex. He was kept seven months a prisoner, and then released before his friends, the Abenaquis, could strike a blow for his deliverance. This once formidable tribe was such no longer. In 1689 it scarcely numbered a hundred warriors. English policy had set a price upon the head of every hostile Indian. Castin, soon after his release, returned to the old family château among the Pyrenees.
"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 farthest grave;
The bells are ringing soft and slow;
The living above and the dead below
Give their blessing on one and twain;
The warm wind blows from the hills of Spain,
The birds are building, the leaves are green,
The Baron Castine of St. Castine
Hath come at last to his own again."
According to the French historian, Charlevoix, the Capuchins had a hospice here in 1646, when visited by Père Dreuillettes. I may not neglect these worthy fathers, whose disputes about sleeves and cowls, Voltaire says, were more than any among the philosophers. The shrewdness of these old monks in the choice of a location has been justified by the cities and towns sprung from the sites of their primitive missions. Here, as elsewhere,
"—These black crows
Had pitched by instinct on the fattest fallows."
"I," said Napoleon, at St. Helena, "rendered all the burying-places independent of the priests. I hated friars" (frati), "and was the annihilator of them and of their receptacles of crime, the monasteries, where every vice was practiced with impunity. A set of miscreants" (scelerati) "who in general are a dishonor to the human race. Of priests I would have always allowed a sufficient number, but no frati." A Capuchin, says an old dictionary of 1676, is a friar of St. Francis's order, wearing a cowl, or capouch, but no shirt nor breeches.[41]
Opening our history at the epoch of the settlement of New France, and turning over page by page the period we have been reviewing, there is no more hideous chapter than the infernal cruelties of the Society of Jesus. Their agency in the terrible persecutions of the Huguenots is too well known to need repetition. St. Bartholomew, the broken pledge of the Edict of Nantes, the massacres of Vivarais, of Rouergue, and of Languedoc are among their monuments.
The rigor with which infractions of the discipline of the order were punished would be difficult to believe, if unsupported by trustworthy testimony. Francis Seldon, a young pupil of the Jesuit College at Paris, was imprisoned thirty-one years, seventeen of which were passed at St. Marguerite, and fourteen in the Bastile. His crime was a lampoon of two lines affixed to the college door. A lettre de cachet from Louis XIV. consigned this poor lad of only sixteen to the Bastile in 1674, from which he only emerged in 1705, by the assignment of a rich inheritance to the Society, impiously called, of Jesus.
The siege of La Rochelle, and slaughter of the Huguenots, is believed to have been nothing more than a duel between Richelieu and Buckingham, for the favor of Anne of Austria. It was, however, in the name of religion that the population of France was decimated. Colbert, in endeavoring to stem the tide of persecution, fell in disgrace. Louvois seconded with devilish zeal the projects of the Jesuits, which had no other end than the total destruction of the reformed faith. In 1675 Père Lachaise entered on his functions of father-confessor to the king. He was powerfully seconded by his society; but they, fearing his Majesty might regard it as a pendant of St. Bartholomew, hesitated to press a decisive coup d'état against the Protestants.
There was at the court of Louis the widow Scarron, become De Maintenon, declared mistress of the king, who modestly aspired to replace Marie Therese of Austria upon the throne of France. To her the Jesuits addressed themselves. It is believed the compact between the worthy contracting parties exacted no less of each than the advancement of their mutual projects through the seductions of the courtesan, and the fears for his salvation the Jesuits were to inspire in the mind of the king. Louis believed in the arguments of Madame De Maintenon, and signed the Edict of Nantes; he ceded to the threats or counsels of his confessor, and secretly espoused Madame De Maintenon. The 25th October, 1685, the royal seal was, it is not doubted by her inspiration, appended to the barbarous edict, drawn up by the Père Le Tellier, under the auspices of the Society of Jesus.[42]
France had already lost a hundred thousand of her bravest and most skillful children. She was now to lose many more. Among the fugitives driven from the fatherland were many who fled, as the Pilgrims had done into Holland. Some sought the New World, and their descendants were such men as John Jay, Elias Boudinot, James Bowdoin, and Peter Faneuil.
Before the famous edict of 1685, the Huguenots had been forbidden to establish themselves either in Canada or Acadia. They were permitted to visit the ports for trade, but not to exercise their religion. The Jesuits took care that the edict was enforced in the French possessions. I have thought the oft-cited intolerance of the Puritans might be effectively contrasted with the diabolical zeal with which Catholic Christendom pursued the annihilation of the reformed religion.
The Jesuits obtained at an early day a preponderating influence in Canada and in Acadia. It is believed the governor-generals had not such real power as the bishops of Quebec. At a later day, they were able well-nigh to paralyze Montcalm's defense of Quebec. The fathers of the order, with the crucifix held aloft, preached crusades against the English to the savages they were sent to convert. One of the fiercest Canabas chiefs related to an English divine that the friars told his people the blessed Virgin was a French lady, and that her son, Jesus Christ, had been killed by the English.[43] One might say the gray hairs of old men and the blood-dabbled ringlets of innocent children were laid on the altars of their chapels.
We can afford to smile at the forecast of Louis, when he says to M. De la Barre in 1683, "I am persuaded, like you, that the discoveries of Sieur La Salle are altogether useless, and it is necessary, hereafter, to put a stop to such enterprises, which can have no other effect than to scatter the inhabitants by the hope of gain, and to diminish the supply of beaver." We still preserve in Louisiana the shadow of the sceptre of this monarch, whose needy successor at Versailles sold us, for fifteen millions, a territory that could pay the German subsidy with a year's harvest.
Doubtless the little bell in the hospice turret, tolling for matins or vespers, was often heard by the fisher in the bay, as he rested on his oars and repeated an ave, or chanted the parting hymn of the Provençal:
"O, vierge! O, Marie!
Pour moi priez Dieu;
Adieu, adieu, patrie,
Provençe, adieu."
There is a pleasant ramble over the hill by the cemetery, with the same accompaniments of green turf, limpid bay, and cool breezes everywhere. Intermitting puffs, ruffling the water here and there, fill the sails of coasting craft, while others lie becalmed within a few cable-lengths of them. Near the north-west corner of the ground I discovered vestiges of another small battery.
Castine having assumed the functions of a town within a period comparatively recent, her cemetery shows few interesting stones. The ancients of the little Acadian hamlet lie in forgotten graves; no moss-covered tablets for the antiquary to kneel beside, and trace the time-worn course of the chisel, are there. Numbers of graves are indicated only by the significant heaving of the turf. In one part of the field is a large and rudely fashioned slate-stone standing at the head of a tumulus. A tablet with these lines is affixed:
IN MEMORY OF
CHARLES STEWART,
The earliest occupant of this Mansion of the Dead,
A Native of Scotland,
And 1st Lieut. Comm. of his B. M. 74th Regt. of foot, or Argyle Highlanders.
Who died in this Town, while it was in possession of the Enemy,
March, A.D. 1783,
And was interred beneath this stone,
Æt. about 40 yrs.
This Tablet was inserted
A.D. 1849.
The tablet has a tale to tell. It runs that Stewart quarreled with a brother officer at the mess-table, and challenged him. Hearing of the intended duel, the commanding officer reprimanded the hot-blooded Scotsman in such terms that, stung to the quick, he fell, Roman-like, on his own sword.
Elsewhere I read the name of Captain Isaiah Skinner, who, as master of a packet plying to the opposite shore, "thirty thousand times braved the perils of our bay."
While I was in Castine I paid a visit to the factory in which lobsters are canned for market. A literally "smashing" business was carrying on, but with an uncleanness that for many months impaired my predilection for this delicate crustacean. The lobsters are brought in small vessels from the lower bay. They are then tossed, while living, into vats containing salt water boiling hot, where they receive a thorough steaming. They are next transferred to long tables, and, after cooling, are opened. Only the flesh of the larger claws and tail is used, the remainder being cast aside. The reserved portions are put into tin cans that, after being tightly soldered, are subjected to a new steaming of five and a half hours to keep them fresh.[44]
In order to arrest the wholesale slaughter of the lobster, stringent laws have been made in Maine and Massachusetts. The fishery is prohibited during certain months, and a fine is imposed for every fish exposed for sale of less than a certain growth. Of a heap containing some eight hundred lobsters brought to the factory, not fifty were of this size; a large proportion were not eight inches long. Frequent boiling in the same water, with the slovenly appearance of the operatives, male and female, would suggest a doubt whether plain Penobscot lobster is as toothsome as is supposed. The whole process was in marked contrast with the scrupulous neatness with which similar operations are elsewhere conducted; nor was there particular scrutiny as to whether the lobsters were already dead when received from the vessels.
LOBSTER POT.
Wood, in the "New England Prospect," mentions that lobsters were so plenty and little esteemed they were seldom eaten. They were frequently, he says, of twenty pounds' weight. The Indians used lobsters to bait their hooks, and ate them when they could not get bass. I have seen an account of a lobster that weighed thirty-five pounds. Josselyn mentions that he saw one weighing twenty pounds, and that the Indians dried them for food as they did lampreys and oysters.
The first-comers into New England waters were not more puzzled to find the ancient city of Norumbega than I to reach the fabulous Down East of the moderns. In San Francisco the name is vaguely applied to the territory east of the Mississippi, though more frequently the rest of the republic is alluded to as "The States." South of the obliterated Mason and Dixon's line, the region east of the Alleghanies and north of the Potomac is Down East, and no mistake about it. In New York you are as far as ever from this terra incognita. In Connecticut they shrug their shoulders and point you about north-north-east. Down East, say Massachusetts people, is just across our eastern border. Arrived on the Penobscot, I fancied myself there at last.
"Whither bound?" I asked of a fisherman, getting up his foresail before loosing from the wharf.
"Sir, to you. Down East."
The evident determination to shift the responsibility forbade further pursuit of this fictitious land. Besides, Maine people are indisposed to accept without challenge the name so universally applied to them of Down Easters. We do not say down to the North Pole, and we do say down South. The higher latitude we make northwardly the farther down we get. Nevertheless, disposed as I avow myself to present the case fairly, the people of Maine uniformly say "up to the westward," when speaking of Massachusetts. Of one thing I am persuaded—Down East is nowhere in New England.
OLD FORT FREDERICK, PEMAQUID POINT.