Lion Ben of Elm Island

by Elijah Kellogg

They will bear a great deal of killing, and even make believe dead. I knew a boy once who shot four squawks, and after beating them with an iron ramrod, left them tied up in his pocket-handkerchief at the foot of a tree while he was clambering up after eggs: when he came down, two of them had crawled out of the handkerchief and run away. They will show fight, too, when they are wounded, bite and thrust with their bill, and scratch terribly with their claws. As if to compensate for the horrible noise they make, the full-grown male is a very handsome bird. The top of the head and back are green, the eyes a bright, flashing red, and just above them a little patch of pure white. The bill is black, the wings are light blue, the back part and sides of the neck lilac, shading on the front and breast to a cream color, and the legs yellow. From the back part of the head depend three feathers, white as snow and extremely delicate, rolled together, and as long as the neck.

The mouth of the little brook of which we have spoken was a very busy place when the fish-hawks were fishing, or carrying sticks to build their nests, and screaming with all their might, the herons fishing for minnows, squawks catching frogs, the wild geese making their peculiar noise, the sea-fowl diving, the ducks quacking, and the fish jumping from the water in schools. It shows how God provides for all his creatures, for though there are thousands of these islands scattered along the coast of Maine, on the smallest of them, and some that are mere rocks, you will find springs of living water.

On this island was a spring, that whenever the tide was in was six feet under water; but when the tide ebbed, there was the spring bubbling up in the white sand, as good fresh water as was ever drank.

Old Skipper Brown said he knew the time when it was a rod up the bank; that when he used to go fishing with his father, he had filled many a jug with water out of it; but the frost and the sea had undermined the bank and washed it away, till the tide came to flow over it.

There is another thing in relation to this little harbor, of great importance; for though the high rocks and the thick wood sheltered the little cove from all but the south and south-west winds, yet it would have been (at any rate the mouth of it) very much exposed to the whole sweep of the Atlantic waves in southerly gales; and though the cove was so winding that a vessel in the head of it could not be hurt by the sea, yet it would have been very hard going in, and impossible to get out in bad weather, had it not been for a provision of nature, of which I shall now speak, consisting of some ragged and outlying rocks.

One of these was called the White Bull, deriving its name from the peculiar hoarse roar which the sea made as it broke upon it, and also the white cliffs of which it was composed. It was a long granite ledge, perpendicular on the inside, and far above the reach of the highest waves. On the seaward side it ran off into irregular broken reefs, covered with kelp, the home of the rock cod and lobster, and the favorite resort of all the diving sea-fowl, who fed on the weeds growing on the bottom.

In the centre of these reefs was a large cove. Between this rock and the eastern point of the island was another, of similar shape, but smaller dimensions, called the Little Bull: they were connected by a reef running beneath the water, against which the sea broke, in storms, with great fury; and even in calm weather, from the ground swell of the ocean, it was white with the foaming breakers.

On the western side was a long, high, narrow island, called, from its shape, the “Junk of Pork,” with deep water all around it, and covered with grass. The two ends of this island lapped by the western point of the White Bull and the western point of the main island, thus presenting a complete barrier against the sea. The whole space between the main land and these outlying rocks and islands was a beautiful harbor, the bottom of which was clay, and sand on top, thus affording an excellent hold to anchors.

There were two passages to go in and out, according as the wind might happen to be, with deep water close to the rocks. This harbor was a favorite resort of the fishermen, who came here to dig clams in the cove, and catch menhaden and herring for bait; they also stopped here in the afternoons to get water, and make a fire on the rocks, and take a cup of tea, before they went out to fish all night for hake; they also resorted to it in the morning to dress their fish and make a chowder, and lie under the shadow of the trees and sleep all the afternoon, that they might be ready to go out the next night.

The bottom of the cove on the White Bull was of granite, sloping gradually into deep water, and smooth as ice. Beneath this formation of granite was a blue rock of much softer texture than granite. The sea, in great storms, rolled the fragments of blue stone back and forth on this granite floor, and wore away and rounded the corners, making them of the shape of those you see in the pavements of the cities. The action of these stones for hundreds of years, on this granite floor, had worn holes in it as big as the mouth of a well, and two or three feet in depth. Sometimes a great square rock would get in one of them, too big for the summer winds to fling out, and the sea would roll it round in the hole all summer, wear the corners off, and then the December gales would wash it out. Among the quartz sand in the bottom of this cove you could pick up crystals that had been ground out of the rocks, from an eighth of an inch to an inch in diameter.