14000 miles, a carriage and two women

by Frances S. Howe

We were to breakfast at six instead of eight as usual when we are driving, so retired early. The hotel is on a very high bluff, a “corner lot,” where the Kennebec meets the ocean, and we had a corner room. At three o’clock our eyes opened as if by magic, and rested on the most beautiful sky imaginable, stretching out over the ocean, and reflected in the lovely Kennebec. We marked the spot where the sun was soon to rise, and resolved to see him, but the provoking fellow popped up when our eyes had closed for a bit.

The morning sail was as fine as the evening. How we would like to row as well as that sun-browned girl, who signalled the boat with her handkerchief, and, with her three companions, was pulled aboard as they came alongside, the boat being towed to the next landing. We were tempted to go to Augusta, it was so delightful, but Jerry was waiting for us.

Our next point was Boothbay Harbor. We could have reached there in an hour and a half by boat from Bath, but Jerry could not be transported. This was no disappointment, however, as we are always glad to resume our driving. We were assured of a long, hard twenty-five miles, but if we were to “do” the coast, Boothbay must not be passed by. Letters came that morning, and soon we were off, fortified with oats and well-filled lunch basket, ready to enjoy the day. What a drive it was over rickety toll-bridges, winding and twisting about, up and down such stony pitches, skirting the ragged edges of a bay! We took our lunch on a rocky bluff overlooking the water, and Jerry was invited into a barn and treated to hay. As we were wending our way towards the coast in the afternoon, feeling as if we had left the world behind us, a carriage came in sight, and as it passed a voice shouted to the driver, “Stop!” We, too, stopped, as a young man leaped from the carriage. We were glad to see anyone so glad to see us, even if we did not recognize at first, in the young man on a business tour through Maine, a boy who used to live almost next door to us. He surprised us again two or three days later, rushing out from a hotel as he saw us driving by.

Boothbay Harbor was delightful from our window in the little hotel, which looked as if it had dropped accidently sidewise into a vacant spot on a side hill, and never faced about. After supper we walked up to the top of the hill for a view, through a pasture, to see what was beyond, and back to the hotel by the rocky shore, watching the boats of every description anchored in the harbor.

Writing was next in order, and the tablet was opened, but where was the pen-holder? Gone, surely, and it must have slipped out when we repacked under the tree in Bath! A pen-holder may seem a small loss, but that one was made out of the old Hingham meeting-house, and has written all the Transcript letters and thousands of others. We grieved for it, but could only console ourselves thinking of the fable we read in German long ago, “Is a thing lost when you know where it is?” We replaced it with a Boothbay pen-holder, a bright red one for five cents, which is now trying to tell you of our journeyings as was the wont of the Hinghamite.

It just poured that night at Boothbay, and there were no signs of cessation in the morning. We decided to stay until after dinner, and not divide our drive that day. Suddenly it cleared, and we went out on the street to make some inquiries at the boat office about Bar Harbor, for we were getting interested in the coast, and felt inclined to go on indefinitely. A small boy came along with a poor horse and shabby carriage, calling, “Have a ride? See round the Harbor for ten cents!” We had time, and nothing else to do, so jumped in and “did” the Harbor.

The afternoon drive to Damariscotta was very pleasant, and we found the old brick hotel full of hospitable comfort, for all it had such a forbidding exterior. We might have been tempted to stop a bit in Damariscotta if we had known what we learned a few days later, about some recent excavations of interest, but we were within twenty-five miles of Penobscot Bay, and impatient for our first glimpse of it.

We camped that day by a country school-house. Two little fellows were much amused when we stopped there, thinking we had come to see the teacher in vacation time. They were greatly interested in Jerry during the unharnessing and tying to a tiny bush. We were interested in the wild strawberries they had picked in the tall grass over the wall, and one of the little fellows finally concluded he rather have the money offered him than the berries, although he had nothing else for his dinner. His eyes glowed as he took the money and went to the field again, returning in a little while to ask us if we would not like another quart.

We fared well at Rockland that night, except our room had one too many doors, and our slumbers were disturbed by an impatient rattling of a door key in the spare one. We aroused to the situation just in season to surprise the well-meaning but mistaken man by a hasty closing of the door, with an authoritative request to him to lock it, when his exclamation revealed his discovery of the blunder. When we paid our bill we quietly suggested to the clerk that it is well to have bolts as well as locks on unused doors.

And now comes one of the finest drives we ever had,—twenty-eight miles along Penobscot Bay through Camden and Northport to Belfast. How could anything be more lovely! Crosby Inn, so fine in all its appointments, was in harmony with the day’s drive. We had a pleasant chat on the piazza with fellow travelers, who had been following our route for a day or two. These ladies were traveling with a pair of horses and a man, so of course took it for granted we would drive the thirty-five miles to Bangor next day and spend Sunday there. We did not tell them our plans, because we had none; we were only hoping we should find a quiet country hotel before we got to Bangor,—we like it so much better for a Sunday rest.