How long these good men lived there, no one seems to know; but it is certain that they went back to Port Royal quite soon, because, in the year 1613, a Frenchman, by the name of La Suassaye, the agent of Madame de Guercheville, a very rich and religious lady, visited Port Royal, and persuaded the missionaries to return to Mount Desert, in company with several French colonists.
An Englishman by the name of Argall, who had come across the ocean to drive away the French people from North America, in order to take possession of the country in the name of his king, found the settlers while they were yet living in tents, not having had time to build houses. He robbed them of all their goods, afterward sending them adrift in an open boat, to make certain they wouldn't encroach on the land to which he believed they had no claim.
The French people, after suffering severely, contrived to gain the mainland, however, and before many months had passed returned to Mount Desert, where they formed a settlement, which did not survive the encroachments of the Indians, as is known from the fact that when, in 1704, the great Indian fighter from Massachusetts, Major Benjamin Church, rendezvoused at Mount Desert, before attacking the Baron de Castine on Penobscot Bay, he found no person living there.
In 1746 Stephen Pemberton and Silas Harding, with their wives, who were sisters, and their children, emigrated from England to Acadia, in Nova Scotia, hoping there to make better homes for themselves and their little ones than could be had in their native land. Then came the quarrels between the French and English, until Acadia was not a very pleasant land in which to live, and these two settlers determined to find an abiding-place where they might not be literally overrun by the soldiers of two armies.
Therefore it was that they built a small vessel, in which they could carry all their household belongings, including two cows, three or four pigs, and a flock of chickens, and started on a voyage that did not come to an end until they were arrived at the island of Mount Desert, near the mouth of what is now known as Duck Brook, within a short distance of the present town of Bar Harbor.
There the men built two small houses of logs, enclosed by a palisade, which is a high fence formed by driving stakes into the ground, for protection against the Indians, whom they had every reason to fear.
Here the two families lived in peace and comparative comfort until the year 1758, and then there were children in plenty.
Stephen Pemberton had in his family Mark, who was fifteen years old; Luke, two years younger; Mary, aged eleven and John, a stout lad of eight years.
Silas Harding's children were Susan, who was fourteen years old; Mary, four years younger, and James, who had lived seven years on Mount Desert without having seen ten white people, save those belonging to his own and Uncle Stephen Pemberton's family.
Now after so many words which have not been strung together in a very entertaining fashion, it is time to begin the story of what was done by these children, with, as a matter of course, some assistance from their mothers.