Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro
Exultingly before their eyes,—
Till cleft and torn by shot and blow,
Defiant still, he dies."
The Kennebec, turning grandly to the eastward, five miles below pours over the falls of Skowhegan, descending twenty-eight feet upon rough ledges, having a picturesque island ending at the crest of the cataract, with the stream beyond compressed within the high, rocky walls of a canyon. Here are numerous factories and a population of six thousand. Eighteen miles beyond, the river, having resumed its southern course, tumbles down the Taconic Falls at Waterville, a town of seven thousand people and extensive cotton-mills, also having the Colby College of the Baptist Church where General Benjamin F. Butler was a student. Farther down the Kennebec are the ruins of Fort Halifax, near the confluence with Sebasticook River, draining various lakes to the northeastward. This was one of the chain of forts built in the middle eighteenth century to defend the Puritan coast towns from French and Indian raids, and large Indian settlements formerly occupied the broad intervales in the neighborhood. Twenty miles below Waterville is Augusta, the Maine capital, situate at the head of navigation, the city being beautifully located upon the high hills and their slopes bordering the river. Just above the town is the great Kennebec dam, built at an expense of $300,000 to make an admirable water-power, and rising fifteen feet above high water. Here are over ten thousand people, among whom lived for many years James G. Blaine, who died in 1893. There are large textile factories giving employment to the inhabitants, and the chief building is the State House, of white granite, fronted by a Doric colonnade, standing upon a high hill and surmounted by a graceful dome. Across the Kennebec is the fine granite Insane Hospital in extensive ornamental grounds, while down by the bank are the remains of Fort Western, built as a defensive outpost in 1754, being then surrounded by palisaded outworks garnished with towers. It was here that Benedict Arnold gathered his expedition against Quebec in 1775, going up the Kennebec, crossing the border wilderness and enduring the greatest hardships, before he appeared like an apparition with his army of gaunt heroes under the walls of that fortress.
Below Augusta is the quiet town of Hallowell, and then Gardiner, and beyond, the Kennebec spreads out in the broad expanse of Merry Meeting Bay, where it receives the Androscoggin coming up from the southwest. Along here are seen to perfection the two great crops of these rivers—the lumber and the ice. The largest icehouses in existence line the banks, and the prolific ice-crop of these pure waters, thus gathered by the millions of tons, is shipped by sea from Gardiner and Bath throughout the coast and over to Europe. The people seem to saw logs all summer and cut ice all winter. The river next passes Bath, formerly a great ship-building port, and still doing much work in the construction of steel vessels, though the population has rather decreased of late years. The town, with its front of shipyards and kindred industries, fringes the western river-bank for two or three miles, and on either hand the rocky shores slope steeply down to the water. A clergyman from Salem bought this domain in 1660 from Damarine, the old sachem of Sagadahoc, whom the whites called Robin Hood, but the place did not grow much until after the Revolution, when extensive shipbuilding began. It is about thirteen miles from the sea, the Kennebec entering the Atlantic through Sheepscott Bay, an irregular indentation of the coast studded with many attractive islands. At Bath, more than anywhere else in New England, has been practically realized Longfellow's invocation:
"Build me straight, O worthy master!
Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!"