"Loud behind us grow the murmurs
Of the age to come,
Clang of smiths and tread of farmers,
Bearing harvests home!
Here her virgin lap with treasures
Shall the green earth fill,
Waving wheat and golden maize-ears
Crown each beechen hill."
The reader may be asked, in conclusion, to estimate the results of fifty years' lumbering on the Penobscot. What a vast revenue, in addition to the agricultural interests of the contiguous country! When we look to Bangor, so favorably located at the head of navigation, the grand center of all these great interests, it would seem not irrational to predict for it a glorious career in growth, wealth, and importance, nor improbable that the same may be fully realized. She is surrounded by resources of wealth altogether beyond any other town or city in the state, of which neither her citizens, with all their foresight, nor capitalists, seem to be fully aware.
Of one great disadvantage, which must retard her progress, mention may be made, viz., capitalists abroad own too much of the territory on her river. A judicious policy in business must be steadily pursued, else she may only prove the mere outlet through which the wealth of her territory shall pass to other hands, leaving her with the bitter inheritance of one day becoming possessed of the knowledge, when too late, of what she might have been.