On him the light of star and moon
Shall fall with purer radiance down;
Shed their virtue through his eye.
Him Nature giveth for defence
His formidable innocence.
The mounting sap, the shells, the sea,
All spheres, all stones, his helpers be."
China had first been settled in 1774 by a family of Clarks. There were four brothers, two of whom were Friends. They cut the first tree that a white man's axe had ever felled in the township, and began to survey the land for homes. The two Friends chose the eastern and the others the western side of the lake. Life in the midst of the Maine forest implied struggle, and these families were courageous. No report of possible gold-mines or other hidden wealth drew them and those who followed them, but the desire to seek out quiet homes for themselves and their children where the temptations to a life of uselessness would be few. Trials they expected, and they were not spared. It was a hand-to-hand contest with want. At one time a cow was nearly the only valuable possession of the little company, and this was accidentally shot for a deer. The men went often ten miles through the woods, by the aid of "spotted" or "blazed" trees, to get their corn ground. We are told that in one case the mother was forced to put stones, in lieu of potatoes, in the hot ashes to induce her crying hungry children to go to bed until they should be called, and often the potatoes which had been planted were dug up to be eaten. Indians and the wild animals were around them, continually causing fear. In a cove at the south-western shore of the lake is a large heart, called the "Indian's heart," cut in a huge boulder, and in spring nearly covered by water. This marks the encampment of a tribe of Indians naturally friendly to their white neighbors, but exceedingly treacherous. On one occasion they visited the settlers in a body, and while the latter were unsuspiciously entertaining them they threw water on the guns of the white men, and only the darkness of the night saved these from destruction.
Gradually one family after another was added to the community, and as they all came for the same purpose, the settlement was composed of strong characters. These farmers had the idea that it should not be the chief aim of those who till the soil to grow rich, or to fill the market with choice vegetables, or to gain an easy livelihood, but rather to send out from their households sons and daughters marked by strength of character and able to do manly and womanly work in the various spheres of the world. Their visible workfield may have seemed narrow and roughly hedged in, but they felt the needs of the future, and did their best to raise a tower of strength in the land by properly training their successors. The horizon which shuts in their real domain expands as the times grow riper.