Eastport, Maine

“ The city is built on ground sloping gently to the water’s edge, and commands delightful views of the bay, in which there are several islands. Its principal industry is the canning of sardines; there are also clam canneries. Shoes, mustard, decorated tin, and shooks are manufactured, and fish and lobsters are shipped from here in the season. The city is the port of entry for the customs district of Passamaquoddy; in 1908 its imports were valued at $994,961, and its exports at $1,155,791. Eastport was first settled about 1782 by fishermen ”

“ The tourist informed me that Eastport looked very well at a distance, with the sun shining on its white houses. When we landed at its wooden dock we saw that it consisted of a few piles of lumber, a sprinkling of small cheap houses along a sidehill, a big hotel with a flag-staff, and a very peaceful looking arsenal. It is doubtless a very enterprising and deserving city, but its aspect that morning was that of cheapness, newness, and stagnation, with no compensating pictur-esqueness. White paint always looks chilly under a gray sky and on naked hills. ”

“ The tourist, who went ashore with a view to breakfast, said that it would be a good place to stay in and go a-fishing and picnicking on Campobello Island. It has another advantage for the wicked over other Maine towns. Owing to the contiguity of British territory, the Maine Law is constantly evaded, in spirit. The thirsty citizen or sailor has only to step into a boat and give it a shove or two across the narrow stream that separates the United States from Deer Island and land, when he can ruin his breath, and return before he is missed. ”

“ The greater part of New Brunswick, the northern half of Maine, and adjacent parts of Canada, not to mention the northeastern part of New York and other tracts farther off, are still covered with an almost unbroken pine-forest.
But Maine, perhaps, will soon be where Massachusetts is. A good part of her territory is already as bare and commonplace as much of our neighborhood, and her villages generally are not so well shaded as ours. We seem to think that the earth must go through the ordeal of sheep-pasturage before it is habitable by man. ”

“ The waters that wrap the island in morning and evening fog temper the air of the latitude to a Newport softness in summer, with a sort of inner coolness that is peculiarly delicious, lulling the day with long calms and light breezes, and after nightfall commonly sending a stiff gale to try the stops of the hotel's gables and casements, and to make the cheerful blaze on its public hearths acceptable. Once or twice a day the Eastport ferry-boat arrives, with passengers from the southward, at a floating wharf that sinks or swims half a hundred feet on the mighty tides of the Northeast ”

“ Though by 1818 it had become a rival of Eastport, it is now but a small town. Yet it is more picturesquely situated than almost any other town in New England. Its single steeple and its flagstaff dominate the steep hill down which run two grassy streets to the water's edge, where stretch out into the Narrows the piers, which change their aspect with each rising and falling tide. When the fog sets in over the bay, the last point it hides is Lubec steeple. When it lifts, it leaves its gay flower gardens damp with a moisture that brightens each tiny petal. ”

“ Nowhere was the exhilarating influence of the times more eagerly responded to than in the District of Maine,—with a vast extent of sea-coast, and to a great degree aquatic population, and the town of Portland in particular, then but recently arisen from its ashes after its bombardment by the British, and incorporated, with an unrivalled harbor, a back country almost one unbroken forest of timber of all kinds, for which there was an abundant demand at high prices in Europe and the West Indies, with extensive water-power for its manufacture ”

“ This Maine landscape, so rugged and yet so tender, had a brooding and introspective calm, as of a serene and strong old man who has lived a vigorous, simple, and pure life, and to the jangled nerves and tired mind of Peter Champneys it was like the touch of a healing hand. ”

“ There it was, the State of Maine, which we had seen on the map, but not much like that,—immeasurable forest for the sun to shine on, that eastern stuff we hear of in Massachusetts. No clearing, no house. It did not look as if a solitary traveler had cut so much as a walking-stick there. Countless lakes,—Moosehead in the southwest, forty miles long by ten wide, like a gleaming silver platter at the end of the table; Chesuncook, eighteen long by three wide, without an island; Millinocket, on the south, with its hundred islands; and a hundred others without a name ”

“ While I do not wish to cut myself wholly off from the society of my fellow men and I make occasional visits to Boothbay Harbor and even to Portland, yet my comfort is here among my books with my own thoughts and in communion with my Maker, tending the piece of ground, fishing, and hunting for the smaller game that is found in this part of Maine. ”

“ After the war the separatist movement grew rapidly. Probably, however, the desire for separation from Massachusetts would not have been so quickly realized if the struggle over the admission of Missouri into the Union had not brought about the necessity of admitting a Northern State to preserve the balance of power. On March 15, 1820, Maine became a State. Industry and commerce received a great impetus after the War of 1812, but throughout the nineteenth century the increase in wealth and population was rather steady than swift. ”

“ It was this sharp scimitar of search and seizure which gave the original Maine law its deadly power. He took his bill to the seat of government and it was promptly passed by the legislature. He brought it home in triumph, and in less than three months there was not an open dram shop or distillery in Portland! He invited me to visit him, and drove me over the city, whose pure air was not polluted with the faintest smell of alcohol. It seemed like the first whiff of a temperance millennium. An invitation was extended to him to a magnificent public meeting in Tripler Hall, New York. ”

“ Oh, take me back home to my Old State of Maine!
From Katahdin’s proud crest, to Atlantic’s blue verge,
New lights and new scenes in succession emerge;
Silver lakes and green meads, in confusion arise
In grand panorama to gladden our eyes.
I love the old ingle, each nook, rock and knoll,
And the country’s dear flag that waves over the whole;
Take me back to the home of my youth once again,
To the dear Pine Tree State,—the Old State of Maine.
{7}
ALL THINGS SPEAK OF GOD
The stars in their infinite beauty,
And the moon in yon azure deep ”

“ Lying under cold snow-white sheets, with jealous neighbors, the French settlers of Canada and Acadia, ready to put pins in the youngster and keep her crying, and if possible to stunt her growth, Maine was longest in her cradle of any of the infant settlements. As early as 1602 some Frenchmen landed on her coast, but only remained long enough to make a few eyelet-holes in that watery frill which the busy but chill fingers of the Atlantic has wrought upon her eastern hem. ”

“ On the coast of Maine, where many green islands and salt inlets fringe the deep-cut shore line; where balsam firs and bayberry bushes send their fragrance far seaward, and song sparrows sing all day, and the tide runs plashing in and out among the weedy ledges; where cowbells tinkle on the hills and herons stand in the shady coves—on the lonely coast of Maine stood a small gray house facing the morning light. All the weather-beaten houses of that region face the sea apprehensively, like the women who live in them. ”

“ I could name the State of Maine—a name, for more reasons than one, familiar and agreeable to Missouri, and whose pristine territory was sold by Sir Ferdinando Gorges to the proprietors of the Massachusetts Bay, for twelve hundred pounds, provincial money. And well it was for Maine that she was so sold; well it was for her that the modern policy of waiting for the rise, and sticking at a minimum of $1 25, was not then in vogue, or else Maine would have been a desert now. Instead of a numerous, intelligent, and virtuous population, we should have had trees and wild beasts. ”

“ Besides, Maine people are indisposed to accept without challenge the name so universally applied to them of Down Easters. We do not say down to the North Pole, and we do say down South. The higher latitude we make northwardly the farther down we get. Nevertheless, disposed as I avow myself to present the case fairly, the people of Maine uniformly say "up to the westward," when speaking of Massachusetts. Of one thing I am persuaded—Down East is nowhere in New England. ”

“ If a man really wants to drink himself into a drunkard's grave, he can certainly save time by going to Maine. Those desiring the most prompt and vigorous style of jim-jams at cut rates will do well to examine Maine goods before going elsewhere. Let a man spend a week in Boston, where the Maine liquor law, I understand, is not in force, and then, with no warning whatever, be taken into the heart of Maine ”

“ Cleverly is a very staid, respectable, triangular township on the coast of Maine, its southern, or sea line about six miles in length, forming the base of the triangle, with a small village—Foxtown—at its eastern point, and a somewhat more pretentious town—Geeseville—at its western point. From these two places the division lines ran, one north-east, the other north-west, meeting on Rogue’s River, where a bridge makes the apex of the triangle. ”

“ During the period we are now discussing, the history of Maine was the story of confused grants of territory and of the planting of small isolated farming, fishing, and trading communities. The existence led by the inhabitants, in their solitary shacks or little villages, was that of a rough border life in which the monotony of the hard, bitter winters, and the routine of planting, fishing, or bargaining for furs, was punctuated by an occasional murder among themselves, and by quarrels, sometimes bloody, with the Indians and the French. ”

“ In the winter, however, which is very equable and long, the ice is the great highway, and the loggers’ team penetrates to Chesuncook Lake, and still higher up, even two hundred miles above Bangor. Imagine the solitary sled-track running far up into the snowy and evergreen wilderness, hemmed in closely for a hundred miles by the forest, and again stretching straight across the broad surfaces of concealed lakes! ”

“ Maine is one of the leading States in the Union in the extent of wooded area and in the annual value received from the forest products. The woodland is estimated at 23,700 square miles, or 79 per cent. of the total land area. The forests cover largely the interior and northern portions of the State, the coast and lower valleys being generally cleared. The land rapidly reforests, and since most of the land is not well suited to cultivation, reforestation is extensive. Large areas at one time under cultivation have been allowed to go back to woodland. ”

“ The mountainous region of the State of Maine stretches from near the White Mountains, northeasterly one hundred and sixty miles, to the head of the Aroostook River, and is about sixty miles wide. The wild or unsettled portion is far more extensive. So that some hours only of travel in this direction will carry the curious to the verge of a primitive forest, more interesting, perhaps, on all accounts, than they would reach by going a thousand miles westward. ”

“ In the yard and around the door stood men, gathered in small knots, engaged in low, earnest conversation; while, every few minutes, some were seen issuing from the house and hastily departing, as if dispatched on special messages,—the company in the mean time being continually augmented by fresh arrivals of the settlers, who came straggling in from both directions of the great road, which, leading from the more thickly-settled parts of Maine to the Connecticut, here passed over the Androscoggin. ”

“ But a large source of opposition to separation was removed in 1819 when Congress, dividing the east coast of the United States into two great districts, did away with the regulation which, making each state a district for entering and clearing vessels, would have required coasting vessels from the ports of Maine as a separate state to enter and clear on every trip to or from Boston ”

“ Patent, which extended along the coast from Cape Porpoise to Casco, and in issuing which the Council for New England had granted governmental as well as territorial rights. Moreover, Puritan Massachusetts, which was naturally hostile to the Anglicanism of Gorges and his followers, interpreted her charter so as to make her northern boundary run east and west from a point 3 m. north of the source of the Merrimac river, and on this basis laid claim to practically the whole of Maine then settled. ”

“ Yet it has barely a hundred people to-day, mostly fishermen, though its isolation has manifest advantages, for it is said to have no public officials, and to be the one place where there are no taxes. In fair sight of each other, over the blue sea, are the highlands of Monhegan and the rocks and coves of Pemaquid Point, the great stronghold of early British colonial power in Maine. Rival French and English grants covered the whole of Maine, and at the outstart the English took possession of the Kennebec, and the French of the Penobscot. ”