Machias, Maine

“ PETROGLYPHS IN MAINE.
The rock upon which the glyphs appear is in the town of Machiasport, Maine, at Clarks point, on the northwestern side of Machias bay, [82] 2 miles below the mouth of Machias river. The rock or ledge is about 50 feet long from east to west and about fifteen feet in width, nearly horizontal for two-thirds its length, from the bank or western end at high water, thence inclining at an angle of 15° to low-water mark. Its southern face is inclined about 40°. The formation is schistose slate, having a transverse vein of trap dike extending nearly across its section. ”

“ On the government of the United States consenting to restore these two forts, Great Britain is ready to restore the forts of Castine and Machias, retaining Fort Niagara and Fort Michillimackinaw.”
Thus the British demand, which had till then been intended to include half of Maine and the whole south bank of the St. Lawrence River from Plattsburg to Sackett’s Harbor, suddenly fell to a demand for Moose Island, a right of way across the northern angle of Maine, Fort Niagara with five miles circuit, and the Island of Mackinaw. ”

“ The little river, after plunging down a cataract of forty feet, rushes over the successive ledges of this remarkable pass until it reaches the St. John. For a long distance the great river passes villages originally settled by disbanded British troops after the Revolution and now peopled by their descendants, and then it winds through the pastoral district of Aukpaque, which was held by Americans within New Brunswick for two years after the Revolution began, they finally retreating in 1777 over the border into the wilderness of Maine, and reaching the coast at Machias. ”

“ The gunboat swerved, and the bowsprit of the Unity plunged into her mainsail, holding the two vessels together for a brief moment.
Rebecca, standing on the bluff, shouted aloud. She was sure that the moment of triumph for the Machias men was close at hand. But victory was not so easily achieved; the vessels suddenly parted, and now a storm of bullets rained upon the Unity.
Captain O’Brien swung the sloop alongside the Margaretta and twenty of his men armed with pitchforks sprang to the enemy’s deck. A hand-to-hand conflict ensued. ”

“ And to-day tidings have come that the brave men of Lexington and Concord, in Massachusetts, drove the British back to Boston on the nineteenth of April. ’Tis great news for all the colonies. I wish some British craft would give Machias men a chance to show their mettle,” said Mr. Weston, his face flushing at the thought of the patriotic action of the men of Massachusetts.
Rebecca sighed. She, too, wished that her56 home town might do its part to win a victory for America; but, remembering what Lucia Horton had told her, the very mention of a liberty pole made her tremble. ”

“ If a liberty tree was so fine a thing why should her father not wish Machias to have one, she wondered.82 Lucia did not know that her father was even then bargaining with the British in Boston to bring them a cargo of lumber on his next trip from Machias, in return for permission to load the Polly with provisions to sell to the people of the settlement, and that, exactly as Lucia had heard him predict, an armed British gunboat would accompany the sloops Polly and Unity when they should appear in Machias harbor. ”

“ In a few moments they were fully dressed for their tramp through the forest. Very cautiously they made their way down the stairs. The house was silent. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Weston heard the faintest sound to disturb their slumbers.
On the piece of smooth birch-bark that Rebby had made ready on the previous day, with a bit of charcoal from the fireplace she wrote:
“Dear Mother and dear Father: Anna and I are going to Chandler’s River to bring home powder and shot for Machias men to use to save the settlement. We will be home to-morrow. Your loving Rebby and Danna.” ”

“ Rebby knew that Anna’s knowledge of the forest, her strength and courage, would be all that could enable her to undertake the task. Without Anna she feared that she might fail in184 finding her way, and never reach Chandler’s River.
“Think, Danna! The gunboat will shoot down our liberty pole! Perhaps burn the church and our houses, and they may carry off our father a prisoner! ’Tis what they try to do whenever Americans resist; and if the Machias men have powder and shot they’ll not let the gunboat come near. And we can get the powder and save the settlement. ”

“ The next day Captain Jones began his183 preparations to load the sloops with lumber for Boston, and the Machias men, doubtful of the Captain’s loyalty, determined that the sloops should not return to Boston. Rebby and Anna were in the lumber yard filling a basket with chips, when a number of men talking of this decision passed them.
“If we only had more powder and shot,” said one; “but we cannot spare a single man to go to Chandler’s River after supplies.”
“There, Anna!” exclaimed Rebby. “Did you hear what those men said? Do you not see that we can help as much as a real soldier? ”

“ And I heard Father say that very soon there would be a regular school here, with a master, as soon as America conquers her enemies. But, Danna, do you suppose anyone will dare touch the liberty pole?” For Rebby’s thoughts could not long stray from Lucia Horton’s prediction that it might be cut down.
“What’s that?” exclaimed Mr. Weston from the doorway behind them. “Cut down the liberty pole? Why, there is not a man in Machias who would do such a traitorous deed.” ”

“ There were bears prowling somewhere in those dim shadowy woods, eating the young buds and leaves, and capturing such defenseless birds and rabbits as they could. Once or twice they heard194 some heavy creature crashing through the underbrush, and looked at each other with startled eyes; but no harm came near them, and by the middle of the afternoon they reached the first house of the settlement, and had told their errand.
“Every man in the settlement is on his way to Machias this very hour,” declared the friendly woman who had welcomed the girls with amazed admiration ”

“ Anna and Luretta were invited to spend an afternoon180 with Melvina, and become acquainted with the new dolls, and Melvina urged Luretta to bring Trit, resolving to dress up the rabbit as she and Anna had done before.
Rebecca was more aware of the troubled condition of the settlement than were these younger girls. Paul Foster told her that his Uncle Benjamin, a bold and energetic man who had served in the old French War, said that the Machias men ought to capture the British gunboat, and take the sloops, making their captains and crews prisoners. Rebby listened eagerly. ”

“ It is to be the straightest and handsomest sapling pine to be found in a day’s journey; that much I know,” declared Anna eagerly; “but tell me why is it to be called a ‘liberty pole’? And why is it to be set up so it can be well seen from the harbor?”
“Thou knowest, Anna, that King George of16 England is no longer the true friend of American liberty,” said Mrs. Weston, “and the liberty pole is set up to show all Tories on land or sea that we mean to defend our homes. And if the men are talking of putting up the tree of liberty in Machias I fear that trouble is near at hand. ”

“ Before noonday Rebby declared that she could not go another step, and sat down at the foot of a high mass of rocks over which they must climb.
“You will have to go on and leave me, Danna,” she said. “My feet won’t go, they are so tired: and my shoulders ache.”
The day had grown very warm; there was not199 a breath of air, and Anna owned that she had never seen so difficult a trail. Mrs. Getchell had warned them to be sure and keep in sight of the river and it would lead them straight to Machias. ”

“ Machias est la dernière place au nord-est de la Nouvelle-Angleterre, à environ cent lieues de Boston, dans le comté de Main qui est annexé à l’état de Massachusetts Bay. Il n’y a que quinze ans qu’on y a formé un établissement qui est fort pauvre à cause de la guerre et qui ne consiste qu’en 150 familles dispersées dans un espace de 3 à 4 lieues. ”

“ The people of Machias were particularly fond of plundering their neighbors, and that place was termed a “nest of pirates and rebels” by General Eyre Massey, the commandant at Halifax.
Early in the summer of 1775 it was rumored that Stephen Smith of Machias, one of the delegates to the Massachusetts congress, had orders to seize Fort Frederick, and the Governor of Nova Scotia recommended the establishment of a garrison there to prevent such an attempt. But the military authorities were too dilatory and in the month of August a party from Machias, led by Smith, entered St. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With her vast forests, her people share with Maine, our own great frontier State, those vast lumber interests, for which it has been our own policy to demand protection. Daughter of three mighty lakes, she takes a large share in our vast inland commerce. Her people are brave, prosperous and free. They have iron in their soil, and iron in their blood. Great as is her wealth and her material interest, she shares with Massachusetts the honor of being among the foremost of American States in educational conditions. ”

“ John. Machias was settled in 1763 by a colony from Scarborough, one of the oldest towns in Massachusetts. During the war it was the asylum of disloyal spirits who fled thither from various parts of Nova Scotia. The township of Cumberland included a considerable portion of what is now the county of Westmorland. The inhabitants were mostly natives of New England, and many of them warm sympathizers with the revolutionary pasty. ”

“ Sixty or seventy years ago, what was then the District, and is now the State, of Maine, was a proverb in New England for the poverty of its people, mainly because they were so largely engaged in timber cutting. The great grain-growing, wheat-exporting districts of the Russian empire have a poor and rude people for a like reason. Thus the industry of Massachusetts is immensely more productive per head than that of North Carolina, or even that of Indiana, as it will cease to be whenever manufactures shall have been diffused over our whole country, as they must and will be. ”

“ It is doubtless a very enterprising and deserving city, but its aspect that morning was that of cheapness, newness, and stagnation, with no compensating picturesqueness. White paint always looks chilly under a gray sky and on naked hills. Even in hot August the place seemed bleak. 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ Through this steel riddle, more or less coarse, is the arrowy Maine forest, from Ktaadn and Chesuncook, and the head-waters of the St. John, relentlessly sifted, till it comes out boards, clapboards, laths, and shingles such as the wind can take, still, perchance, to be slit and slit again, till men get a size that will suit. Think how stood the white pine tree on the shore of Chesuncook, its branches soughing with the four winds, and every individual needle trembling in the sunlight,—think how it stands with it now,—sold, perchance, to the New England Friction-Match Company! ”