Maine coast

“ No other section of the eastern United States has a similar coast, so serrated, indented, and rugged, as has this shore line of the Gulf of Maine. Here the battering by the forces of nature has resulted in making thousands of safe harbors and havens for the navigator. All along shore are strewn hundreds of islands, a characteristic feature of the region and one noted with wonder by every early explorer. ”

“ The view from the top is fine, over the deeply-cut Somes Sound, penetrating almost through the island, and the grand expanse of Maine coast, seen, with its many bays and islands, stretching from the Penobscot northeast to Quoddy Head. All around to the southward and eastward spreads the open ocean bounded by the horizon, and like a speck, to the south-southeast, twenty miles away, is the lighthouse upon the bleak crag known as Mount Desert Rock, far out at sea, the most remote beacon, in its distant isolation, upon the New England coast. ”

“ The coast of Maine, truly picturesque as it is, with its rocky points, lake-like bays, and islands bristling in their dark evergreens like porcupines, and particularly Mount Desert Island and Frenchman’s Bay, is the mildest form of Newfoundland scenery as you see it on the Atlantic side, with an additional dressing of forest and vegetation, sparsely studded with towns and habitations. ”

“ The fishermen on the coast of Maine and other parts of New England know the currents, winds and tides of their waters so well that thick fogs or the darkest nights have no terrors for them. I have seen a Maine fisherman sail his schooner straight for the rocky, reef-fringed coast through the thickest fog and drive into a narrow harbor entrance as surely as if he was following a well marked lane of buoys. ”

“ Our tourists passed a weary, hot day on the coast railway of Maine. Notwithstanding the high temperature, the country seemed cheerless, the sunlight to fall less genially than in more fertile regions to the south, upon a landscape stripped of its forests, naked, and unpicturesque. Why should the little white houses of the prosperous little villages on the line of the rail seem cold and suggest winter, and the land seem scrimped and without an atmosphere? It chanced so, for everybody knows that it is a lovely coast. The artist said it was the Maine Law. ”

“ In Massachusetts alone are the delightful Nantasket and Revere beaches, elegant Nahant, and the myriad of charming nooks from Cape Ann to Provincetown. Then the Berkshire hills; Lenox and Stockbridge, and other equally beautiful towns, but with less pretensions to aristocracy; the lovely valley of the Connecticut, the romantic Deerfield and the pleasant Franklin hills. In Maine, beginning with Old Orchard, perhaps the finest beach on the Atlantic coast, what delightful harbors and islands there are. And in the Maine woods there is a wealth of health and sport. ”

“ In the White Mountains the sides of the mountains, the valleys, the top of Mount Washington, at 5,000 feet above the sea, are all cut with these strange furrows, the rocks polished, and the whole country bearing these evidences of past erosion wherever the naked rock meets the eye. Over Maine the same phenomena present themselves in endless succession, the grooves striping the country, and losing themselves in the sea along the coast, while they corrugate the borders of the innumerable bays, and the walls of the deep fiords that indent the shores. ”

“ THE QUEEN’S TWIN. I. The coast of Maine was in former years brought so near to foreign shores by its busy fleet of ships that among the older men and women one still finds a surprising proportion of travelers. Each seaward-stretching headland with its high-set houses, each island of a single farm, has sent its spies to view many a Land of Eshcol; one may see plain, contented old faces at the windows, whose eyes have looked at far-away ports and known the splendors of the Eastern world. They shame the easy voyager of the North Atlantic and the Mediterranean ”

“ The good soul looks not a day older than when we left her, ten years ago. Like the gray, weather-beaten rocks of her native shore, her strong features had an unchangeable identity beyond that of anything fair and blooming. There was of course no chance for a gray streak in her stiff, uncompromising mohair frisette, which still pushed up her cap-border bristlingly as of old, and the clear, high winds and bracing atmosphere of that rough coast kept her in an admirable state of preservation.
Miss Emily had now and then a white hair among her soft, pretty brown ones, and looked a little thinner ”

“ There is an island off a certain part of the coast of Maine,--a little rocky island, heaped and tumbled together as if Dame Nature had shaken down a heap of stones at random from her apron, when she had finished making the larger islands which lie between it and the mainland. ”

“ The characteristics of the coast of Maine are due chiefly to the fact that a mountainous region of hard rocks, once worn to a peneplain, and after a subsequent elevation deeply dissected by north-south valleys, has subsided, the depression amounting on its southern margin to as much as six hundred feet below sea level. Drowned valleys penetrate the land in long, narrow bays, and rugged divides project in long, narrow land arms prolonged seaward by islands representing the high portions of their extremities. ”

“ Mount Desert is the largest of the islands on the indented coast of Maine, and forms the western shore of Frenchman’s Bay. Many shell-heaps are scattered over this and the adjoining islands and the main land. ”

“ Nautical skill is transmitted from one people to another, as may be seen from some of the most obvious cases in modern history. No maritime people has become great through its own coast alone. It is not the coast of Maine, with its numerous inlets and bays, that has produced the best seamen, but the coast of Massachusetts, naturally unfavourable for the most part; and it has produced the best seamen for the reason that the inland districts bounded by it are far more productive and furthering to commerce than are the interior regions of Maine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If justification were needed, that fact alone justifies its existence. This fact, however, is not necessary, as the all-sufficient fact which warrants the collection of these unique sketches in book form is that no one can read them without being interested, entertained, and amused, as well as instructed and improved. “The stubborn strength of Plymouth Rock” is nowhere better exemplified than on the Maine farm, in the Maine woods, on the Maine coast, or in the Maine workshop. ”

“ The coast of Maine was particularly well adapted to aid Captain Wolf in his peculiar enterprise. The great tide of summer travel had not then started and its countless bays, coves and inlets were unmolested. Wherever a safe harbor occurred a small village had clustered about it and the larger islands only were inhabited. The residents of these hamlets were mainly engaged in fishing or coasting, and of a guileless nature. They were honest themselves, and not easy to suspect dishonesty in others. ”

“ Lying a short distance off the Maine coast is an island which belongs to nobody and is therefore referred to as No Man's Land. If you look for it on the map you will find it marked as Muscongus. It is also known as Loud's Island, in honor of the first settler. ”

“ The soils of Maine, with the exception of the Pleistocene marine clays along the coast, are almost wholly glacial. Along some of the rivers and lakes and in many old lake bottoms, long since filled up or drained out, there are alluvial plains of great fertility. The higher outcrops of the crystalline old land are largely denuded of all soil, while the whole surface of the State is more or less strewn with glacial débris. The drift is in places arable, though in wide areas it is unsuited for agriculture. ”

“ Maine lies in the heart of the temperate zone, yet in climate it ranks as boreal in the northwestern part, and the southeastern part is only a region of transition into the austral zone—a region of overlapping floras and faunas. The winter is very severe, except in a narrow strip along the coast. The summers are never hot. ”

“ His father belonged to a class of men only to be found on the coast of Maine, who are at once fishermen, farmers and navigators; a much more intelligent and cultivated class than the agricultural people of the interior. It is a beautiful sail among the islands from Rockland to Mount Desert, and the pleasantest part of it, to me at least, is the sight of the well kept farms with their handsome cattle and clean-shaven hay-fields, which line the coast. ”

“ On the coast of Massachusetts there are 50 or more weirs and fish traps, and from the Isle of Shoals to Pemaquid Point in Maine there are more than 50 floating traps in the various bays, on the points of offshore islands, or even in the open sea, and all these take a rich harvest from these waters. Then, too, there is the lobster fishery, more important in the Gulf of Maine than anywhere else in the United States. ”

“ 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 lakes and forests attract great numbers of tourists, and the sea coast is lined with the cottages of summer-residents from all parts of the country. Some of these resorts, notably Bar Harbor, Old Orchard and York Beaches and the islands in Casco Bay are among the most popular and fashionable ones in the country.
Minerals. The fact that the surface is made up of the bases of two mountain ranges explains the great variety of minerals found in the hills of Maine. Granite is abundant in the western portion, and a belt of the same rocks extends along the coast and for miles inland. ”

“ There is no corner, however remote, into which Maine enterprise does not penetrate. The spirit of adventure and speculation has pushed its commerce everywhere. With a deck-load of lumber, some shingles, or barrels of lime, schooners of a few tons burden, and manned with three or four hands, may be met with hundreds of miles at sea, steering boldly on in search of a buyer. ”

“ Manufactures.—Although Maine has no coal and only a very small amount of iron ore within her borders for the encouragement of manufacturing, yet the abundance of fine timber and the numerous coves, bays and navigable streams along or near the coast promoted ship-building from the first, and this was the leading industry of the state until about the middle of the 19th century, when wooden ships began to be supplanted by those of iron and steel. ”

“ The second winter was as severe as the first, and quite discouraged the colonists, who could get very little to eat, as their storehouse had been burned by the Indians; and so when spring came and they had a chance to leave Maine they all went back to England, and the settlement of Maine by the English was given up for many years. The next attempt to settle this coast was made by the French, who, not satisfied with claiming Acadia and Canada, wanted also to get possession of Maine, which had been so often described as a good place for settlement. ”

“ A new lighthouse tower was erected near the old tower in 1855, consisting of a gray granite conical tower, 133 feet above the water, 61⁄2 miles off the coast of Maine.
As Boon Island is a very flat piece of land, well surrounded by ledges, the tower appears at times to be springing up from the sea from a submerged ledge, especially when low clouds are flying. One of the most isolated stations off the Maine coast, it is also one of the most dangerous. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most sterile regions are on the mountains and along the coast. Because of the cold climate, the large areas in which there is little or no good arable land, the growing demand for timber land, and the large and constant supply of water-power afforded by the principal rivers, agriculture in Maine, as in all the other New England states except Vermont, is a smaller industry than manufacturing; in 1900 there were 87,932 people engaged in manufacturing and only 76,932 engaged in agriculture. ”