Rockland, Maine

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ If I were to look for a narrow, uninformed, and countrified mind, as opposed to the intelligence and refinement which are thought to emanate from cities, it would be among the rusty inhabitants of an old-settled country, on farms all run out and gone to seed with life-everlasting, in the towns about Boston, even on the high-road in Concord, and not in the back woods of Maine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is the second river in Maine, and one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. Instead of watering a wilderness, as I had supposed, all along its valley for over a hundred miles are fertile and extensive farms, with here and there a thriving village, inhabited by an intelligent and industrious people. Its principal tributary is Dead River, and the spot at the junction of the two is called the Forks. The cultivated region stops here, and between this point and Moosehead, the distance is about twenty-five miles, which is yet a forest wilderness. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ Uncle Elk declined the invitation of Scout Master Hall to stay over night at the bungalow, and bidding his friends good bye, with the promise soon to see them again, he went forth staff in hand into the dim woods on his tramp to his lonely home to the eastward.
It cannot be said of any portion of our country that it enjoys a perfect climate, though some sections are highly favored in that respect. Maine is an ideal summer resort, with its crystal waters, its cool breezes and its pure air. ”

“ A hundred miles through the wilds of Maine
You soon may ride on a railroad train.
Some Yankee hustlers have planned the scheme
To take the place of the tote-road team.
They have the charter, the grit and cash
To stretch their tracks to the Allegash.
Along the length of the forest route
The woodland creatures will hear the hoot
Of the bullgine’s whistle, where up to now
The big bull moose has called his cow.
And old Katahdin’s long fin-back
Will echo loud with the clickity-clack
Of wheels that merrily clatter and clash
Through the sylvan wastes toward the Allegash. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Both of these streams rise in the midst of a mountain wilderness, looming above which is old Kathaden, the loftiest mountain in Maine, and elder brother to Mount Washington, in New Hampshire. The mountain is distant from Moosehead Lake only about twenty miles, but it towers into the sky so grandly, that nearly all the people who inhabit the northern part of Maine look upon it as a familiar friend. The two branches of the Penobscot run through a mountainous region, both of them abounding in rapids, though the west branch contains a number of picturesque falls. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It does not make Maine less, but the spectator more, and that is a useful moral result. Maine's face, thus exposed, has almost no features: there are no great mountains visible, none that seem more than green hillocks in the distance. Besides sky, Katahdin's view contains only the two primal necessities of wood and water. Nowhere have I seen such breadth of solemn forest, gloomy, were it not for the cheerful interruption of many fair lakes, and bright ways of river linking them. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Indian name, Apmoojenegamook, means lake that is crossed, because the usual course lies across, and not along it. This is the largest of the Allegash lakes, and was the first St. John's water that we floated on. It is shaped in the main like Chesuncook. There are no mountains or high hills very near it. At Bangor we had been told of a township many miles farther northwest; it was indicated to us as containing the highest land thereabouts, where, by climbing a particular tree in the forest, we could get a general idea of the country. ”

“ A populous section of a town, in order to promote certain financial ends, is commonly incorporated as a village without however becoming a governing organization distinct from the town. Maine is the only state in the Union that retains what is known as the organized plantation. This is a governmental unit organized from an unincorporated township having at least 200 inhabitants, [5] and its principal officers are the moderator, clerk, three assessors, treasurer, collector, constable and school committee. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No one who has ever lived in Maine can forget its dark pine forests, its rugged hills, its rushing streams, cold and clear as crystal, its broad lakes, the abundant game of its forests and the fish in its waters. The Minnesota and Wisconsin pioneers, who with the author of this book claim Maine as an early home, will not object to the insertion in this chapter of a few of these reminiscences. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”