Down East Latch Strings/Chapter 7

by Ernest Ingersoll

Chapther VII.

Mount Desert.

Planting strange fruits and sunshines on the shoreI make some coast alluring, some lone isle,To distant men, who must go there, or die.—Emerson.

ow there began to rise well into view a head, a cluster of mountains, which more and move fixed our attention as we drew near.

An hour later we were close under their "gray turrets." and saluting with three blasts of the whistle the light-house clinging high up the pink precipices of Bass Harbor head, the southernmost point of Mount Desert island. Hearing this friendly blast, a woman runs out of the house and rings the fog-bell with one hand while she waves us a greeting with the other, and then hurries back into her kitchen, as though begrudging time spent in such formalities.

Our course lies south, on the outside of Mount Desert, and we soon turn between the well-populated Cranberry islands, and steer around into Southwest Harbor, formerly the principal settlement on this island, but now eclipsed by Bar Harbor. Here we were at the entrance of Somes' sound, and thought it high time to study our map.

Mount Desert is a hardly detached piece of the Maine coast, standing higher out of water than any other Atlantic promontory, because it holds a group of granite mountains, the tallest of which is not less than 1,500 feet above its surf-smitten base. These mountains stand in long parallel ridges, tending north and south, between which the deep and narrow valleys would be fiords like those which penetrate the coast to the westward, were they not above the reach of the tides. The largest of these valleys, however, does admit the water in a long, river-like channel quite to the heart of the land, giving the island the shape of a pair of well-stuffed saddle-bags, hanging over the head of Somes' sound. Several of the valleys contain ponds, all of which are elongated in narrow basins parallel with the ridges and the sound. The

southwestern extremity of the island is a comparatively level plateau, penetrated by the Bass Harbor inlets; but the northern half contains a rugged, irregular region of foothills, smoothed down into a pretty wide area of arable land along the northern shore, where the narrows, which separate the island from the mainland, are crossed by a bridge. At Bar Harbor, again, enough reasonably level land exists for a large village, or even the city of the future, The southern and eastern shores, however, possess only a narrow rim, and sometimes no space
Somes' Sound, Mt. Desert.at all between the abrupt walls of the mountain and the ocean, ever raging at their foundations.

With the Guide, written by the skilful pen of Mrs. Clara Barnes Martin, open before us, as we steer out of Southwest Harbor, we scan the passing shores. "The western hills recede," we both hear and see, as Prue reads, "and the remarkable inlet of Somes' sound opens. The Flying mountain juts out across its mouth, but for a short distance there is a view of the steep eastern face of Dog mountain, and further inland the narrows between Robinson's mountain and Brown. Moving farther eastward the other Twin comes out from behind Sargent. Dry mountain separates itself from Green, and Newport’s narrow ridge resolves itself into the rounded spurs of its southern face, and so one can count from first to last the 'eight or nine notches in the Isle of Mt. Desert' which Champlain saw.

"This scenery of the shore is impressive. The mountains stand shoulder to shoulder, well braced together, ranks even, trappings rich in color, erect, stern, uncompromising, heroic."

"Big words for little mountains," says Baily, with a shrug in his voice as well as his shoulders, which irritates me, and I fly at him.

"What of it! In poise and outline, as seen from anywhere in this offing, they suggest the finest ranges of the Rockies; and in color are often as magnificent as the Alps. I know they are small, and close at hand; but I tell you truly that you can get profiles of this range from the sea or the islands southward, which shall be as majestic as any of Washington. I have gazed across the leaving rollers of the Pacific at mountains ten times their height and felt no greater satisfaction. Bigness does not necessarily mean beauty, young man, any more than careless contempt is criticism!"

"Go for him!" cries my wife, in great glee; and in the next breath urges Baily to stand to his guns. "Don't let him browbeat you," she entreats. Evidently that wicked young woman wants to see two old friends lose that calm of philosophers, which has been, and remains, their pride,—but she fails. How can any one quarrel or shut their eyes in scowling, when the great green rollers, so sleepy we scarcely feel them out here, wake into leonine strength over there under the pink gates of Otter cove, and with a swing of their whole weight, banners of spray unfurled, hurl themselves upon the brilliant cliffs, slide far up their polished faces, then shrink back baffled. Here, again (we are getting round to the eastern side, now), where the cyclopean masonry of Great Head is so ruined at the top, but so firm and whole at the bottom, see how the breakers never tire of battering, and the shrillest scream of the sea-gull can hardly be heard above the roar and striving of the surf. Next, a little farther on, comes Schooner Head, sending far out upon the wastes the boom of its spouting horn, as the rollers, caught in the hollow, explode through the crevice above like the bursting apart of the cliffs themselves; and, beyond it, trace that wall of iron, where a ship's timbers would crush and collapse in a shoreward gale like a vessel of paper. Ah, the wreckage these rocks have seen, and the drowning cries they have heard! What tales can be told in the winter firelight by these old island-men who have fought and conquered the storms of Maine for so many years!

For here, when the night roars round, and under The white sea lightens and leaps like fire,Acclaimed of storm and applauded in thunder, Sits death on the throne of his crowned desire.Yea, hardly the hand of the god might fashion, A seat more strong for his strength to take,For the might of his heart, and the pride of his passion To rejoice in the wars they make.

But no wrath of storm and wreak of whirlwind are in the air now. The sun glints on lace-like lines of spume, trailed across the verdant waves of Frenchman's bay, and in the sky the few soft clouds hardly change form or position. We never tire of the shore, each feature of which is plainly visible. The land fronts the ocean in an abrupt low wall, or bluff of rock, cracked and excavated into a hundred crannies half hidden by foliage, where the waves ripple and spout. This bluff is covered with trees of many kinds, while in some places hanging vines loop the rocks together with living cables of leaves and flowers. Now and then we get glimpses of a road, and on the southern shore saw many cottages; but here by Schooner Head, the tremendous wall of Newport mountain confronts us, terrible in its sternness, yet lovely in its warmth of color, above the steely sea,—a wall of bluish-gray granite, with satiny brown reflections under the noonday sunlight, thinly clothed with trees that lend a purplish-brown tone, seamed with cracks like curving strata-lines, and crossed by upright gashes and channels, where, after rain, the water trickles.

Next is passed the little hassock-shaped islet, the Thrumcap, by which time Bar Harbor is in sight, and everybody makes ready to go ashore; some with countenances as rueful as if they expected to be torn in pieces by the army of hackmen and hotel boys who crowd the wharf. But for us, at least, the bark of the tooter is worse than his bite, and handing our baggage checks to a man whose cap bears the name we want, we are soon rattling up the hill in a half-frantic procession of buckboards and dog-carts, phaetons, and road-wagons, which deploy at the top of the street, and go plunging away to the various hotels as if panic-stricken.

This main front street is set with fantastic shops, several of which are conducted by leading Boston dealers. The biggest hotels, also, are down in this democratic, level end of town; and their balconies are crowded with people in comfortably negligè attire, who gaze at us with welcoming curiosity as we hurry past. One of the biggest of all these hotels, standing on the front street and looking more like a huge factory than a hotel, save for its spacious portico and wide-open doors, is thus spoken of by Charles Dudley Warner: "—a sort of big board ing house, hesitating whether to be a hotel or not; a go-as-you-please, help-yourself sort of place, which is popular because it has its own character, and everybody drifts into it first or last. Some say it is anacquired taste; that people do not take to it at first. The big office is a sort of assembly-room, where hew arrivals are scanned and discovered, and it is unblushingly called the 'fish-pond' by the young ladies who daily angle there." We didn't wonder at his "first impression," as we dashed by and got a glimpse of "a bewildering number of

slim, pretty girls, nonchalant young fellows in lawn-tennis suits, and indefinite opportunities in the halls and parlors and wide piazzas for promenades and flirtations."

No hiding-place is this for mournful fate, No sorrow here is guest;These summer palaces are dedicate To pleasure and to rest.Here fashion plumes her brilliant, airy wing And brightens sea and shore,A rainbow-colored, transitory thing, Now here, now seen no more.Pleased with the brief, exotic revelry, Of this ephemeral train,In proud delight the city of thesea Assumes imperial reign.

The amount of room my clothes took in the two trunks that comprised our family baggage wasn't much; you must not expect much change in my personal appearance, therefore, throughout this tale. But Prue not only gets along on rather short commons, poor girl, in the matter of dress-appropriations, but is a wonderful manager in making a trunkful go a long way. I sometimes fancy she has a magical power, or juggles with her modest wardrobe in some way, so varied and fresh were the costumes which came out of that same old "Saratoga." Why, she would take a dress she'd worn ever so many times, and make it appear, even to me, new and lovely, through twisting some soft gauzy thing across her bosom, or by some other feminine trick of good taste.

Prue, therefore, held her own very well during these few days in the gay and semi-swell society to which we were introduced at one of the quieter hotels up toward the wooded hills, where some friends were stopping who had arranged for our coming.

But Baily! Look at him now, as on the next morning, early, he joins me on the piazza that overlooks the shining tract of Frenchman's bay! His head is crowned by a white hammock hat, his broad chest enveloped in a gray flannel shirt, with its collar loosely confined in a dull red scarf, well displayed by the open jacket; while his legs, encased in knee-breeches and 'cycling stockings, stand firm and straight in anew pair of lawn-tennis shoes. Prue comes to the door, but does not join me. Glancing over my shoulder, I break into a shout of irrepressible mirth. She doesn’t recognize our chum, and is hanging back because she thinks I am talking with a stranger! It is a long time before Baily hears the last of that, and he menaces revenge.

Yet he was right in his "get up" and I was right in my ordinary travelling suit, and Prue was sure to be right whatever she wore, for at Bar Harbor every man and woman does pretty much as he pleases in the matter of clothes, and sets before himself the having a good time, "regardless," as the first object of existence. Here again Mr. Warner has caught the sentiment in one of his happy word-sketches. "Except in some of the cottages" at Bar Harbor, he wrote in Harper's Magazine a short time ago, "it might be said that society was on a lark. With all the manners of the world and the freemasonry of fashionable life, it had elected to be unconventional. The young ladies liked to appear in nautical and lawn-tennis toilets, carried so far that one might refer to the 'cut of their jib,' and their minds were not much given to any elaborate dressing for evening. As to the young gentlemen, if there were any dress-coats on the island, they took pains not to display them, but delighted in appearing in the evening promenade, and even in the ball-room, in the nondescript suits that made them so conspicuous in the morning, the favorite being a dress of stripes, with striped jockey cap to match, that did not suggest the penitentiary uniform, because in state-prisons the stripes run round. This negligè costume was adhered to even in the ball-room. . . . . . But the principal occupation at Bar Harbor was not dancing. It was out-door exercise, incessant activity in driving, walking, boating,—rowing and sailing,—bowling, tennis, and flirtation. There was always an excursion somewhere, by land or sea, watermelon parties, races in the harbor in which the girls took part, drives in buckboards which they organized,—indeed, the canoe and the buckboard were in constant demand. In all this, there was a pleasing freedom—of course under proper chaperonage. And such delightful chaperons as they were, their business being to promote and not to hinder the intercourse of the sexes.

"This activity, this desire to row and walk and drive, and to become acquainted, was all due to the air. It has a peculiar quality. Even the skeptic has to admit this. It composes his nerves to sleep, it stimulates to unwonted exertion. The fanatics of the place declare that the fogs are not damp as at other resorts on the coast. Fashion can make even a fog dry. But the air is delicious. In this latitude, and by reason of the hills, the atmosphere is pure and elastic and stimulating, and it is softened by the presence of the sea."

We came to know (and hereby testify to) the solemn truth of all that, excepting perhaps the dry fogs, of which we heard much but saw nothing, though it was a good year for fogs.

"What shall we do first?" we ask, when we meet our friends at an early breakfast—no city hours for Mount Desert!

"Better go at once to the top of Green mountain, for it is clear today, and you are not sure of it tomorrow. That off your mind, the state of the weather will not give you any anxiety."

This is sound advice and we adopt it. As soon as possible a double-seated buckboard is brought around, and we start.

The road wound along the shore and ever the ridges where the finest of the cottages were perched among the rocks above us, or stood in wide laws down by the shore on the right, and the whole scene was lively and gay. The we entered the woods and rattled around to the left, under the flank of the mountains, where heights came into view through the trees at unexpected places, until, with the suddeness of a surprise, we were brought out at the end of a pond, stretching away down a narrow woodland valley into a deep horseshoe of mountains. This was Eagle lake, so christened by the painter, Church. On its right were The Twins or Bubbles—bold hills; ahead the craggy peak of Pemetic, and all alone the left the steeps of Great hill, White Cap and, towering over all, Green mountain.

How long the fair expanse, so beauteous still, Only the eagle knew;When to his eyrie on you frowning hill With eager cry he flew!

Here we alight, in company with a genial lot of sight-seers who have come from the hotels in plebeian barges, or from cottages in patrician phaetons and landaus, and scat ourselves under the awnings of a little steamboat which carries us across the lake to the foot of Green mountain. Baily sniffs at this luxurious way of making the ascent, and I agree with him so far as to say that if there were no other opportunity for ambitious climbing I should prefer to walk; but the railway is a great boon for those whose indolence or infirmity forbid the exertion, and for those whose time is short. There is, indeed, a wagon-road to the summit, built as far back as 1850, but it is no longer kept in repair, and serves only as a bridle-path.

The railroad is like that which later we saw upon Mt. Washington. "There is the same apparatus of cog-wheels and massive brakes, but unlike that road there is no high trestle work. Except for a few feet ever a brook, the road bed is made throughout its entire length of timber bolted directly on the solid rock." The distance is about one and a fifth miles, and the average rise, one foot in four and a half. The car hangs very low, and moves so slowly that a nimble person could easily step off or on. Nearly 10,060 persons ascend it annually, and accidents are almost impossible. Twenty-five years ago the summit was an important station for the Coast Survey, which had a building there. When, more recently, Mount Desert began to be haunted by city people and was disclosed to the world of fashion and summer travel, a small hospice was erected, where visitors spent the night; for two days were generally devoted to this excursion in those leisurely and remunerative days. This house was burned in 1884, whereupon a much more pretentious hotel overlooking Bar Harbor and conspicuous from almost everywhere, was erected in its place.

As we neared the top, and the world widened and widened around us on every side, the light-headed burst into a fusilade of Oh's! and
A leaf from sketch book, Mt. Desert. Ah's! but the more thoughtful grew silent. Our own group sought a certain knob of stone, and buttoning our coats, fer the wind was cool and strong, gave up our eyes to seeing and spoke but little at first.

Nowhere else on the eastern coast of America can such an outlook be taken. In front of us the limitless expanse of the gray sea sloped heavenward to a horizon as high as our station—a most curious effect!—and so distant that ships far this side were the merest dots of white. Eastward, this silent and flashing plain, melting from gray to a warmer tone, mingled with a coast almost as low and level as itself:

Every waveIs turned to tight and mimics the blue sky,As if the pecan were another heaven.

Northward, the whole sky-line was notched with a continuous sierra, mystical and blue in the distance—farthest and bluest, Katahdin. It lay straight north, and was distinct over the crinkled line that elsewhere limited vision,—"some fragment of a wall which anciently bounded the earth in that direction." No mountain in New England is so fancy-spurring as this lone, remote, winter-hoarding monarch of the great north woods. Westward, the Kennebec hills grew higher, as they neared the coast, and then were hidden by the lofty masses of Megunticook at the mouth of the Penobscot. In that filmy paling round the world was enclosed a gray-green area of tree-land, specked with a dozen or so white settlements at the head of sparkling inlets.

In this direction we overlooked a large area of our island; could pitch our sight straight down the brush-clothed flanks of our pedestal into the oblong surface of Eagle lake; could look over the heads of all the mountain-ridges crowded before us, to ocean and islands away toward Pemaquid: or, a little more to the westward, sweep that marvelous mingling of water and land, forest and fishing-ground, upland and salt-meadow, immovable rock and fluent tide, that form the Penobscot archipelago, and fill the scene between the tall dome of Blue Hill and the "titan-fronted blowy steeps" that mark far Isle au Haut.

And so we were brought around to the ocean again, which most often claimed our eyes, and longest held the imagination:—

I heard or seemed to hear the chiding seaSay, Pilgrim, why so late and slow to come?Am I not always here, thy summer home?Is not my voice thy music, morn and eve?My breath thy healthful climate in the heats,My touch thy antidote, my bay thy breath?Was ever building like my terraces?Was ever couch magnificent as mine?Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learnA little but suffices like a town.

The streets and prettily winding roads which stray among the rocks, groves, and half-hidden houses of the foothills, or curve along the shore are populous and gay with strollers in the long twilight while each hotel soon becomes a perfect beehive of pleasure-seekers,—a honey-comb of sweetness, as Baily once phrased it, refering to the girls, I presume, instead of to the moist sugar he happened to be stirring in the bottom of a tumbler.

Nor were we behindhand in patronage of Vanity Fair, which Prue rightly remarked to be much more fair than vain. Of "society," and the entertainments of those who own their own houses, modest or magnificent, I have no occasion to speak. They do at Mt. Desert what they are accustomed to do in New Orleans or New York, Baltimore or Boston. What interests me now is the hotel life, open to everybody. It is possible, I concluded, to amuse one's self, and be amused at Bar Harbor and thereabouts more variously and more rationally than at any place I know of, and one who docs not enjoy for a season the whirl of genial gayety that eddies round each hotel every evening—well he’s something extraordinary. Nor is it necessarily a very expensive treat; you can suit almost any purse capable of pleasure-buying at all. On the other hand, so bountiful in resources is this sea-girt rock that none are keener to praise her than these exceptional ones to whom the painter's brush, or the naturalist's outfit, or the paddle of a birch-canoe, is all sufficient for vacation joy.

As for Prue, she just revelled in innocent glee. One evening I recall particularly. Our friends had introduced to her a battalion of young fellows, and I took good care to keep quite out of sight, and let her disport herself once more in the warmth of admiration and compliment. It didn’t do her a bit of harm; and it left me to two or three very charming young misses who were kind enough to be oblivious to the gray hairs—there are not so very many!—and whose rippling badinage I enjoyed all the more because Baily had been entrapped by a couple of grandmothers who knew his mother or some of his aunts, and held him like dear old cuttle-fishes.

In the day time we went walking, riding and boating. Earlier in the season picnicing is much in vogue, especially at the time when watermelons are ripe. Of course champagne on ice, and a few other items help out the melons on the cloth spread under the greenwood tree. It is not a fact, however, that these parties are dull and silent affairs, simply because everybody keeps Mumm. One favorite picnicing ground is the shore of Jordan pond; but pitch up a stone almost anywhere and it will fall in a good place to consume watermelons, biscuit and champagne, at the elbow of a pretty girl.

Later, these alfresco feasts give way to pedestrian jaunts—long tramps with a bracing breeze in your face and a hard roadbed under your feet. Our party walked a good deal. We went to all the beaches and climbed all the hills in the neighborhood, getting a new point of view each day for the pretty picture of the clustered town with its many-gabled red roofs and azure bay, with the rugged Porcupines and the knolls of Gouldsborongh for a back-ground.

Nowhere in America are lovelier summer-houses than these hill-sides held, or that border the shore north of the landing. Some have been lodged among rocks, gnarled trees and natural vinery, in situations that were inaccessible to goats until roads had been cut. Others occupy the brows of hills commanding a wide prospect, or are tucked away in sheltered nooks where the owner can rest at home from beholding the splendor of the world and so preserve his appetite for nature. To many, the edge of the water seems best, so that the island is almost engirdled with a row of cottages, great and small.

Cottage at Bar Harbor.

But the word "cottage" here is as expansive as at Newport (Mt. Desert is, in fact, a combination of Newport and Saratoga, remodeled after its own original fashion), and scores of the houses in the outskirts of Bar Harbor, are not only ideals of architecture but very substantial and more costly than the average of city homes, even in wealthy quarters. Nowhere in the Union, I feel sure, can the equal, or similitude of the Bar Harbor heights be found, in combined architectural and natural picturesqueness. Nor is this an ephemeral thing, for every year adds many names to the catalogue of rich and cultivated men who are buying land and building houses here which they mean to occupy permanently.

These facts and many others as to the remarkable growth here were given to us by a gentleman who was one of the earliest to appreciate the excellence of the spot, and one who has not only profited most largely by his early investments, but has wisely guided the hurried improvements since effected. The rise in the value of real estate has been most extraordinary, A lot of forty acres, including a shore-front, was bought seven years ago for $2,500, which has since paid its owner $46,000. Land at Bar Harbor, is now cheap at the rate of $25,000 an acre, and for some a rate of $125,000 has been paid. Desirable cottages have appreciated in proportion; one small one, pointed out to us, having gone from $3,000 to $11,000 between 1882 and 1885. The only fault ever found with Bar Harbor was on the score of bad drainage; and this has now been remedied by a scientific system of sewerage.

The people of the whole island are thriving greatly under this new state of things, and exhibit their bettered circumstances not only in improved farming, but in better houses, better clothes, better schooling and more amusement, so that Mount Desert, from being one of the most forsaken, hardest-working and poorest-living corners of Yankee land, has become one of the most prosperous and easy.

One of our first excursions was along the southern shore, past Schooner Head, where we halted to hear the heavy rollers go booming into the Spouting Horn,

And see the elastic banners of the dulseRock softly, and the orange starfish creepAcross the laver.

Then on past Great Head to the cliffs of Otter, and its pretty cove held in the lap of the mountains; and, farther yet, to Northeast Harbor, where there is a large colony of summer houses, and an intellectual circle, represented by two or three university presidents, and a number of literary and professional men.

"To appreciate Great Head," says Samuel Drake, whose winter visit here is a notable contribution to the literature of the locality, "One must stand underneath it.…By dint of perseverance I at last stood upon the ledge beneath, that extends out like a platform for some distance toward deep water. It was the right stage of the tide. I looked up at the face of the cliff. It was bearded with icicles like the Genius of Winter. Along the upper edge appeared the interlacing roots of old trees grasping the scanty soil, like monster talons. Stunted birches, bent by storms, skirted its brow and at sea add to its height. From top to bottom the face of the cliff is a mass of hard granite, overhanging its foundations in impending ruin, shivered and splintered as if torn by some tremendous explosion."

This is the route of the "twenty-two mile drive," which from Northeast Harbor goes north along the flanks of the mountains far under some of their cliffs, yet hundreds of feet above Somes' sound, disclosing here and there fine seaward glimpses; and thence descends to the valleys at the head of the sound, where it turns eastward and winds among the hills and past Eagle lake back to Bar Harbor.

In a two day's drive, stopping for the night at Bass Harbor, the whole circuit of the island can be made comfortably, and new roads in all directions ave constantly being opened, or old ones repaired, so that the variety of walks and drives available in all directions has become very great; with Mrs. Martin’s excellent guide-book in hand no one need get bewildered. This authority cautious travellers not to omit Bass Harbor Head, since it affords a superb view, only surpassed by that from Green mountain.

Southwest Harbor bids fair to rival Bar Harbor in population and

Otter Cliff, Mt. Desert. attractiveness. Its neighborhood abounds in opportunities for walking, driving and sailing. Here is that wonderful natural sea-wall, piled up in a long windrow by the fury of the winter gales, of which so much has been written,—best of all, the poem by Frances L. Mace, with the firm faith of its last stanza:—

But while the tide shall come and go While tempests rage and sunbeams smile,Safe guarded by its giant wall Shall bloom the Mountain Isle.

Opportunities for sea-fishing are particularly good here, while trout are within reach at several inland ponds. A ferry makes frequent trips to the Cranberry islands, and occasionally, on fair days, a party sails out to the lone reef where Mount Desert light, built in 1830, rears its solitary beacon,—most distant of the light now visible from the top of Green mountain. This light-house occupies a mere summit of granite, towering just out of reach of the waves, and sometimes a boat cannot land there for weeks together.

All shores about and afar lie lonely, But lonelier are these than the heart of grief,These loose-linked rivets of rock, whence only Looks one low tower from the sheer main reef,With a blind wan face in the wild wan morning, With a live lit flame on its brows by night,That the lost may lose not its word's mute warning, And the blind by its grace have sight.

Around Southwest Harbor, too, centres the history of the island. No doubt Mount Desert was sighted, and perhaps examined, by the Viking sailors of Red Eric, for its heights can he seen sixty miles at sea. Hence the island early appears in American history. "It constituted a part of the ancient Acadia, for the possession of which there was a contest more or less sanguinary between England and France which lasted for more than a hundred and thirty years. The French founded their claim on the discovery of this coast by Verazzano in 1524, on the discovery and occupancy of Canada by Cartier in 1535, and on the grant to De Monts in 1603. The English claim was based upon the discovery of Cabot in 1497, upon the occupancy of Newfoundland by Gilbert in 1553, by the subsequent voyage and landings of Gosnold, Pring, and Weymouth and others, by the charter to the Popham colony in 1606, and the occupancy of the soil by that colony in 1607." In 1603, Henry IV. of France granted to Le Sieur de Monts this "Acadia," including all then known of what is now New England and the Maritime Provinces of Canada. In March 1604, DeMonts and Champlain sailed in two vessels for his new possessions, and after having discoverd the St. John river, made winter quarters on an island at the mouth of the St. Croix (see Chapter X.), sending Champlain on an exploring expedition along the further coast. After various adventures and misadventures Champlain cane to an island "very high and so cleft in places that at sea it appears as if seven or eight mountains were ranged side by side;” and this he named L'isle des Monts-deserts. Champlain made no extended stoppage; but a few years later accident sent white people to reside upon the island.

When Henry IV. died, and the Queen-mother reigned in France, Acadia was not forgotten. Her Majesty encouraged Madame de Guercheville to send a Jesuitical colony to be planted among the red heathen, and a well-equipped vessel was despatched under command of M. de la Soussaye, which carried the Jesuits Quantin and Du Thet. They were to stop at Port Royal (near Annapolis, N. B.—see Chapter X.) and take with them Fathers Biard and Masse, after which they were to proceed to Pentagoët. The plan thus far was carried out; but the expedition became enveloped in fogs, and, dreading the rocks ahead, put into a harbor on the coast of Mount Desert, where it was decided to establish their colony, and to give it, in gratitude, the name St. Sauveur.

Both date and place of this incident are uncertain. The former is probably 1613. Some historians suppose their first landing was to have been not far from Bar Harbor—perhaps in the cove near Schooner Head, whence the colonists afterward moved; while others hold that they landed at first where they remained. At any rate the Indians befriended them, guiding them to their own camps; and it seems tolerably certain that the colony was finally settled at Fernald's point, about two miles from Southwest Harbor.

That nothing better than two or three doubtful cellar-excavations remain to mark the traditional site is not strange, when one remembers the slight nature and brief existence of the ill-fated colony. For in 1613, Samuel Argal, one of the boldest (and worst) of the early navigators, who had struck out for himself a short cut to Virginia, and was now attached to the James River colony, came to the coast of Maine on a fishing-voyage. Here he learned from the Indians of the French at St. Sauveur and resolved to dislodge them. "It made no difference to Argal," as the author of Pen and Pencil at Mt. Desert has remarked, "that England and France were then at peace." The Jamestown colony which he represented, regarded all encroachments upon their territory as acts of hostility and assumed the right to keep off all intruders. Argal's approach greatly surprised the French, but haying a ship and a barque in the harbor, and a light entrenchment on shore, they did what they could to defend themselves. Argal attacked the place with musketry, and at the second discharge, Du Thet fell mortally wounded, and two young men named Lemoine and Neveau were drowned. The French were easily overpowered and fifteen of the colonists, including Fathers Biard and Quantin, were taken to Virginia.…This ends the story of the Jesuit occupancy of Mount Desert island, and whether they were here five years, or only a part of a single year, it matters little now. The ashes of Du Thet repose at Fernald's point which is the ancient St. Sauveur, and probably other relics of the French mission may be buried beneath the soil, but the description of the harbor, the admirable site for such a settlement, and the boiling springs in the vicinity are the only existing evidence by which we are able to locate the spot.

Fall softly, blossoms of the century tree! Long would we keep our isle’s historic fame;Teach thy blue waves to whisper, plaintively, St. Sauveur’s ancient name!

The French, however, still claimed sway, and in 1688 Mount Desert and its neighborhood were granted to a man named Cadillac, who, however, never visited his property. When Acadia was relinquished to England, Massachusetts gave Mount Desert island to Governor Bernard, as a reward for his services. But as he stayed with King George, whom he had served so well before, when the Revolution broke out, the state of Massachusetts confiscated this estate, of some 60,000 acres, but afterward restored half of it to his son, a resident of Bath, who had become a stanch Whig. "Meantime the claim of Cadillac was revived in the person of Mons. Bartholomew Gregoire, and his wife Marta Theresa, who was the great-granddaughter of the original grantee. It was an old and doubtless obsolete claim, but at, and immediately after the close of the Revolutionary war, the government of Massachusetts was especially well disposed toward France and her citizens, and so, in 1787, the Great and General Court first naturalized the petitioners, and then gave them a quit-claim deed of the interest held by Massachusetts in the island, it being one half of it, reserving to actual settlers lots of one hundred acres each. The petitioners settled here, and Theresa Gregoire died at Hull's cove, on the spot now occupied by the large brick mansion house, in 1810. Many of the settlers on the island hold title deeds based upon this grant."

No settler had been safe along this coast, however, until after the French had been driven out, and the Indian wars put at an end; and the first man to make his home on the island was Abraham Somes, jr., who belonged to an old Gloucester (Mass.} family, and came here with: his family in a Chebacco boat, which he anchored at the head of the sound that now bears his name, and inhabited during the winter of 1762-3. Thus originated Somesville, in the old staging times an important place, but now devoted to entertaining summer boarders.

Settlers multiplied, fishing, ship-building and other sea-faring industries occupying all the young and sturdy men. Not a Tory could be found in the island when the Revolution began, and no people dared and suffered more for liberty than did these.

Such are hints, here and there, of what we saw and did, or wanted to see or do, at Mount Desert. We walked and we climbed; we rowed and we rode; we danced and we loafed. Baily made diligent enquiry about real estate and bachelor quarters, and picked himself out a place where he proposes next year to begin along residence. I feel more confidence in this resolution than any I have heard him utter yet, and I am tempted to go in with him, for I have grown strong and refreshed to a most surprising degree already. As for Prue, she has seemed in perfect harmony with the glorious island, and the wan look in her face has given place to that alert air and glowing color which is her natural heritage:—

For she and the clouds and the breezes were one,And the hills and the sea had conspired with the sun,To charm and bewilder all men with the graceThey combined and conferred on her wonderful face.