^' -'-'<-- '* o^^o_.<',. v'*°'.^"'..-'."" o ,.1^ •• /XT'. , 'T r r\ .til. o ^U\\vo:?> ■> K > •^v^. G^ .V^^ 4 o , U ' ■Cr' 'bV bV^ '^^ o"* ° -^ 'Mm.''- ^^K^^ ,%f^if*o ^^ ,s^ ^i % '" J^ .-- -^-^ '"'° ainetl away his loneliness and fatigue, the ma- rooned Ingram, spent with hunger and harassed by dangers seen and unseen, who, wrapped in the silences of the Penobscot woods, saw glorious visions. Here, too, was the theatre of hinnan passion where Charles of Estienne and D'Aulnay inaugurated a play of sanguinary hate, a rough-set stage above the yellow sands of Pentagoet, across which strode in turn priest and puritan. Here, too, was the Ste. Famille of L'Au- vergat, the wilderness seignory of the elder St. Castin, the first baron of the untutored Tarratine. Eastward still is where the shadow of the Cross was first paintetl by the sun across the sands of Sieur de Champlain's famous "Isle des Monts Deserts." A famous country, indeed! A land of pictured skies, of limpid waters, of lovely homes, and gracious hospitalities. Happy is that one whose lines are drawn within the infinite charm of dear old Maine, — the soughing song of the winils through her pines; the rhythmic lapping of the tides along her picturesque shores; the eternal lesson of her restless waters where — with the coming of every day and night — sun, moon, and stars write in litpiid glory the mystery of th(^ ages. Blessed is the man whose character lias been nur- tured in the cradle of her hills and valleys, whose rugged lines and full-rounded contours have found like expression in his native strength and grace; his clear integrity and wide-eyed charity; his notable magnanimity and unflinching courage; his sturdy EPISTLE DEDICATORY 17 manhood and his great heart,— the golden heart of her towering pines. My friend, kindly accept this foreword to '' The Land of St. Castin" as the author's acknowledgment of the gracious suggestion and earnest word of commenda- tion you gave me to your friends, who as well lent me their kindly thought to make possible the goal of my ambition. You lent me what you have ever been lending others; and doubly cheering is the thought that the good thus done in my behalf, being faithfully ajiplied, may, like the widening circles of the pebble dropped into the stream, pass out to the readers of these romances with combined and multiplied effect, till its final reach is beyond our comprehension or our hope. 1 am most sincerely, PREFACE PREFACE T has always sociiiccl to the wri- er as if the preface were a sujjerfluous preliniinaiy, one of those literary extravagances of paper, ideas, and pos- sibly of I'liergy, a conven- tion ai)purtenant to the society of books, exacted by the critic and the book- lover alike — but to what purpose? No author but would do without it if he could. One does not always feel like doing literary acrobatics, for that is some- thing to be done gracefully. 21 22 PREFACE But what is a preface other than a white feather from the pkimage of the farm chanticleer with which the housewife tests the cjuaUty of the lye (this word is readily susceptible of another spelling) in the soap- making days! It may Ije a tuning-fork which one lightly taps against one's anticipations, as if to sound the key to which the author has pitched his compo- sition. I prefer, however, to regard it as a boutonniere which the author has pinned lovingly, solicitously, to the lapel of his volume, with a hope to disarm, in a degree, the hypercritical individual who is never satisfied with his ink-horn until he has dropi)ed a lump of jjotash into it so he may color the nib of his j)en with its violet flame, and, as well, to win a glance of pleased appreciation. The author is like a guest whose foot for a moment presses the inner thresh- old, who, after a j^leasant greeting from those who know him best, is merged into the throng which has preceded him. Happy is he, indeed, if his hostess kindly suggests: "You nuist not hurry away, my friend — we nuist have a talk over the old times." So he waits patiently, to be remembered and sought out later, for all the multiplicity of gentle anxieties that come with the entertaining of many guests; or, to be forgotten. I have somewhat more to write of the times so old that the memory of man goeth not back to even their latter days, and of a people whose ways were cast in a rude mould, and whose burial-places Nature has long since obliterated. Let me play the host with PREFACE 23 the hope, dear reader, that you will accept my hospi- tality for a space, and with the sincere desire that you may find in my company some measure of enter- tainment, inasmuch as I am altogether charmed and fascinated by my own recall of the once realities that gave to the country of the ancient Penobscot the romance of St. Castin. whose tide-l)uffeted waters still echo to the paddle of the al^origine, and whose hoary hemlocks still exhale the odorous smokes of the Tarratine. THE AUTHOR. W^ TTTrr A P^: I. NoiUMBEGUA. II. Sainte Croix. III. I'entagoet. I\'. The Pahi.sh of Sainte Famille. V. L'Isle des Monts Deserts. DRAWINGS Land of St. Castin (Half-title) Frontispiece, Frazer's Head ] 'i(/nette, Title-page Headband, Dedicatory Epistle \'A Initial i:^ Tailpiece 17 Headband, Preface 21 Initial 21 Tailpiece 2'A Points of Vieiv 25 Headband, Drawings . 29 Tailpiece 33 Prelude 37 Tailpiece 39 29 30 DRAWINGS PAGE Headband 43 Initial 43 Map 44 Map 47 Autographs, Champlain and LoTour 52 Map, Nancy Globe 53 The Reach 56 Grand Manan 59 On the Penobscot River 62 Cape Porcupine 64 Trossachs of Camden 66 Isle au Haul 68 Mt. Katahdin 72 Old Maid and Sea Gull Cliff, Southern Head, Grand Manan 75 St. Anns Bay, Cape Breton 77 Indian Beach, Grand Manan SO Oldest House on Prince Edward's Island .... 82 Trossachs of Camden 90 Nortlicrn Head, Grand Manan 95 Alongshore, Isle an Haul 99 Great Harbor, Cape Breton 103 Tailpiece 104 Headband 107 Initial • ■ 107 Old Wharf, Passamaquoddy Bay 110 Trossachs of Camden 113 Map 114 Map 116 Annapolis Bay, Royal 119 Ba>>' ]»i-icst]y intrigue; gi-im with the barbarities and treachei'ies. the hates, of a sav- age race; and through it all shines Love's seductive 4:} 44 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN romance, not unlike the filtering rays of the sunnner sun that make luminous the feathery foliage of its primeval hemlocks, to write a cheerful prophecy on the forest-floors in mesh of checkered shade. Its traditions begin with the coming of the observ- ant Champlain. ^>rrazzano and the Cabots had un- witting passed the Bashaba's royal domain, described BRAS D OR, CAPE BRETON by John Rut as a "vast and opulent region," whose voyage has been cited as the earliest having any connection with any territorial portion of the No- rumbegua about which so many fables were writ- ten. This was in 1527, but on a map of a date two years later, ascribed to Verrazzano, the name '^Aran- bega" appears, by which it was intended to locate the coasts of Nova Scotia. Rut's voyage is shrouded in much obscurity, though Purchas gives the names of the two ships. There is only the letter of Rut to Henry VIII. on his return, with the letter of the Italian Albert de Prato, a canon of St. Paul's, THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 45 London, to the Cardinal Wolsey. According to the chronicles of Grafton and Hall, these ships were sent out by the king, May 20, 1527. Rut's ship was the Mary of Guilford. The other was the Sampson, which was supposed to have been lost in a storm along the Norumbega coast, the northeastern ex- tremity of which was Cape Breton. Rut was sup- posed to have made some explorations of the country. Hakluyt alleges the fact that Rut searched ''the state of those unknown regions." It was in 1539 that Xorumbega caught the glory of the western sun, when the Dieppe cai)tain wrote a narrative in which the country from Breton to P'lorida was painted in glowing colors; and three years later the River of Norumbega (Penol)scot) was de- scribed on Jean Alfonse Gastaldi's map. Ramusio narrows the territorial limits from Breton to the par- allel of New Jersey. On Lok's map (1582) Norum- bega appears as an island, with the Penobscot as its southern boundary. In 1620 Captain John Smith bounds Norumbega on the south by \'irginia, while Champlain limits it to the Province of Maine: and it was up the great river of the Panawanskek and around the site of old Pentagoet that he sought for the fabled capital in the early fall of 1()()4. It was a magnificent dream, that lingered in the brain of Heylin as late as 1669,— a city of houses upheld by pillars of silver and crystal, and of which Francis I. made Roberval the patentee and, according to Charlevoix, Lord of Norumbega, a freak of credulity that .shook with jolly laughter the sides of Marc Lescarbot, who had 46 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN been able, of all this towered city, to find only a few huts of bark. The first Englishman here who can be located with any certainty is the original promoter of ancient Norumbega, David Ingram. His story was one of hardship, having been marooned by Captain John Hawkins in October of 1568 on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, by reason of lack of ship supplies. There were about a hundred of these sailors set ashore when Hawkins sailed away. Whither they drifted, or what became of them, is unknown, with the exception of Ingram and two companions. Ingram, aware of the fact that the waters of northern America were fre- quented for fish, and that, in that direction, he was more than likely to come across his country-people, and having a wholesome fear of the Spaniards, by whom the country where Hawkins dropped him was infested, turned to the trails tending in that course. What became of his "twentie" companions is not recorded, but Ingram, Brown, and Twid kept to the coast, living on roots, or now and then supping with the friendly savage, to cross Massachusetts into Maine. So Ingram kept on until he reached the Penob- scot River. It was here he, like John of Patmos, saw unrolled before his wondering gaze a rich and splendid city, populous and of wide extent, whose constructive material was silver and precious stones, and whose metalled roofs glistened in the sun like molten gold. The miracle was so complete that he was able to traverse its length, where he was amazed at the fine and costly peltries which the people used for mats THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 47 and beds. Poor Ingram, after his experiences for weeks amid the lonely wilds of an apparently inter- minable and untrodden wilderness, his brain as weary and worn as were his feet with their interminable plodding, was wonderfully impressed with the vil- lage of the Indian Bashaba, which he describes as little less than a mile in length, for it was probably there that he was able to rest himself and to i)artake CoasV op A\auu'- of the savage hospitality oi the natives, to hnd the sum of his immediate happiness complete. Later he pressed on to the St. John's River, and there he found the Gargarine, whose master was Captain Champagne, with whom he sailed away for sunny France, to find his way across the Channel. That he made the jour- ney from the Gulf to St. John's River is not to be doubted, as phenomenal as it may seem, and the wondering Londoners were not likely to soon tire of 48 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN his Miinchausen-like stories. The more stories he told, the more fertile grew his imagination, the wider his vocabulary, and marvel crowded the heels of other marvels. Greatest of all was the magnificent city to which he held the keys for a little, which he located in the deeps of the Penobscot woods, through which ran a mighty river where pearls were to be had for the fishing. It was a popular tale, and it had to be oft repeated. It was infectious, for others had heard of it, and corroborated Ingram, as if they hoped to share with the sailor wizard something of his growing cel- ebrity. He had a train of gaping listeners at his heels, and for a time he held his audience fairly well, until his embellishments had become so profuse that they were stamped by the most credulous as figments of a disordered brain, which was a sensible solution of the wondrous tale. Ingram's stories were not without their use. The public attention was attracted to the strange country, and over their mugs of good brown ale the good folk talked and drank and drank and talked until the tavern-keeper was fain to rake up his fire and get to bed. Cupidity was at the bottom of it all. It had the glamour of a get-rich-quick-and-easy scheme, some germs of which, it may truthfully be said, still linger in the air one breathes. Vessels were fitted out and men sailed away to look for themselves upon the fabled scene. One of these expeditions was that of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, 1578, of which Dee's Diary has a mention under the date of August 5, 1578: " Mr. Raynolds, of Bridewell, took his leave of me as THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 49 he passed toward Dartmouth to go with Sir Umfrey Gilbert towards Hochelaga." Hochelaga was an Indian village near the site of Montreal, discovered by Cartier in 1535, which had disappeared before a Champlain iiiadc his explorations up tiie St. Law- rence: but when Sir Humphrey made his voyage its generic application inckuled the lands now comprising the Canadas. It is not known that he sailed so far south as the Penobscot. At least, there is no mention of it. In 1579 a "little ftrigate" sailed away from Eng- lish Dartmouth under Simon Ferdinando. The en- 50 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN terprise was promoted by Sir Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State. Three months later Ferchnanclo had returned. It was the first recorded Enghsh ex- pedition to Norumbega. It is uncertain as to what part of the Norumbega country he made his way, but it was no doubt in the vicinity of the Penobscot. No account is given as to the results of the voyage. A year later, however, John Walker, the first English- man to part the waters of the Penobscot, made the voyage in the service of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. He sailed into the river of Norumbega, explored its shores, and made the acc^uaintance of the natives, to cor- roborate Allefonsce and Ingram as to its furs, which were abundant and of great richness. He found a silver-mine from which one writer avers considerable gold and silver has been taken, but that could not have been in Maine. He engaged in the fur trade, loaded his ship, and then set sail for France, where he disposed of his cargo at a round price, getting as much as forty shillings each for the " hides'' he had secured of the natives. He would have found as excellent a market in England as in France; but, like the later James Rosier, he perhaps did not care to take the English public into his confidence, no doubt intend- ing to return to the region of the Penobscot for further commodities of a similar nature. Much secrecy was practised in those days, as all such ventures from English ports were of a private character and de- pended upon individual resources for their prosecu- tion. Three years later, 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 51 sailed for Xcwfoundland, of wliicli he took possession for the Crown, erecting a pillar to which was attached a metal plate, and from whence he set sail for No- rumbega. Near Sable Island he ran into a heavy gale which swamped his best and largest ship, the Ad- miral. Dismayed by his loss, which carried with it most of his provisions, he turned his prow to the eastward. The sails of his " little ffrigate " filled away, and he had sighted the Azores when another storm broke over him, and in its fury, as it drove him through the black night, he tried to quiet his sailors by telling them that it was as near to Heaven by sea as by land, which was true; for, a little after, his bin- nacle lamp was l)Iown, and his shiji went down — possibly the same craft which had safely taken Fer- dinando on his previous voyage. Sir Humjjhrey had been in his ocean grave ten years w^hen Richard Strong made the voyage to Cape Breton, searching the coast for seal, by which he attained some familiarity with the contour of the Maine shores, its bays, rivers, and inlets, and possibly made his way up the Penobscot, though he does not mention that river particulai-ly. He does, however, say that he saw people whom he "judged to be Chris- tians'' sailing boats to the southwest of Cape Breton. Such was not an unconunon sight from that time down, as subsequent English navigators make men- tion of the same ha})penings, which, to them, were matters of surprise. Shallops with sails were in use on the coast of Maine, and the natives understood their management. Such was Gosnold's experience 52 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN off the shores of York, where the shallop was of Basque make and the Indians made him a chalk-sketch of the coast. It is likely that many a voyage of which no rec- ord is to be had was made to this new country ; but to Gosnold has been credited the taking of the di- rect route, in which Verrazzano had certainly, and Walker had possibly, preceded him. It meant a shortening of the voyage by a thousand miles. Gos- nold did not touch at the Penobscot, for his first land- fall was about Casco Bay, to sail down across Massa- chusetts Bay, and from Cuttyhunk he shaped his course straight to South Hampton. Bring, 1603, sailed the same course as Gosnold; and it remained for a Frenchman, Pierre du Guast (Sieur de Monts), and his annalist, Samuel de Champlain, to afford some definite knowledge of the Penobscot waters. This expedition of the French was not a trading ex- pedition, but behind it lay the definite purpose of colonization. The French had been attracted to Norumbega by the relations that had floated over from England, and perhaps the inclination had been strengthened by the cargo of furs brought into one of THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 53 their ports by Walker. Making their landfall east of Cape Sable, they skirted the coast to the St. Croix, up which river they kept their way, to drop anchor oppo- site Calais, pitching their camp on an island to which they gave the name of St. Croix. De Monts was, however, not the first Frenchman to come over to these strange shores of Xonimbega, for Jean Alfonce, a pilot of Roberval's, was here in 1542, and he left the memoranda of his discoveries, from which, in 1559, De St. Gelais wrote his " Voyages Aven- tureux d' Alfonce Xaintongeois," which has the story of a southward coasting expedition to '' une haye jusques par les 42 degres, entre la Xoromhegue et la Flenride." This was the expedition of 1543, when he returned to France with Cartier. Roberval, like all navigators of the time, was ever in search of a North- west Passage. This was Alfonce's errand. The coun- 54 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN try he saw to the southward he beheved to be Asia. Hakhiyt mentions this voyage across Massachusetts Bay, and Alfonce has l^een declared to be the discov- erer of that wide expanse of water. It is a curious coincidence that Alfonce and Champlain came from the same Pyrenean province. The new world at that time did not attract much attention in France, and it has been said that Frenchmen had little, if any, knowledge of the credulities of Hakluyt, or the more curious work of Purchas. A history of France was issued at Amsterdam in 1720 under the auspices of the Jesuits, and written by Father Daniel, in which a single mention of the settlements of New France is made. One finds there the names of Cartier, Rober- val, Champlain, and that is all ; although over a hun- dred years had elapsed since the founding of Port Royal, and a full century had gone since the estalj- lishment of the Jesuit missions at Montreal, along the Chaudiere, and amid the Norridgewock wilderness in Maine. It was not for lack of space, for the work was comprised in six huge volumes. It is possibly charge- able to lack of data, which suggests ignorance. The Gulf of Maine is one of the four great gulfs on the east coast of North America. On the north is the great hammer-head of Nova Scotia, while on the south is the crooked out-reaching arm of Cape Cod. The history of the early discoveries may be said to have begun with this broad sheet of water, undigni- fied by a name until the Spanish navigators desig- nated it as the " Arcipelago de Tramontana " (North- ern Archipelago), to afterward distinguish it by the THE LAXD OF ST. CASTIX 55 name of its fii-st oxploror. Gomez. It was known to the ancient Freneli fishermen as the " Sea of Norum- begua," and the name attached to the country that stretched the length of its indented shores. The Eng- lish who colonized the Massachusetts shores after their fashion gave to it the name of ''Massachusetts Bay," but the United States Coast Survey charts it as the "Gulf of Maine." Cape Sable and Capv Cod are its great door-posts, two hundred and thirty miles from lintel to lintel, within which base line, one hundred and twenty miles landward, are the strings of em- erald islands that hug the sinuous coast-line from Passamafiuoddy to Cape Ann, which have l)een trans- formetl into the incomparable summer resorts of the western continent. It was the "bohia baya" of the Spanish, and the " Lo Bayo Francoise" of the French at its northern extremity, now known as the Bay of Fundy, and Kohl describes its configuration as " very much like the figure of a colossal turnip with a broad head, a small body, and two thin roots." To the reader it is the "Sea of Xorumbega." Off against these fog-ridden waters lay the mystic coun- try, ragged with imiumeraljle lieatUands, spits, reefs, somnolent creeks and inlets, and wide rivers, flanked by innumerable islands that stretch from the St. Croix to the southern headland of Casco Bay, snooded with verdurous woods, or bare under the lashings of the sea. They give to the Maine coast its alto-rilievo char- acteristics: and here at the mouth of the Penobscot, the most striking bay of all in its wide approach, are the same isles which Gomez saw and to which he gave 56 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN the name " baya fer?nosa' (beautiful bay). It was rightly named, and its deep waters, its easy approach, its sheltered situations, its clustered islets from Edge- moggin Reach and Burnt Coat on the east to St. George's on the west entitled it to the suggestive "Rio Grande,'' "Rio hermoso/' of the Spanish ex- plorer, which later became the " Rio de Gomez." Here was the water-way which appeared on the most an- "^?fL/?fa;cFT^ cient maps as the largest river on this then strange coast, — the canoe-trail of the Indians as they went to or from the city of fabulous beauties, which may not have been far from the little fort settlement of the French which Thevet saw, and which was there prior to 1555. Thevet's veracity has been doubted, but his description is clear and such as a traveller to many and strange countries would be likely to make. He says: ''Having left La Florida (the entire coast south of the Gulf of Maine) on the left hand, with all its islands, gulfs, and capes, a river presents itself, which is one of the finest rivers in the whole world. THE LAXD OF ST. CAST IN 57 which wc call ' Noriinibegue/ and the aborigines, ' Agoncy,' and which is marked on some marine maps as the Grand River (Rio Grande, — Penobscot Bay). Several other beautiful rivers enter into it; and upon its banks the French formerly erected a little fort about ten or twelve leagues from its mouth, and which was surrounded by fresh water, and this place was named the Fort of Norumbegue. "Some pilots would make me believe, that this country (Norumbegue) is the proper country of Can- ada. But I told them that this was far from the truth, since this country lies in 4.3° N., and that of Canada in 50 or 52°. Before you enter the said river appears an island (Fox Island) surrounded by eight very small islets, which are near the country of the green moun- tains (Camden Hills, possibly) and to the Cape of the islets (the cabo de muchas islat^ of the earlier maps). From there you sail all along unto the mouth of the river, which is dangerous from the great number of thick and high rocks; and its entrance is wonderfully large. About three leagues into the river, an island presents itself to you, that may have four leagues in circumference (Islesboro), inhabited only by some fishermen and birds of different .sorts, which island they call ' Aiayascon,' because it has the form of a man's arm, which they call so. Its greatest length is from north to south. It would be very easy to plant on this i.sland, and build a fortress on it to keep in check the whole surrounding country. " Having landed and put our feet on the adjacent country, we perceived a great mass of people com- 58 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN ing down ui)on us from all sides in such numbers, that you might have supposed them to have been a flight of starlings. . . . And all this people was clothed in skins of wild animals, which they call 'Rabatatz.' Now considering their aspect and man- ner of proceeding, we mistrusted them, and went on board our vessel. But they, perceiving our fear, lifted their hands into the air, making signs that we should not mistrust them; and for making us still more sure, they sent to our vessel some of their principal men, which brought us provisions. In recompense of this, we gave them a few trinkets of a low price, by which they were highly pleased. " The next morning I, with some others, was com- missioned to meet them, and to know whether they would be inclined to assist us with more victuals, of which we were very much in need. But having en- tered into the house, w^hich they call 'Canociue,' of a certain little king of theirs, which called himself 'Peramich,' we saw several killed animals hanging on the beams of the said house, w^hich he had pre- pared (as he assured us) to send to us. This chief gave us a very hearty welcome, and to show us his affec- tion, he ordered to kindle a fire, which they call 'Azista,' on which the meat was to be put and fish, to be roasted. Upon this, some rogues came in to bring to the king the heads of six men which they had taken in war and massacre, w^hich terrified us, fear- ing that they might treat us in the same w^ay. But toward evening we secretly retired to our ship with- out bidding good-bye to our host. At this he was very THE LAND OF ST. CAST IX 59 much irritated, and came to us the next morning ac- companied by three of his children, showing a mourn- ful countenance, because he thought we had been dissatisfied witii him; and he said in his language: uRAND MANAN 'Cazigno, Cazigno Casnouy danga addagriu' (Let us go, let us go on land, my friend and brother) ; 'Coaquoca Ame Couascon Kazaconny ' (come to drink and to eat, what we have); 'Area somioppach Quen- chia dangua ysmay assomaka' (we assure you upon oath by heaven, earth, moon, and stars, that you shall not fare worse than our own persons). 60 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN " Seeing the good affection and will of this old man, some twenty of us went again on land, and every one of us with his arms; and then we went to his lodgings, where we were treated, and presented with what he possessed. And meanwhUe great numbers of people arrived, caressing us and offering themselves to give us pleasure, saying that they were our friends. Late in the evening, when we were willing to retire and to take leave of the company with actions of gratitude, they would not give us leave. Men, women, children, all entreated us zealously to stay with them, crying out these words: 'Cazigno agnyda hoa' (my friends do not start from here ; you shall sleep this night with us). But they could not harrangue so well as to per- suade us to sleep with them. And so we retired to our vessel; and having remained in this place five full days, we WTighed anchor, parting from them with a marvellous contentment of both sides, and went out to the open sea." Kohl accepts this relation and classes it with that of Gomez and Ribero, 1525 and 1529, respectively. What strikes one as most important in this story of a visit to the River of Norumbega is the placing here of a fort and a settlement of the French before 1556. If the statement is to be believed, here then, upon the upper tide-waters of the Penobscot, instead of upon the little island off Calais, was the first Euro- pean foothold. It may have been a summer station for those who came into the Penobscot to fish, and the fort nothing more than a barrier of palisadoes of the rudest character; but were it nothing more THE LAND OF ST. CA;STIX 61 than these, a few huts and a slender wall of defense for only temporary use, the fact is of value, as estab- lishing a greater familiarity with these waters than has heretofore been accorded them. Gomez is credited with having explored the Pe- nobscot very minutely, and he is thought to have given it the name of "Deer River" by reason of the abundance of the deer he saw here. Kohl makes the Xorse Thorwald the earliest nav- igator of the Gulf of Maine, followed later down this olden coast in their search for the humble crosses that marked the grave of the adventurer by Thor- finn and Gudrida, the beginning of the thread of the romance that has ever since held these serrated shores within its silken thrall. Its sj)inning begun with the wild Norse sagas of Thorwakls battle with the Skrel- lings (aborigines), where Thorwald got an arrow un- der his arm and his death-blow, and the wooing of his widow, the fair-haired Gudrida, by Thorfinn, whose strange honeymoon was a far pilgrimage to V'inland and the crosses Gudrida knew would be placed at the head of his grave, which the annalists say might have been upon any one of the headlands from the Piscataqua to the Charles; for this first con- flict with the savages is supposed to have taken place not far from the southern boundary of Maine. Like a spider dropping from the ceiling beyond one's reach, so lengthens out the thread upon which saga after saga, romance after romance, and tradi- tion upon tradition is suspended; of which, perhaps that of the El Dorado of the Penobscot is the most 62 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN fascinating and elusive, but which is certainly lo- cated on the beautiful map made by order of Francis I. for the dauphin, afterward Henry II. If no one ever saw it elsewhere, here it is, to be sure, its castel- lated towers showing fair against the landscape. The ON THE PENOBSCOT RIVER mysterious city is revealed again upon Mercator's Map, 1569. It is in 1524 that one gets his first glimpse of the No- rumbega coast — in fact, it is the first description of the coast at all. For that reason it is worthy of a place here, though one must needs take it second-hand, as it is a translation of a letter in Ramusio, as re- corded by Hakluyt in his "Voyages." The original was from the hand of the Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano, who sailed from Brittany in the Dauphine, THE LAXD OF ST. CASTIN G3 provisioned for an eight months' cruise. He had turned the Shipnose of the Norsemen (Cape Cod), and he writes: "Trending afterwards to the north, we found another hmd. high, full of thicke woods, the trees there of firri's, cipresses and such like as are wont to grow in cold Countreys. The people differ much from the other, and looke how much the former seemed to be curteous and gentle, so much were these full of rudenesse anel ill manners, and so barbarous, that by no signes that ever we could make would we have any kind of traffic with them. They cloth themselves with ]-ieares skinnes and Luzernes and Scales and other beastes skinnes. Their food, as farre as we could pcrceve, reparing often to their dwellings, we suppose to be by hunting and fishing, and of certaine fruits, which are a kind of roots, which the earth yeeldeth of her own accord. They have no graine, neither saw we any kind of signe of tillage, neither is the land, for the barrenesse thereof, apt to bcare fruit or seed. " If at any time we desired by exchange to have any of their commodities, they used to come to the seashore upon certaine craggy rocks, and we stand- ing in our boats, they let down with a ro|)e what it pleased them to give us, crying continually that we should not approaache to the land, demanding im- mediately the exchange, taking nothing but knives, fishhookes, and tooles to cut withall, neither did they make any account of our courtesie. And when we had nothing left to exchange with them, when we 64 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN departed from them, the people showed all signes of discourtesie and disdaine, as were possible for any creature to invent. We were in despight of them two or three leagues within the land, being in num- ^%^ bertwenty-five armed men of us. And when we went on shore they shot at us with their bowes, making great outcries, and afterwards fled to the woods. " We found not in this land anything notable or of importance saving very great woods and certaine hills; they may have some mineral matter in them, because we saw many of them have headstones of Copper hanging at their eares. We departed from thence, keeping our course north-east along the coast, which WT found more pleasandt champion and with- out woods, with high mountains within the land." [These were undoubtedly the White Mountains, often THE LAND OF ST. CASTIX 65 observed by the ancient navigators on the Gulf of Maine between the 8aco River and Monhegan.] " Con- tinuing directly along the coast for the space of fifty leagues, we discovered thirty-two islands, lying all neere the land, being small and pleasant to the view, high, and having many turnings and windings be- tweene them, making many fair harl)oroughs and channels as they do in the gulfe of \'enice, in Sclavo- nia and Dal mat ia. We had no knowledge or acquaint- ance with the i)e()i)le: we suppose they are of the suTue manners and nature as the others are. Sayling Xorth-east for the space of one hundred and fiftie leagues, we approached the land that in times jiast was discovered by the Britons, which is in fiftie de- grees. Having now spent all our provisions and vic- tuals, and having discovered about seven hundred leagues and more of new C'ountreys, and being fur- nished with water and wootl, we concluded to retui'ue into France." It is evident from ^'errazzano that these savages along the coast of the Gulf of Maine had some ac- fiuaintance with the European barter, for that was all the commerce possible; for he says, while the sav- ages of the south did " not care at all for steeleor yron tools," those at the north would have nothing " but knives, fish-hooks and whatever would cut.' It is probable that the navigators here before ^'errazzano had made kidnapping incursions into the country, which is sufficient reason for their hostility. After all, this story of \'errazzano's may be, of ro- mance, "the purest ray serene," 66 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN if Mr. Murphy's contention is to be accepted, for lie declares the identity of Verrazzano with Juan Florin, the pirate, to be well established; and this teapot tempest has all arisen over "A mightie large olde mappe in parchemente, made as yt shoulde seme by Verarsanus. . . . nowe in the custodie of Mr. Michael Locke." It seems to be a case of " Who shall deoide, when doctors disagree, And .soundest casuists doubt, like j'ou and me?" TROSSACHS OF CAMDEN Be that as it may, whether ^"errazzano ever looked upon the rare beauty of the picture spread out from Quoddy Head to the Piscataqua, topped by the glis- tening peaks of New Hampshire's White Hills, or, crossing the Bay of the Penobscot, looked out upon the Trossachs of the Camden country, may be in doubt; but all this glorious gallery of Nature's choic- est works, painted with the pigments of a New Eng- land autumn, and every one hung ''to the line," w^as THE LAXD OF ST. CASTIX 67 hero when Dii Monts and Champlain sailed down as far as Monhcgan in tiie Indian Summer of 1604. As one looks out over the wildness of the shore as the morning sun breaks full on jjictured "wave and rock. Bathed in the autumnal sunshine, stirred At intervals by breeze aiul bird. And wearing all the hues which glow In heaven's own pure and perfect bow, That glorious picture of the air. Which summer's light-robeil .ingel forms On the ilark ground of fading storms. With pencil dipped in sunbeams there," one is lookino; with Champlain's vision. These were all here in his day. .Matinicus lies off the mouth of the hay to take the brunt of the fireat l)lue .sea, while landward .slumix-rs an ('([ually interminable wilder- ness where the rounded hills lift their untlulating verdinc. to fade away into a horizon as deeply blue as the furthest marge of the ocean; while, along the shores of the great river, the sun droj)s down on the crowtled leaves, "Each colored like a topaz gem; And the tall maple wears with them The coronal which the autumn gives," as far as the eye can linui the wide and unshorn river's brim; and drowsing in the hazy halo "Penobscot's clustered wipvams lay, And gently from that Indian town The verdant hillside slopes adown To where the sparkling waters play Upon the yellow .sands below; 68 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN And shooting round the winding shores Of narrow capes and isles which He Skimbering to ocean's lullaby, With birchen boat and glancing oars, The red men to their fishing go; " but as yet no golden towers catch the mellow shafts of sunlight from the blue bow of the sky, — no ruddy domes upheld by crystal pilasters break the ISLE AU HAUT vert of the heaving rims of the woods. But toward the sunset land "A thousand wooded islantis lie. — " that l3urn and glow, "Touched by the pencil of the frost, And, with the motion of each breeze, A moment seen — a moment lost — Changing and blent, confused and tossed. The brighter with the darker crossed. Their thousand tints of beauty glow Down in the restless waves below, And tremble in the sunny skies. As if, from waving bough to bough, Flitted the birds of paradise." THE LAXD OF ST. CAST IN 69 It needed but the gleaming roofs of the mythic city which Ingram saw in his dreams, as the roar of old Panawanskek filled his ears after that long weari- some journey from the wilds of the far south, the Lost City of Xorumbega, that, like Cartier's Indian Hochekuja, was so invisiljle to the eyes of Champlain he was unable to find even its ancient site; as if some savage magician and his Slave of the Lamp had, in a single night, transported its barbaric magnificence to the Islands of the Seven Cities, or perhaps to the more remote and mythic Land of the Himini. Once, a Land of Enchantment, no longer "The witch-grass round the hazel spring May sharply to the night-air sing; Hut there no more shall withered hags Refresh at ease their broom-stick nags, Or taste those hazel-shadowed waters; " but had one looked into famous Boar's Head in East- cheaj), of an evening, one would have very likely met Ingram, whose tankard, foaming-full at his elbow, was all the inspiration needed: and had one listened to the magic tale tripped from a limber tongue, and drip])ing with all the dyes of the rainbow, to wash it down witii a i)ot of good red ale, one's doubts would have Hown up the chimney; for those were tlays of prodigies, when even Shakspere was a horse- boy at the new Drury Lane Theatre. The low ceiling of the Boar's Head is suggestive of confidential chats and mysterious hints of secret things, and in its time it was a famous place. Shak- spere locates its ancientness as of the days of Henry 70 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN lY. It was biinu'cl in the Great Fire of London, and was rebuilt, only to be removed years later, when it was found to be in the way of those approaching Lon- don Bridge. A statue of William R". now adorns the site of the old hostelry, once the scene of many a wild carrousal, from old Sir John FalstafT, 7ie Sir John Oldcastle, down to the days when David In- gram sought its reeky atmosphere, its brown ale, and its famous traditions. The fog has choked Eastcheap with its smother- ing damp and drizzle, and here or there the blinking torch of the link-boy flares like a will-o'-the-wisp. Huge shadows dance up and down, or grow and lessen upon the opaque wall of the stagnant vapor. Across the narrow street lays a bar of light, and above it swings a cumbersome sign from its Flemish-wrought iron crane. In the dim light one makes out the bristly head of the boar, and near by is the gate to the tavern yard. On the street gable is the wide French window with its latticed ])anes, dripping with wet outside, while within they are smudged, like the oaken rafters and the wainscoted walls, with the reek of two centuries. Flanked by huge red jambs, the fire smolders on the ample hearth, and over the sanded floor the little tables and the heavy stools are thronged with roysterers who eat or drink between their quips and jests, knight and swashbuckler ban- dying oaths in turn, while the landlord, red-faced, rotund, and smug, watches the lad at the spit, or serves a turn at the ale-casks, where they "Sit on their ale-bench with their cups and cans," THE LAM) OF ST. CAST IX 71 SO many silent memorials to the holy clerk of Cop- manhurst. Ingram is here, carrousing with the rest, and he can tell the wildest tale of all. Ingram is the lion of the old ale-house, who tak(>s his cue as easily as if to the manor horn, and his lii)s make pictures as they move. Alc-nicllowcd, his voice has the sound of the tides that lapped the wonderful .shores he has so lately visited; and as he relates the marvels of the far-away city of the Bashaba, all ears are intent, and hang upon his words, that like nimble servitors at his eli)ow wait. No longer does he dote upon his weary toiling along the beaten sands: the .story of the golden city best chai'ins tiic motley hour. "You must know," said Ingram, "that the coun- try wherein lies this marvellous city, Xorombega, is a country of great rivers and many of them, and many great falls of water that fill the land with great roar- ings, and in them are many great hshesof divers colors, red, blue, green and black, which are very tooth.some and easy to take. There are many and abundant great trees as tall as several of the tallest masts on the Thames put together, great firrs, pines, cipresses, and many sweet-odored woods with much sassafras and (livers other sweet roots which are very sustain- ing and which the people there, devour in great quan- tities. There are dye-woods of cochineal antl indigoes with which the peoi)le paint themselves when they go out to war, for they have an exj)ert use of the bow and arrow as good as was ever shot in Sherwood for- est by Little John or Allan a Dale. As for the red 72 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN deer, there were never so many in all England as I have seen in a single day's travel in that land, where there are lions, great bears with coats as black as sloes, and as shining as the sun, and I counted not a few elephants, a single tusk being more than a man might lift, out of the smaller of which they make MT. KATAHDIN their trumpets. It is a country adjoining Cathay on the south, where I found a marvellously mild and sweet climate, and where, wlien the night came I slept under palms so broadly-leaved that a single branch would make a thatch for one side of a house- roof. There was gold to be picked up with the sands of the sea by which I, for many days made my way, but I had to leave it, having not the wherewithal to THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 73 carry it; and there were great stores of silver and copper in the rocks to be had for the digging. I found pieces of gold in the rivers big as a man's fist, and fine pearls in some of these, which I gathered, but which I threw from me as I tired of carrying them. So abundant were the riches of that strange land, and so used to the seeing of such did I become that I thought no more of them than you do of the dirt under your feet. "After I had travelled many days, passing many and great cities, I left the land of the palms to come into a different country where were the numerous rivers and the marvellously tall and thick trees, and where there were great hills, until I came to a high land wlicre I could see a great distance. As I turned to the northwest I saw upon the horizon what appeared to be a mountain of solid silver. In the opposite direc- tion I could see the sea which was as full of islands as you could get peas in a skillet. I thought to go to the mountain of silver, but all at once I heard a great outcry among some animals which I took to be wolves, whereby I made haste for the sea shore and jjlunging in, I soon made an island where I found some fine grapes, and where I rested for that day and a night. "From that I followed the shore to the eastward, counting many great and thickly wooded islands, in the which time I forded many streams until I came to a place where I found some people of the country, a great many there were, who had gathered to feast on a strange fish which they call qua-hog, and where 74 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN there were great heaps of shells. I made some con- versation with them by signs, pointing to the east- ward as the direction I was going, whereupon they signified to me that there were many wide and dee}) streams in my way. They were very friendly and in- formed me that they had seen a ship going toward the Sim, a little before; but they gave me to eat and some soft furs to rest myself upon, after which I found myself greatly refreshed, and able to go on my jour- ney, which I was about to do, but they restrained me by their entreaties, so that I remained with them. They cooked their fish by heating some stone piles with great fires, after which they drew the coals and brands to heap the hot stones with the fish which had shells about them, covering them with sea-weed. After they had cooked a while, the heaps were un- covered, after which they fell to eating with great appetites until nothing but the shells were left. This feasting was kept up for some days, after which they took to their canoas taking me along. They calleti the place Saccadahock, and which was on the shore of a river which had many mouths. They were a comely people I)ut for their skins, which were of a copper color. The young women were handsome and graceful, and so much were they taken with me that I was offered one of the prettiest wenches to wife would I consent to live with them. They were finely dressed in soft skins, and were very tUgnifi(>d in their manner. They told me that their king, the l^ashaba, lived to the eastward in a great city, and pointing to the gold ornaments in their ears, they told me the OLD MAID AND SEA GULL CLIFF, SOUTHERN HEAD GRAND MANAN 77/ A' I.AXl) OF ST. CAST IX 75 houses were roofed over with the same metal. Thev wore strings of great pearls about their neeks of whieli they seemed to have little account as they said the rivers abountled in them. There were several chief men in the party whom they called Saganios, one of whom lived near to the city of their king, who of- fered to take me there, to which I gladly consented. Taking me into his canoa, we i)addled across east- ward from the place he called SaJtitto to a peninsula which he called Pcmcuit. and where we rested over that night. When the morning broke I saw not far to seaward a great island that was backed like a whale. I first took it for a whale, as those fish in that country are easily taken for islands at a distance, s(j high do their backs rear out the sea, and so enormous are they that one would load a hundred ships. The Sagamo said it was an island and that the people who lived on it were subjects of the liashaba. "It was a fine day, and the waters of the sea were ' like glass, and the canoas made direct for a great island to the eastward. The canoas weiv drawn up on the shore that was made by a little cove, and a fire was built by rubbing briars together rudely in their hands. A fish was spitted and cooked: and but for the coals and the ashes with which it was smutched, it proved excellent fare. The weather holding fair, and the sea being smooth, the canoas were got into the water, and by sundown we had got to the mouth of the great river, the which, the Sagamo called Pana- wamske. Here the canoas were |)ulle(l uj) out of the way of the tide, for it was low watei- when we made 76 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN land, and our supper was made off the remains of the fish which we had on the isLand. ''A fire was made as before, and guided by its light, the other of the Sagamo's people came who had followed on behind, until all w^ere gathered about the fire, which was very comfortable as the wind had risen and was blowing in freshly from seaward. The fire was very cheerful, and the people sat around it in a circle, the men smoking very handsome stone pipes, one of which was given me, wherewith I sol- aced myself to my perfect contentment. There was no conversation carried on, but one strange thing I noticed the next morning; all were up betimes, and, as the sun came up, they all turned to the east and ducked their heads in that direction, soberly, by which I gathered that they had some sort of a religion. They have a devil they call Collochio, that appears as a black dog with the eyes of a calf. When they raked the ashes open wherein were great coals and the fire was renewed quickly. It was a time of the year when the salmon run in the river, and of which several were caught by the use of a long picked stick of spruce- wood with a fish-bone fastened to it by delicate thongs, and which fish I at once recognized as having seen occasionally in our London markets, but much larger. "A part of the forenoon was spent in waiting for the tide to turn so we might go up stream the more easily. When the tide had set in, we again took to the river, which was of great width at that place, and made a comfortable passage imtil the end of the THE LAND OF ST. CASTIX 77 day, when, as the sun was going down, the Sagamo stopped the canoa to point silently to the roofs and towers of a city that flamed in the setting sun like another and a nearer sunset. As I looked, my eyes were dazzled with the unwonted splendors that ST. ANNS BAY, CAPE BRETON showed above the tops of the trees in that tlirection. W'v watched the sun go down, and long after it was out of sight and the dusk had come, those roofs and towers glowed like living coals. Then, when I had asked him what the city was called, he said,— ' Arembec' I signified my desire to go to this marvel of cities at once, but the Sagamo shook his head, tell- 78 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN ing mo that strangers were allowed within its walls only by the consent of the Bashaba to whom he would send a messenger as soon as we made the shore, which he did. We spent the night under the shadows of some great trees from which hung mighty lengths of gray mosses that were as soft as lace, the tops of which I could not see, and I could hardly sleep for the desire to see the city. " Wlien we had shaken off our sleep, and the Sagamo had bent his head several times toward the sunrise, he called the messenger who said the Bashaba would send an escort down the river to meet the stranger with the royal insignia, — the tail of a horse, — and that he should put himst^f into their hands, and des- ignated the place of the meeting of the canoas. With that, we went out upon the river again and paddled up the stream to a place where the river forked, where a fleet of gilded canoas awaited us, which were much larger than those I had seen at the place they called Saccadahock, and which were made of thin plates of beaten copper and ribbed , and curiously fastened, while our canoas were made of the bark of the birch sewed with the rootlets of the spruce and caulked with the pitch from the pines that I saw everywhere. In fact it seemed to be a country where there was much pine, more than of other woods. " I there left my Sagamo, to go with a salvage who waved a horse's tail in the air, nor did I see him again, as he at once turned away and went down the river to his peojjle who belonged in another part of the country. We passed u]3-stream swiftly and were soon THE LAND OF ST. CASTIX 79 in sight of the walls of Aivmbcc. As we turned to the shore I noted a wide flight of stone steps, both sides of which were lined with warriors whose faces were painted red and yellow, and every one of whom held a supj)le how in his hand while a quiver of ar- rows showed over the shoulder. On their heads was a curious dress of long colored feathers which came down behind to their heels and around their waists were curious garments of fine furs. I at first took them to be statues, so immovable did they stand, but I discovered my mistake: for as soon as I landed on the first step, the two nearest ai3proached me and lifting me from my feet, carried me gently to the top- most stair where they placed me upon my feet again. As we came uj) the stone stairs those warriors who had lined the way fell in behind like a trooj) of sol- diers, and so we went uj) a wide strei't which was laid with some curious stone the like of which I never l)e- fore saw, which was as smooth as glass, and shone in the sun as white as the sun itself. I noted the houses as we went, for the walls were of some white smooth cement of diff(>ring heights and their roofs seemed to be some of silver, and some of copper, while the en- trances to some were of marvellous beauty as is not excelled by the j)alace of good (^ueen Bess, being cased with j)ure crystal, antl hooded with beaten sil- ver with doors of burnished copper with raised mould- ings of silver. Copper there seemed to be in great abundance, for they used it for the lattice-work of their windows of which the panes were very small, ami seemed not to be of glass, l)ut of a transparent 80 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN stone which some call isinglass. We kept to our walk until as I afterward observed, we were half way across the city, which is three-fourths of a mile wide along this street. Here, in the center of the city is the palace of the Bashaba, the king of all other kings INDIAN BEACH, GRAND MANAN among these races, in the midst of a spacious park or common, where were all hardwood trees, such as the oak, maple and the beech. From the main street to the palace ran a wide avenue like what leads the way to some of our English castles; and it was at its end as we turned into it that I beheld the most wonderful sight, the Bashaba's palace. I was most astonished at its size, the roof to which, on its ends and front, were upheld by twelve great pillars, round and of polished silver, with capitals of gold wrought into very curious design. The great entrance was fash- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 81 ioned like a great gate, and of solid crystal inlaid with precious stones which were unlike anything I had ever before seen, and which I thought to be lapis- lazuli. but which were of a green sort instead of blue and more to be desired. The great doors were of solid gold, and as we approached they opened though I saw no one near them. Within, was a mighty hall in the center of which was a fountain of strange stone, more to be desired than marble, where waters of divers colors came out. The lining of the fountain was gold, and its rim was encrusted with jewels that would make my Lord of the Exchecquer go mad, for I never thought of the like, so much did they flash and glisten; but the greater wonder was to come when I turned to look at the easterly gable where the Hashaba sat on his throne stutlded with fine pearls, and canopied with strings of great pearls, something like a fish-net, with a i)earl for every knot. As I was being conducted to the king I had some chance to see him, but instead of a crown, he wore a head-dress of very long eagle's feathers, dyed in the most bril- liant colors, and in the center of the ribband by which they were held in place, was a diamontl half the size of a man's fist, that was so dazzling that one might take it for a coal of fire. I was taken to the foot of the throne and made to kneel, when I crawled to the king's feet which I kissed, whereupon I arose and had some converse with him. "The king asked me wherefore I had come into his land, as to which I informed him, but he knew all that had transpired since my arrivaJ at Saccadahock. 82 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN It was of matters before that, aiitl whence I had come. I made him understand me very well, so that he stood up and asked me to come nearer, when he gave me his hand, to tell me that I was welcome to stay as long as I pleased, and that he would provide me with a lodge and tsooes, that is, a woman, a bow and some OLDEST HOUSE ON PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND arrows. He told me that he was king of the Abenake tribes, and that I was in the land of Norombega, and the name of the place where the city lay was Kades- (juit, but that the city was the capital and was every- where among all the tril)es known as Arembec. I told him I had never liefore seen so magnificent a })alace, whereupon he told me it was very old, having been built hundreds of moons before he was born. I asked him where he got so much gold, but he was discreetly silent as to that. He told me the pillars that upheld the roofs and their towers represented the twelve months of the year, and that the pillar for the pres- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIX §3 ont month was Assehaskivat.s (tlicre is ice on the bor- ders,) and whieli corresponds to our October. " After that he led me around the great hall whose walls were lined with the finest gold to the ceiling, which was of silver. On the walls were hung the skins of fine furs and there were painted on them, with some curious pigment of various colors, what he said were thctotemsof thenumcrous tribes over which hereigned some of which were familiar to me, of which I remem- ber a turtle, an eagle, a snake, and some others there were, but which have escaped me. On the floor, which was seemingly of fine stones, set in mosaic, were great rugs of moose, bear, otter and niartyn skins, into which, as I walked, my feet seemed to sink to the ankle, and the like of which I never before im- agined, and with which the Bashaba told me the woods and streams abounded, and were to be hatl with small exertion. Then he clapped his hands and a salvage brought to us a silver pot with two heavy gold gob- lets, all of which were ui^held ujjon a sizable trencher of massy gold, and after pouring the goblets to the brim, he gave me one, and uj)on tasting, I found it to be an unfermented wine which was very sweet and palatable to the tongue, and by which I was much refreshed. It was a pledge of his friendship to me, by which I was much relieved in my mind as to his pur- poses, and upon which, he dismissed me, signifying I was soon to come anil see him. He was very dignified, and never for the once smiled. Going to the side of the great hall, he parted some heavy. skins, and I was led the way I came to the main street which we still 84 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN followed as it ran away from the river, until, finally we stopped before a house which I understood was for the king's guests, the entrance to which was rich and massy in fine metals. Upon entering, I found the room ample and hung with tapestries of exceeding fine furs, the floor being covered with the same so that our feet made not the slightest sound. The upper part was reached by a rude stairway of polished cedar, which suggested to me that these people were not so expert in the use of woods as of metals. At their top I found another room much like that below, with abundance of furs whereon I was to sleep, and it was then that my escort left me to my own conceit. As I had eaten nothing through the day I began to feel some need of food, and upon going below again, I was much surprised to see a pretty wench who had brought me in a platter of fish and venison, along with a pot of wine. After I had eaten and she had taken the dish away, which I noticed was of pure gold, she again re- turned with a suit of clothes made of softly-dressed skins of the deer and minded me of a fine chamois, and which she signified was to take the place of the tattered garb which I had kept about me on my journey from that place where we were marooned. For buttons, there were fine thongs of tanned deer- skin which the wench showed herself very handy about, after which she told me she was my tsooes, which was the salvage for woman, and would tend my fire and which they make of a white turf that smells like musk. "I found my leather clothes and the moccasins THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 85 very comfortable. I assure you I made a very good salvage, for my face had been tanned by the weather to the color of good copper, so that the Bashaba, when he saw me, was mightily pleased to caU me his brother. I went about the city much as I pleased, and I came upon some of their carpenters, who, much to my amaze, had axes and chisels of metal and which were thinned to a good edge, at the which I looked, to find them made of hardened copper, and to carry a very good sharpness. I noted that the habits of these people were very simple, withal, they were of staid demeanor, and very hospitable, and had many wives, — sometimes ten, and sometimes a hundred. They were great observers of small things, and they have a very keen vision so that by a wrinkle in the grass or a crease in a leaf in the woods, they can discover the passage of others, their number, and as well the direc- tion of their going. When they put their ears to the ground they can hear steps far away, and their noses are as sharp as a fo.x's. They count their time by moons and the length of their journeys by sleeps, and they make a sun-ilial of the shadows; and they can make their way through the woods in the darkest night by placing their hands on the rind of a tree, for they note some difference between that side toward the south, or the north. I found them as well able to foretell the weather and as certainly as an English skipper, and they begin their months on the liew moon. Their new year begins when the nights are longest, or from the longest moon. Our December is the month of their long moon which they call Ketch- 86 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN ikizoos. One thing I noted, which was that the tsooes did all the work, while all the warriors were much on the hunt, or after furs. I saw as many fine furs as would lade all the ships of the Thames, and Dart- mouth and Bristol, besides. Their grain is as big as a man's fist. All the salvages wore rings of gold in their ears, and strings of pearls about their necks, while some of them had their hair, which is very long and black, hooped with gold bands. Gold was more com- mon with these people than lead is with us, and in al- most every house was a bucket of pearls. I was much inclined to stay with them longer but hearing that a canoa with white wings had been seen to the east- ward, I signified to the Bashaba that I must go to my home over the sea. He embraced me, and with a promise that I would come again, he set me on my way to the St. John River, with a guide, whereat I found a French ship in which I made my way to France, and thence across the Channel to the Boar's Head where I have tried to interest divers adventu- rers to make the voyage to this marvellous city of Norombega." The fortunes of Ingram and his companions are colored with all the romance and fascinating terrors of the tales of days when piracy was rife along the Carribean reefs from Great to Little Tobago Islands; and one cannot forbear recalling for a moment their relations, if for no more than a taste of the waters that in boyhood days, and somewhat before the ad- vent of Oliver Optic, made up the sum of a winter evening's pleasure, with only the light of the huge THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 87 open fire to illiimino the grewsome exploits of Captain Kidd aiul his {)iratieal forebears. ■ Ingram was of Barking, Essex, and in his career, ■which one can imagine to have been a checkered one for the times, found himself a-ship with Hawkins, who was renowned for his piracies and slave-trading. Haw- kins' coat of arms was crested with the half-length figure of a negro child bound with cords, — a fitting escutcheon for a man of his villainous trade. Haw- kins' career had taken him into the harbor of St. John d'Ulloa, where he was attacked by the Span- iards, who destroyed four of his fleet; but he managed to get away with his two remaining vessels, to take shelter within the mouth of the Tampico River on the Mexican Gulf coast. Here he surveyed the ruins of his fleet to find himself with a plethora of sailors and a straitened larder. In order to reach l']iigland alive he must dispose of a part of his crew, which he did by putting half of his sailors ashore. One of these. Miles Phillips, who reached p]ngland safely, in a rela- tion which Hakluyt has recorded, says, quaintly: " For the more contentation of all men's Mindes, and to take away occasion of offense, to take this order: First hee made choyce of suche persons of serv- ice and accovmt as were needefull to stay, and that being done, of those that were willing to go hee ap- jiointed suche as hee thought might be best spared, and presently appointed that by the boate they should be set on shoare. . . . Here, agayne it would have caused any stony heart to have relented to hearr the pitifull mone that many did make, and how lothe 88 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN they were to depart ; the weather was then somewhat stormey and tempestuous, and therefore we were to passe with greate danger, yet notwithstanding theere was no remedy, but that we that were appointed to go away, must of necessitie doe so. "Howbeit those that went in the first boate were safely set ashoare, but of them that went in the sec- ond boate, of which number I was one, the seas wrought soe high that we could not attayne to the shoare, and therefore we were constrained through the cruel dealing of John Hampton, Captain of the Minion, and John Saunders, boatswain of the Jesus, and Thomas Pollard, his mate, to leape out of the boate into the Maine sea, having more than a mile to shoare, and soe to shift for ourselves, and either to sink or to swimme." One would hardly expect other treatment from a hardened crew whose brutish instincts were so well cultivated by the slave trader Hawkins, whose vaunted exploits as a colleague of the famous English sea-dog Drake had, after all this brutality, found place in English story. Hawkins made the port of London January 20, 1568, after a very favorable run home. There is a narrative by Job Hortrop, an English- man of Hawkins' crew, who was not heard of for many years. It is a strange and unreal story, and is curiously entitled, ''THE RARE Trauailes of lob Hortrop, an Englishman who was not heard of in three and twentie years space. Wherein is declared the dangers he escaped in his voiage to Gynnie, when THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 89 he was set on shoare in a wilderness neere to Panico (Pamlico,) he endured much slaveric and bondage in a 'Spanish Galley. Wherein also hee discoureth many strange and wondorfull things scene in the time of his trauaile, as well concerning wild and sauage people, as also of sundrie monstrous beares, fishes, foules, and also Trees of wonderfull forme and qualitie." This narrative was issued from the ancient press of WUliam Wright, 1691. Hortrop's story shows a ray of humanity on the part of Hawkins when he writes that Hawkins "was constrained to divide his com- panie through an extremitie of hunger . . . where- upon our Generall set on shoare of our company, four-score and sixteen; and gave unto everv one of us five yardes of Roan cloth, and monie to tfiose that did demand it. Then he louingly embraced us greatly lamenting our distressed state, and having persuaded us to serue God, and love one another, he bade us all farewell.'' The marooned sailors slept for that night beside the Pamlico; and the next morning, which was Octo- ber 8, 1667, they set out l)lindly, to follow the west- ward trend of the coast. They" had not gone far be- fore a band of savages swooped down upon them. Tiiey were weaf)onless. undoubtedly a precaution taken l)y Hawkins for his own safety. With weapons and ammunition they would have been on e(iual terms with the more fortunate half of the crew, and in their desperation would not unlikely have attacked the ships. They were an easy |)rey for the Indians. Eight were killed, and the romainder were robbed 90 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN of their slender possessions, after which they were allowed to go. The savages pointed out to them the direction of Pamlico, the Spanish settlement, some ten leagues distant. Not a few demurred to accept- ing the Spanish hospitality. Phillips continues his narration : " We thought it best to divide ourselves into two companies, and so being separated, halfe of TROSSACHS OF CAMDEN us went under the leading of Anthony Goddard, who is a man yet alive, and dwelleth this instant in the town of Plimouth, whom before we chose to be cap- taine over us all, and those which went under his leading, of which number, I Miles Phillips, was one, trauelled Westword that way which the Indians with their hands had pointed us to go. The other halfe went under the leading of John Hooper, whome him, David Ingraham was one, and they took their way and trauailed Northword, and shortly after, within a space of two days, they were againe incountered with sauage peojile, and their Captaine and two more of THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 91 his companic were slainc: then againe they diuided themselves, and some hekl on their way Northword, and other some, knowing that we were gone West- word, sought to meete us againe. As in truth there was about the number of hue and twentie or six and twentie of them that mette with us in the space of three or four days againe, and then we began to reckon amongst oursehies how many we were that were set on shoare, and we found the number to be an hundred & fourteen, whereof two were drownded in the sea, and eight were shiine at the first incounter, so there remained an hundred and foure, of which fine and twentie went Westword with us, and two and fifty to the North with Hooper and Ingraham: and as In- graham hath often tolde me, there were not past three of their companie shiine, antl there were but fine and twentie of them that came againe to us; so that of the companie that went Westword, there is yet lacking, and not certainly heard of, the number of three and twentie men." Hawkins says, "Such as were willing to land, I put them apart." According to Hortrop, his com- pany slept on the sands where they were marooned the first night. As the day broke, they began their almost hopeless march across the semi-trojiical coun- try, only to encounter a band of hostile savages who levied tribute upon them, which included a portion of their ''cloth and their shirtes." Finding the English so easy a prey, the savages increased their demands; but being met with some resistance, one of their num- ber " was presently slaine with an arrow by an Indian 92 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN boy : but for so doing, the Indian Captaine smote the boy with his bow in the necke, that he lay for dead, and willed us to follow him, which we did." This party, hoping to save something of their chat- tels by so doing, divided itself into halves and started anew for the Pamlico, but only to be again set upon by another band of savages. Hortrop says these last " left us naked as wee were born of our mothers." Eight more were killed, and it is supposed that the remainder of the crew got to the Spanish settlement safely. As a whole, Hortrop's story is a romance, and the hardships which were his lot were various and almost incredible. He was sold into slavery by the Span- iards, and he did not get back to England until twenty years after, a broken old man, whose recollection of the slave-trading voyages of Hawkins was ever col- ored by the Nemesis of an avenging spirit. One sees him start in his sleep, smarting under the whip of his taskmaster, and hears him crying out — only to find it all a terrifying dream, and, while the chill perspira- tion dries upon his face, he sleeps again, his brain re- peopled with the weird phantasmagoria that begins with the slave-decks of Hawkins, to run down through the years of his own bondage. In the year 1582 Ingram was subpoenaed by the English Government to describe the countries through which he had passed in his " trauailes," and the man- uscript is still to be seen in English State Paper Office. It is an incredible tale, but Sir Humphrey Gilbert was sufficiently credulous, so that it accelerated his prep- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 93 arations for the voyage which to him was so unfor- tunate. If one has a curious turn, Ingram's deposi- tion may be found in the first volume of "The Ameri- can Magazine of History," as translated by the eminent antiquarian, De Costa. In his testimony before Wal- singham, " He traueiled by land two thousand miles at least. . . . After long travell, the aforesaid David Ingram, with his companions, Browne and Twid, came to the head of a River called Gugida, which is sixty leagues west from Cape Britton," where he found Captain Champaigne. It was a notable jour- ney, and its actuality is not to be doubted. His story is to be traced to a diseased imagination, the imagin- ings of a superstitious sailor. There is some truth in the tale, but it is confined to his footprints across an unfamiliar and unexplored wilderness; to long and tedious, and, as well, perilous wanderings in a strange country among a rude and inhosjiitable people, a cruel and savage race. The wonder of it all is that he arrived at St. John's River at all ; and the romance of it all is the color he gives to the relation. He cites Coronado — and if one recalls the fables of Cibola, in that the houses had "pillars of silver and crystal;"' that every house had " coupes and buckets and divers other vessels of massie silver, wherewith they do throw out water and dust;" w^here the streets were "farre broader than any street in London," one may believe Ingram to have been acquainted with those selfsame fables. He saw the firefly, which he describes as "fire- dragons (the mouches of Lescarbot), which make the 94 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN air very red as they fly." One finds this in Ingram's sworn statement: "The Kings in those Cuntries are clothed with painted or Coulored garments & therebie ye maie knowe them, & thei weare great precious stones which commonly are rubies, being VI (4) ynches long & 2 ynches broad, and yf the same be taken from them eyther by force or fight, thei are presentlie deprived of their Kingdomes. ''All the people generallie do weare manillions or bracelets as big as a mannes fynger uppon eche of their amies, and the like on the small of eche of their legge, whereof commonly one ys golde & two silver, and manie of the women alsoe doe weare greate plate of golde covering ther bodies in manner of a paier of Curette (Cuirass) & manie braceletts & chains of greate perle." It was a tale to arouse the cupidity of the most unimpressionable — a tale suitably embellished, and which ranked him as one of the Munchausens of his time. If it did not, it was not because he had not practised at the tune whose harmonies became so seductive to his wonder-struck audiences at the various London taverns he was wont to frequent. His tale of marvels, seen and imagined, was bruited far and wide. It crossed the channel to tickle the ears of the French, whose ears were ever to the ground to catch whatever might entertain, then as now. Then they began to cast their eyes to the westward to this El Dorado, and schemes of colonization began to ferment, until, in 1604, De Monts sailed away, with Champlain and Poutrincourt to keep him in good face. He sighted THE LAM) OF ST. CAST IN 95 Cape Sable on May 1st of that year. The latter part of that month they has passed within the headlands of Passamaquoddy Bay to sail up the St. Croix. A little within the coast-line they dropped anchor un- der the lee of two small islands, to the larger of which NORTHERN HEAD, GRAND MANAN Dc Monts ' low and heavily wooded and fringed with many islands abounding in much game. Spending the night within the shelter of Sable Bay, the next day they were at Cape Sable and Cormorant Island, where they gathered a cask full of cormorants' eggs. One can imagine the feast that followed, and can get a sniff of the smoke of the driftwood fire they lighted on the sands for the roasting of their lucky find. It was an appetizing feast, al fresco; and no doubt the French palate responded eagerly to the delicacy, after so long a surfeiting of ship's stores. They had the robust appetites that come only with the winds of the sea. They found the waters dotted with islands of em- erald, and there seemed to be a chain of them about two leagues from land. Here they found an abundance of wild fowl. On some of these the penguins were so many and so tame as to be approached and killed with sticks. Sea-wolves covered the shore, and these islands where the sea-wolves were so numerous Cham- plain named after them; and he says they spent " pleas- antly some time in hunting (and not without cap- turing much game)." The next land made was Port Forchu, a fork-shaped peninsula. It is evident he was plotting the coast as he went, and locating and identi- fying the indents and capes with such names as their 116 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN peculiarities suggested. It must have been a leisurely progress they made, and a thoroughly enjoyable voy- aging, with so many pictures of sea and shore opening \p- ACADIA 4 f up as the prow of their little barque nosed its way along the yellow sands, or amid the reefs of seaweed- covered rock and the broken perspective of the island- strewn waters. He coasted the shore and doubled the THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 117 headland of Cape Sable to enter the Bay of Fundy, where he found a long reach of curving, broken shore, with many little harbors from which the country un- dulated inland gently, or rose in isolated beetling bluffs to hang in dusky masses over the restless waters; and everywhere was the picturesque beauty of a primitive landscaj^e unfolding, always unfolding, as he sailed, new vistas of fascinating scenery, and above which hung the blue sky as softly beneficent as that of France. It was a delightful country, and possibly his eyes were the first from the Old World to look upon its bewildering charms. Continuing his voyage up the east shore of the bay, landing here or there, as curiosity prompted, scruti- nizing the soil, the timber, the openings for signs of human habitation, while M. Simon tapped the ledges with his hammer in search for minerals, he was as constantly making use of his pencil, sketching as he went. Champlain was desirous for the tliscovery of copper-mines, but only leads of silver and iron were found. These apparently existed in paying quantities; but there were no signs of copper. "WTierever the shores curved, Champlain's willing keel kept to the contour, until he had entered the Bay FranQoise, a beautiful sheet of water, and two leagues northeast of which M. Simon found a "very good silver mine.'' These silver-mines, speciously suggest- ive, were of no particular profit to the French, al- though some of tlie crude ore was taken to France for reduction. Nothing much came of it, or, at least, not much account was made of it. Champlain says, 118 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN "Some leagues farther on, there is a little stream called River Boulay, where the tide rises half a league into the land." Near by this place M. Simon found traces of iron; and less than a quarter of a league away he found iron ore in quantity. He assured De Monts on his return that the ore would assay " 50 per cent good iron." Three leagues northwest they sailed, still following the shore trend, making land wherever any object of interest presented itself, to come into the mouth of another Acadian river " surrounded by beautiful and attractive meadows." To this river- mouth Champlain gave the name of St. Margaret's Harbor, the attractions of which must have been es- pecially seductive to have won from Champlain so fair a designation, for his eyes were apt; his appreciation, swift; and his adaptation, artistic. Elated with their successful prospectings, they turned the nose of their barque to the southward, and made Port au Mouton without mishap, where they re- ported to De Monts the results of their explorations. They had been away from Port au Mouton twenty- one days. It was a hearty greeting that awaited them as they came into the mouth of Port au Mouton Harbor out of the mist that came up over the waters of Cape Sable with the declining afternoon. De Monts had missed Champlain, and his active spirit had kept step to his pacing the deck of Captain Timothee's ship, or its vibrant straining at its cable as the tides lurched in or out. He was like a vessel chafing its sides against the wharf, for there was nothing for him to do but to keep THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 119 to his rendezvous at Port au Mouton. They were the most tedious twenty-one days of his experience. He thought of the dangers by sea and land, many of which he had experienced himself at one time or another. Others he conjured out of his lively imagi- nation. He began to count the days of Champlain's absence more seriously, though the skies were fair and the winds were soft and low-voiced. ANNAPOLIS BAY, ROYAL Champlain was as eager to see his commander and to get the news of Morel and Pont-(}rave: and it was with youthful alacrity he mounted the rail of Captain Timothee's ship, his hand in tiiat of I)e Monts, whose f)leasure had com|)elled him to reach down to the voyager, as if to draw Champlain the cjuicker to him- self. The words came swiftly, and nothing was to be done until Champlain had told his story and shown his drawings, witli the location of the silver and iron mines. It had been a constant source of delight to Champlain. and he derived as much pleasure in telling De Monts how they had skirted the rugged shores of Cape Sable, hugging the east shore of the Bay of Fundy as far as the site of Annapolis; and the sport 120 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN they had at Sea-Wolves Islands; how they knocked the penguins over with their clubs; and of the great feast of the cormorants' eggs at Sable Island. This was the 19th of May, and the next day Morel had come down fromCanceau, bringing Pont-Grave along; and the ships again were anchored side by side. The day after Morel's arrival, De Monts shifted his berth to Bay St. Mary, a fine harbor on the west shore of Nova Scotia. There he made preparations for an exploration over the course made by Champlain. He wished with his own eyes to see the wealth that lay bound up in the rocks along the shores to the west- ward. Leaving his ship here, he dropped into his shallop with a portion of his crew. Champlain and M. Simon were along as well; and pushing off, they up-sail to hold down the course according to Cham- plain's charts. They had a priest along with them (Nicholas Aubrey), who later found the wilderness of Nova Scotia to be hardly the streets of Paris. De Monts went into Annapolis harbor, which he found to be peculiarly attractive, and well-disposed for the founding of a colony, though it did not appeal to him at the time. Leaving this beautiful sheet of water, he skirted the west coast of Nova Scotia, touch- ing at the Bay of Mines, from whence he kept on to the place where M. Prevet had discovered copper- mines the year previous. He went on shore, as did Champlain on his former voyage over these waters, and it was on one of these occasions that the priest, whom Lescarbot describes "un certain homme d' Englise," lost his way in the woods. The party had THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 121 been on shore, and the priest had inadvertently left his sword. Discovering his mishap, he turned back to get it, when he became so turned about that he could not find the ship, but kept a course directly away from it. The ship's crew fired cannon, muskets, and blew horns, making in the meantime a diligent search ri^-itMSHL. BASIN OF MINAS of the neighboring woods, but the priest was not to be found. For once the instinct of the savag(>s was at a loss; for they could discover no trace of Aiibn^v's footprints on the leaves, or other sign of the fellow. Their trained eyes, for Champlain says, "The sav- ages of those parts searched for the priest," were for the once no better than those of a blind man, and the quest was reluctantly given up. Aubrey wandered about the woods for seventeen days, eating the roots of the herbs that were most i)alatable, and the wild fruits, of which he says he found some that had the 122 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN look of currants. At last he came out upon the sea- shore. It was the Bay of St. Frangoise, and there he saw De Monts' shallop, from which some of the sailors were fishing. Aubrey made an effort to halloo, but discovered that he had lost his voice somewhere in the forest, so he hoisted his hat upon the end of a pole, and waving it to and fro, at last attracted the atten- tion of those on the shallop. It was the expedition of De Champadore, who had come to the bay for a ship- load of silver ore, that brought salvation to the starv- ing priest. They went into Port Royal and made a thorough examination. It was preferable to St. Mary's Bay; but De Monts kept on to Bay Fran^oise to make further search for the copper-mine discovered the previous year by M. Prevert of St. Malo, but which was believed to be mere hearsay, he having had it from the savages who were from the country south of the Northumberland Straits; but which, Cham- plain says, had been found by Prevert. The copper- mine was not to be found. Following the shore of New Brunswick, he went down to the harbor of St. John. Then they sailed out to four islands, where they saw great flocks of magpies, many of which they cap- tured, and out of which they made pot-pies, which Champlain remarks " are as good as pigeons." Farther west was the bold outline of Manthane (Manan). Leaving the Magpie Islands behind, they set sail for the "River of the Etchemins," a tribe of savages so designated in that country. Here they saw so many islands they were unable to count them. All were bay- THE LAND OF ST. CASTJN 123 enclosed. They dotted the waters like so many huge emeralds, and it was hereabout the prow of their ves- sel first parted the waters of the Passamaquoddy Bay, which Champlain describes. "Sailing northwest three leagues through the islands, we entered a river almost half a league in breadth at its mouth, sailing up which, a league or two, we found two islands; one very small near the western bank; and the other in the middle, having a circumference of perhaps 8 or 9 hundred paces, with rocky sides three or four fathoms high all around, except in one small place, where there is a sandy point and clayey earth adapted for making brick and use- ful articles, "There is a place affording shelter for vessels from 80 to 100 tons, but it is dry at low tide. The island is covered with firs, birches, maples and oaks. It is by Nature very well situated, except in one place, where for about forty paces it is lower than elsewhere; this, however, is easily fortified, the banks of the main land being distant on both sides some 900 to 1000 paces. \'essels could pass up the river only at the mercy of the cannon on this island, and we deemed the location most advantageous, not only on account of its situation and good soil, but also on account of the intercourse which we propose with the savages of these coasts and of the interior, as we should be in the midst of them. We hoped to pacify them in the course of time, and put an end to the wars which they carry on with one another, so as to draw service from them in future, antl convert them to the Christian 124 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN faith. This place was named by Sieur de Monts, the Island of St. Croix." To these mariners here was an ideal spot. The anchors went overboard and the permanent debark- ation at once began. Now known as De Mont's Island, it has been designated as ''Douchet's/' and as well *' Neutral Island." There is a light on the island which DOUCHET'S ISLAND, WHERE DE MONTS WINTERED is maintained by the government. It is moderately high in its situation, with pleasant outlooks, and an area of perhaps six or seven acres. It must have been somewhat larger when Captain Timothee dropped anchor here, for the erosion by the river current has been considerable. Cannon-balls have been dug out of its sward on its southern extremity, evidently the site where De Monts planted his heavy guns, and it may here be noted that they are the only memorials of the De Monts settlement of 1604-05. The little island is known as Chamcook Hill, and reaches the altitude of six hundred and twenty-seven feet, — a sightly summer spot. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 125 St. Croix Island was at once considered the most suitable location, and no sooner were the men ashore than a barricade was commenced on a little inlet where a place was made for the cannon, and where they were mounted — one of the first things to be accomplished. The work was vigorously prosecuted, "although the mosquitoes, (which are little flies,) annoyed us exces- sively in our work, for there were several of our men whose faces were so swollen by their bites that they could scarcely see." ^^^^en the barricade had been completed, De Monts sent his shallop to St. Mary's Harbor to notify the re- mainder of the party to sail immediately for St.Croix Island. The messenger despatched, the work of lay- ing out the colony began. First there was the line of the palisadoes to be established, within which was to be plotted the locations of the buildings necessary for the shelter of the colony, the workshops, a well, and the two great garden-plats. Champlain drew the plans and was the Olmsted of the important works to be projected. He says: " After Sieur de Monts had determined the j^lace for the store-house, . . . he adopted the {)lan for his own house which he had promptly built by good workmen, and then assigned to each his location." The men gathered by " fives and sixes," and " all set to work to clear up the island, to go to the wootls to make the frame-work, to carry the earth and other things nec- essary for the building." These people, running busily about the limited area of this island, are suggestive of so many ants going, coming, each upon its individual 126 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN errand; and the air was vibrant witii the foreign sounds of axe, hammer, and saw. From this time to the coming of the snow the preparations went on without cessation, except when the laborers ate or slept. So the new Carthage grew. The work platted, and each appointed to his several labors. Captain Fouques was sent in the Rossignol ^-^;S<^ . - ship to Canceau to find Font-Grave. This was fol- lowed by the advent up-stream of Du Glas of Hon- fieur, who was one of Pont-Grave's pilots, and who had in charge the Basque skippers caught in the Nova Scotia waters by Font-Grave. De Monts received them well, and sent them back to Font-Grave, who sent them after Rossignol ; that is, to Rochelle. This was' the first instance of an Admiralty Court proceed- ing on the coast, and the results were sufficiently drastic to the offenders ; for, with the exception of their dunnage, all else was confiscated. THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 127 This affair off his hands, De Monts urged on the woriv still more vigorously. His ambitions were not to be hedged in by the pent-up Utica of St. Croix Island, for he had other and more important objects on hand. It was needful that he be assured, when he undertook his later project, that the work on the shel- ters should be so well along that he might be cer- tain of their completion of them by the time they would be most neetled. An oven for the bakery was built, and a hand-mill for the grinding of wheat was set up; for on the farther bank of the river excellent wheat-land had been found, which he proposed to sow in season. Leaving the work in charge of proper direction, De Monts went away in his shallop to .search for copjx'r- mines. He found a copper-mine not far away which M. Simon assayed at eighteen per cent. The savages had reported copper-mines, and Messaftwuet set out to guide De Monts to a mine which he described as of pure copper. Under the guidance of the savage, a considerable tract of wilderness was covered; but no mine could be found such as the Indian had described. Returning to the island disappointed, he sent all his vessels away to France, except that of Captain Tim- othee, an event which happened to fall on the last day of August. It was shortly after that that with Champlain he set out in quest of the fabled city of Norumbega, to make an exploration of the Penob- scot, and to sail out across the southern confines of the Bay of Penobscot to the hull-shaped island of Monhegan; accomplishing which, they" turned the 128 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN prow of their barque toward the St. Croix River, where they arrived, after passing through some dangers incident to a broken rudder and a hard rub on a reef near the mouth of that river. It was mid-November when they had berthed their ship under the lee of the island. It was none too soon, OLD POWDER-HOUSE, EASTPORT for there had been snow on the 6th of October. There was a promise of winter's setting in early. De Monts had not looked for the snows so early, and the com- ing of the feathery crystals had prevented the entire completion of the buildings, though "some gardens" had been made by the men. Each man had cleared THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 129 up his own premises before and behind his dwelling; and Champlain says he planted a quantity of seeds before the ground had closed up. He notes that the ice began to come down the river by December 3d, and that '' the cold was sharp and more severe than in France, and of much longer duration." In April the snow lay on the island three feet in depth. When the winter had closed in upon them they were like so many prisoners. It is not supposed that they had provided themselves with snow-shoes or that they were accustomed to their use. They were not acclimated to the inclemency of the season, and with the food served from their stores they began, one by one, to come down with "Mai de la terre" (scurvy). When the spring opened, out of seventy-nine, thirty- five of the colony had succumbed to the disease. Champlain's description of the symptoms and the progress of the malady has an interest from its realis- tic ciuality as well as from a pathological point of view. The colony physician held a post-mortem, which showed "the interior parts mortified, — such as the lungs, which were so changed that no natural fluid could be seen in them. The spleen was serous and swollen; the liver was legueux (?) and spotted, with- out its natural color. The vena cava, superior and inferior, was filled with thick, coagulated and black blood. The gall was tainted, nevertheless, many arte- ries, in the middle, as well as the lower bowels were found in very good condition. In the case of some, incisions with a razor were made on the thighs where 130 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN they had purple spots, whence there issued a very black clotted blood." The disease was not confined to the helpers of the colony — the surgeons were afflicted with the others. Spring was watched for with anxiety, and those of the men who were ill, and who managed to sustain life until the spring days came, were healed. The intense cold and the lack of variety of food was the cause, and, not being anticipated, the men were taken down without opportunity for precaution. Champlain says: "During the winter all our liquors froze except the Spanish wine." Cider was dispensed by the pound. There were no cellars under these houses, and the cold had a raking effect as it swept down the river; and when the winds were still it rolled down the steeps of the air and from off the highlands; and so it seemed to these Frenchmen that the air " that entered by the cracks was sharper than that outside." The river was frozen over and the water in the well, so that they were obliged to melt snow to get the wherewithal to quench their thirst. They ground their grain in a hand-mill, which was laborious and fatiguing; there was a lack of fuel, as if the men could not have got out to the adjoining woods to replenish their supply. It is not to be doubted but these men were terror- stricken at the cold. Champlain notes that the wood was not to be obtained on account of the ice, which is somewhat obscure. Their meat was altogether salt, and was the cause of much discontent. Sieur de Monts was not above exliibiting something of a quer- ulous disposition, and inclined to fret over a state THE LAND OF ST. CASTJN 131 of affairs which could not be remedied — which was to be relieved only by the most stoical expression of endurance. It is evident that Champlain was able to keep his ink-horn thawed out a part of the time, for it is likely that he made notes through the winter: and perhaps it was on account of his having some occupa- tion that he seemed to take matters so cheerfully; for he says, naively, " It would be very difficult to ascer- ANNAPOLIS GUT tain the character of the region without spending a winter in it; for, on arriving here in summer, every- thing is very agreeable in consequence of the woods, fine country—" And he adds, ''There are six months of winter in this country." He regards the climate as inhospitable, and notes that very few Indians live in the region; but he says of their garments, that they are made of beaver and elk, and the squaws are the tailors; but he calls them poor fitters. He must have seen some of them that winter, as he describes the manner of their taking their game on snow-shoes, by trailing and running it down, even as the Canadian Micmacs of the present day capture their game, in the pursuit of which the Indian hunter can capture the caribou and deer easily, 132 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN and not infrequently the moose, killing them with no other weapon than a sharp hunting-knife. Champlain notes their first visitors. It was in March when some savages came in bringing some game they had killed, which the colony found very acceptable. It is not a far stretch of the imagina- tion to see the settlement of these colonists with the plot of the place before one. One gets an idea that the dwellings could not have been very large, and they certainly were not wind-proof, for Champlain says they were not. It was an idle space for the majority of the colony, but those who made the voyage up the Penobscot and down to the mouth of the Kennebec had much to talk about, and much to recall. But they were in the rigors of the frost-bound winds, tasting their first experience of a New England winter. These deep snows were a revelation to the Frenchmen, as they were to be to the Popham Colony three years later at Sabino. There was begun the first New Eng- land graveyard, where, when the flowers bloomed in the sjDring, were to be counted thirty-five fresh mounds, over which Nature had not as yet time to cast her mantle of greenery. Whether the winds blew, or the snow came, to make a grotesque sculpturing of all vis- ible objects, or whether the gale had lost itself in the maze of the forests that surrounded the little settle- ment, the smokes were always spinning away from the chimneys, lending to the bleak air the perfume of its woodland saps to conjure up the romance of the woods and their secret mysteries. Those thin spirals of pungent vapor were suggestive of a rare compan- THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 133 ionsliij), the realities of which were fraught with all the burdens of existence, of life, and death. The roofs were white with the burden of jxallid winter, and with- out were the stark moaning trees and the wide floes of crackling ice, that rose and fell with the tides ; and over all was the low-hanging sun, and the blinking stars, and the silence of a wilderness — if the wilder- ness may be said ever to be silent; for it is doubtful if Nature is ever absolutely silent. Silence implies a vacuum, something which Nature abhors. But the sounds of those winter days were dulled by their activities. The great fires roared uji the Pan- diean pipes of the chimneys, while the winds smote their smokes to beat them against the low^-sloping roofs. The blinding snows hurtled over the tops of the palisades to smite the gables with swirling gusts of sleet, or dropped away from the bending boughs of the storm-laden evergreens, the massy foliage of the hemlocks, the pines, firs, and si)ru('es. like huge blank- ets of fleecy down, to filter through the sunlit air, the wraiths of winter, in clouds of disintegrate pellicles that flashed all the colors of the rainbow. When the clouds hung low on the horizon to paint the sky a dead gray and the woods with the blackness of a pall, there was always the fir(> with its cheery companionship to enliven the scene within; but when the night came, and the sounds of the day were hushed; when the spraich of the winds had passed on, or gone down with th(^ sun, then one missed its boister- ous companionship, as if there were something of com- panionship in that, for all its suggestion of bleakness; 134 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN for it was the suggestion of motion, which was life. But when the sun, blown and blood-shot, had been bowled over the brush of the woodland tops, and the stars began to blink, and then to flash and scintillate, until the opaque blue of the sky glistened with a weird splendor, then it was that the listening ear caught the faint music of the spheres, and the ice on the river began to boom like some far-off Hohenlinden, and the frost-rimmed nails in the cabin-walls to pull and snap like mimic musketry ; then the libretto of the fire writ across the back-log or along the sooty jamb of the fireplace is audibly translated, and the songs of sum- mer, the low voicings of the south winds, the chan- sons of the feathered tribes, and the murmurous med- ley of insect life haunting the wild bloom of the sea- son, make symphonies of the flapping flames, while its ruddy halo becomes the romance of summer's riant coloring. These were apparent to Champlain, and they influenced his style, so that as one sails with him one sees the things he saw, and one's appetite is whet- ted for more. With De Monts it was different. He had dyed his anticipations with the roseate hue of morning; but winter, bleak and smothering, had nipped their bloom and sapped his ambitions. Before the ice had gone out the streams he watched with fretting spirit the de- pletion of his colony to one half its original comple- ment. He had hoped for a lucrative trade, but the deeps of snow precluded that. They had embargoed the savage trapper as himself. Of a more mercurial temperament than Champlain, a man of lesser talent. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 135 and more dependent upon current activities to buoy him over adversities, he already had thoughts of a re- turn to France. For himself, he had determined to abandon the St. Croix as an unfeasible site for his colony, and he was only waiting the return of Pou- trincourt to carry his plans into execution. %Q.?^\}t/'^ The days went with laggard steps. I-'rom sunrise to sun- set he counted the hours as he ditl the days of Champlain's absence on his voy- age up Lavardicre's River of Xorunibega. It was a reign of discontent within the stockade of the St. Croix. Under other circumstances, of health, occupation, and comfort, with a better jireparation, better shelter, and a wider precaution born of experience, it might have resulted in a prosperous colony and a rugged statehood; but ^y 136 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN he had not anticipated the realism, the isolation, phys- ical inanition, the mental wear and tear, of a Canadian winter. There were rigors to be withstood, he knew; but his temperament was not sufficiently elastic to enjoy so intimate an acquaintance with Dame Nature as a winter at St. Croix called for. Champlain says nothing of winter sports, of sledding or skating, or even snow-balling. There does not seem to have been any outdoor diversion, or attempt at such — otherwise there would have been a leaner graveyard. That stinging air was a microbe-killer, and the congealed breath of the pines a deodorizer and an antiseptic; but the Frenchmen hugged their fires and huddled from the cold like so many sheep, and shunned an icicle as they would a red-hot poker, shutting their thin noses in from the bracing weather, and cheat- ing their lungs from the delicious ozone of aero weather. De Monts' experience was the forerunner of all the colony-founders after him. The colony of 1607-08 at Fort St. Georges, and that of 1620 at Plymouth, passed the same ordeal. Popham's Colony succumbed, to fade away with the melting of the snows and the coming of Captain Davies, unless some few might have lingered at Pemaquid, which is even probable; but the colony of the Mayfloiver, despite hunger and grim death, clung to the sands of Cape Cod — from which was to grow a great civilization, greater even than the wildest prophecy of the time could have fore- shadowed. The secret of it all lay in accumulate ex- perience. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 137 Given the same ration of stolidity, the same family- cohesion, the same domestic endowment, De Monts would have been successful, except that there was lacking in his camp the religious cult by which the high courage, persistent, indomitable, of the Puritan was inspired and maintained. This last may be re- garded as the link in the chain that through every stress moored them to ultimate success. This colony was infinitely poorer, infinitely weaker in a sense, whose debarkation upon a bleak and shelterless coast took place at a time of the year when De Monts and his men were roasting their shins before blazing wood- fires under rain-tight roofs. There was a difference between Cape Malabarre and Mont Desert, as Cham- plain noted the following fall; but it was winter, and the rilgriuLs found the ground covered with snow. They were poorer in everything, equipment, resources, and stores, than was De Monts; for De Monts had a vessel and sailors, a cartographist, a man exi)ert in soils and minerals— withal, the support of his govern- ment. The Puritan had none of these. He was a de- luded passenger, the sport of avarice, a dissenter, pro- scribed by the prelates of the Roman Catholic Church, a fugitive from the persecution of Parker, AVhitgift, Bancroft, and later the infamous Laud; only to be recognized when he had acquired something which the English Government could tax, and from which some revenue could be derived to the Crown. Then came the taskmaster; yet the Puritan throve and waxed strong, to finally cast the English money- changers without the temple. It was English grit 138 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN against the grit of the Cape Cod sands — but the re- sultant fusion was perfect. The comparison is instructive. De Monts expected too much, and his disappoint- ment, when he awoke to see how completely his dream had been shattered, was keen. He was glad to be rid of his patent, its responsibilities and its offices. The ^'T^ ST. CROIX RIVER FROM LUBEC sunny skies of France were more benign. In his place, Champlain would have made a success of the venture, one may safely assume, with his evident adhesion to purpose, his disposition unaffected by the perils that beset him on the sea and amid the wilds of the sav- ages, his hardihood and indifference to dangers, seen and unseen. It is doubtful if Champlain would have located his colony on St. Croix Island. It had its ad- vantages, and had De Monts been better acquainted with the climate, the influence of the Gulf Stream THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 139 upon the climatic phenomena of the coast, he would have pitched possibly upon the more benign shores of Nova Scotia, rather than the deeps of the forest up the St. Croix River, where the gentle warmth of the great ocean river from the tropics never came. Champlain makes no mention of indoor diversions at the St. Croix settlement, such as were inaugurated the first winter at Port Royal, and which lent some lubricity to the leaden-footed hours. Perhaps it was out of his experience at St. Croix that Champlain sug- gested the famous " L'Ordre de Bon Temps/' which may have been as well suggested by the legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. It was a club of fifteen, each member of which, in rota- tion, once in fifteen days, officiaied at De Poutrin- court's table as the maitre d'hbtel, and for that day he was provider and chef. There was something to look forward to each day, and a round of jolly good-fellow- ship was kept up. Dinner was a mild carnival-time, and in order to cover the cloth, hunting-parties were organized with the Indians, day l)y day, by those to whom the lot came, each of whom a day or two before the mantle of his office fell upon him was off on the hunting-trail; nor did the hunter return until some toothsome delicacy had fallen before his unerring musket, or answered to a prod of his spear through the ice. It was fish or game at breakfast, and perhaps the same at dinner: l)ut whatever it was, it was a festi- val of good eating, good reason, and a flow of soul. One must admit Champlain to have been fertile in 140 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN expedients; no doubt he contributed his share to the congenialities of the circle. Home from the hunt with the best that he and his hunters could capture, the maitre cVJiotel made his preparations for the following day. The great fires PORT ROYAL were in readiness for the cooking of the viands, and he set about his task with the breaking of the dawn on the eventful day. Breakfast ready to be served, he threw his napkin over his shoulder, and with a proper sense of the responsibility of the office, one may assume, — as the badge of his high function, with haton in hand, the insignia of the " L'Ordre de Bon Temps" about his shoulders, — he announced the fare; and tradition has it that this collar was no flimsy THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 141 affair, but worth above four French crowns. The members of the order closed in behind him in military rank, each armed with a plate which it was his especial privilege to keep in order himself. This was the man- ner in which they approached each repast, to be va- ried in the evening, when, after thanking God for the mercies of the day, the chef of the day gave up his insignia to his successor, whose good health, and the healths of his companions, were pledged by each in a glass of wine. Lescarbot says that the savages were tlicre as well, onlooking, and "at table eating and drinking like us, and we right glad to see them, as, on the contrary, their absence would have made us sorry." Nothing of this kind enlivened the days at the St. Croix settlement. It was there that the winter crept its slow pace, while the slow days, heaped and blinded with the riotous, wind-l)lown snow, spanned the low gables that shrunk from the buffetings of the gale. The fires on the great hearths leapt crazily about the fire-logs piled on the huge andirons, which may have been nothing more than a pair of stone slabs picked up on the island shore, or smouldered into gray ash, their smokes swirling up the wide throats of the rude chim- neys in gusty draughts. Then there were other days, when the snow had forgotten to fall, when the winds had gone to sleep, and the intense cold hugged the valleys and fettered the wide mouths of the rivers with undulating floes of ice as the tides ebbed or flowed, and etched upon the meagre window-panes the wonder-foliage of the frost, — the palms that never 142 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN elsewhere grew on land, and the gracious filigrees of ferns that never drank from out the woodland spring, — yet only to fade away before the soft winds of the south, the croaking of the errant crow, and the swell- ing of the buds; for as De Monts and Champlain ate and slept, or wrote one day into another, the ice broke in the river and went plunging out to sea, and spring had come to the St. Croix, These were the days for which the voyagers had been waiting, " When the shadows veil the meadows, And the sunset's golden ladders Sink from twilight's walls of gray," to weave wraiths of tremulous mists along the streams, and paint the woodlands with the crimson of the maples; when the streams vied in their babblings with the thrush piping in the lowlands, and the dews un- locked the choicest perfumes of the woods. But these were not the days of idleness for Cham- plain. As the fire roared up the great chimneys of the triple houses, of D'Orville, Champlain, and Champa- dore, for the dwellings of these three constituted a single block of buildings, Champlain sharpened the nibs of his goose-ciuills and wrote the narrative of the first voyage down the coast, or drew the charts of its lines; and one can imagine the delightful entertain- ment his work afforded him as the story grew, or in the lines that one by one found their way into exist- ence, over which he again went with loving glance to hear the ripple of the Penobscot tides, THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 143 " the stealthy feet of things Whose shapes he could not see," the flutter of the down-falling leaf in the silent wood- land; to breathe again the odors of the autumn's de- cay, the dank moisture of the forest floors; and the soft glamour of the eyes of the Indian maid, and the savage rudeness of their living, swept across his lively or reminiscent vision. It was in these days that De Monts strained his eyes down the river to get a glimpse of the delaying sails of Poutrincourt's ship. April had gone, and De Monts' brain was troubled with visions of shipwreck. He waited until the 15th of May, when he decided to fit out the barque of seventeen tons, and another of seven, so that he might get away to Gasp^ in quest of a ves- sel by which he might reach France. He was homesick, certainly; but on June 15th, as the guard went his 144 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN rounds a little before midnight, Pont-Grave came in a shallop with the news that his ship was but six leagues away, lying safely at anchor. There was great rejoicing at the St. Croix settlement, and everybody was routed out to extend his greetings to the new- comer after such manner as suited him best. There was little sleep for the rest of the night, for Pont- Grave had to relate all the news from France, and his listeners were never tired of his tale. De Monts' spir- its arose with the occasion, and they mounted higher when the next morning the French ship came loom- ing out the greenery of the river-banks to seaward. It was then that Pont-Grave vouchsafed the further information that the St. Estienne, of St. Malo, was not far behind with abundant store of provisions; but this did not effect a change of De Monts' purpose to return with the first ship for France. He had tired of the Island of the Holy Cross. It was France, or a more propitious location, " better adapted for an abode, and with a better temperature." De Monts acted promptly; for on the 18th of June, with some other gentlemen, among whom were Champlain and M. Simon, and twenty sailors, taking along Panounais and his squaw as guides, he sailed away down the river and over the course taken the previous autumn, to complete his explorations to the west and south. This was Champlain' s second voyage down the coast, which took the party as far as Cape Cod, which Champlain nominated, ''Cap de Malabarre." It was an eventful voyage, and added to De Monts' knowl- edge of the country, and perhaps confirmed him in his THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 145 disposition to return to Franco. The voyage occupied four months, and Chaniplain says they left Cape Mala- barre October 28th, setting sail for St. Croix. He says, "The air was very cold, and there was a little snow." The course was direct for the mouth of the Penobscot. The last day of October found them between Mont Desert and Cap Corneille (Crow Cape, between Campo- bello and Moose Island, on which is situated the town of LUBEC NARROWS Eastport) . The rudder of their vessel broke, and they resolved to take to the land to repair it, or to ship a new one. With only a foresail set, they were driven through the night trying to steer by the ''sheets of the foresail," which they held in their hands. Finally, a boat was let over the stern with some men and oars, by which they were enabled to sail their ship as they wished. As the dawn began to break, they were al- most upon the Isles Rangees, a nest of breakers; but the wind abated and they managed to get away in safety. 146 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN With the first day of November they were able to make a landing upon an island where they found the ice of a thickness of two inches, and Champlain was impressed with the difference between the climate of Cape Malabarre and these islands about the mouth of Passamaquoddy Bay. It was a slight foretaste of winter; but the following day the barque was beached, and there it was they got the first news of the happen- ings about the St. Croix region since their departure in June. A few days before, a massacre had taken place here. One tribe of savages had made an on- slaught upon some of their neighbors, the result being the killing of some, and the capture of a few squaws who were executed at Mont Desert after the savage fashion. A new rudder shipped, they left Cap Corneille for the eastward, and the next day they were anchored in the ''little passage of Sainte Croix River." The following day they anchored south of Manan. On the twelfth they again made sail, when the shallop was thrown against the stern of the ship "so violently and roughly that it made an opening and stove in her upper works, and again in the recoil broke the iron fastenings of our rudder." The wind was stiff and the seas ran high, so they ran under a foresail, but they kept on until they reached Port Royal safely. This year was colored with a single tragedy, — it was the killing of their savage guide, Panounais, by the Inchans about the Penobscot. He was brought to the French settlement from Norumbega, where an im- posing funeral obsequy was held. Champlain de- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN I47 scribes the savage ceremony: ''As soon as the body was brought on shore, his relatives and friends began to shout by his side, having painted their faces black, which is their mode of mourning. After lamenting much, they took a quantity of tobacco and two or three dogs and other things belonging to the deceased, and burned them some thousand paces from our set- tlement on the sea-shore. Their cries continued until they returned to their cabin. The next day they took the body of the deceased and wrapped it in a red covering, which Mamhretou, chief of the place, urgently implored me to give him since it was hand- some and large. He gave it to the relatives of the de- ceased who thanked me very much for it. After thus wrapi)ing up the body, they decorated it with several kinds of malachiats; that is strings of beads and brace- lets of divers colors. They painted the face, and put on the head many feathers and other things, the finest they had, then they placed the body on its knees between two sticks, with another under the arms to sustain it. Around the body were tiic mother, wife, and others of the relatives and friends of the deceased, both women and girls, howling like wolves. "While the women and girls were shrieking, the savage named Mamhretou made an address to his companions on the death of the deceased, urging all to take vengeance for the wick(>dness and treachery committed by the subjects of the Bessahez, and to make war on them as sjieedily as possible. After this, the body was carried to another cabin and after smo- king tobacco together, they wrapped it in an elk-skin 148 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN likewise; and binding it very securely, they kept it for a larger gathering of savages so a larger number of presents would be given to the widow and children." This ceremony may have taken place at St. Croix; but Champlain describes the rite as an eye witness, after which, with De Monts, he went direct to Port Royal, the domain of the Indian chief, Mamhretou. There is no record of what took place at St. Croix after De Monts and Champlain left in June ; but in the autumn the settlement was transferred to Port Royal, and De Monts sailed for France. At Port Royal their shelters were no better than at St. Croix, but Cham- plain says, "We spent the winter very pleasantly." He mentions as of the 24th of May the coming of a small barc^ue to Port Royal bringing a letter from De Monts in which was announced the birth of Mon- signeur d' Orleans, whereat bonfires were lighted, and the Te Deum was chanted. It was not an utter desertion of St. Croix with the departure of De Monts, for the houses were habit- able, and in the summer season it was a delightful place. The island of itself was an attractive spot, abundantly clad with towering forest trees, perhaps a mile and a half about its shores, and containing per- haps fifteen acres. It was secluded, and commanded the river which became finally the southern boundary of Acadia. But for the extreme inclemency of the /winter, the French Protestant nobleman De Monts might have founded a considerable city. Its seaward extremity ascended from the river-bank by an easy incline to make a commanding hilltop. Here was set THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN I49 up the battery of the colon}-, and here was the chapel, which tradition says was like unto a wigwam. The cu- rate's house was at the other side of the island, near by the residence of Champlain and De Monts. The end of the island opposite to the battery was entrenched, and here was the round of the guard, who was on the watch day and night. Here it was the guard first A DEER ISLAND RELIC caught the hail of Font-Grave that mid-May night when the garrison routed out to greet the wel- come visitor. Between the battery and this barricade were the houses of the soldiers and the other cabins, altogether constituting a considerable village. These were surrounded by a stout palisade, and the fort was something of the block-house fashion of solid carpen- ter work, and over it floated the flag of France. There was a magazine roofed in that stood in close proximity to the quarters of the commander of the settlement. 150 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Everything was built to an elaborate plan, and, according to Lescarbot, religious services were held here. These Frenchmen were Huguenots, and their church service was undoubtedly modelled after the form of the Reformed German Church. Champlain locates the house of the curate in his "Habitations Visle Ste. Croix," but the location of the chapel is not given. Champlain does not make mention of any church service during the winter at St. Croix. These Huguenots were earnest in the propagation of the Protestant religion, and if such a service was a fact it would antedate the labors of the Episcopal Church at Popham's Colony, which began three years later at Fort St. Georges, which is claimed to have been the first regular church service on Maine soil. It is here one hears first of La Tour, whose bitter warfare with D'Aulnay furnished some of the romance of the time, and who is supposed to have come over with De Monts. La Tour's operations were distributed farther to the eastward, along the shores of Port Royal. After De Monts went to France, and Poutrincourt to Port Royal, the Island of St. Croix was under the charge of Plastrier, of Honfleur. He was here in 1608-09, and maintained the French post also, in 1610. It was while here, in the interests of the expansion of the French territory, that he planned his expedition to Pemaquid to dislodge the English who were using that place as a trading-station. He sailed down to Pemaquid with the purpose of establishing the Crown rights of his government over the Sagadahoc coun- try; but only to fall a prey to the ships of the Pop- THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 151 ham interest, which happened to be there in sufficient numbers to overpower him. It is supposed that it was Popham's ship, the Gift of God, which effected his capture, and which for the time ended the French interference with the EngHsh fishermen at that place. The La Tours were notably connected with the earlier Acadian days. April, 1598, saw the Edict of Nantes in force. The Protestant was recognized by the King ; and so it happened, when De Monts set sail for New France with a ship-load of colonists, theyi contained Catholic as well as Protestant, which latter faith was that of the leader of the expedi- tion, De Monts. Young Charles de la Tour may pos- sibly have come over in the same ship with Pou- trincourt, keeping his father company on this ad- venturous voyage. The boy would have been about the age of fourteen, and it is perhaps as well to say that he came with the De Monts Expedition as with any other. It makes no dilTerencc in the results, for the Jesuit was at the heels of the Protestant wherever he went in this new country, and if it were a possible consummation to be had, he was as likely to be in the van. The dreams of these French adventurers, as one thinks of it, must have been much like those w^hich came to the Puritans as they sailed away from the old Plymouth to the new. Religious obloquy and persecution had followed the French Huguenots, and it was with a fond anticipation that De Monts and Poutrincourt built the new castles to overhang the new seas. It is not questioned but Poutrincourt's dreams were shattered when, by the influence of the 152 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Queen, young Biencourt was compelled to take along the Jesuits Biart and Masse. Not long after, fretted and exasperated by their interference with his ad- ministration of the affairs of his colony, he left it to his son, who was finally betrayed by Biart into the piratic hands of Argall. Poutrincourt, with De Monts, who had anticipated him, thought the sunny hills and the purpling vineyards of old France a more at- tractive setting for his ambitions than the virgin charms of Port Royal. Fated to the persecution of the priests, young Biencourt found himself a wan- derer in a strange country, his settlement plundered. The sack of his Arcady complete, he, with other Frenchmen, including young Charles de la Tour, maintained a precarious existence in the country; whereby Biencourt asserted the jurisdiction of the French Crown to the region. He threw up a fortifi- cation at Cape Sable, which he called Fort St. Louis. Young La Tour was his lieutenant, and when Bien- court died, 1622-23, the mantle of the French honor dropped to the shoulders of La Tour. That it was safe in his hands was verified when approached by his father in the English interest with a suggestion that he surrender his fort and his colony to the Eng- lish jurisdiction. The father was one of the baronets constituted under the patent of Sir William Alexan- der. Each baronetcy was entitled to twenty-four square miles of the Province lands. Young La Tour was of stern stuff. He had written home in hopes that the command of the Province of Acadia would be given him. He had not asked for THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 153 help, relying on the natives as his resource if attacked. The French were of fortunate disposition. In the few lines quoted from Smith, in the beginning of the story of Pentagoet, the latter says the French are reported to " live with these people (savages) as one nation or family." La Tour had made friends with the Souri- quoise. He informed the home government that he had a hundred of these Souriquoise warriors, and he could get on without further reenforcements. This report he gave to his father, who was later to be his attempted seducer. It was about this time that Sir David Kirk, a French Huguenot who had tired of France and he- come a British subject, was playing at licensed piracy on the French expeditions to New France, and who had lingered on his way down the river from his suc- cessful raid on Quebec. Claude Turgis de Saint Ktieinie, Sieur de la Tour, the father of Charles de la Tour, was unfortunately the bearer of this report; and when the fleet of DeRoquemont sailed away from Cape Sable, La Tour, senior, went along with liim. Off the St. Lawrence, De Roquemont ran into arms of Kirk, and his voyage to Quebec was then and there terminated. The l":nglish began the voyage home with De Rociuemont's fleet in tow, and it was on this oppor- tunity that affairs came to a head between La Tour and Kirk. Both were Frenchmen, Huguenots, ex- patriated as it were by Richelieu's voidance of the rights secured to the French Protestants by the Edict of Nantes, through his organization of the "Hundred 154 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN Associates," 1627, which forbade foreigners or here- tics entering New France. As between Catholic and Protestant of France there was intense bitterness, and here was a lively bond between Kirk and La Tour. It was through the enmity of the religionist Protestant, and the desire to save Acadia as open ground, to take it from out the domination of the Jesuit, that the elder La Tour was led to lend ear to Hi-Mil/ L IjL •--"■V'^.^''t:; [(•'r i(i«-- CHERRY ISLAND the seductive Kirk, who was not only able to sway him from his loyalty to France, but to arouse him to that pitch of enthusiasm by which he was led to in- volve his son in the mesh of Sir William Alexander's colonial ambitions ; but not until he had taken to wife one of Henrietta's maids of honor, with whom he be- came so infatuated as to promise anything. With the versatility of his race, he was court painter to his wife one day and poet laureate the next. He painted for her delectation the virgin beauty of the land to which he was about to take her, the beneficent shel- ter of its skies, the marvellous enchantments that lay within the gray shadows of its wooded domain. Then he sang to her of the delights of the days, as they would use them, once settled in his seignory of La THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 155 Tour and \'uarvc. In his second marriage he was again a youth in the possession of so royal a gift from the English queen; and one smiles and rejoices alike at the alchemy of Love, in the art of which La Tour belonged to a race of past-masters; so that which his fair young wife overlooked was readily invented and supplied by the husband. The delusion was kept up of a princely domain at the other side of the voy- age to New Scotland — for as such Sir A\'illiam Alex- ander's baronies were to be known in the aggregate. The elder La Tour was on the sea with his two Eng- lish ships, well armed and well manned, and duly authorized under the Great Seal to accomplish great things. Dropping anchor off Fort St. Louis, the father made haste to approach his son Charles with the suggestion that he lower the French flag and in its place run up the banner of St. George. He .^^howed him an English patent of knighthood wherein he was styled " Charles de Sainct Etienne, esq., lord of Sainct Denicourt." He exhibited as well the patents of the two princely baronies secured to them under the royal seal, " Sainct Etienne" and "La Tour." The price was the alle- giance of father and son to the English interest, and the latter was not to be disturbed in his command at Cape Sable. The son turned a deaf ear and, for all the tyrannies of the Jesuit-led government, remained steadfast to his trust. La Tour senior, exliausting all the blandish- ments common to such enterprises, landed a portion of his forces and demanded the surrender of the fort. 156 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN The son was obdurate in his refusal. The assault be- gan, and the defense was so vigorous that, after two days, the invaders drew off, having suffered a loss of some men and a deal of prestige, with an oozing out of much vaunting and pride. The great projects of the elder La Tour had succumbed to the heavy frost of disappointment, and he could but feel his position keenly, which was not lessened by the incorrupti- bility of the son. For high emprise, was open-faced. ANNAPOLIS BASIN grim-visaged disaster; for the love-founded castles in Spain, was dire failure upon the confines of a country whose doors he had pulled to against his heels. France was no more country of his; England would be hardly more comfortable ; — then what was to be done with the young wife? He offered her her liberty to return to the English Court and its protection; but she would none of that. She answered him, as a wife should, that ''she would make it her happiness to alleviate the pain of his disappointment." La Tour and his lady were at last landed with all THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 157 thoir stranded hopes and servants on the shores of Acadia, and at the sufferance of the son, whose only resource was to afford his father his habitation and sustenance without the fort. Afterward, the elder La Tour found his way to the Scotch settlement at Port Royal; and recovering somewhat of his inde- pendence and prestige, he located on Annapolis Basin, near Goat Island, where he built a fort — the slender remains of which may yet be discovered, and which is known as the Old Scotch Fort. Young La Tour's loyalty was appreciated by the home government, and Louis XIIL made him Lieu- tenant-General of Acadia, Fort Louis, Port La Tour, and all the dependencies. Marot had brought along the commission, which was strengthened by men and supplies. This was in February of 1();31. The first thought of the Lieutenant-General was the com- fort and safety of his father. ri)on talking the mat- ter over with Marot, it was decided the latter should go to the Port Royal settlement, and when there should make himself acquainted with the condition of the Scotch, inform the elder La Tour of the honors which had come to the son, and desire him to come to him to see what further provisions for his comfort and safety could be made for the future. La Tour re- turned with Marot. It was a story of lean days and living, and of a "fat churchyard;" and with the de- parture of La Tour and his household the savages managed to dispose of what had not been claimed by disease. La Tour the eklcr was given command of St. Joim 158 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN by his son, and a small castle was built in the midst of a fertile plateau, where he nested with his fair wife in some fair fashion of security, and with much en- joyment. Then came the Treaty of St. Germain, and still, in 1635, " O'er the Isle of the Pheasant The morning sun shone On the plane-trees which shaded The shores of St. John ; ' ' but there was a land grant made the following year of some of the country about Pentagoet, a patch ten leagues square, with the old French trading-house, and the elder La Tour was the patentee. This is sup- posed to have been the beginning of the feud between D'Aulnay and the La Tours. D'Aulnay was driven from the Island of the Holy Cross by La Tour, from whence he went to Pentagoet, where he set up anew, and the La Tours occupied the St. Croix. There are La Tour traditions, but they cannot be verified. Whittier has it that D'Aulnay made a raid on St. John ; but he gets the father and son mixed up in his legend, as it was Claude of Estienne, instead of the Lieutenant-General Charles, who dwelt in the Castle of St. John, and whose English wife was last seen "On the shot-crumbled turret," defending the pennon of her absent lord. St. Croix continued to be occupied by the French. They had forts as well at Mont Desert, Port Royal, and at the mouth of the Penobscot. These were de- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 159 stroyed by the pirate Argall, in 1613, when he sailed down from \'irginia to make his raid for the second time on the St. Sauveur Mission at Mont Desert. From that time on it was one of the French footholds, one of the chain of fortified posts that fringed the Maine shore to the St. John's, and thence up the Bay of Fundy. It became an important matter to estab- lish the identity of St. Croix Island during the set- tlement of tlie Northeast Boundary; and the finding of a few cannon-balls on the southern extremity of Neutral Island established its identity, so that the ancient Schootauke river of the savage (the place where the water rushes), corrupted into the Schoodic River, but now better known as the St. Croix, became the boundary between Maine and Canada on the east: a territorial mishap that may well l)c hiid at the door of one of Maine's careless historians. This became ultimately the most southern foothold of the French, and it so remained until the cession of Canada to the English, in 1763. It is now one of the islands about which clusters the romance of the earliest French occupation. Its traditions are few, of which its de- struction by Argall is the most sanguinary. The footprints of those who knew it first are utterly blotted out. The burying-ground is not to be located. The grass-grown mounds arc ironed down by the rude hand of time, and the wooden crosses that once marked them are rotted and eaten uj) by the rank vegetation, ^^^lere once "The songs of the Huguenot Rose on the gale" 160 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN is only the single gleam of its light-tower flashing its silent greeting to the myriad lights of the city across the stream, the lone Pharos that marks the site of the earliest French occupation on the now Maine coast to recall the days of the adventurous Cham- plain. PENTAGOET RUINS OF FORT PENTAGOET PENTAGOET NCIEXT IVntagoet, with its early occupation by the European; the fertile ground it affortletl for the ultimate tragedies that col- iiicd its wealth of Romance and Tradition, that follow every sun- glint or every racing cloud- shadow up, down, or across the sky-painted waters of the Pe- nol)scot, even to this day, be- *^*— ginning with the legend of the Xoi'nian knight; the sempiter- nal rune of its waters, that have their hidden springs in the wihhvood where even yet may be some traces of the Lost City which Chamjilain half-heartedly sought; the buried footprints of the treacherous IMart, and later of the more sanguinary Thury; where oft- times the wind blows one the pungent incense from the ghostly wigwam of the savage^ Toxus, and wh(>re the rustle of the leaf makes amorous whis))er of the 1(53 164 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN tale St. Castin poured into the ear of the dusky Mathilde; — this Pentagoet lives as do the waters that lap viciously at her granite sandals, or softly fret the reedy marge of her emerald gown, as the summer nights come and go at old Castine. But Pentagoet is as old as the hills, and one knows that should be antique enough for all ordinary pur- poses. Prior to 1555 Thevet found a little fort here and some French traders, and he left them for De Monts and Champlain to search out, but which these later adventurers failed to find. The following spring, 1605, Weymouth dropped into one of the little ha- vens along the Monhegan shore, — for there is no hawser of rhyme or reason by which it would seem possible to pull Weymouth into the mouth of the Penobscot River, despite the desperate efforts of some, — and, for all that, Rosier lives, de nominis umbra, like a huge brass handle on the greater door of the Penobscot, to remind one of another who, instead of a spit of land at a river-mouth, acquired a whole con- tinent with even less exertion. If Rosier had even seen Penobscot River he would perhaps have been as indefinite and elusive as he was in his intended narrative of the Sagadahoc. Had he been like Cap- tain John Smith, he might have written the follow- ing: "The most northern part I was at was the Bay of Penobscot, which is east and west, north and south, more than ten leagues; but such were my oc- casions I was constrained to be satisfied of them I found in the bay, the river ran far up into the land, and was well inhabited^with many people; but they THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 165 were from their habitations, either fishing among the isles, or Imnting the lakes and wootis for deer and beavers. " The bay is full of great islands of one, two, six, eight, or ten miles in length, which divide it into many faire and excellent good harbours. On the east of it are the Tarratines, their mortal enemies, where in- habit the French, as they report, that live with these people as one nation or family." He locates the Tarratines on the east side of the river. This stream was the river of the Tarratines: it was their highway, up and down which they pad- dled their canoes as they went to their fishing, or down the coast for their feastings of shell-fish, or upon their errands of peace or war. This mighty stream was the river of solitudes, except for the wild fowl that beat up or down its shaggy shores. It was a realm of silence, where at times the song of the northwind had "The tones of a far-off bell." It might have been the boom of the bittern, the cry of the sentinel-heron, that beat the lengthening rib- bon of graying shadow of the waning afternoon into tremulous vibration; the trenchant tread of the moose; the whistle of the browsing deer, its keen vision dis- closing the mysteries of the wootUand from the sky- lights that patched its verdurous dome, to the deep- ening vistas of the crowding woodland aisles, " Where are mossy carpets better Than the Persian weaves, And than Eastern perfumes sweeter Seem the fading leaves. 166 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Out upon the sleepy waters the lone canoe hung as between sky and earth — the canoe of the fisher. Again, the tumult of a hundred jjaddlcs churns the A GLIMPSE OF THE PENOBSCOT ever-widening stream into threads of foam. One looks once more, and the river is but an inlaying of the sky upon the vert of the woodland, — a strip of dusky THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 167 blue laid athwart the illimitable carpeting of the wilderness, where "the mighty Bashaba Held his long unquestioned sway, From the Wliite Hills, far away, To the great sea's sounding shore; Chief of chiefs, his regal word All the river Sachems heard; At his call the war-dance stirred. Or was still once more." In Weymouth's Journal of 1605 one reads: "June 1. Indians came and traded with us. Pointing to one part of the main, eastward, they signified to us that the Bashebc, their king, had plenty of furs, and much tobacco." ChamjDlain, the year before, dropped anchor off the mouth of the Kcnduskeag, anticipating Weymouth's advent upon the Sagadahoc; and going ashore to their little collection of huts, he met the "Bessabez." He saw him in all his squalid state; for the savage was a creature of superstitions, as of tra- ditions. The occult predominated in his disposition, and much was hereditary cither through family trait or family prowess. Importance in the tribe was de- pendent upon the number of scalp-locks on the wig- wam roof-i)ole, and the savage chief carried additional prestige if he was credited with the magic skill of the wizard, " And a Panisee's dark will Over powers of good and ill, Powers which bless, and powers which ban, — " and such never lacked followers on the war-path. 168 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Strachey, the annalist of the Popham venture at Sabino, describes the immediate country as that of "a Sagamo or chief commander under the graund bassaba." In another reference to the Sachem of sa- chems, he notes, ''The salvadges departed in their canoas for the river of Pemaquid, promising Captain Gilbert to accompany him in their canoas to the river of Penobscot where the bassaba dwells." Here, Strachey locates the seat of the Bassaba. In looking over Gorges' Brief Narration, one finds this: ''That part of the country we first seated in seemed to be monarchical, by name and title of a Bashaba." Smith, 1614, had some intercourse with the savages along the Maine coast. He counted sev- eral tribes, and he writes that certain of them re- garded "the Bashaba to be the chief and greatest among them, though most of them had Sachems of their own." Of all these, it is apparent that only Champlain met this dignitary. This was in the autumn of 1605. The Frenchmen had been led up-stream to Kadesquit by the savages whose acquaintance they had made at Pematiq ; and opposite the mouth of the Kenduskeag, just below where the river forks on the white rocks, was where their barque was moored. Champlain says the savages who had led them to the " rapids of Nor- umbega . . . went to inform Bessabes, their Captain, and gave him warning of our arrival." The embassy was successful, for he notes that on the sixteenth day of the month he was visited by many savages, some thirty in number, who came THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 169 after the most friendly fashion, being assured by their guides hither of their hke friendly mission — " also came the said Bessabes to us that same day with six canoes." Champlain further notes: "As soon as the savages who were on shore saw him arrive, they all began to sing, dance and leap until he had alighted; afterwards they all sat down in a circle on the ground, following that custom when they wish to make some speech or festival. Cabahis, the other Chief, soon after arrived, also, with 20 or 30 of his companions, who withdrew to the other side, and rejoiced greatly to see us, inasmuch as it was the first time they had ever seen Christians." After the honors had been observed, and the state visit had been made to the strangers, Champlain, with two of his companions, accompanied by his two sav- age interpreters, Panounais and his squaw, went on shore — not, however, without {irecaution. He writes: " I charged the persons on our part to approach near the savages and hold their arms ready to do their duty if they should perceive any disturbance in his pco]:)le against us. Bessabes seeing us on shore, made us sit down, and began to smoke with his companions, as they ordinarily do before making their speeches, and made us a present of venison and game. All the rest of the day and the following night, they did nothing but sing, dance and feast, awaiting daylight; afterwards each one went back, Bessabes with his companions. . . ." It is evident that Champlain did not visit Bessabes in his capital city, where. 170 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN " his spoils of chase and war, Jaw of wolf and black bear's paw, Panther's skin and eagle's claw, Lay beside his axe and bow; And adown the roof-pole hung, Loosely on a snake-skin strung. In the smoke his scalp-locks swung Grimly, to and fro." Had he reclined upon the heaped-up furs of the great Abenake chief, where he could have looked out upon the river as they talked or smoked, to catch a glimpse of "rowers rowing. Stir of leaves and wild-flowers blowing, Steel-like gleams of water flowing. In the sunlight slanted," he would have not only written of them, but he might have essayed to have caught the charm of the scene with his pencil. If one takes note of Champlain's sketches, none of them are in perspective, but all seem to be of the bird's-eye characteristic. His land- scapes are charted, as are his coast contours, and yet all are suggestive of the assimilative vision. One has to regret that the art of those days was so crude from a pictorial point of view. One would be satis- fied with the sketchiness of the cosmopolitan news- sheet, could one but have had preserved to his curi- osity the Bessabes' portrait, his tapering wigwam, a glimpse of its interior, and a panel sketch from the turned-back flap of his wigwam door. It is singular that of all the early voyagers of the time, and those who came along with them, nothing had been pre- THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 171 served outside the pictorial embellishment of the contemporary maps. It is as well evident that Champlain was not over- impressed with the state of the Bashaba; and perhaps it was because his disappointment was so keen that, all along the way up the grand stream, from its mouth for a distance of twenty-five leagues, he not only " saw no city, nor village, nor appearance of there having been one; but, indeed, one or two savage huts where there was nobody." It has been conjectured that the city of the Ba- shaba was further up the stream, and that Champlain did not penetrate to its location. One thing is to be gathered from his narrative, — that the Sagamore of Mawooshen met his French visitors by the mouth of the Kenduskeag, which was some distance from his village. This observation of the French voyager was in 1605; but Heylin, writing of the locality after the coast-line of Acadia had become familiar to the Eng- lish and French mariner, says: "Most have formerly agreed upon Norumbegua or Arampec as the natives call it; said to be a large, poi)ulous and well-built town, and to be situate on a fair and capacious river of the same name also. But later observations tell us there is no such matter; that the river which the first rela- tions did intend, is Temptegonet, neither large nor pleasant; and that the place by them meant is called Agguncia, so far from being a fair city, that there are only a few sheds or cabins, covered with the barks of trees, or the skins of beasts." The same author also mentions "Nansic" as the river of the Tarratines. 172 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN Call it by whatever name suits the ancient annalist best, it is always the Penobscot River that is meant. The Jesuits were here in 1611, and in their ''Rela- tions" one finds mention of Betsebes, "Sagamo of Kadesquit." It is evident that the Bashaba of Strachey, the Bcssabes of Champlain, and the Betse- bes of Biart are one and the same; for Biart writes of his lanchng on Mont Desert: ''On our first visit and landing at St. Savior, we made as though the place did not please us, and that we should go to another part; the good people of the place wept and lamented. On the other hand, the Sagamo of Kadesquit, named Betsebes, himself came for us to allure us by a thousand promises, having heard we proposed to go there to dwell." This savage people have been the subject of much discussion. The interest has doubtless arisen from the importance which the great river has always held from the earliest voyagings, and among whom the pioneer settler has cast his uncertain lot. According to the accounts of Purchas, Winthrop, Prince, Hub- bard, and others, the Penobscot tribe was known as the Tarratine. In Smith's account one finds this: "The principal habitations I saw at the northward was at Penobscot, who are at war with the Tarra- teens, their next northerly neighbors;" and Gorges follows, making confusion worse confused by saying, "The war growing more violent between the Bash- aba and the Terrentines," etc. It does not occur to the writer that the remark of Gorges would have any weight in the settlement of the tribal occupancy of this THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 173 stream. It is undoubtetUy safe to keep to the line drawn by Father ^'entromile, who says here, on the Penobscot, was one of the five great villages of the five tribes of which the great Abenake family was composed. Father Rale, who may be considered as unexceptionable authority, gives the name of the Penobscot village as Pannaivdnhskek. Nanrantswak, 174 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN on the Qninebequil, was another. Anmessukkantti was the third within the Province of Maine. The re- maining two were located in Canada. La Hontan mentions the Mahigans (Mohicans), Soccokis, and the Openango as nomadic, but says of the Abenake that they have ''fixed habitations.'' Kidder, who is accepted as the best modern authority, places the Tarratines along the Penobscot. According to M. Ventromile, the Abenake were an original peo- ple, and were possessed of a marked docility of man- ners. Their shelters were more elaborate and more effective than those of neighboring races, and they were more gregarious in their habits. Their dress was substantial, modest, and ornamented with their own handiwork of shells, beads, belts, and fringes, which they wrought out of crude material with much artistic skill. They were agriculturalists. Their corn- fields were of notable luxuriance. They planted as the snows went, and gathered their crops with the waning days of August. They were notably pure in their morals. These were the Abenake of the days when Father Dreuillettes first came among them. When he told them they must renounce their strong- waters, bury all their hatchets, abandon their medi- cine-men, throw away their drums when they came among the sick of their tribes, in order to be baptized, they consented, making no difficulty of doing away with their superstitions. Their love for their offspring was great. From its birth the balie was swathed in the soft fur of the bear- skin, and tenderly nourished; and as soon as the child THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 175 could stand well braced on its feet it was taught the mystery of the bow and arrow, and as the years grew, the arts and secret wiles of the chase. They were noted for their hospitable characteristics, and, as well, for their family attachments. In war they were a brave people. Two instances are given by M. Yentromile: "Twenty Abenakis once entered an English trading-house, either to rest or to traffic, when they were surrounded by two hun- dred British soldiers, as if to capture them. One Abenaki gave the alarm of war, crying, ' We are dead, let us sell our lives dearly!' The}' prepared them- selves to fall ui3on the British soldiers, who had great difficulty to |)acify them. Another time, during the war of England and France, thirty Abenaki warriors, returning from a military expedition against the British, while they unsuspectingly were asleep dur- ing the night, were found by a party of British sol- diers headed by a colonel who had been on their track. The soldiers, six hundred in number, surrounded them, certain of their capture, when an Abenaki awoke and cried to the others, ' We are dead, let us sell our lives dearly!' They arose instantly, formed six divi- sions of five men each, and with tomahawk in one hand, and a knife in the other, they fell upon the l^ritish soldiers with such force and impetuosity, that they killed sixty soldiers, including the colonel, and dispersed the rest." The Tarratines were of symmetric physique — lithe, willowy, with well-knit muscles; and, aroused by ill- treatment, hardy and resolute in the carrying out of 176 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN their purpose, and ferociously vengeful in the cruel- ties incident to the carrying on of their system of savage warfare. Their treacheries were the result of their acquaintance with the English, who set them to making bricks without straw from the beginning, de- moralizing and debauching their integrity with watered rum and open cheating. If they were good haters of the English settler they were good lovers of the French, which was a proof that they could be loyal where it was for their interest to be so — wherein they were not much different from the common run of to-day. The Jesuit was the great factor in cementing the bond of their loyalty to the French, and it was nat- ural that the French should use them in conquest. Others would have done the same. Things are not so much different in matters of war in later times. Ter- ritorial aggrandizement, the quarrels of kings, the wild ambitions of politicians, and the sickly barriers of effete barbarisms are sufficiently acute causes. It may not be that victory is followed by butchery, ruddy and indiscriminate, — a savage assault upon Old York at break of a winter dawn, the fiery pit of Port Arthur, or the trenches of Mukden, — its resultant effects are the same. It is a reversal of conditions. It seems to be a means, however unjust or disreputa- ble, to a desired end, as it was three centuries ago. Human greed seems to have come down through the generations with its faculties unimpaired, while its inventions have multiplied until robbery and oppres- sion'are able to go about in the garb of legality. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 177 That is a brutal way to indict modern civilization, but all indictments of society, or the individual, when founded in truth, are apt to be productive of discom- fort and a certain modicum of mental wriggling and squirming. The massacres of Schenectady, Deerficld, Salmon Falls, and York were the acme of brutality and cruelty — but it was warfare as the savage under- stood it. Argall's attack upon the defenseless Jesuits at Mont Desert, Hunt's kidnappings, Andros' sack of Pentagoet, Waldron's and Frost's treacherous sur- prise of two hundred savages whom they had invited to witness a mock-fight, and who were afterward sent to Boston to be shipped to the Barbadoes to be sold as slaves, were fertile sowings on prolific soils. It was noted by the French, when they began their first occupancy of Acadia, that among the arts of the savages was that of communicating by picture- writing on the barks or rinds of the forest trees, and on stones. Arrow-heads, flints, and coals were used. The bark of the birch-tree was their letter-paper, and it served them to a very good purpose; and upon it they transcribed their messages to neighboring tribes. Answers were made upon the same material and returned by the dusky runner to the sender. It was by such means that war councils were gathered, around whose fires tobacco was smoked and deliber- ations were held, and it was by such medium that the ultimatum was given to the belligerent party. In the wigwams of the Abcnake were to be found, frequently, collections of hieroglyphic literature, — a kind of li- brary, which consisted of bits of bark, stones, and 178 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN other object-records. The medicine-men had scrolls of bark drawn with these singular and uncouth tra- cings which they were wont to read to the sick. The incident is recalled of the writing on a bit of bark so disposed over the stream, the waters of the Kennebec, which announced the news of Rale's death to the ^ HIEROGLYPHICS, DAMARISCOTTA savage traveller by water, but which proved later to be unfounded. It was a form of savage bulletin, and was as intelligible to the Abenake as one finds the election returns thrown across the street of the metrop- olis and limned upon a white screen of an election night. The Micmacs were notable in this picture-painting, and while the Abenake may not have practised it to THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 179 SO great an extent, yet it was not unknown to them. It was a species of picture vocabulary, and with the coming of the Jesuits the vocabulary was improved and expanded. Among the writings of Father Rale some of these hieroglyphics are preserved. Rock- writings have been discovered, notably at Manana, but no interpretation has been made. The Rosetta Stone of the Dighton Rock cryptograms is yet to be discovered. The Abenake was the mystic of the woods, within the shadows of which he made his abode. He was keenly observant. From a crease in a fallen leaf, the bend of a twig, a wrinkled blade of grass, he read the ap])roach of a stranger, the passing of a trespasser, whose trail he was able to follow as readily as the hound scents the fox. To avoid discovery by others equally gifted, their inventions were many. Every sense was trained to meet the unexpected. Their sense of touch was so acute that they were able to designate the points of the compass amid the darkness of night by putting their hands to the rinds of the trees; and while they possessed little or no knowledge of astronomy, they read the hours of the night as an illuminated clock-dial. The moon was their tim('keej)er from month to month. It was their weather-bureau, A pale moon meant rain or snow. A reddish moon foretold wind. A reclining moon presaged a stormy month, while a new moon, from which a powder-horn would slij) its string from the lower crescent, bespoke fair weather. The moon told them when the rivers would freeze up. 180 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN and when the spring buds would burst their waxen casements. They had a wide knowledge of the sim- ples that grew in the woods, and there was healing in the rind of some of their trees. They were the masters of woodcraft, and their omens and signs at- tached to every success or failure. They knew the language of the wild creatures of the woods, and many of them they revered, especially such as they had taken for the totems of their tribes. They could call the moose through the hollow of the hand. They could gather the crows with the speech of the owl. The beaver wrought at their wigwam doors. Not a few were their mystic rites and cere- monies. They knew " All the subtle spirits hiding Under earth or wave, abiding In the caverned rock, or riding Misty clouds or morning breeze ; Every dark intelligence, Secret soul, and influence Of all things which outward sense Feels, or hears, or sees," through their medicine-man, and "These the wizard's skill confessed, At his bidding banned or blessed, Stormful woke, or lulled to rest Wind and cloud, fire and flood; Burned for him the drifted snow, Bade through ice fresh lilies blow, And the leaves of summer grow Over winter's wood! " Nature was the literature of the savage, unexpur- gated and unabridged. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 181 It was here came an offshoot of traders from that first squatter settlement on Cape Cod, for such were the Pilgrims, without charter-rights or license. The Pilgrim occupancy on the Penobscot dates from 1626- 27, and it was among the Tarratines,the aborigine un- S^^f?ojlt..- FROM AN OLD SKETCH 182 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN sophisticated in tlie ways of the European, that the trader Isaac Allerton set up his shop. Here at Penta- goet, upon a peninsula of the same name, which has, at one time and another, passed under other aliases, like Matchebiguatus, Bagaducc, and Penob- scot, and now identified as Castine, is a place of much historical interest in the early provincial history of Maine. It was in 1611 that Biart, who came over to Port Royal with Biencourt, found his way hither at the solicitation of the great Bessabes, and it was from this central point among the Abenake tribes that the Jesuit wrought outward. For locality it is beautiful of situation, affording an ample harbor, which is environed by a wealth of scenic attractions, and invested with a continuity of subtle charm of land and waterscape, almost unri- valled in its constantly changing perspective. Here was the once-time theatre of many a stirring episode whose yarns have gone into the parti-colored woof of its traditions, its legends, and romances; for here was where the Wizard of Romance wrought his finest fab- rics and his choicest patterns after the coming of Baron Castin. It was just within the edge of the trapping coun- try of the savage, in close contiguity to their villages, and by the roadside over which they went from the inland to the sea, the mighty Penobscot, and it be- came a place greatly resorted to for trade after the coming of Allerton. It offered an available site for military occupancy, which both English and French in turn improved with the varying fortunes of war. THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 183 As has been noted, it was the Plymouth people, acting under the advice of Bradford, who regarded it as an eligible place for traffic. This country was a bone of contention between the English and the French, both countries claiming prior discovery and occupation. The former dated their supremacy with the advent of the Cabots into the waters of Newfound- land, while the latter depended upon the voyage of Verrazzano, who followed the Cabots some thirty years later. To be sure, Pring was here in 1603, and is credited with some acquaintance with the Fox Islands in the Penobscot Bay waters, while he was followed by Weymouth, in 1605; but it is to be doubted seriously if the latter made any exploration of the Penol)scot, although he is certain to have been at Monhegan and within the Sagadahoc stream. It is, however, absolutely certain that De Monts and Champlain made the survey of the Penobscot to the Kadesquit in the fall of 1604, and Champlain's de- lineations and descriptions are the first-known efforts at charting the river or the adjoining coa.st. Dc Monts possessed himself of Port Royal, St. Croix, Pematiq, and Pemetegoet, to which he justified under a char- ter from the French Henry 1\. It covered all the territory between the fortieth and forty-sixth {jaral- lels; or, in other words, the southern limit of the F'rench charter was at Delaware l^ay, while the north- ern bountl was marked by the Gulf of the St. Law- rence. The French charter antedated the iMiglish charter by about two years, the latter extending from Cape Breton on the north to South Carolina, which 184 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN was divided between the London and the Plymouth companies. The settlement at St. Croix may be regarded as of a permanent character, whUe the attempt of the Pop- ham Colony on the Sagadahoc came and went with the snows of a single winter, — that of 1607. Wliat- ever claims may be made of the subsequent per- manency of the Pemaquid settlement by the '' forty- five" of Popham's planters must be regarded as of some weight outside of the lively imagination of the romancer. The French are credited with an occu- pancy of the Penobscot as early as 1555, if the The vet narration is to he accepted; and yet there is some record of an Ananias at a still earlier date. I appre- hend most of those old voyagers outside of Champlain drew something of a long bow — not so much with a view of deluding people, as of adding something to their own stature as accomplishers of incredibilities. Smith, truthful in the main, was a romancer of the first water; yet he is to be accepted as a truth-teller. Levett was not troubled with c^ualms of conscience; while Rosier, correct evidently in detail, was not averse to covering his fox-trap with ashes; or, in other words, deftly covering his footprints. Their prede- cessors, Gosnold and Pring, had more to say about sassafras, Biscay shallops, and Indians dressed a la mode, with an English trip to their tongues, than of sounds, bays, and inlets. Unlike the scrutinies of Champlain and Lescarbot, they were after a profit- able home-lading. In 1621 Sir William Alexander procured from James a patent of the immense re- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 185 gion comprised in these later days by the Provinces of New Brunswick, Cape Breton, Prince Edward's Island, and Nova Scotia. This last grant covered all the colonies of the Annapolis Basin — being Acadia in its entirety almost. Prior to the grant to Alexander the French Jesuits had landed on Mont Desert and there established a mis- sion — the same which was de- stroyed by A]-gall in 1613. This was the condition of Eng- lish antl French supremacy in tiic neighborhood of the Penobscot River when the Plymouth trading- post was estab- lished. This occu- pation of Pentagoet by these first ]^:nglish settlers grew out of the impoverished finances of the Plym- outh Colony. Colonial bankruptcy stared the little settlement in the face. The debts exceeded the ISLESBORO SHORE 186 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN assets, and its exchequer was as dry as a well in a sand-pit. It was at this time that a score of energetic colonists undertook to retrieve the situation, which was one of comniercial inanition. It was certain that without some form of lucrative trade the Plymouth Colony must starve. Its location was not productive of anything but grit, of which there was an abundance, and of good equality. This sandy rib of Cape Cod was fertile soil for the rugged traits of character which made the Puritan and his General Court famous; and the rigidity of the Puritan spine is suggestive of the stubbed hard pines of the region, that buffeted the salt winds from the sea, and held the shifting sands of the barren cape to its rocks. The control of the settlement trade, its coasting- craft, its incident production, vested in these pro- moters, was to be compensated for by an annual con- tribution to the colony of shoes and stockings to the value of fifty pounds, to be paid for in corn at six shillings the bushel; or, if the consumer preferred, three bushels of corn, or six pounds of tobacco. The syndicate w^as going into the peltry business, and the contract with the colony, which began with Sep- tember, 1627, was to be operative for six years. To be exact as to numbers, there were twenty-seven of these colonists who had an itching for trade, and, as- sociating with themselves four English merchants, they called themselves the '' Undertakers." As events subsequently developed, this somewhat imposing firm- name smacked of prophecy. The company employed as their general agent and THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 187 factor one Isaac Allorton, who takes some prestige by being a charter-member of the Mayflower Club, and to whom Winthrop caustically alluded as one who "set up a company of base fellows, and made them traders;'' but Winthrop forgot sometimes to wijx' his (juill, and its corroded nib would make black marks unwittingly. Allerton was committee on ways and means; or, in other words, the travelling, pur- chasing, and selling agent, — the animate end of the enterprise, which he made immediately profitable. A partner in the original scheme, he could hardly make money enough to suit his greedy gait, and so Ix'gan to transact a bit of trade on his own account, witli the result that Ills j)rivate deal was soon inex- tricably mixed with that of the "Undertakers." The traffic was profitable, the trading-j)ost once es- tablished at Pentagoet. The natives were much at- tracted by the truck-house, where were displayed, in alluring array, coats, shirts, rugs, blankets, wam- pum, biscuit, corn, and peas — and rum, of course. Beaver, otter, martyn, sable, and other valuable furs were procured in abundance, and trade was merry indeed. The trading-house was hardly more than a block-house, built after the fashion of the times and surrounded with a palisade — and it was possibly sit- uated on the site of what appears to have been the last fort at Pentagoet. It may be safely assumed that such was the location, by reason of after events. Wampum was an alluring connnodity, f(jr the sav- ages were bead worshii)i)ers. after a fashion. It was, when woven into a belt, the insignia of authority. 188 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN and any messenger from one tribe to another, to obtain credit, must show the wampum-belt of his tribe. It was his letter of credentials. Wampum was much coveted, and the brighter and more varied the colors of the beads, the less able was the savage to AN OLD BLOCKHOUSE withstand the temptation. A handful of glass beads for a fine sable skin was ample compensation to the Indian, and was the source, likewise, of a most extrav- agant profit to the trader. Business on the Penob- scot was brisk, and Allerton had started so many fires on his own account, and had so many pokers heating in them, that an assistant became needful. By the connivance of the English partners and Aller- THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 189 ton, Edward Asliley was imported to lend some assist- ance in the conduct of the Pentagoet trade. He was young in years, but the Plymouth folk knew of little in his favor. He made a good appearance, was lively and witty, and apparently of excellent ability. They credited him with being '' a very profane younge man, who had lived amonge ye Indians as a savage, and wente naked amongste them and used their maners." Ashley's accjuaintancc with the language of the sav- ages was in his favor, and made him an exceeding valuable factor in the business. It was possibly his chief stock in trade. Appearing on the scene two years after the establishment of the trading-post, 1629, he very soon came to take the entire charge of the Penobscot trade. The business became so very lucrative that the Plymouth partners began to dis- trust his honesty, and selecting Thomas Willet, who was originally from Lcydcn, in whose discretion and integrity they had unlimited confidence, they sent him down to Pentagoet to look after their interests and to keep A.shley "in some good measure within bounds." He was in reality the watch-dog of the Pilgrims. Ships came over from England laden w'ith goods, and grain was sent from Plymouth, and the trade in- creased so that large iiuantitics of beaver and other fine furs were accumulated, which, as it turned out, came to be of little advantage to the Plymouth part- ners. Ashley ignored the liabilities of the company to the Plymouth men for supplies and commodities used in this growing trade with the savages, but 190 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN shipped direct to the English merchants the consid- erable stores of furs, still obtaining from Cape Cod such goods as the settlement was wont to supply. This was not satisfactory or pleasing to the Plymouth partners and, with their lack of confidence in the fellow at the start, was not productive of favor toward him. For all this inattention to their rights they were compelled to contribute a vessel and man it for the furtherance of the Penobscot traffic. It was apparent that Ashley was too alert for the Hollander, at least for the space of a year or more; but Willet bethought himself of a snare, and he laid it. Like the rabbit-hunter going the rounds of his bended twigs, to here or there make a more delicate adjustment of his loops and wires, Willet kept to his scrutiny of Ashley's dealings. Ashley '' was taken in a trape for trading powder and shote with ye Indians," accord- ing to Bradford. This was a flagrant violation of the proclamation of the Crown, and by reason of which the authorities levied on a half-ton of beaver which Ashley had not had time to ship. The Plym- outh partners showed that Ashley had given bond in the sum of five hundred pounds '' not to trade any munition with ye Indeans, or otherwise to abuse him- self e;" and thereby the beaver was saved from con- fiscation. It was, however, the means of terminating Ashley's connection with the post at Pentagoet, and of sending him to the Fleet in London. The discharge of Allerton followed. His own mat- ters were so tangled with those of the '' Undertakers," and the losses were so apparent, that nothing else was THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 191 to be done. From Penobscot Allciton went to the Kennebec, where he set up a truck-house and made some inroad on the Pentagoet trade. Afterward he was in trade with Richard ^'ines, and appears to have done some business at Machias, whence he was ousted by La Tour, after which he seems to have found a deserved obscurity. Allerton and his tool disposed of, the Pentagoet truck-house was managed by the "Undertakers," and under their control was made to give immense annual returns. It was not to be expected that with the knowledge of the accumulating traffic at Pentagoet the French would not make some effort to secure a portion of th(> fur trade which the English had been constantly drawing away from them. It was in 1631 the first ripple showed on the hitherto placid stream of their commerce. The Pentagoet factor had one morning taken most of his servants, going after some goods whicli had been brought over from England, and which had been deposited elsewhere. Th(> post had Ix'cn left in charge of four servants, who were to attend to the preserva- tion of the place. It was not long before a barque came up the river with the wind. It was a party of Frenchmen under Rosillon. They came to land, and, making something of a scrutiny of the premis(>s with an excess of French politeness, they discovered that Pentagoet was at their disposal. At the first they were strangers in a strange country; they had been unfortunate — their vessel had sprung a leak, and they had come in search of a place to beach her so 192 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN they might put safely to sea. There was along with this pirate crew a Scotchman. Through him the French learned the state of affairs, and by a ruse of curiosity they got the fire-arms into their possession, whereupon they compelled the servants of the com- pany to carry the goods in the truck-house, in fact everything they could lay their hands to, to their vessel — which included three hundred pounds of beaver. Having looted the place, the freebooters sent the servants ashore, when their captain thanked them for their kindly courtesy, and bade them tell the trader when he returned that "some of the Isle of Rhe gentlemen had been there." It was at the Isle of Rhe, but five years earlier, that the French had defeated the Duke of Buckingham. The applica- tion was clear. This war had been terminated in 1629, but the treaty was not fully entered into until the early part of 1632, at Germain en Laye. It was by this treaty that the country of Pentagoet was ceded to France, being, as it was considered, the southern limit of Acadia. The '^ Undertakers" paid no attention to the treaty, but kept to their selling of wampum and buying of pelts, — it is so difficult to part with a good sup when you have it, though your stomach be full. The treaty closed, Isaac de Razilli was made Gov- ernor of Acadia. He assumed his dignities at once (1632) . Two years later he erected a fort at La Have, on the Nova Scotia coast, but it was not until 1635 that he assumed jurisdiction over the entirety of Acadia. He divided his jurisdiction between his THE FLUME, ROCKLAND BREAKWATER THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 193 two lieutenant-generals, Charles Amador de St. Estienne, Sieur de la Tour, who held to the north- east of the St. Croix, including all the Fundy shore, and Charles de Menou, Seigneur d'Aulnay de Chairn- say, whose command was to the southwest of the St. Croix. And here begins the romance of the La Tours. D'Aulnay pitched his camp first upon the site of the De Monts settlement at the Island of the Holy Cross. It was in the year 1635 that he established him- self at Pentagoet, but not without some contention, for the Plymouth traders had to be driven away by force. Bradford relates the incident: " Monsier de Aulnay coming into ye harbore of Penobscote, and having before gott some of ye chief yt belonged to ye house abord his vessell, by sutly coming upon them in their shalop, he gott them to pilote him in." Once in the truck-house D'Aulnay made proclama- tion of possession in the name of France. " But the goods?" said AVillet, the agent. ''I will take the goods of you," was the reply. ''I cannot relinquish them." "You will relinquish them at a valuation, — " "I must have them for my trade." "You cannot trade here: this is Frencli teriitory; I have taken possession by authority; your traffic in this place is at an end. You shall be paid for your goods." "If I am compelled to sell them I can make no re- sistance." " I will fix the prices, and if you will come for the pay in a convenient time, you shall receive it." 194 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN " You will pay mc for the house and fortification?" ''That is a different matter. Those who will build on another man's ground do forfeit the same. I can say nothing for the buildings." Here was English tenacity; but the Frenchman had the whi])-hand and the Plymouth man was en- tirely in the wrong, yet he was showing the feathers that ever ruffled the Puritan crest when disturbed at the feast, actual or prospective. D'Aulnay gave Wil- let his shallop and sufficient provision so that he got to Boston safely, where a tempest in a teapot was soon started, with the result that the Massachusetts Bay folk furnished a vessel, the Great Hope, w^hicli was under the command of "one Girling," who had made a contingent contract with the Plymouth part- ners, in which one catches the Willet accent. It was a shrewd bargain, in the which Girling would " deliver them ye house (after he had driven out, or surprised ye French,) and give them peacable possession thereof, and of all such trading commodities as should there be found; and give ye French fair quarter and usage, if they would yield." The contingent consideration was seven hundred pounds of beaver, deliverable when the contract was completed. To see that the business was properly supported, Myles Standish, doughty and warlike, went along in his own private yacht with about twenty men, not only to lend some dig- nity to the enterprise, but as well to hand over the beaver on the occasion of success, which he took along to si)ur Girling to great deeds. The weather was propitious. The voyage was rich THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 195 with good omen, and Girling's heart beat high in his heroic chest. When afar off he began to thunder away with his big guns, as if in his desire for " fair usage" he wished to give the doomed garrison ample time to withdraw, or to put itself into a better state of defense. Up the river came Girling, his guns still belching thunderous volleys at the innocent woods, making the echoes fly. So sailed the Great Hope into the harbor of Pentagoet, her great guns pounding Sf(^(L^ 'WmVL. ^rai^jwtL the air with great l)l()ws, so that Standish could not get oi)portunity to summon the French to a surrender. Girling was an expert in war, and his bombardment of Pentagoet was like the blowing of horns before Jericho, only the walls of Pentagoet failetl to fall. Standish, said Girling, " begane to shoot at a distance like a madd man," the while the French kej)t to their trenches above the resounding shores. Girling kept to his guns, and the Frenchmen to their cover, until the Good Hope had no more pow- der for her guns, nor any with which to get back to Boston in case she should fall in with aiiv from the 196 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Isle of Rhe. He was at last driven to the support of Captain Standish for the replenishing of his maga- zine, which the latter undertook to supply from Pem- aquid. Girling was something of a pirate himself, and it has been said that, having got the powder, he in- tended as well to possess himself of the seven hun- dred pounds of beaver in Standish's barque; or, in other words, "t ceise on ye barke and surprise ye beaver." Standish sailed away to Pemaquid, and, sending Girling the powder, set his sails for Boston, thereby saving his vessel and his skins. It was a glorious expedition and reminds one of Old Tarleton's song : "The King of France went up the hill, With twenty thousand men; The King of France came down the hill, And ne'er went up again." What became of Girling after this is uncertain, and Bradford makes moan, ''Ye enterprise was made frustrate and ye French incouraged." With this Acadia passed into the possession of the French, who occupied it and profited much in trade, but more in the sway they were able to maintain over the savages when, in later years, the Indian Wars broke out. Un- til 1654 the French held the place undisputed. This was the first battle of the Penobscot — blood- less, inglorious; but had D'Aulnay known the fero- cious Girling he might have spared the waste of so much good powder. Razilli was dead, and the contest was on between D'Aulnay and La Tour for the supremacy of com- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 197 mand in Acadia. It was the beginning of a lifelong quarrel, which was nursed and carefully cherished by both leader and adherent. D'Aulnay was Catholic, while La Tour was Protestant. Massachusetts Bay favored the latter, and so far connived with him as to allow him to hire four vessels and sufficient men to man them. La Tour set out for the St. Croix with the four vessels and a complement of eighty men, and it was this attack that sent D'Aulnay to the Penob- scot in 1635. The latter occupied Pentagoet after the withdrawal of Girling until 1643. unmolested, in which year La Tour again undertook to capture D'Aulnay. He appeared in force before the place, but D'Aulnay had retired to the old mill of Pentagoet, where he forti- fied himself and awaited the assault. La Tour led the attack, which was a spirited one; but other than the loss of three men on each side, and the burning of the mill and the destruction of some standing corn, the results were unimportant. La Tour retired with his forces, and the following year D'Aulnay had rebuilt the fort, and supposedly on the site of the former trading-house, the fact of which coming to the ears of La Tour, with the further information that the place was slenderly manned, the latter sent the notorious Wannerton of Piscataqua, with some others antl some twenty of his own men, to capture Pentagoet. D'Aulnay had a farmliouse some six miles away from the fort, and by some it has been located at what is now Winslow's Cove, in the town of Penobscot. La Tour's party found their way to the farmliouse, which was approached by Wannerton 198 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN and an insignificant party of two or three as a re- connoitering-line. The farmhouse was apparently abandoned. The skies were serene, and the sunlight dropped into the clearing to curl the dusky green corn-leaves into Pipes o' Pan, or lay across the river in folds of glimmering heat, or dipped its slant shafts into the cooling deeps of the woodland beyond. The herds of D'Aulnay browsed ruminantly along the edge of the open lands, or stood knee-deep in the lapping tide where the cove shallowed to its grassy marge. The chimneys of the farmliouse were smoke- less. It was the drowsing of a summer noon, that unsuspicious hour in Nature when all things seem to sleep. Perhaps D'Aulnay had caught some warning of the approach of the invader, and had sought the obscurity of the woods. Over the narrow trail La Tour's men had come, and Wannerton was at last at the door of the farmliouse. He tapped against the sturdy lintel. It swung apart, and from it came two musket-shots, one of which killed the predatory Wannerton out- right, and wounded another of his party. The retal- iation was swift, for one of the party returned the fire, and Wannerton's slayer paid the penalty of his loyalty to D'Aulnay. At this, the La Tour force came up on the run, and, making a dash, were at once in possession of the farmliouse. D'Aulnay's men were made prisoners. Finding nothing else upon which to expend their enmity, they killed the cattle and then put the farmhouse to the torch, after w^hich they made their way to their ship and sailed away to Bos- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 199 ton. It was a war of reprisal, in wliich it soemod to be D'AuInay who was the sufferer. In the following autumn a peace was concluded between D'Aulnay and Governor John Endicott; but for all that, Massachusetts winked at the Protestant La Tour and for a consideration loaned him ships to convey to his St. Croix fort the supplies needed to CAMDEN HILLS enable him to maintain his footing at that j)oint. This was from D'Aulnay's point of view a breach of the treaty, and he at once cast aside his garment of peace and started out upon the seas to capture such vessels as he found trading with La Tour. La Tour discovered that the Penobscot wasp had a long sting, and he concluded to let D'Aulnay's nest at Pentagoet alone. From that to D'Aulnay's death, in 1651, the latter was left in (|uiet possession of the Penobscot waters. After D'Aulnay's death La Tour again turned his eyes with a covetous longing toward the truck-house 200 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN and farming-lands where formerly D'Aulnay held sway. D'Aulnay dead, the bitter quarrel was at an end; but D'Aulnay left a charming widow, endowed with all the charms and fascinations of a mature womanhood, which, to La Tour, were like spring- time promises. Both these Frenchmen were members of the nobility; while those under them were of the peasantry. They were hardly better than serfs, fight- ing or keeping the peace as did their masters, des- perately ignorant, wholly depraved, dyed in the dregs of superstition; but La Tour broke the barrier to storm the castle of his fair lady, and with such brave success that a year after her husband's death Lady D'Aulnay became the seductive Madame La Tour. One imagines the romance that filled the heart of La Tour, the fond dreams that kept pace with his waking hours, and the like lively ambitions to possess himself of the wide domain between the St. Croix and the Penobscot. His wooing sped on golden wings, and what he was unable to accomplish by war he wrought by the alchemy of love, and La Tour was at last master of all Acadia. One hears him shout exultantly, as he bears his prize of beauty from her lonely home by the shadows of Pentagoet : " ' To the winds give our banner! Bear homeward again ! ' Cried the Lord of Acadia, Cried Charles of Estienne ; From the prow of his shallop He gazed as the sun, From its bed in the ocean, Streamed up the St. John." THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 201 Pentagoet was maintained as a military post, but La Tour had his residence at St. John. He was at last at the summit of his ambitions, but it was not to last for long. His tenure of peaceful occupation was limited to two short j'ears. After the accession of Cromwell, the discontent of the English over the relinquishment of Acadia to the French, and a desire to give to the Papist influence, which there prevailed, a decisive check, the Pro- tector directed an attack on Pentagoet, and the place was again under the English domination. The French domination of the river had been a thorn in the flesh of the Puritan since the ousting of Willet, who had struck up a lucrative trade at that place. The French under D'Aulnay were not so energetic as had been the Puritan traders, his attention being given to main- taining a military despotism rather than a trading- post. It was D'Aulnay who taught the Indians the use of the musket; who, after the English Ashley, supplied the savages with what was to make them within the next generation a dreaded enemy. This was in 1654, and for thirteen years after, the English were in control, during the latter part of which a bit- ter conflict arose between England and France, by reason of which the Province of Nova Scotia, by the Treaty of Breda, July 31, 1667, was surrendered to the French. The following year, in February, the whole of Acadia was ceded to the French, in which Pentagoet was set out specifically as the southern boundary-line. But the English were slow in the giv- ing up of their foothold, t^lse the French were tardy in 202 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN their movements of acquiring possession; for it was not until three years later that Captain Walker was called upon by Monsieur Hubert d'Andigny, Chev- alier de Grandfontaine, to deliver the place into his hands. During the English occupancy Cromwell issued a patent to Stephen de la Tour, a son of the Lord of St. John, Sir Thomas Temple, and William Crowne, confirming in them the territory of Acadia. This was in 1656, and included the Penobscot country. A lit- tle later La Tour disposed of his interest to his co- patentees, and Colonel Temple left Pentagoet to the command of Captain Thomas Predion. A ciuotation from Sir Thomas Temple's letter to the Lords of the Council, of the date of November 24, 1668, — for with the death of Cromwell came the acces- sion of Charles IL, by which the acts of the Cromwel- lian Commonwealth were abrogated, — is of impor- tance as making up a part of the history of the local- ity. Colonel Temple writes : '' May it please your Lord- ships, 'T is my duty to acquaint you that I received his Majesty's Letter dated the 31st of December, 1667, for the delivering up of the Country of Acadia, the 20th of October, 1668, by Monsieur MoriUon du Bourg, deputed by the most Christian King, under the Great Seal of i^m^fp, to recieve the same; . . . I thought fit also to let your Lordships know, that those Ports and Places named in my first order, were a part of one of the Colonies of New England, viz: Pentagoet, belong- ing to Neiv Plymouth, which has given the Magis- trates here (Boston, probably, and from whence this THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 20: letter was undoubtedly written,) great Cause of Fear, and Apj)rehensions of so potent a Neighbor, wliich may be of dangerous Consequence to his Majesty's Service and Subjects, the Carribee Islands having most of their Provisions from these Parts, and Mons du Bourg, informs me that the most Christian King int(>nd(Ml to plant a Colony at Pentagoet, and make a OWL S HEAD LIGHT Passage by Land to Quebec, his greatest Town in Canada, being but three Day's Journey distant." Colbert, in his letter of instruction to Grandfon- taine, advises the latter, "that he ought particularly to stick to Pentagoet, the restitution of which has always been demanded by his most (^hristian ^hijesty, as well as the forts uj)()n the St. John. . . . The said Sieur de Grandfontaine. having obtained this resti- tution, and having Ixrn put in possession of the said territory, will be able in hi.s discretion and prudence 204 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN to decide where he will make his principal establish- ment — which it appears to us ought to be at Penta. goet, as being the place nearest the territory under the English rule, and where he will be better able to support and protect the lands under the rule of his Majesty, which are, as has been said before, extend- ing towards the north, from the middle of Penta- goet, as far as Cape Breton. (This suggestion on the part of Colbert was equivalent to a command.) "And when the Sieur de Grandfontaine shall be settled he ought to pay great attention in regard to putting himself promptly in a state of defense, and protecting himself against all the accidents which might happen in the course of time and affairs, by for- tifying himself and providing himself with everything necessary for that purpose — for which, besides that already furnished him, his Majesty will provide for what more will be necessary for him in the memo- randa of them which he will take care to send." Sieur de Grandfontaine is authorized to use all the forces which may be given him to increase and strengthen the traffic that may be made " either for permanent or transient fishing, dressing of furs, erect- ing of dwellings, tillage of lands, or such other things as they desire to attempt there — and that without the exclusion of anyone, allowing full and entire lib- erty to all subjects of his said Majesty, to go and come, and to carry on such traffic as they shall wish; but interdicting and taking away this same freedom of trade and residence from all strangers, unless they are provided with an express order of the King.' ' THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 205 The English arc expressly excluded, unless thcywill swear allegiance to the king, — taking an oath of fidel- ity and submission to His Majesty such as good and faithful subjects ought to make and keep. Colbert's information of the country seems to be extensive and fairly accurate, and his geographical knowledge is well founded. He suggests that communication should be opened with Canada and the St. Lawrence, and that it should be by the St. John River, or from Pentagoet by way of the Saute, otherwise called the Chaudiere. He is to lo.se no time in doing thi.s, and is to enlist in his aid the ''Savages" of the region. He is to keep in constant touch with De Courcelles, the Governor and Lieutenant-General of Canada, also M. Talon, In- tendant of the Canadas, and to follow their advice in all matters. Here was the beginning of that policy that united the savage to the French cause and inter- est, and behind which lay a definite purpose, in the fulfilment of which the English were to be driven from New England ultimately. Colbert was a mas- ter-plotter, almost a second Richelieu, and his de- signs were deep and vast for New P'rance. That De Grandfontaine should develop Pentagoet was imperative. Colbert left him no other alterna- tive. He says: "And supposing — what is not to be believed — that the said Sieur de Grandfontaine finds insurmountable obstacles to the restitution of the country above mentioned, and to taking possession of it, he must know that it would not be expedient for the service of his Majesty, that he should return to France, with tlie people who shall be placed under 206 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN his command; but that ho ought to endeavor to take a position in some place, upon the said coast of Acadia, either at La Heve, or such other place as he shall judge fit, in order to give an account of his anxieties, and of the difficulties that he will have met in the execution of his orders, whereupon his Majesty will let him know what he shall do." These steps were not only taken to emphatically mark the Penol^scot as the boundary on the west of the French possessions, but as well to afford a place of offense and defense against the English in the con- flict which was about to begin between the English and the Indians, who were being actively fomented l^y the Jesuits, who had at that time made some con- siderable advance into the wilderness, where they had taken great pains, along with the tenets of their re- ligion, to impress the Indian that the French were their natural brothers; that the English were to be extirpated; and that whatever they might do in driving them from the country would redound to their future salvation. They taught the savages that the mother of Christ was a French woman, and that the English hated her and would not worship her. This and other religious fallacies were instilled into the Indian mind. This was apparently the mission of Thury at Pentagoet, who, of all the Jesuits, was the most ferocious and bloodthirsty. There had been an abundant seedtime, and the harvest was about to be reaped with a ruddy sickle. When the English turned the Pentagoet fort over to the French it hatl l:)een made into a somewhat THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 207 formidable barrier. What its actual extent was at the time of the surrender was fairly well outlined in the report of De Grandfontaine, Jean Maillard, and Richard Walker. The report contains this descrip- =r? r ^T) d I^rl Pc-itap^ib '^"""^'lj"'|i|'MiilinliH||ln||jj tion: "First, at the entering in of the said Fort upon the left Hand, we found a Court of Guard (guard- house) of about fifteen Paces long, and ten broad, having upon the right Hand a House of the like Length and Breadth, built with hewen Stone, and covered with Shingles, and above them there is a 208 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Chapel of about six Paces long, and four Paces broad, covered with Shingles, and built with Terras, (pdtie sur une terrasse,) upon which there is a small Turret, wherein there is a little Bell, weighing about eighteen Pounds. " More, upon the left Hand as we entered into the Court, there is a Magazine, having two Stories, built with Stone, and covered with Shingles, being in Length about thirty-six Paces Long, and ten in Breadth, which Magazine is very old, and wanted much Reparation, and which there is (a) little Cellar, wherein there is a Well. ''And upon the other Side of said Court, being on the right Hand, as we enter into the said Court, there is a House of the same Length and Breadth as the Magazine is, being half covered with Shingles, and the rest uncovered, and wanted much Reparation." Upon the ramparts were mounted twelve iron guns, of which two were eight-pounders ; six, six-pounders ; two, four-pounders; and two, three-pounders, with six murtherers. These constituted the armament turned over by Ca])tain Walker. Outside the fort was the barn for the cattle, and not far from that was a gar- den which contained fifty or sixty trees that bore fruit. This garden was fenced in. The fort had four bastions, well flanked, "which bastions, taking them as far as the verge of the terrace inside, are sixteen feet." On the inside the terraces were eight feet high. The chapel, with its slender steeple and its eighteen- pound bell, was that of " Our Lady of Holy Hope," but not much is known of the clergy who officiated THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 209 at its huml)l(^ altar. It could not have been Father Thury, as he did not come here until two or three years later; but that there were services, and that the' mel- low tones of the chapel bell broke the sUences that hugged the river's edge with the breaking of the dawn, and, as well, waftetl a tuneful message to the setting sun as the vespers rang, is not to be doubted. And the priest went in and out among his flock, "with pallid cheeks and thin, -Much given to vigils, penance, fasting, prayer, Solemn and gray, and worn with discipline, As if his boily but white ashes were. Heaped on tlie living coals that glowed within," blessing the child of the Church and hating and cur.s- ing the heretic alike. Here was the setting of a j^astoral scene, but for the fort that cast its shadow, in the marge of the river; and how unlike that of Rale at Xorridgewock! There' in the silence of the wootlland deeps Rale's bell lent its alien notes to the awaking of the birds at dawn, an I for the bastions of Fort Pentagoet were the clus- tered wigwams, and for the frowning guns on the ramparts were the low-hanging limbs of the hem- locks draped with tlu> festooning mosses that hung from th(>m like the beards of a druid race, each one a phantom woodland sprite that wanted only a breath of wind to set it to dancing to the inaudible music of the air. This was Rale's environment. Xo white sails of ships blew up the Kennel)ec — only the birchen shell of the bark canoe knew this wiid and lonely stream. 210 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN With the gray bastions frowning above the river, the little chapel, perched almost upon the top of the rampart, like a sentry-box, afforded a pertinent sug- gestion of the militancy of the Jesuit, so far as the English heretic might be concerned. The musket, the tomahawk, and the torch went along with the priest and his crucifix. The entire lack of a moral up- building of the savage wherever the Jesuit established TRASK'S ROCK, BLOCKHOUSE HEAD his mission is the unanswerable arraignment of his sincerity. The work at Pentagoet was allied to that of Norridgewock in a way, but until the coming of Castine the history of the Jesuit Mission was the slender history of the French occupancy and meagre settlement of D'Aulnay, Grandfontaine, and Chambly. To the Jesuit is to be charged the ferocity of the savage, as he made his depredations upon the Eng- lish settler. That the savage mind was susceptible of THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 211 devilish manipulation was evident from the atrocities committed by the savage children of the Jesuit faith, and there seems to have been no moral value to the Jesuit's labors, arduous as they have been described to have been. The personal interests of the priest, and the political benefits to be derived from the ad- hesion of the savage to the French cause, were ap- ])arently the only results; for there was certainly no advance along the lines of civilization, as civilization is commonly taken. The savage was a tool, and a rude one at that, by which a way was to be hewn through the English settlement after it had been re- duced to the gray ashes of devastation for the aggran- dizement of the French, whose morals of humanity were not less brutal than those of the savage whose l)assions they fanned into fiame. Even at Xorridge- wock, where Rale had undoubted and unlimited sway, "the consequences were equal to the means," as Lin- coln says. The Protestants did not nuich better. The famed Eliot, the first English evangelist to go among the Indians, o])ene(l the way for others; and for all the English Parliament, in 1649, created a company which acquired some considerable funds for the purpose of supporting a dozen or more missionaries in the Indian field, which it did, the savage kept his vices and his nomad ways of living, alike. He was the wildling of the woods that was averse to l)lanting — a wildling in his instincts and in his incli- nations. Such he was when the Frenchman found him, and he was no more when the Jesuit landed the 212 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN sore remnant of the great Abenake race on the shores of the Chaudiere — to be annihilated, in 1759, by the rangers of Robert Rogers at the sack of St. Francis de Sales. . Grandfontaine remained at Pentagoet four years, and of all the matters of which he wrote during that time, what one likes best is that he said, "The air here is very good." One has only to get a sniff of the river breeze to l^e reminded of that remark of the French officer. Here was the land of the pine, as it is to-day, where they, as of old, "Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones. The arch beneath them is not built with stones; Not art, but Nature, traced these lovely lines, Antl carved this graceful arabesque of vines; No organ but the wind here sighs and moans, No sepulchre conceals a martyr's bones. Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves. Gives back a softened echo to thy tread! Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds. In leafy galleries beneath the eaves, Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled, And learn there may be worship without words." To Grandfontaine it was all of this, perhaps; and it may have been but a wild, lone place, whose environ- ing wilderness was a thrall from which he sought re- lease. It was in 1673 that Chambly succeeded Grandfon- taine, who gives the population of two years before as thirty-one. These must have been largely the soldiery, as later there was but one French family. It was, however, a most distinguished one. The year THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 213 following the coming of Ciiambly, one John Rhoadcs, hiding his nationality under a successful disguise, came into the fort. He remained here some four days, and, having gained such information as he came after, got away without detection. A little later, the Flying Horse, under Flemish colors, bowled up-stream under a good wind and dropped anchor off the fort. There were two hundred men in her crew, and thev WHERE THE ENGLISH LANDED IN 1779 immediately invested the garrison. For an hour Chambly made a brave resistance, getting a bullet in his shoulder which put him out of the fight. The fort gave way, and the marauders, Dutch and English, for Rhoades was among the j)irate crew, jiillaged the place, taking away all the guns, and as well Chaml)ly and Marson, the chief officers. The Flying Horse was evidently from New York, for Governor Leverett writes in a letter of August 24, 1674 : " Our neigh- bors, the Dutch, have been very neighborly since they had ccrtaiiie intelligence of the peace. One of their 214 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN captains have bin upon the French forts, taken Penob- scot, with loss of men on both sides; what they have done further east, we understand not." Chambly wrote the story of the adventure to Fron- tenac, at Quebec, which is given in the words of the latter: " What I have learned, from a letter that Monsieur Chambly has written me, is that he was attacked by a crew of buccaneers, who had just come from St. Domingo, and who had crossed over from Boston, with one hundred and ten men, who after landing, kept up their attack for an hour, ''He received a musket-shot through the body, that compelled him to leave the field, and which also injured his ensign; and the rest of his garrison which, with the inliabitants, was composed of only thirty disaffected and badly armed men, surrendered at dis- cretion. The pirates have pillaged the fort, carrying away all the guns; and while they ought to have brought Monsieur Chambly to Boston with Monsieur Marson, he has been taken to the St. John's River, by a detachment who hold him as a ransom, and wish to make him pay a thousand beavers." Frontenac closes his letter thus : "1 am persuaded that these people from Boston have employed these men there to do us this injury, they having given them even an English pilot to conduct them, they impa- tiently enduring our neighborhood, and the fear which this gives them for their fisheries and their trade." Frontenac colored his report to suit his inclination, which was to so far as he could embroil the English THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 215 with the savages. There is no doubt but much was winked at in Massachusetts Bay where the interests of the French were discussed adversely. The same spirit that aided La Tour in his forays against D'Aul- nay was rife along the Boston wharvTs. But Cham- bly was ransomed, and the fort at Pentagoet rehabili- tated, only to be again captured and pillaged by the Dutch two years later. Boston was encouraged by the prowess of the Dutch and sent out a foray of her own, but its success was of the same order as that of Girling and the redoubtable Standish in the time of D'AuInay. This is the story of ancient Pentagoet; and if one could go back to those days, to have the scroll of its life unrolled and its unknown, undreamed of, and unwritten romance and tragedy revealetl, to see out of the low hummocks of the ruins of old Fort Penta- goet — which may even now be faintly discerned by the river-bank — the bastioned walls again take shape, and to hoar from the chapel-tower the flying notes of the little bell, one would glean a harvest worth the sickle. They are long-gone days when Thevet begins his romancing of the French settle- ment up among the Penobscot pines, but which, like the Hochelaga of Cartier, has the elusive character of the raii>l)ow. If one were a wizard, so that ■■ Touched by his hand, the wayside weed Becomes a flower; the lowliest reed Beside the stream Is clothed with beauty," 216 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN one would build up the pine woods again, and the garish-hued roofs of the summer cottage would melt away into the dense verdure of the forest, and under the shelving bank where the beaver was cutting wood and the mink was doing a bit of trout-fishing one would wait for the coming of Champlain's voyagers for a lift to the home of the Bessahez. What an outing for an August vacation! — and the wild shores what a picture-gallery, with leaves, and limbs, and huge boles of tree-trunks, and wrinkled ripples of the tide along the river-banks for brush-marks, slashed and crossed by purple shadows such as the sun paints up and down the aisles of the woods! And the arrows of silence shot from the woodland solitudes, — they have pinned the vagrant winds, after they have swept the sky of its clouds, to the sleeping waters, so that one seems sailing through the blue depths of the u})per air rimmed by another woodland in the deeps of the river. One would have enjoyed the feasting and danc- ing of the Tarratines down by the mouth of the Kadesquit, a taste of the venison served al fresco, an after-dinner smoke with the Sagamores, and the after-dinner speeches. One lights his fragrant pipe at the thought of it, for the Indian weed begets dream fantasies; and while the fire crackles, and the smoke curls upward from the well-filled bowl, "the steepled town no more Stretches its sail-thronged shore; Like palace domes in sunset's cloud, Fade suu-gilt spire and mansion proud; THE LAXD OF ST. CASTIX 217 Spectrally rising where they stood, I see the oKl primeval wood; Dark, shadow-hke, on either hand I see its solemn waste expand: It climbs the green and cultured hill. It arches o'er the valley's rill, And leans from cliff and crag, to throw Its wild arms o'er the stream below. Unchanged, alone, the same bright river Flows on, as it will flow forever." Beside it are the elu.'^teretl wigwams of the Tarra- tine. Wisps of smoke blow outward over the fiood of the Penobscot, savory with the resinous odors of steaming pitch saps, sweetened with the mystery of the spitted veni.son roasting over the lodge-fires. Along with the smokes of the wildwootl, the light birchen canoes dance upon the mirroring waters, and the isolation of the picture is lost in its rude life. Champlain's little banjue is anchored off the mouth of the Kadescjuit, and then the stranger in the land of the Bessabez is gone. His footprint is that of the duck, and his dun sail fades away below the bend of the river to become lost in the mazes of wooded cai)es that make out into the stream, while the nomad be- takes him.self again to his bear-skin and the smokes of his lodge of sticks and bark. "As in Agrippa's magic glass," I see the wilderness aglow with the myriad dyes of the first frosts that nip the morning air and lend the rose-color of dawn to Champlain's cheeks, and the flash of the molten dewdroj) to his eye. 218 THE LAND OF ST. CASTJN As the barque goes with the stream, "I hear the low Soft ripple where its waters go; The wild-bird's scream goes thrilling by, And shyly on the river's brink The deer is stooping down to drink; " and Champlain notes it all and reads it as the adept reads the book of Nature. And so he sailed with the -"" T" ■Wmi^%. KUr fsflf "^it.. { ' : i -f/^. m PLATE FOUND AT PENTAGOET tide, out the great river and across the bay, leaving his memory forever associated with the unravelled mystery of Norumbega. After Champlain came the years as they had gone before, their tales written by the rude hand of Nature, that held alike the gentle THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 219 heats of summer and the merciless flail of the winter winds: from the maples casting their ruddy hoods, to when the gray, leafless brush of the woodland crowns the hills with the stole of the friar and its tossing arms are pinioned by the fingers of the wizard frost. The tide ebbs and flows ; the leaves come and go- The Tarratine counts the days by sleeps as he does his mighty deeds by scalps. "As a pale phantom with a lamp Ascends some ruin's haunted stair, So glides the moon along the damp Mysterious chambers of the air, "Now hidden in cloud, and now revealed, As if this phantom, full of pain. Were Ijy the crumbling walls concealed And at the windows seen again," to mark the calendar of the seasons to the savage, the cycle of whose years is never numbered, only rounded out as he leaves his wigwam on his lone journey to the Happy Hunting-grounds. But the savage finds alien footprints along the Penobscot sands, and alien smokes choke the virgin aisles of his hunting-lands. The shop-keeping .-Viler- ton has built his trading-house within the border of this land of shadows and of dreams. But one cares not for Allerton or the watch-dog Willet. There is no romance in their sordid souls — in Allerton's not even the romance of honesty; antl strange to say, that is something to which some sort of romance clings even in these days of contentious workers and the absolutism of capital. 220 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN But make you a magic staff, for which one has to " gather on the morrow of All Saints, a strong branch of willow, of which you will make a staff, fashioned to your liking. Hollow it out, by removing the pith from within, after having furnished the lower end with an iron ferule. Put into the bottom of the staff the two eyes of a young wolf, the tongue and heart of a dog, three green lizards, and the hearts of three swallows. These must all be dried in the sun, between two papers, having been first sprinkled with finely pulverized saltpetre. Besides all these, put into the staff three leaves of vervain, gathered on the eve of St. John the Baptist, with a stone of divers colors, which you will find in the nest of the lap-wing, and stop the end of your staff with a pomel of box, or any other material you please, and be assured that this staff will guarantee you from the perils and mishaps which too often befal travellers;" and if you use it aright it will enable you to see much that will please and surprise you, especially of those things which have already transpired, once you are in the neigh- borhood. With your magic staff hie you to Winslow's Cove, by the phantom trail that threads the six-mile stretch of woods that tower and climb skyward along the huge limbless shafts of the golden-hearted pines, your feet shod with wings, noiseless as they keep the brown woodland floors, following the blaze of the axe, for one knows there is an Eden at its end. See! there is a brown roof in the edge of the clearing. Its low eaves meet the tassels of the corn. It is a drowsy THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 221 place, for here no rough winds over come, where the smoke from the chimney mounts in air like a delicately sculptured pilaster of marble, and whose goddess is the dainty wife of the adventurous D'Aulnay. No tree of forbidden fruits grows in this Eden, nor tempter in disguise. Its homely note by day is the lowung of the D'Aulnay herd, safely housed FORT POINT at night. There is only the whine of the fox, the howl of the wolf, the far cry of the panther, the Lost Soul of the wilderness, and the (juerying alarm of the owl. Then come the j)atter of the rain on the roof and the crooning of the storm-winds and the crackle of the levin — and the orchestra of Nature is at its climax. As D'Aulnay hears the thunder rolling through the woods, he thinks of the mighty noise Girling made one summer afternoon, and he laughs. 222 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Sunlit pictures lined the vistas of the woods, or the gently undulate shores of the river cove, and D'Aul- nay was the wizard of all, the curator " Of Nature's unhoused lyceum. In moons and tides and weather wise, He read the clouds as prophecies; And, foul or fair, could well divine By many an occult hint and sign, Holding the cunning-warded keys To all the wood-craft mysteries; Himself to Nature's heart so near That all her voices in his ear " were the speech of his familiars. And as for fair Mis- tress d'Aulnay, she too had her wildwood acquaint- ance. She knew the rune of the wood-fire; "The oaken log, green, huge and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty fore-stick laid apart. And filled between with curious art The ragged brush," she interpreted into the songs of the springing saps, the garlanded summer, the yellow-laden autumn, and the riotous winter, all of which was wrought by the crackle of the blazing hearth, the fire-glow of which bathed her fair hair in a gleam of ruddy glory, while " the rude, old-fashioned room Burst, flower-like, into song and bloom." Here the Lord of Pentagoet and his spouse drowsed or dreamed ; or, waking, mayhap, talked of far-off vine- clad France; or, hushing their speech, listened to hear THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 223 "the violin play, Which led the village dance away," while from the old chateau steps they watched as in a dream the giddy scene. They had abundant time for musing, for their days at Pentagoet were not crowded with incident ; nor may one call such an existence bar- ren of pleasure. There was no game-warden prowling about, and their game-preserves began at their thresh- old. The woods and streams afforded an abundant larder and exciting episode. It is by Winslow's Cove one finds the trail of A\an- nerton's vicious crew. The ashes of the ancient cabin still live in the fertile soil, and with the magic staff one builds it at will, to stand athwart its stout thresh- old, as one would the doorshek of the Mohammedan; or, leaning against its rough-hewn stipe, hears the wild laugh of the loon up-river, while the eye devours the beauty of its pristine environment. But the pic- ture fades with D'Aulnay's unfortunate death. He was frozen while out in the bay with his valet, May 24, 1650. With the passing of D'Aulnay, the romance of Pentagoet has flown — for a year later Mistress D'Aulnay had left the old places for the new. It hap- l)ened after a year of gray, satl days of bereavement, and lonely days they were. Then Love shot an ar- row, — "A softly- feathered shaft that falls Within the lonl-deserted walls Where brave d'Aulnay's widowed bride Awaits above Pentagoet's tide The breathing of the wizard spell Which lordly La Tour wrought so well," 224 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN and which made the goddess of Pentagoet over into our Lady la Tour of St. John; for the Lord of Esti- enne has borne his bride forever from the scenes she had learned to love. Woman-like, she yielded to her husband's foe, a willing captive, leaving Penta- goet without so much as a backward look — with such magic was Love's arrow barbed. As La Tour breaks the mists of the bay, "The forest vanishes in air; Hill-slope and vale lie starkly bare;" the sails of the ships flap in the river breeze, and one hears the tread of men, the sounds that make up the common things of life. Tradition is forgotten, and romance is smothered in the odors of the kitchen, — "A phantom, and a dream alone." lllpllllWTnmp^ RUINS OF FORT GEORGE THE PARISH OF SAINTE FAMILLE _ _,,..i«3ilTl^rfIln,ii::»», * "^ic. V CASTINE FROM ISLESBORO THE PARISH OF SAINTE FAMILLE HE great Penobscot River is the classic stream of Maine. The Panawanskek of the abo- rigine, the Norumbega of the romancer, the Rio Gomez of the Sj)anish cosmographers, it has been wrought into song and story since the days of the mendacious Ingram. Is- suing out of the Chesuncook country, the middle wilderness of Maine, it keeps to its march to the sea, holding apart its wooded banks with varied flow, swiftly impetuous, or threading the Piscataijuis valleys, a massive flood, slow, stately, and silent, a shred of blue torn from the upper air. From Cau- comgemoc Lake comes the central thread, to be aug- mented at Chesuncook Lake by its confluence with the West Branch, which has its rise on the watershed that divides Penobscot Lake from the trilnitaries of the Riviere du Loup; while to the eastward, as it leaves the lake countrv. the Penobscot East Branch 228 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN comes down from Chamberlain Lake, taking by Web- ster's Brook something of the Allegash waters. Its tributaries of brook and pond are legion, and comprise the greater fisherman's Paradise of New England. There are no mountainous heights reflected in its pellucid depths; only the wild shag of the wilderness woods, where the lumberman spends his winters, drop their dusky shadows off shore. It twists in tu- multuous writhings over its worn boulders, leaps in wild abandon their shifting barriers, or winds with sinuous and graceful bendings among the farming- lands nearer the sea. The Penobscot is not much of a loiterer by the way, and its walls are hung with a picturesque and fascinating scenery. If one begins his journey among the islands of the Penobscot Bay to go up the river, parting the waters of Heron, Eagle, and Churchill Lakes to pass into the Allegash stream, and thence down the St. John to the sea, one may well doubt if elsewhere can be found so wonderful a display of natural beauty as is strung along these three streams —all of which are as clear as streaks of sunshine, and as sweet and cold as the virgin saps of April. In the days of the Parish of Sainte Famille it was the great aboriginal highway. The dense forests crowded its banks with uneven folds of green and buff and scarlet, as the season served, and above were the flying clouds; but the gray roofs of the villages of the present day were not etched into the landscape, for, to the English vision, it was a mystery to be un- folded only when the savage had been eliminated THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 229 from the picture and its wildness had been gradually tamed. In the time of Castin no white man other than himself had caught the echo of its weird silences, or inbreathed the savory incense of its huge domi- nating pines, or tasted the healing balsams of its hooded firs. It was terra incognita until the Jesuit Biart found his way to the Cannibas. After him came the diplo- matic Dreuillettes, who left a trail for the brothers Bigot. These were the first three Europeans to pene- trate the terrors of the untrodden wildernesses of Maine. It was about the ordinary lifetime of a man, threescore years and ten, between the first coming of Father Biart and the advent of Rale at Nanrant- souack on the Kennebec, and the aj)pearance of Baron Jean Mneeiit de St. Castin with Madockawando at Pentagoet. The establishment of the French supremacy at Quebec by Champlain opened the eyes of the explorer to the condition of the savages, whom he discovered to be "living like brute beasts, without law, without religion, without God." He invited the Recollects, who were of the reformed l)ranch of the Franciscan order, to begin a missionary work among the abo- rigines. In May of 1G15 four of the Gray Friars were at Quebec, and Father John Dolbeau at once insti- tuted a mission among the tribe of the Montagnais, beginning his work there, spending the winter with them, undertaking their nomad life, hunting and fish- ing and enduring all the hardshijis common to a win- ter in the St. Lawrence Valley, and at the same time 230 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN acquiring their language, their manners, and modes of thought. He became one of them, as it were, sharing with them their k^an fare and exposure to the winter cold in their frail huts. He won their hearts so that they listened to the preaching of the true faith will- ingly. Father Joseph le Caron found his way to the Wyandots, farther inland and on the borders of the great lakes, and in that same year had erected an altar in his lodge of bark at Caragouha, a Huron town near Thunder Bay, where, like Dolbeau, he be- gan the study of the Indian tongue and the manners of the rude race among which his lot was thus cast, so he might the more readily bring them into the Church. It was thus that the Recollects had undertaken the evangelization of these two powerful savage tribes, whose connection with the savage tribes inhabiting the country from the Atlantic to the Mississippi, and from the rivers of the Chesapeake and Ohio to the lands beyond the Hudson Bay country, was one of kinship and family influence. It was a strange lan- guage they had to acc^uire, and it was a life of stern and self-denying poverty to which they had commit- ted themselves. It was an unfertile ground they had undertaken to till, as well, for the Indian idea of a fu- ture state was notably obscure. They were controlled by their knowledge of natural objects, and whatever was to appeal to them was necessarily to be colored by that which they could see, and hear, and touch. The religion of the Recollects was not rich in natural- ness, and the work was at once difficult and arduous. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 231 if not utterly discouraging;. For all those obstacles, the Gray Friars kept to their missions, to their teach- ings, and prayers, winning but slowly the savage con- vert into their fold. Ten years later there were six Franciscans engaged in these intelligent labors, and disposed among the five missions of Tadousac, Quebec, the Nipissing Mission, that at Three Rivers, and another in the country of the Hurons. It was not long before the Franciscans were con- vinced that the field of New France required workers of a different order, an order whose vows bound them to a poverty less scrupulous than that of the Recollect order, and the Jesuits were invited to come over into this new Macedonia and take up the work. It was in this y(>ar 1625 that Enemond Masse, Charles Lale- mant, and John de Hrebeuf appeared on the scene — to which homeless contingent the Franciscans opened their convent. The oi)position to the Jesuits on the part of the government was renewed ; but the Jesuits were a powerful order, and from their friends in France received sufficient funds so they were en- abled to build cha))els, and through their influence considerable augmentations were made to their set- tlements. They encouraged the tilling of the ground and soon became self-supporting. They wrought side by side with the Franciscans in the places where the latter had obtained footholds, by whose experience they were al)l(' to j)rofit greatly. The outside missions suffered alike with that of the Quebec colony, which in 1629 had surrendered to the English, who at once terminated the lal)ors of the 232 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Jesuits and Franciscans, and which, after all their fourteen years of strenuous church-work, afforded but a meagre few of converts. It was a despondent sea- son for the priest, and his only resource was to leave the pleasant places where he had passed his summers, the French settlements, and to plunge deeper into the savage wilderness, or leave the St. Lawrence Valley wholly. They were in the former case entirely at the m^rcy of the savage, which is instanced by the fate of Father Nicholas Viel, who had his rude chapel at Quieunonascaran, and who had undertaken the work begun by Father le Caron. This Quieunonascaran was in the Huron country, and here the priest taught and cultivated his little patch of ground, upon which the eaves of his lodge dripped. In 1625 he undertook the journey to Quebec in a canoe with a Huron guide. There is a stretch of rapid waters near Montreal still called the "SauU au RecoUet," and it was while making these rapids that the guide threw the priest from the canoe, where the latter was drowned. The Iroquois were not less obdurate and brutal in their purpose to torture Father Poullain at the stake; but he fortunately became the object of an exchange by the French, and thus escaped his otherwise certain martyrdom. But this interregnum or lapse of the Jesuit labors was to be of short duration. Three years after the surrender of New France to the English, 1632, came the Treaty of St. Germain, by which the great terri- tories of the Canadas were restored to the French. It was from this period that the story of the Jesuit in THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 233 New France, and liis i)owerful and wide-spreading in- fluence, begins; and while it is not within the scope of this romance of Sainte Famille to relate with much detail the history of the Jesuit, yet it is of interest as being the road by which the Baron St. Castin found his way to the Penobscot, and by which Father Thury likewise happened to establish himself among the Tarratines. With the Canadian conquest complete and France again in control, Richelieu, who was not friendly to either Franciscan or Jesuit, offered the Canada mis- sions to the Capuchins. It was declined, and it fell to the lot of the Jesuit finally to pick up the work where it had been laid down at the fall of Quebec. The Society of Priests formed at St. Sulpice became the clergy of Montreal, but with other than a double- tongued Indian Mission, which was located near at hand, their work was local. In 1658 Bishop Laval came to Canada and founded a school at Quebec which was subsidiary to the Seminary of Foreign Missions at Paris, which undertook the control of all the Indian Missions. Its influence was felt as far as the waters of the lower Mississippi, as well as in Acadia. Then came the clash between the Church and the Governor on account of the sale of liquors to the Indians by the latter. As for that, the Jesuits and the Government were seldom at peace, by reason of the jealousies that seemed ever existent between the influence of tlie Church and the tcmjjoral powers. The Iroquois were a warlike nation and were con- stantly arrayed against the French and the tribes 234 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN that were at peace with them. The Huron Mission was destroyed by the Iroquois in 1650, and the Jesuits abandoned the Huron country. The Hurons had been swept away by the Iroquois, and the same fate had fallen to the Montagnais and the Algonquins on the St. Lawrence and Ottawa rivers. The trading-posts of the French at Montreal, Three Rivers, and Quebec were practically deserted, and many of the Jesuit missionaries returned to France. Not long after, much to the surprise of the French in Canada, the Iroquois proposed peace. They had made captive a Jesuit, Father Poncet, whom they returned in safety to his friends at Quebec, and in their peace propositions they asked that missionaries be sent them. War with these savages had continued almost without in- terruption since the settlement of the St. Lawrence by Champlain. The tribes of Canada had joined in a mutual defense against the bloodthirsty Irociuois, and Champlain at the head of his savage allies had carried the war into the heart of the Iroquois coun- try. It had the disastrous result of exterminating their allies and bringing the French to the verge of absolute defeat. This offer of peace was peculiarly acceptable and afforded an opening into the great west. D'Allion had in the early mission days crossed the Niagara from the westward. The cross had been planted at Sault Ste. Marie by Jogues and Raymbault — the former of which had attempted to found a mission on the Mohawk, but with Goupil and Lalande he had died in the wilderness. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 235 It was Father Simon le Moyne to whom fell the mantle and the Indian name of Jogues. He was of indomitable spirit, and, acting as the interpreter in the negotiations with the Iro(iiiois, had been asked to go to the Onondaga and the Mohawk. Onondaga was where the great council-fire was to be held by the Iroquois League, and Le Moyne left Quebec in early July, 1654, reaching Onondaga by the St. Lawrence, Lake Ontario, and the Oswego stream. His reception was of the most cordial character, and it was sug- gested to the French that they build a house on the shores of Lake Ontario. This suggestion was invested with the most serious formality known to the savage, — the presentation of the belt of wampum. The wam- pum-belt was the foundation of all credentials and lent a j)roper solemnity to the act. Much to Le Moyne's pleasure, wherever he went he found converts to the Christian faith; and so heartily was he welcomed that his heart became buoyed up with a great hope that his work might redound greatly to the glory of the Church. The following year the Onondagas solicited that a mission be established among them, and the Jesuits Chaumonot and Dablon were summoned hither. On their arrival a notable occasion was made with talks and exchanges of wampum-belts, when they were shown the site for their chapel and their lodge. The Chapel of St. Mary's of Ganentaa was soon built, and its site is still pointed out beside twin springs of salt and fresh water. This promising state of affairs, however, was not for long. Rumors of hostile demonstrations on the part 236 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN of the French came on the wind. Father Dablon re- turned to Canada, and the Jesuits Le Mercier and Menard set out for Onondaga with a party of French under Captain Dupuis, whose intention was to form a settlement at Onondaga. They received a cordial welcome, and while the Frenchmen began the put- ting up of their shelters, the Jesuits had built a sec- ond chapel at the Castle of Onondaga, which was not far from the Chapel of St. Mary's of Ganentaa. Other Jesuits came to this promising field, going among the Senacas and the Cayugas, and Father Le Moyne had prepared the way for a mission among the Mohawks. And so it happened that in 1656 the Jesuits had made the acquaintance of the Five Nations, and new mis- sions were projected. The following year there were indications of an out- break of savagery when a party of Hurons were massa- cred, which the Iroquois charged to the Jesuits Rague- neau and Duperon, but who had in reality endeav- ored to save the Hurons from their fate. ^\Tlen Le Moyne had reached the Mohawks he found them hos- tile, though they allowed him to come among them. The Irociuois were about to drop the mask, for they followed their attack on the Hurons by a hostile dem- onstration upon a party of Ottawas at Montreal, and in the melee Father Garreau was killed. It was evi- dent that a like disposition awaited the Jesuits at the Onondaga Mission; and so open and threatening was the hostility of the Five Nations that, by order of D'Ailleboust, the Governor of Canada, all the Iro- quois in Canada were arrested, to be held as hos- THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 237 tagcs. Tlie Jesuits at St. Mary's of Ganentaa began to formulate plans for an escape, and in March tliey took the initiative. They gave a banquet to hide their design, and invited the Onondagas. It was a feast at which all the food must be eaten in order not to give umbrage to the entertainers. The feast was a pro- longed one, and the dancing and other amusements were kept up until the guests departed, tired and gorged with food. In the middle of the noise and sport the priests had carried to the edge of the water some canoes, which they had j)repared beforehand and secreted in their house, and, making their ways safely to them, they made all speed with their paddles through the night, so the}' were enabled to reach Lake Ontario without discovery. It was not until the fol- lowing day the Onandagas found that their prey had eluded them, and they were nmch mystified by the manner in which the Frenchmen had made their es- ca|)e. It was an adroit flight and well carried out. Le Moyne faretl well, for he had explained the situ- ation in a letter which he had succeeded in getting into the hands of the Dutch, and the chiefs of the Mohawks at once sent him to Montreal. In this month of March, 1657, the Jesuits had been able to get away from danger, abandoning the scenes of their so prom- ising labors. It was then that the Iroquois dropped all i)retense to the observance of the peace which had i)een only too brief, beginning their onslaughts upon the French settlements, leaving the ruins of cabins and blood be- hind. Three years later, 1660, a Cayuga sachem came 238 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN to Montreal as a peace envoy. He brought along some French people who had been captured in one raid after another, who had escaped the stake, and demanded that the French authorities send a priest to the Onondagas. Father Le Moyne answered the demand. On his journey he was waylaid by the Oneida savages, but escaped to Oswego. Peace was again entered into, and nine prisoners accompanied the Iroquois Garakonthie to Montreal; but it was a slender compact, to be immediately broken by the Mohawks and Onondagas, who came so near Montreal that they were able to slay Vignal and Le Maitre, two Sulpitian priests whose zeal exceeded their dis- cretion. But Le Moyne remained at Onondaga, teach- ing among the captive Hurons and the Iroquois, to finally return to Montreal the year after, with other French captives. The Iroquois were treacherous, and while entering into negotiations for peace, and making applications for Jesuits to be sent them, they were still making war, killing and burning at will, without regard to their professions of friendliness. The French Government, exasperated and sore, determined to carry war into the Iroquois country, and a considerable body of reg- ular troops was sent over from France, with whom came many colonists. Immediate preparations were made for a vigorous campaign. Forts were built along the Sorel and on the shores of Lake Champlain for the reserves and the necessary stores, and the Mohawks and Oneidas were to be attacked at once. The Indi- ans, with their usual celerity when danger threatened. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 239 immediately proposed a peace, and the French Gov- ernor acceded. But the Indians were restless, and the relations between the French and savages again became unsettled, so that in 1665 De Courcelles left Montreal with a large force on snow-shoes, keeping on to the secret recesses of the Mohawk country. The Mohawks, warned of De Courcelles' approach, fled from their villages, and again a peace was proposed; but De Tracy, the Canadian Viceroy, with twelve hundred soldiers and one hundred Indians, made his way to the Mohawk country and began a work of devastation that ended only when all their towns and stores of provisions were tlestroyetl. This was fol- lowed by a permanent ending of hostilities on the part of the Five Nations until after the fall of Eng- lish James II., in 16SS. With this peace was termi- nated the service of the French soldiery in Canada. It is here the story of the Parish of Sainte Famille begins; for among those sent over from France to assist in the subjugation of the savages of the coun- try of the Great Lakes was the Carignan Salieres Regiment, of which Baron Castin was the commander. Jean Vincent, Baron de St. Castin, was born near 240 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Oleron, in the District of Beam, Lower Pyrenees. He was a young man of lively disposition, fond of ad- venture, his youthful mettle tempered by a multi- colored experience, his intellect quickened and broad- ened by association with matured minds, and pos- sessed of a high order of courage and daring. His mil- itary training was of the most arduous character, and well fitted him for the service in Canada, under De Tracy, in his raid upon the Mohawks. After the per- manent peace was assured the Regiment Carignan Salieres was disbanded. The officers were granted considerable areas of the new country up and down the St. Lawrence, which were known as seignories, and upon which they disposed themselves, building such shelters as suited their fancies, and gathering about them their soldiers, who served them as vassals. The settlement on the St. Lawrence at the coming of Castin and his regiment was weak, possessing but a slender population, and being confined to its peltry trade for its resources. It was undeveloped country, and to men inclined to a military career it offered ampler opportunity for idleness and indulgence in the sports of the chase, or of the hunt, than inducement to more serious employment. St. Castings example w^as doubtless willingly followed by his brother officers, who, like himself, were not particularly pleased with their abrupt dismissal from the service. The French were always adepts at love-making, and the Indian maidens of the Montagnais, like the petalled flowers of the woodland, lent the sweet fragrance of their companionship to the pleasure of these titled adven- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 241 turers, apparently without reserve, and their half- breed offspring eanie up like their sires, in idleness and license. Romantic days were those beside the rushing waters of the St. Lawrence, but of which St. Castin soon tired. The life was too tame among these isolate seignories; and it was about this time, when he was casting his lines for gamier fish, that he met Madockawando, the great sagamore of the Tar- ratines, who had come to Montreal to dispose of his peltries. It was the task of the Tarratine chief to weave the romance of the Penobscot woods of such fascinating pattern that St. Castin should be induced to return with him to his tribe, where, beside " the lovely bay, Penobscot's clustered wigwams lay; " and where, not far out to seaward, "A thousand wooded islands," slumbering to the sounds of many waters, merged and mingled their sagging horizon-lines with the soft va- pors of the sea, lending and blending their emerald hues to the deeper vert of the titles that lapped the yellow fringe of their receding shores. He painted the immensity of that wilderness whence "The broad Penobscot comes to meet And mingle " with these self-same waters; "Slow sweep his dark and gathering floods, Arched over by the ancient woods," even from the shadows of vast Katahdin, where were wrought the first slender threads of sih-er whose mol- 242 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN ten argent at Pentagoet ebbed and flowed with the rippling pulse of the sea. Mayha]) the wily sagamore whispered in his ear the wanton tale of the dusky beauties who flitted in and out the Penobscot shadows, and who grew like the wild-flowers of the woods — sweet, lithe, and willowy of figure ; whose moods were as various as the winds that kissed the Penobscot waters ; whose eyes were the color of the leaves of the ash as the autumn days went; whose voices were as softly and wondrously musical as the twilight song of the thrush, and as seductive as the Serpent of Eden. What more was needed to woo the adventurous Castin? St. Castin listened to Madockawando, and as he looked forward into the possibilities of the future, struggling with unavailing fingers at the strings that held the scroll of its mysteries intact and unrevealed, so he looked backward over the way he had come from the old chateau at Oleron. He recalled his fam- ily, which was of noble rank, but of which no tradition exists — possibly being extinguished or overwhelmed in the tide of the French Revolution, which swept away so many of the French nobility in its wild course. Only the story of the son remains, who left his home, a raw youth of some fifteen years, whose heart beat high, and whose mind over-brimmed with visions of great achievement in the armies of his country. In those days it was the customary thing in France for young men to seek the army, or the Church for pre- ferment; but St. Castin was not cut out for a monk, so he went to the wars. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 243 The Carignan Salieres was a part of the like famous P'rench Corps contributed by Louis XIY. to the Ger- man Leopold's aid in his desperate fight with the Turks. Mazarin was dead. Colbert was at the head of the French finances, and he had advised Louis to send the Emperor this famous contingent of six thousand of the flower of the French army. It was needed; for the Turks had burst the barrier of Transylvania, and already menaced the German capital with its pagan horde. Leopold was at St. Gothard, and his armies were massed under the command of the Italian Monte- cuculi. The Turks were rai)ping at the boundary- gates and pounding them loudly with the hilts of their scimetars, August 1, 1664, they were on the hither side of the Raab and had thrown themselves against the troops of the Empire. The Carignans were among the re- serves, under the direct command of Count de Coligne Soligne, and a contemporary account of the fight is not uninteresting. Martin says: "The janizaries and spahis crossed the river and overthrew the troops of the diet and a part of the Imperial regiments; the Germans rallied, but the Turks were continually re- enforced, and the whole Mussulman army was soon found united on the other side of the Raab. The battle seemed lost, when the French moved. It is said that Achmet Kiouprougli (the Turkish Grand \'izier), on seeing the young noblemen pour forth with their uni- forms decked with ribbons and their blond jx'rukes, asked, ' Who are those maitlens?" "The maidens broke the terrible janizaries at the 244 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN first shock ; the mass of the Turkish army paused and recoiled on itself; the Confederate (Leopold's) army, reanimated by the example of the French, rushed for- ward and charged on the whole line; the Turks fell back, at first slowly, their faces toward the enemy, then lost footing and fled precipitately to the river to recross it under the fire of the Christians; they filled it with their corpses." It was a famous fight and ter- minated the war, the Turks retiring to their own do- minions, never to forget the vicious onslaught of the Carignans that turned the day against them. It was the following year that this regiment was sent to the Canadas, where, as has been observed, their service was short. It is not to be supposed that these young officers, gentiUwmmes they were, were other than soldiers of fortune, with only their swords for capital, supported by their stern sense of honor, and in no wise fitted for the improvement of the leagues of land donated them by the Governor, and whose accomplishments were those of a notable gallantry polished by the manners of the Court, and tinctured with a deal of vanity. They were not of the laboring class — to them labor was demeaning and a lowering of caste. Undoubtedly they were poor, but to those who accepted their seignories a small sum of money was given, as was a smaller sum to their vassals. It was a virgin country for hunting and fishing, and if they in any way engaged in business, it was in the accumulation of furs and the selling of them to the traders, after a vagabondish fashion. Champigny, the French Intendant, says of the chil- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 245 (Iron of these soldiers: "It is pitiful to see their chil- dren, of which they have great numbers, passing all summer with nothing on but a shirt, and their wives and daughters working in the fields." Perhaps no more demoralizing or unfortunate state of affairs could be described, and it is not singular that the French were so slow in their march toward a forceful, self-sustaining civilization. It could be but a rotten fabric based upon so disintegrate a foundation. St. Castin was of these gentilhommes, and it is to be doubted if he accepted one of these seignories, for it was not long after peace was entered into with the Lake tribes that he met Madockawando; and it is supposed that, charmed with the opportunity offered of having the field to himself, which he finally ac- quired under a grant from the Frencii Crown, he re- turned with the savage sagamore to his like savage home by the Penobscot. Once here, he built for him- self an ample and commodious residence, which was probably situated near the site of D'Aulnay's fort. It has been described as a long, somewhat extended, and irregularly con.structed building, the materials of which were partly of wood and partly of rock, and of somewhat grotesque architecture. It was situated at the confluence of the Penobscot and ]^iguyduce riv- ers — a beautiful spot with a like charming outlook, and a most fortunate selection for a trading-post and center of operations, which it not long after became;, for it was from St. Castin's brain that emanated the plans of offense anti tlefense against the English after the plundering raid of Andros on the Penobscot. The character of the man is interesting, as St. 246 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Castin seems to be, of all the French officers at Penta- goet, that one to whom the romance of its wildness has attached itself with perennial freshness. His abil- ities were undoubtedly most excellent, forceful, and productive of results. He was possessed of great daring, which was equalled by his enterprise. His manners and address were gentle, and as well fascina- ting; while his education, for the times, may be re- garded as amply competent for all his needs, either as a leader of his people or as a diplomat. A devout Catholic, he was generous, forbearing, and kindly solicitous for others. In other words, St. Castin was a gentleman by birth and culture. He was held in great esteem by his own people, possessed credit at the French Court, and was respected by those who re- sented his and the French occupancy of the Penob- scot country. And this, in the face of some charges of undue freedom with the Tarratine belles, and his de- tention by M. Perrot for the space of seventy days upon charges " of a weakness he had for some fe- males," stood him in good stead — as those who knew him best were inclined to wink at his follies among the softer sex. The savages held him in great venera- tion. He had absolute control over them, and he was their tutelar divinity. Later, he was feared and hated by the English, alike, for whom he had little consid- eration. He classed them all with Andros, and he had for them all what he would have rendered to Andros could he have reached him. We are not sure of the time of St. Castin's coming to Maine, but it may be asserted to have been about THE LAXD OF .ST. CA6TIX 247 1666-67, whore, after a little, he had made himself a little state, his government " surrounded by Indian retainers, a menace and a terror to the neighboring English colonist." He was a man of different fettle from either D'Aulnay or Chamblay, whom he found here in command. He was not one to run in grooves, / ^ ^ *^te. mJ'; ?P''-> and this opening for a free and adventurous career was exceedingly attractive. He entered into it with all the zest in his many-sided make-up. and to some historical writei-s the coming of this man hither was by reason of some secret spring or motive. That docs not seem apparent. His regiment disbanded, dis- missed from the service he so much liked, he was 248 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN simply stranded on the shores of the St. Lawrence, which offered him nothing more than that which might come to an ordinary mortal. The outlook for his fortunes in France was no better. He was a free lance, and he followed Madockawando down the headwaters of the St. John's to the Allegash, thence up and across the triple lakes, and down the great Penobscot to the fair peninsula where was later the Parish of Sainte Famille, then only an Indian village, a cluster of brown-walled wigwams whose smokes, mirrored in the stream, subtly " Etched with the shadows of its sombre margent And soft reflected clouds of gold and argent," were not wilder or less unrestrained than the slender hands that fed them. St. Castin may have seen Madockawando more than once at Montreal as he came with his peltries; and, at last, fired with the tales of the chief, of the stores of beaver, otter, and sable to be had for the trapping, and the chances for immediate and consid- erable wealth, he had shouldered his kit into the canoe of the savage and crossed the Rubicon. The rest was easy. The life before him had no terrors; for five years of life beside a camp-fire with a soldier's fare had weeded out those finer sensibilities which afford only seed-ground for antipathies that are for- gotten once one is within the portals of the woods, where Nature's f easting-board is the common ground whereon one walks. He had no cjualms, moral or otherwise, in his intimacy with the savages. He ate, THE LAXD OF ST. CA:STL\ 249 slept, and fai'cd with them as to the savage born. He Imnted with them; he learned at their school what they had to teach ; and he taught them as well what he knew, and his amiable way made swift inroad into the hearts of the jjroud Tarratines, of whom one finds a quaint description in Wood's ''New England Pros- pect." He says: "Take these Indians in their own trimme and nat- ural) disposition, and they be reported to be wise, lofty-spirited, constant in friendship to one another; true in their promises, and more industrious than many others, . . . when some of our English, who to uncloathe them of their beaver coates clad them with the infection of swearing and drinking which was never the fashion with them })efore, it being contrary to their nature to guzzell downe stronge drinke, until our bestial example and dishonest incitation hath brought them to it; . . . and from overflowing cups there hath been a proceeding to revenge, murther, and overflowing of blood."' Wood is as truthful as he is candid. It is, how- ever, not probable that the habits of drinking among the Tarratines were of the confirmed character that prevailed about and to the westward of the Kennebec, for the complaint against the French is lacking that was made against the English,— that the traders first made the savages drunk and then rol)bed them. That was their apology when the first raid was made on Purchase's cabin at New Meadows River by the sav- ages, — that they were simply taking to themselves their own. 250 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN Madockawando is credited as being a savage of great ability, corresponding courage, and much hu- manity. He had a kindly feeling for the Jesuit, as was traditional with his race on the Penobscot from the time of Biart. He was grave and serious of speech, and on his visits to Montreal seldom omitted to visit the priests of the only church he knew. Hubbard ascribes to him a " show of a kind of religion," and he adopted St. Castin at once into his family. Here was the beginning of St. Castin's romance as he sat by the fires "Of nights in the tents of the Tarratines; Of Madocawando, the Indian chief, And his daughters, glorious as queens. And beautiful beyond belief; And so soft the tones of the native tongue. The words are not spoken, they are sung;" and mingled the whiffs from his stone pipe with the smokes that wandered within the narrowing walls, and dreamed of the day when he " sailed across the western seas. When he went away from his fair demesne The birds were building, the woods were green;" and he conjures up the old chateau under the pallid peaks of the Pyrenees. He hears the winds howling around the massive stone turrets as when he was a boy, or shouting down the wide chimney into the ga- ping fireplace, where "His father, lonely, old, and gray. Sits by the firesitle daj^ by day. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 251 Thinking ever one thought of care; Through the southern windows, narrow and tall, The sun shines into the ancient hall. And makes a glory round his hair." It is the same hall where his boyish feet made noisy clatter in the not far-off days, for he cannot count so many years on his head after all. But it is all so differ- ent now wliere his father keeps to the round of his customed living over of the old days, dozing over his cake and wine, or dreaming of his younger self, to whose belt he mayhap girded his own sword, while ■'The house-dog, stretcheil beneath his chair, Groans in his sleep as if in pain, Then wakes, and yawns, and sleeps again. So silent is it everywhere, — So silent you can hear the mouse Run and rununage along the beams Behind the wainscot of the wall; And the old man rouses from his dreams, And wanders restless through the house. As if he heard strange voices call." But St. Castin's voice falls upon other ears, to be an- swered "By a laugh in which the woodland rang Bemocking .\prirs gladdest bird, — A light and graceful form which sj^rang To meet him when his step was heard," and his dream of the old chateau is banished, and a new picture is wrought in the softly translucent "Eyes by his lodge-fire flashing dark. Small fingers stringing bead and shell, Or weaving mats of bright-hued bark," 252 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN while he woos with gentle speech the sweetest flower of Madockawando's household, — the lissome Mathilde. And what an entrancing creature this forest child, wild blossom of the Pentagoet woods, as " Slight robed, with loosely-flowing hair, She swam the stream or climbed the tree, Or struck the flying bird in air. O'er the heaped drifts of winter's moon Her snow-shoes tracked the hunter's way; And dazzhng in the summer noon, The blade of her light oar threw otT its shower of spray. "Unknown to her the rigid rule, The dull restraint, the chiding frown, The weary torture of the school, The taming of wild nature down. Her only lore the legends told Around the hunter's fire at night ; Stars rose and set, and seasons rolled, Flowers bloomed and snow-flakes fell, unquestioned in her sight." And yet his memory of the chateau at Oleron blooms again, and a gentle voice ])ids him " Good- night!" and he goes up the winding stairs of stone to look out the slit in the turret wall at the moon that shows through the brush of the trees that crowd the wide park, and the near peaks of the mountains flash back their silvery whiteness; but their splendors do not drown the kindly light of the father's fond smile that still lingers in his boyish eyes, and which has kept him company all these years; for St.Castin is loyal to his family traditions, as is the way with his race. The fire smoulders at his feet, and the dainty Mathilde has left him to his reverie like a wise woman. The coal in THE LAXD OF ST. CAST IX 253 his pipe is dead, but what matters it, as he dreams of France, twisting the strands of romance into the sin- gle thread of Fate — and how many there are of them, and how they tug at his heart-strings! He has mounted the stairs, — and to his boyish feet there seemed to be many of them, — and he is over the threshold of the room where a fair-haired woman every night lulled him to sleep with a motherly kiss, and every morning awoke him with a tender caress; and his head droops as if her wonted touch were there, and a spirit whispers, '' Benedicite " in his ear. The fire has smouldered to a single brand, and it gleams from its bed of gray ashes like the star that to his childish eyes seemed ever to burn abo\'e the cypress hedge of the ancient graveyard of Oleron, or to shine through the arches of the old stone church- tower like a light hung amid its bells, that were strik- ing the hours at all times of the night. His Indian mat is a magic carpet, and it has carried him across the seas, and he looked from " the bed on which he lay, — There are the pictures bright and gay, Horses and hounds and sun-lit seas; There are his powder-flask and gun, And his hunting-knives in the shape of a fan; His chair by the window where he sat, With the cloudetl tiger-skin for a mat, Looking out on the Pyrenees, Looking out on Mount Marbord And the Seven Valleys of Lavedan," as in the days of youth; but it is only a memory, this lingering of a vision so fresh in mind that it seems to 254 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN him like the soft odor of a presence that has passed. The gray ashes have burst into a flame, and the fire, replenished by the beautiful Mathilde, sings the song of Nature, and St. Castin translates it so that it is balm to his soul, to speed the wooing of the sagamore's daughter, — " The garden rose may richly bloom In cultured soil and genial air, To cloud the light of Fashion's room, Or droop in Beauty's midnight hair. In lonelier grace, to sun and dew The sweet-briar on the hillside shows Its single leaf and fainter hue, Untrained and wildly free, yet still a sister rose;" for, to St. Castin, the dusky maid was the wild rose of Pentagoet. And what wooings those old woods saw, with the fire of France to set them aglow; and with what smoothness sped Love's course, straight as an arrow to its mark; and the consummation — for there was no fashion in those days to make the bride de- pendent upon the Paris dressmaker for stunning effects in draperies. It was a simple affair, — St. Castin had given to Madockawando a knife and a gun, and to the wedding-feast, proffered by the proud sagamore, " With pipes of peace and bows unstrung, Glowing with paint, came old and young, In wampum and furs and feathers arrayed." It was a notable occasion, where " Bird of the air and beast of the field, All which the woods and waters yield. On dishes of birch and hemlock piled. Garnished and graced that banquet wild ; " THE LASD OF ST. CASTIX ZDiD bear from Katahdin, salmon from the pool above the mouth of the Kadcsciuit, nuts from Mont Desert, and grapes from the Magpie Islands, " Wine from the depths of the woodhind spring, Bottled afresh in the deer's white skin, And drunk from cups of the virgin birch. Daintily wrought, without and within," was servetl by the dusky Hebes. "And merrily when the feast was done On the fire-lit green the dance begun, With squaws' shrill stave, and deeper hum Of old men beating the Indian drum. "Painted and plumed, with scalp-locks flowing And red arms tossing and black eyes glowing. Now in light, and now in shade. Around the fire the dancers played. "The step was quicker, the song more shrill. And the beat of the small drums louder still, Whenever within the circle drew" St. Castin and his bride. Ikit the ccrcnKJiiy was over. The dance was done, and the great fires had smoul- dered into heai)s of smoking brands. St. Castin had led his liridc to his new house, escorted by the maid- ens of the tribe, mid then the Tarratine village had lapsed into its accustomed (juiet. According to Shea, St. Castin's official i)osition in the regiment Carignan Salieres was a subordinate one, being that of an ensign in Chanibly's company; but other writers credit him with the command of that regiment. (Irandfontainc was in connnand at Pentagoet after the Treaty of Breda, 1667, and was 256 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN succeeded by Chambly, and it was Chambly who was attacked by the Dutch, and wounded and carried away for a ransom in 1674. Abbe Raynal speaks of St. Castin as a captain who settled among the Abenake, "married one of their women, and conformed in every respect to their mode GOOSE CREEK of life." Mr. Godfrey, in his brochure on St. Castin, uses the above language and refers to Poutrincourt's son, Biencourt, with whom came the first Jesuits, also Charles la Tour, and Ashley, the co-agent at Penta- goet who was so successfully dogged by Willet, as men who had adopted the habits and customs of the savages. It was an attractive life to a man whose ties to civilization were somewhat loosely twisted, or per- haps bent by policy. If St. Castin were ambitious of influence, he took the way to gain it ; for by his alli- ance with the family of Madockawando he rapidly THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 257 ac(iuiiv(l their friendship, and hitterly their unlim- ited contitlence. WTien St. Castin came among the savages of the Penobscot the river was called, and probably the re- gion adjacent to it, Panawanske; and if one went by Baron Hontan he would have been here in 1663; but the assault on the Turks at Raab had not then taken place. Hontan says: "The Baron St. Castin, a gentleman of Uleron, in Bearne, having lived among the Abenacjuis after the savage way for above twenty years, is so much resjiected by the savages that they look upon him as their tutelar god.'' St. Castin was here when the Dutch made their raid on Chambly, in 1674, but it does not appear that he took any active part in the affair, leaving Chambly to his own conceits. It was at this time, the Dutch having sailed away witii their ])lunder, that St. Cas- tin assumed jwssession of the fort. According to a French annalist, *' He recaptured it as lieutenant of Sieur de Grandfontaine, governor of said fort." He began to trade after the pattern set by Allerton, and was very successful. After St. Castings assumption of the command of Fort Pentagoet he was not infrecjuently annoyed, and he suffered more or less interru))tion from the English, who envietl him his opportunity for lucrative trade by reason of his being in the heart of the trading country, which, by the influx of the English eastward of the Piscata(iua. had become somewhat nan-owed west of Pemacjuid. The mine had been worked out; but St. Castin was somewhat bothered bv his com- 258 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN patriots in Acadia, who were incliiietl to l)ecome jeal- ous of his iricreasiiig wealth and influence. There had been a strife for years between the English and the French for the rich lands between the Kennebec and the St. Croix. It was coveted territory, and there is no reason to doubt but the French, l)y right of discov- ery and occupation, were rightfully in possession. As has been before noted, the French were credited with having a small trading-post here in 1556, but it was not initil 1613 that they made an attempt to for- tify the peninsula of Pentagoet. De Monts and Cham- plain were the first explorers of the river, and they were the first to exploit its resources. It was a rich country. The river teemed with salmon, haddock, cod, and other profitable commodity to l)c secured with hook and line by those who followed the indus- try of fishing, while its upper waters were thronged with the habitations of the beaver, and afforded countless haunts for the otter. Its woods were abun- dant in sable and other fur-bearing animals, which were easily captured by the Indians even with their rude weapons and traps. It was an immense hunting- ground, and approached by a most incomparable and magnificent highway. Here at Pentagoet was an important colonial foothold, of which the Tarra- tines were the original proprietors, and which after the coming of St. Castin was zealously guarded. Between the aborigine and the French, as to the latter's occupancy of Pentagoet, there was no ques- tioning. In their intercourse with the savages the French were unlike the English. The former were 77//: LAX J) OF sr. CASTIN 259 plastic in tcmix'raincnt, generous and considerate, not averse to eating from the same dish, accommoda- ting themselves always and naturally to the savage mood with an approving rather than a chicUng dispo- sition; diplomatic; while the latter were openly pred- atory, driving a snug bargain like the shopkeepers they were, and not averse to getting what they tie- sired, willy-nilly. Tntrained in commerce, the sav- age was not long in discovering where the long end of the bargain was going under the influence of the Englishman's insidious strong waters, and that their acquaintance with the thrifty settler from Pcmariuid to the westward was subjecting them to constantly aggregating abuses. The English were sowing this- tles, while the savage bided the harvest patiently. From the days of the Acadian governorship of Razillai, the Penobscot had been raided with indift'er- ent success. The " I'ndertakers " had reaped a boun- tiful return from their investment when Rnsillon Nwoojied down u))()ii their trading-house in l()o2. Then came DWulnay, and the French flag floated over Fort Fentagoet; but D'Aulnay was not to And his pathway strewn with roses. With the death of Razillai, the Protestant La Tour began his hornet-like buzzings al)out the eai"s of the papist D'Aulnay, and a bitter rivalry began its stalking from St. John toward Pentagoet. La Tour, ambitious for jjower and jealous of D'Aulnay, encouraged by the med- dlers of Massachusetts Hay, who still felt a lively resentment at being deprived of the trade on the Penobscot, began a series of reprisals by plundering 260 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN and burning D'Aulnay's property at Pentagoet, while the latter, peaceably enough inclined, when he heard the storm coming, sought the shadows of the woods, to begin the rehabilitation of his shattered premises when the sails of the raitlers had disappeared down the river. La Tour was finally ordered Imck to France, but owing to changes in the home administration the <^> FISH-HOUSES, OLD CASTINE Ijrosecution against him fell inert, and D'Aulnay kept his fort until he was drowned, in 1650-51, With La Tour's marriage to the widow of D'Aulnaj' the strife for this part of Acadia ceased. In 1654 Pentagoet was again under the English supremacy, to be afterwards, in 1667, by the Treaty of Breda, restored to the French, under the governorship of Chevalier Grand- fontaine, to whom Colbert, Minister of Finance, gave instructions to hold the place. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 261 The exact time of the coming of St. Castin is in- definite, but it may be assumed to have been upon the occupation by Grandfontaine. M. de Chambly was the officer in charge until the coming of the Flemish freebooters in 1G74, who pillaged and dismantled the fort, to at once sail down stream with their booty. Two years later, one spring day, a Dutch man-of-war made its way up the river, and the echoes of the heavy guns were soon flying through its wilderness of woods. The fort at once took up the challenge, and the river was choked with the smokes of the battle, under cover of which the French retired to the woods. The Dutch landed a detachment and at once possessed themselves of the fortification, over which they raised their flag, with the intention of holding the place per- manently. Undoubtedly St. Castin watched the con- flict from some safe vantage-point and began at once to lay his plans for its recapture. Shortly after, a small fleet of English vessels, hailing from l^oston, came up the river and the Dutch vessel slipped her cable and went out to sea, whereupon St. Castin made a sortie upon Pentagoet and recaptured it, from which time on he was its commanding officer, making the barter- ing for furs his chief occupation. St. Castin was a man of peaceable inclinations, whose position as sachem of the Tarratines gave him the paramount influence. His efforts were always for peace among his people, and until the unfortunate advent of Andros the Eng- lish were much indebted to him for the non-interfer- ence of the savages on the Penobscot in the disturb- ances that followed the outbreak of 1676. His object 262 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN was trade and the making of money. He carried on a contraband trade with the EngHsh, which was mu- tually profitable, and the latter well appreciated his influence with the Indians of the Penobscot, and courted his favor with much assiduity. St. Castin also had a trading-jjost at Port Royal. M. Perrot was Governor of Acadia at that time, and had become St. Castin's debtor as a borrower of money, which brought him nothing but perplexity. The Governor was in- clined to go into the fishery industry, and bought some vessels for that purpose; but being unable to obtain further influence from St. Castin, and being unable also to secure the assistance of the French fishermen, he was compelled to man his fishing-ves- sels with English, who robbed him so unmercifully — stealing his fish and sending them to Boston for sale — that he was })erforce com])elled to return the vessels to those of whom he had |)urchased them, being un- able to pay for them. Whether he repaid the deljt to St. Castin is uncertain, but it was apparent that the latter was indifferent to the Governor's success, who ungraciously rewarded St. Castin with a series of petty annoyances, charging him with licentiousness among the filles of Port Royal, and making that an excuse for holding the commandant of Pentagoet a prisoner for a six weeks' space, which certainly did not mend matters. If St. Castin felt any resentment to Perrot he did not show it, but kept the even tenor of his way, main- taining an admirably pleasant exterior, always capa- ble and ingenious in devices, a diplomat and ex- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 263 pert in expediencies. St. Castin was in his prime, neither old nor was his face marked with hnes of dissipation. He was in the heyday of life and was no doubt greatly in love with his fair wife, the youth- ful Maria Pidiaskie, whose was "A fonn of beauty uiulefinetl, A loveliness without a name, Not of degree but more of kind; Nor bokl nor shy, nor short nor tall, But a new niingling of them all. Yes, beautiful beyond belief;" nor does one doubt that when he looks ui)on her he thinks of the far home at the foot of the Pyrenees. St. Castin was a man of sentiment, else he would not have been swayed by the charms of the chisky Tar- ratine beauties or the fa.scinations of the belles of Port Royal: and he must have Ix'cn a man of mo.st excellent parts to have been .so .seductive with the softer sex. But your man of sentiment is ever a dreamer, and St. Castin had time for dreaming, as busy as Perrot kept him with his wasp-like attentions. Thoughts of home mu.st have crowded in upon his mind, and esj^ecially that he had inherited an inmien.se property for those days, of which he received due no- tice, but which he ignored with a strange perversity of nature, apparently satisfied with what he had, and with the possibilities of the future, which was filled with promise. He was a man who was openly averse to social trammels, yet a man of honor, setting an example to his savage attendants of marital loy- alty to one wife. He enjoyed the freedom of the woods 264 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN and the life that belonged to it, yet one is sure that this life, '■ Full of adventures and wonderful scenes Of hunting the deer through forests vast In the royal grant of Pierre du Gast," had not crowded out the color of the landscape of an- cient Oleron, and he writes a letter to his father that " wings its way Across the sea, like a bird of prey, And strikes and tears the old man's heart." Then St. Castin forgets the ivied walls of the old chateau, the great park, and the rooks that go troop- ing over it from dawn to sunset, for Colonel Thomas Dongan, Governor of New York, had written " Sieur de St. Castin, commandant of Fort Pentagoet," that the English claimed the country from the Kennebec to the St. Croix, ordering him and his French people who were occupants of that part " embracing between those two rivers forty or fifty leagues on the finest country in all Acadia" to leave it immediately, or take the oath of allegiance to the English Crown, The letter was not altogether so rough, as Dongan, realizing St. Castin's power among the savages, and his ability as an officer, held out to him advantageous inducements if he would come under the English sway and turn over to the English authorities his trading- post, which he would still be allowed to control. But St. Castin was loyal. Dongan's threats and persuasions flew past their mark, although M. de Callieres was somewhat disturbed over the brilliant THE LAM) OF ST. CASTIX 265 offers of Dongan to his countryman. M. Porrot gave liini more troul)le than Dongan. Perrot was a med- dler, a "person of grasping and (inarrclsome (Usj)()si- tion." He had qiiarreUed with Front enae; engaged in personal wrangles and canings, such was his irascibil- ity; maintained a contraband trafhc with the Indians, selling them brandy by the half-i)int, j)ersonally, when Governor; fought a duel in which, jierhaps, un- fortunately for St. Castin and others, he was only wounded: s(|uabbh'd with the clergy of Quebec, ma- king himself so utterly abominated that he was driven over to Acadia, over which beautiful coun- tr}- his friends at court had procured him a com- mission as Governor. His accumulations were even then reputed to have been large; and casting his greedy eyes over the pos- sibilities of his new demesne, they settled longingly upon Pentagoet. Here he found St. Castin to be a formidable rival, and he began his scheming for the latter's downfall. St. Castin retired from Port Royal, where Perrot had taken up his residence, but the lat- ter was not satisfied with having the immediate ter- ritory to himself, and persisted in his persecutions. But St. Castings attentions to Perrot were suddenly diverted l)v the ojx'rations of the tools of Andros at Pemaquid. In 1686 the Governor of Sagadahock appointetl the pliant yet rapacious commissioners. Palmer and West, to the management of the country east of the Kennebec. The old claim of James II. to the lands as far east as the St. Croix Kiver was renewed, and it so haj)pcned that St. Castin had ordiM-cd from 266 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN Nelson, Watkins & Company, Boston merchants, a cargo of wine and fruit. The bill of lading called for seventy pipes of Malaga wine, one of brandy, two of oil, and sixteen barrels of fruit. The cargo was shipped, and was to be landed at a point down-stream. The skipper, hailing from Piscataqua, landed his wines at the place previously determined upon, and before St. Castin could come at them they had been at- tached by one Thomas Sharpe because the duties had not been paid at Pemaciuid; but the English court ordered the wines restored, after which their owner had some time on his hands which he might devote to M. Perrot. St. Castin was not a man to sit down quietly under the abusive and insolent attitude assumed by Perrot, so he resolved to carry the war into the camp of his persecutor. But his troubles with the Government of New England were not wholly over, for in 1687 St. Castin was asked to surrender the fort at Pentagoet. He ignored the demand, being engaged at Port Royal in the erection of a mill, other than to ask of the Gov- ernor of Canada for a force of thirty soldiers, offering, if they were promptly sent him, to sustain the fort at Pentagoet, and to collect a settlement of four hun- dred Indians. He found time in this note to write the Governor-General concerning M. Perrot, charging him with neglect of the Provincial matters, and re- ferred him to the priest at Port Royal for full infor- mation of the shortcomings of the Governor of Acadia, as it was not proper that the same should come from himself. He writes in his letter of himself, THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 267 touching upon the "httle folhes" laid to his charge, that they did not cause M. Perrot the most vexation, " as I do not think there is any man under the sun whom interest can cause to perform such low actions, even so far as to deal out with his own hand in his own house, in the presence of strangers, the pint and half pint of brandy — not trusting one of his domes- tics to do this. I see what troubles him; he wishes to be the only merchant of L'Acadia — and, if it please God, it may be so far as I am concerned, for so long as he will remain in the country I shall endeavor not to displease him in that respect. He has never been willing to grant me a furlough to go to L'Isle Percee, because he fears I shall go as far as Quebec; neither would he allow me to send to Boston for mill-stones for a mill which the company at Port Royal had de- sired me to build for them, although he had prom- ised beforehand — before we had undertaken to build the mill; and now that the mill is finished and the mill stones paid foi', ho has changed his mind and has no objections to send there Mons. \'illebon, who has returned only fifteen days ago, and who will go back to Boston about the commencement of Sep- tember in order to bring back the bark he has built there." In this letter are intimations that M. Perrot had contraband intercourse with the English, and that the former had ''whispered in his ear that if any Englishman came in these quarters (Port Royal) he must not speak of it, and that he must say nothing." And one can imagine the fire that trickled out the 268 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN ends of the St. Castin fingers as the quill ran over the paper under his hand. It was his first outburst, and no doubt he was prepared to follow it up with even warmer assertions. He was credited with being a man to whom a mean or dishonorable act was im- possible, having a high regard for his personal honor. Ml ' A STREET IN OLD CASTINE The result of this letter was the ultimate removal of Perrot from office, who had the fortune later to be taken and robbed hy pirates, as he had so long robbed others. M. de Denonville, at Quebec, writes to the French minister at Paris a year or two earlier (November, 1686), of St. Castin: " There is at Pentagoet the Sicur de St. Castin, who is a gentlemanly officer in the Carignans. He is very THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 269 daring and enterprising and clierishes the interests of the King, having his Hfe all the time at stake from the English with the Savages of the country of which he has become the ruler. ''They assure me that he has recently come into the inheritance in France of £5,000 a year, that he is a man of sound understanding, hating the English who fear him. "If .Monsieur Perrot dislikes him on account of his government, St. Castin, by the report they have given me of him, should be a true man to give chase to the pirates and to encourage the fisheries of Monsieur de Chenvy, I have requested him to come to see me in order to become better acquainted with him, and to engage him to go to France, if he should appear to me fit for anything. " He is quite solicitous of honor, having some prop- erty, this will I)e a great helj) in sustaining a post like that of Port Hoyal, especially if he is not selfish. "My Lord our Bishop has returned from Acadia where he has made a visit to all the dwellings with great fatigue. He will send you an account of the great amount of disorder which there is in the forest from the wretched libertines who have been for a long time like the Savages, doing nothing towards cultivating the land. "I have written strongly about it to Monsieur Perrot. When we shall be at leisure it will be well for Monsieur dc Champigny and myself to make a tour there. I learn this on all sides, both that there is scarcely any left of the Savages and that they are 270 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN for the most part destroyed by the excessive drinking of brandy." It is not charged to the account of St. Castin that he debauched his Tarratines with brandy, and it is doubtful if he allowed the sale of strong liquors to the tribe in unlimited quantities. He says in his letter to De Denonville, in which he writes of the obstacles Perrot placed in his way in the building of the mill at Port Royal, a part of which has been a little before quoted, and which throws a side-light upon the char- acter of the man, referring to Perrot : " If I was not on bad terms with him, from a feeling that every upright man ought to have, when he is ill-treated by his ruler as I have been, I should have informed you of his conduct; but I prefer to suffer a little longer, and that the matter should come to you through the letters of M. Petit, Priest at Port Royal, who will not fail to acquaint you with all, without passion, which I might not be able to do." And in a postscript to this letter one notes the following: " This that I say is very true; not that I am certain of anything; for I ought not to advance anything that I cannot sustain, even to the last word, and which also cannot be confirmed in the course of time." One can but admire the frankness of the man. M. de Menneval succeeded Perrot at Port Royal. He wrote a Memoir upon Acadia, and one finds this in it: " The Sieur de St. Castin is absolute master of the savages, the Canibas, and of all their business, being in the forest with them since 1665, and having with THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 271 him two daughters of the chief of these savages by wiioni he has had many children. " This man has promised to quit the life he has led up to the present time (1687,) and to proceed to es- tablish himself at Port Royal; but having learned that the Sieur Perrot had an intention of causing his arrest and with a view of seizing his trade, he has not come. The Sieur de Menneval is ordered by his in- struction to declare to the said Sieur de St. Castin that His Majesty will pardon him the past, if he will conduct himself differently, and make his settlement real." The same writer in a report as Governor of Acadia almost a year later (September, 1688) makes note: " I have induced the Sieur de St. Castin to live a more regular life. He has ciuitted his traffic with the Kng- lish, his debauchery with the savages, he is married, and has promised me to labor to make a settlement in this country.'' It is evident that the imi)ressions which De Menne- val had of St. Castin were colored by his acquaintance with M. Perrot, and doubtless ujion a more intimate knowledge of St. Castin's character he had reason to revise his opinion. Possibly St. Castin had a sensing of the feeling of De Memieval toward him; for after the former had suggested to the Acadian Governor that with thirty men he could maintain Pentagoet against the English, he received the answer that "if he chose to alter his course and assume one more becoming a gentleman, his majesty would be pleased to pardon for the past by making a solid establish- 272 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN merit." The pertinent suggestion was also submitted that "there was reason to hope that he would con- tribute towards the construction of the fort at Penta- goet, having the reputation that he had amassed con- siderable property." This was sufficiently sharp to have penetrated the most obtuse understanding, and St. Castin was not slow in comprehending what was expected of him; but he evidently did not care enough for the Government to make friends with it by levy- ing tribute upon himself or rebuilding the fort — probably the same occupied by the English and the Dutch in succession, and situated on the site of the old Plymouth trading-house which was close by the river-bank. It was the same as when we saw it upon our visit to Pentagoet in the previous chapter. The little turret with its brazen bell was there, and the well and the garden of fruit-trees wherein St. Castin was wont to solace himself and dream of the fruits that as a boy he thought so delicious in olden France. St. Castin was independent of his Government. He did not claim to represent the Government, but rather to be and hold himself as a ])rivate citizen, the sachem of the Tarratines, which was infinitely safer for him, and more to his liking. It has been supposed that St. Castin's house was without the fort. Probably it was, and for the reason that the fort was Government ])roperty. His inclina- tion to enjoy his freedom of person to its fullest ex- tent, and to throw off the irksome trammels of a sub- ordinate position, would lead him to remain outside. He had an abundant force of retainers in the numer- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 273 ical support of his Tarratinos, which caused him to be respected by those in office; and especially was his influence in demand after the breaking out of the savage hostilities in Kl'.iO. James II. once crowned King of England made his influence felt among th(> Puritan colonics. Andros was here the mouthpiece of the papist James, and 274 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN shared with him the cordial hatreds of the New Eng- landers, which they took occasion to vent with every favorable opportunity. Andros was but the faithful agent of the Crown. One of his duties was to make a personal acquaintance with the lands to the east- w^ard, especially to the eastward of Pemaquid. His royal master claimed that territory, and he had much curiosity to see St. Castin, of whom he had heard much. He had heard, too, of his wives; and being something of a judge of such stock, he was not averse to passing his criticism upon St. Castin's possibly good taste. The stories of his debaucheries at Pem- aquid on his return from Pentagoet are known to every reader of contemporary history. He had sailed down to Pemaquid, where he sated his appetite with its muttons and fish, and, laying in a supply of carpenter's stock, with the intent of putting the fort at Pentagoet in some reasonable sort of con- dition, he boarded the Rose under Captain George, and headed for the mouth of the Penobscot. He had caused notice of his approach to be sent to St. Castin, and, arraying himself in his most gorgeous and im- posing apparel, the Rose made her way up the river to the peninsula of Pentagoet, only to discover that St. Castin had shut up his residence and retired with his family and all his retainers to the interior, having little interest with any of the English, and especially in Andros, to whom in some degree he charged the seizure of his wines. The Governor had it all his own way, and could make his inspection of the locality at his leisure. Dropping anchor opposite the fort, and THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 275 as well St. Castin's house, he debarked, only to be disappointed in not finding the master at home. It was unfortunate that St. Castin did not have time to remove some of his property. As Andros went from room to room, in one of which he found a small altar, while in others he came upon guns, powder, shot, kettles, and cloths, his desire for acquisition grew upon him so that he carried them all aboard the Rose, with the excei)tiun of the altar, and then sailed away to Pemaquid. It was a confiscation in '' condemna- tion of trading;" but he sent notice to the Baron, through his father-in-law, that if he wished his goods it was only necessary that he should come to Pema- (juid and swear allegiance to the King of England. As a sop to the savages, he called in the sachems and made them presents of various commodities; but St. Castin nursed his grievance in silence and bided his time. The sachems went away with tlie gifts of Andros, only to return two years later for the scalps of the settlers, and St. Castin lifted not a hand to restrain them. Andros had filled his cup of resentment to the brim, and it was a pity that this human blot on the integrity of the Colonies could not have been in the place of Captain Chubb, when D'Iberville and St. Castin made Fort William Henry at Pemaquid their own. Madockawando was one of the sagamores upon whom Andros bestowed gifts, which consisted of fourteen blue blankets, twelve shirts, three rolls of cloth, antl two l)arrels of wine, according to M. Pas- quine. l^ut it was a useless coquetting with the Indian 276 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN sachem, for, as Hutchinson says, he proved '' a most virulent enemy. '^ It was a time of peace between England and France, and from any point of view Andros' appropriation of the property of St. Castin was utterly indefensible. It was to be paid for, how- ever, in coin of a different character than that of the realm. One can see the pompous Andros strutting through the humble abode of St. Castin, followed by his ob- sequious train, glancing with curious eye. He noted the small windows that were so high up that one from the outside could not look in. He counted the prints on the rude walls. There was a great fireplace in either gable, but it was mid-summer and the jambs were inhospitably cold and black. The ceilings were neither high nor low, and the floors were covered with soft furs. There were indubitable signs of feminine em- ployment, as if things had been dropped in a hurry — but the singing-bird had flown the cage. The altar was suggestive in its silence, but Andros had no use for it, and it was left as he found it; so the priest had no complaint to make. As for the fort, he saw it to be in so dilapidated a condition that he did not think it worth while to get out his carpenter's stock of plank and nails and the needed material for its re- habilitation. It was hardly more than a mound of turf and stone thrown up into a low environing scarp; so he left it as he found it, — a ruin. One finds a suggestive note in the Andros Tracts, — ''that after Sir Edmund Andros had sent the Rose Frigott eastward and had rol)bed Casteen, a French THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 277 man that had married two Indian women, the Indians (hd not come to their town but in a hostill manner, although before that time they used to come fre- quently and traded witii them." The inliabitants of Boston were greatly aroused over the matter, and, scoring Andros severely, offered '/i'^.^t' ij^^M^^ me^^ "^m ftl^^a^l3i^e to arrange the matter on generous terms. The enmity against Andros was like a fire in the woods, — it swept everything in its path. Madockawando has been credited witli a visit to Boston subsequent to the affair, where he admitted that St. Castin was greatly indignant over the affair, and that " a great war was apprehended," Increase Mather was perhajis the most furious in his denunciations of Andros, and terms his assistants "a crew that began to teach New England to Drab, 278 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Drink, Blaspheme, Curse, and Damn. . . . What good did that Frigot do New England? unless this were so, that it fetched home the Plunder of Castaine, upon which began the Bloudy Warr." And it was a sanguinary conflict that began the following August by the banks of Royall's River in North Yarmouth. Immediately the magistrate at Saco issued his war- rant and a score of savages were apprehended and committed to Fort Loyal for detention and trial. Then came the raids up and down the Sagadahoc, wherein several settlers were killed, their herds driven away, and their cabins plundered. The abuse of the savage by the English was of a cumulative character, and the savage had a retentive memory. The spread of the English plantations was an " encroachment" upon the hunting-lands and fishing-grounds of the Indian. The white man's herds ate the Indian's maize; but the chief source of discontent was directly chargeable to the machinations of the Jesuit priests rather than to St. Castin's disposition to private revenge. The Capuchins were here early in the seventeenth century. Biart was here in 1612. He was followed by the Dreuillettes, and the Bigots. A copper plate was unearthed in the soil near the site of D'Aulnay's fort which bears the Latin inscription, — " 1648. I, Leo. of Paris Laid this Foundation in Honor of Our Lady of Holy Hope," and is suggestive of the ancient chapel that once stood here, with its THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 279 "Ceiling, and walls, and windows old, Covered with cobwebs, blackened with mould; Dust on the pulpit, dust on the stairs, Dust on the benches, and stalls, and chairs!" and one wonders what became of tlic little bell that swung to and fro in the turret over the fort gateway. All have disappeared in the wreck of time, and the obloquy visited upon any of its remnants of the hated service by the Puritans, who came down here with REMAINS OF THE OLD FORT AT PENTAGOET Governor Pownal in 1759, who describes the place. He says: ''About noon left Wasumkeag point, and went in sloop Massachusetts to Pentaget, with Cap- tain Cargill and twenty men. Found the old aban- doned French Fort and some abandoned settlements. \\'ent ashore to the fort. Hoisted the King's colors there and drank the King's health. . . . To the east, is another Bay, called by the French Pentagoet, or Pentooskeag, wjicre I saw the ruins of a P>ench settle- ment, which from the scite and nature of the houses, and the remains of fields and orchards, had been once 280 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN a pleasant habitation : One's heart felt sorrow that it had ever been destroyed." This destruction, however, was due rather to the rav- ages of time and the decimation of its original people than to the assaults of the English; for the latter were not much inclined to the throwing away of that which could be of use. In fact, there was never much of a French contingent here in Pentagoet's most prosper- ous days. Its population, according to the census of 1689, was one priest, one married man, one married woman, and one boy under the age of fifteen. This was no doubt the family of St. Castin. It was in this year that Father Thury, who had for some time officiated at the altar of Sainte Famille, appreciating the danger to the Jesuit cause and his own personal influence, convened the Indians within the walls of the Chapel of our Lady of Holy Hope, and with an air of sadness and affliction told them the story of absorbing ambitions of the English, by which he aroused their sympathies as well as their animosities when he began to unfold his purpose. Thury, thoroughly cognizant of the history of Acadia, realized the weakness of the French apart from the support of the savages, who were like tow — only wait- ing for the fire and the wind to start the conflagra- tion. Among his people he brooked no rival; he al- lowed no competition. He held his office superior to that of St. Castin. If Rale was an enthusiast, Thury was a bigot, and a virulent one at that, whose hatred of the heretical English knew no bounds, and w^hose wit was always whetted to a keen edge to encompass THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 281 their destruction. And thus spoke the wily priest to the untutored and revengeful savages who had come to hear what he had to say to them : "My children, when shall the rai)acity of the un- sparing New Knglanders cease to afiiict you? and how long will you suffer your lands to be violated by the encroaching heretics? By the religion I have taught, by the liberty you love, I exhort you to resist them. It is time for you to open your eyes which have l)een long shut; — to rise from your mats and look to your arms and make them once more bright. This land belonged to your fathers, long before these wicked men came over the great water, and are you ready to leave the bones of your ancestors, that the cattle of the heretics may cat grass on your graves? The luiglish- men think antl say to themselves, ' \\'e have many cannon: we iiavc grown strong while the red man has slept. While they are lying in their cal)ins and do not see, we will knock them on the head; we will destroy their women and children, and then shall possess their land without fear, for there shall be none to revenge them.' My children, God commands you to .shake the sleep from your eyes. The hatchet must be cleaned of its rust to avenge him of his enemies and secure to you your just rights. Night and ilay a continual prayer shall ascend to him for your success; an un- ceasing rosary shall be observed till you return cov- ered with the glory of triumjih." Such was the exhortation of the Jesuit, and such was the gale that fanned the fire in the savage heart into a flame that burst through the roofs at New 282 THE LAND OF ST, CASTIN Dartmouth, so snugly clustered among the hills of the Sheepscot stream. Thury's listeners were swept from their feet; their fury burst from their throats to make the walls of the little chapel tremble, and a hundred devils crowded around its altar, where they made a vow to go at once to Pemaquid and never come back until they had captured the fort and killed or driven the English away. Their rage knew no bounds; and all this has been laid at the door of St. Castin, from whom, perhaps, the entire proceeding had been kept a secret. The latter was too politic a man to allow his rancor to get the better of his com- mon sense. The making of war on his neighbors was something which he left to his government. That this is true is justified by a quotation from the sub- stance of a letter written by him to his government from La Rochelle in 1701. One reads: "He has gone to France, to justify his conduct as regards the complaints that have been made that he traded with the English. "He grants that residing upon the frontier of the colony, where no Frenchman has carried thus far any goods, and not having been permitted to buy at Que- bec or in Newfoundland, he has been obliged to take them from the English for his most urgent wants, and that he has no other traffic with them than this." St. Castin's entire interest lay on the side of main- taining peaceful relations with his neighbors on the west. James II. had made a successful escape from England, and had found refuge on the French coast. The Andros regime was terminated by the arrest of THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 283 that high official in Boston, and liis transportation to England for trial. Then came the war between France and England, which lent a new encouragement to the ])lotting of the Jesuits against the settlers, of which body, in Maine, Rale may be said to have been the Grand Master. The Jesuits were the instigators of the atrocities committed by the savages from the Kennebec to the Piscataqua. The fear that haunted the Jesuit brain was the proselyting of the savages to Protestantism. The Jesuit was clergy and school- master in one, and lent himself wholly to teaching the complete extermination of the English. De Nonville had been retired from the governor- ship of Canada, and Frontenac, who had lost none of his old-time vigor and capability, had been reinvested with his once-time authority, much to the encourage- ment of the aggressive element, and " his return was hailed by all; but by none more than the Jesuits, who had, in fact, for years before, labored to obtain his re- call;" for in the days of his first administration the Jesuits were the greatest obstacles in the j)athway. The last month on the calendar of 1689 had been reached, and across its seventh day had been drawn a smooch of ruddy color that had the shape of a toma- hawk as nuich as anything, for on that day tlie Massa- chusetts Bay people had declared war against Acadia. Frontenac was not behind the Puritans, but imme- diately sent out three expeditions on snow-shoes, each of which consisted of a considerable force of French and Indians. The objective point of the first was Schenectady, where the inhabitants were slaugh- 284 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN tered in their sleep and afterward l)urned amid the brands of the cabins. The second fell upon the hap- less village of Salmon Falls, where Waldron paid the terrible penalty of his earlier treachery. The last sortie to leave Canada was led by Portneuf, straight A CASTINE STREET across the wilderness to Fort Loyal (Kaskabe, of the French), where he was reenforced by Madockawando and his Tarratines under St. Castin. Phipps had just sailed down the bay on his way to Nova Scotia to establish the English colors along the coast from Penobscot to Port Royal, which he did. With Phipps well on his voyage, the French soldiery and the savages made short work with the settlement THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 285 of Falmouth. Williamson lays the breaking of the articles of surrender of Fort Loyal, and the subse- quent butchery of its seventy occupants, at the door of St. Castin, and charges him freely with the most perfidious conduct — but, as it seems, most unjustly. It does not appear that he had anything to do with the matter. He was not an officer in command, and it does not ap])ear that he was consulted as to the contract of capitulation. To be sure, he was the sa- chem of the Tarratines, but that tribe comprised a very small portion of the hundretls of savages who came along with Portneuf, and whose red hands he was powerless to stay. It was this year that Thomas Gyles, who had for some time been a captive among the Penobscot Indi- ans, made an attempt to escajx' from his savage thrall. He was recaptured and swept along to the heights of Maja-bagadoose, where he was put to the torture. His ears, one by one, were lopped off and crammed into his mouth, and he was made to gulp them down. Then the stake was driven, and the unfortunate was tied to it and the pitch-wood heaped about him — the savage devils leaping and dancing and tilling the woods with their exultant whoops meantime. Then the oozing fats of the soft wood were ignited, and the blaze swirled upward to ignite the slivers which pro- truded from his cjuivering flesh. Then came the death- dance, with the savages joined in a huge circle about the victim. It is the only instance of torture by the Tarratines: as if that one were not enough. It was, howev(>r, a common thing among the tribes to the 286 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN west and south, who were of a more cruel and treach- erous disposition. It was natural, upon the opening of the war, that St. Castin should side with his countrymen, nor was it unreasonable that the English should credit St. Castin with some feeling of satisfaction at the English disaster. He would hardly be human did he not re- gard the punishments of the English as just, after the affronts and injuries put upon him without provoca- tion. Hutchinson says: ''The Indians informed some of their captives that Castine furnished every Indian engaged against the English with a pound of powder, two pounds of lead and a quantity of tobacco." Sup- pose it were true, — and some annalists have suggested that the report wants confirmation, — was he at all without his right in so doing? The English dealt out the same commodity to the Mohawks, to be used against the French interest. The earlier annalists were not averse to smirching St. Castin upon all occasions; but time has smoothed over the rough places, and one delights to look at the man as he might have ap- peared upon acquaintance under his house-roof at Pentagoet. Few men are without their passions, their likes and dislikes, and environment has much to do with their conduct. It is not to be imagined that a man, isolate upon Robinson Crusoe's Island, would be quite the same in concept of manners as at a so- ciety levee. That he was an excellent adviser of the French was certain, but he was apparently willing to lend his good offices to the English prisoner whenever he had THE LAXD OF ST. CASTIN 2(S7 ()l)l)()rtunity. He was especially just in his demands upon the English that they should conform to the rules of exchange in war. This was exemplified in the position taken by him in the matter of the Chevalier d'Eau, held by the English. There were English in ■ the hands of the Abenake, and 8t. Castin notified the Massachusetts Bay Government that if they w(nild have him act as an intermediary in securing the re- lease of the English, they must as well conform to the principle of honorable dealing, insisting upon the release of tiie Chevalier. It was about this time that the Massachusetts Bay people, with their accustomed desire to get the best end of the bargain, laid a j^lot to kidnap St. Castin. It was in the fall of 1692 that two French deserters hapi)ened into Boston. They brought letters from one John Nelson, a Puritan prisoner at Quebec, with the information that the French were fitting out a fleet for the subjugation of the eastern English settlements; also some intimations that Madockawando was dis- contented with the French. Nelson's money had been the inducement, and the Bay authorities carefully looked Arnaud de \'ignon and Francis Albert over for further investment, having in mind to use them as the instruments of their plot against St. Castin. There were in Boston at that time among the French i)ris- oners Jaques Petipas and Charles de Loreau, Sieur de St. Aubin, residents of Acadia, with their families. These latter, very anxious to get home to Acadia, were willing to promise anything to get away from the English. Their families were to be retained as 288 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN hostages while they went on their treacherous mis- sion. One can imagine the midnight conferences of these amateur conspirators, the talking over of the numer- ous plans and traps whereby the lion was to be caught in the toils; how he was to be disposed of, once cap- tured; and remind one of iEsop's fable of "Belling the Cat." It must have required numerous meetings, and much good licjuor must have been abused, be- fore matters had been ]3roperly adjusted; but it was no new business to the authorities of good old Boston, for it was always a nest of conspirators from the time the Episcopalians began their settlements in the county of New Somersetshire. Anything was legiti- mate that would redound to the temporal or spiritual welfare of the Puritan propaganda, and much was furthered under its sheltering wing that Winthrop forgot to mention in his quaint old Journal. But the kidnappers started on their journey, the Acadians anxious only to get beyond the jurisdiction of Massachusetts Bay, while the deserters, Vignon and Albert, jingling a part of the purchase-price in their pockets, Judas-like, went along, on treachery intent. Once in French territory, the Acadians re- vealed the plot to the authorities, detailing the plan, and the part the deserters had in it as the ring-lead- ers. They were immediately arrested and taken to Quebec, where, after being confronted with Nelson, they were shot in the presence of the Englishman, who was afterward sent to France, where he was shut up in the Bastille. After eleven years Nelson found his THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 289 way to Boston, but whether he evi^r ascertained who had so illy befriended him by sending his bribe-takers back to Quebec has found no recorder. ONE OF THE TILDEN ANCESTRY The loyalty of Petipas and St. Aubin was well rewarded, for the Acadian Governor, De "\'illebon, promulgated an edict with De Bonaventure and 290 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN D'Ibcrville, the chief officers of the frigate " Legare, now anchored at the Isle of the Desert Mountains," that these simi:)le yet honest Acadians should be given goods of the value of five hundred and fifty-four francs "for the important service they had just rendered to Canada," in their revelation of the identity of Vignon and Albert, " who had carried letters to the English, and who had come back with the intention of cap- turing M. St. Castin and of giving him up to the Eng- lish." That there w^as ever any possibility of success, had these kidnappers held together, is much to be doubted, as St. Castin was an astute man, who had grown watchful in these latter days. This was in 1692, and affairs were rather mixed, though sharply enough dehned, with Phipps beginning the erection of Fort William Henry at Pemaquid, which the French had anticipated for themselves, only that the}' were fore- stalled by the energetic Governor from Boston. The building of the fort went on, and the Indians kept at their atrocities, in which St. Castin does not seem to have taken any part. The French were still weak along the coast, and the English were extending their operations. St. Castin saw that it would not be long before the English would he able to maintain their supremacy, and it so came al)Out that in 1693 he gave in his adhesion to the English Crown ; though the English possession of the Penobscot was but nomi- nal, and St. Castin's allegiance could not have had much heart in it, for shortly after that Sieur Villieu, a French officer, was in command at Pentagoet. The census this year gave Pentagoet a total of fourteen THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 291 inhabitants, among whom were " Castin, aged 57, his wife and one chikl/' That St. Castin was in the inter- est of the French in 1695 is evidenced by his going to Rutherford's Island and conducting an exchange of prisoners with the Enghsh, taking ''charge of the business alone in the name of Count de Frontenac." St. Castin had an ample body-guard of savages, which went along in fifty canoes. But the English were get- ting some foothold among the Indians, for it is to be noted that the year before Governor Phipps secured a deed from Matlockawando of the lands mentioned in the Beaucham}) and Leverett grants made by the Council of Plymouth in 1629. The conveyance is indicative of the familiarity between the races, al- though neither had any confidence in the other. But the English were unfortunate in choice of material to represent their interest, else they were intentionally imj)olitic. A lack of dii)lomacy with the French and Indians had been notoriously apparent from the be- ginning on the part of the English. A fair illustration is afforded in the episode at Fort William Henry in February of 1696. This fort had shortly before been completed under the supervision of Governor Phipps at a great expense to the Colony, nearly £20,000, from the embrasures of which bristled fifteen cannon, with an amply stored magazine, and manned by ninety-five soldiers, which overlooked the westerly harbor of Pemaquid. It was considered to have been the most important fortification on the coast eastward, and well-nigh impregnable. The in- glorious Captain Pasco Chubb was in command, and 292 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN it was in this month of February that he was visited by the sagamores; Egeremet of the Machias Tribe, Abenaquid of the Penobscots, and Toxus of the Norridgewocks. Some of their savage followers came along with them. Raising a flag of truce, the savages were admitted to the fort, where they declared their errand, which was to effect an exchange of prisoners. From the moment of their entering the fort, Chubb had entertained the idea of violating the truce and making the three famous chiefs his prisoners. It was the English way. No sooner did its feasibility pre- sent itself than Chubb proceeded to dispose of his men to carry out his treachery, which resulted in the killing of Egeremet and Abenaquid, and the escape of the fierce Toxus. With the exception of one or two of the train, the savages all got away. It was a de- testable performance and sounded the knell of Fort William Henry, for the savages were aroused to an unwonted fury and revenge. The ice had gone out of the streams, and for the white mantle of winter had come the leafage of the early summer. Life at Fort William Henry kept its wonted quiet, but it was the lull before the storm. There was a cloud in the east no bigger than a man's hand, but as it came nearer it loomed into the w^hite sails of the L'Envieux and the La Profonde. DTber- ville commanded the former, and De Bonaventure the latter. This was the expedition despatched by Frontenac for the subjugation of Pemaquid. The Newport, a twenty-four gun ship, was captured off Mont Desert and sent into St. John, while DTberville THE LAX I) OF ST. CAST IN 293 kept his course to Pemaquicl, in the close vicinity of wliich lie found his savage allies awaiting him to the number of two hundred and fifty, to whom he gave a feast, at the same time liest owing ui)on them gifts to the value of four thousand livres. These were Fron- tenac's message to the savages. The Indians had fol- lowed down from Pentagoet in their canoes, along with De A'illieu and De Mortigny and his twenty-five sol- diers. They were accomjianied by St. Castin and the Jesuit priests Thurv and Simon. According to the New York Documentary Collection, there were two hundred and forty of the savages, who were under the command of St. Castin. On August 14th Fort William Henry was fairly in- vested, and perhaps the story of its fall may be of interest, so a detailed account of the engagement is warranted. The fort was located about two leagues from the outer extremity of Pemaon the unarmed hjiglish — to be beaten back by the French until all were safely away under guard. The savage held as a prisoner was but half alive, aiul, according to Father Badouin, so heavily ironed that nearly two hours were used u]) in tiling the shackles from his limbs. It required the utmost effort on the part of St. Castin and the French officers to keep the infuriated .savages from wreaking their vengeance upon the Engli.sh, notwithstanding the temis of capitulation, which were fulfilled to the letter. 296 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Once in possession, De Villieu and his soldiers be- gan the dismantling of the fort, after which' it was reduced to a picture of complete devastation, upon which Chubb and his soldiers were compelled to look before their conveyance to Boston. Here Chubb was charged with cowardice and imprisoned, but only for a few months, when he returned to his family in An- dover, to be slain by the savages some two years later in repayment of his cruelty to their people at Pema- quid. It was a delayed vengeance, but it was sure, and affords a trite illustration of the tireless hatred of the savage once it was aroused. After the laying waste of Pemaquid came the peace of Ryswick, September 11, 1697. Madockawando was dead. In October the Massachusetts Commissioners, Major Converse and Captain Alden, came down to Pentagoet to hold a conference with the Indians. They were met by six sachems and a great body of savages, and although they were mourning the death of the great Madockawando, they went through their usual indulgence of song and dance, to finally smoke the pipe of peace. One of the conditions laid down by the Commissioners was that the Jesuits should be banished. The savages consented to the release of the prisoners in their hands, but insisted that the ''good missionaries must not be driven away." The next year Alden was trading here with St. Castin, buying furs of him and a son-in-law, and sell- ing goods in return; for the inhabitants were unwilling to make disposition of their furs to the French. The English suited them better. One of the priests here THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 297 at the time was an open trader, a fact which gave some umbrage; but the trade went on, — St. Castin sending his furs to Boston, and taking his pay in Eng- lish goods. This interfered seriously with the French traffic, and though the latter tried to ingratiate them- selves with the Indians by offering them presents to get their good will, yet by reason of the influence of St. Castin and his Jesuit priest the savages would have none of the gifts of the French. The reason given for this state of affairs was that while M. Vil- lieu was inclined to be generous with his presents, he wished at the same time to sell them brandy, which they did not care to buy, " foreseeing the excess into which they fall when intoxicated." But St. Castin was nearing his threescore years, if he had not quite passed them, and he began to have thoughts of sunny France, to which he had so long been a stranger. He must have had news from time to time from over the sea, and he must have known of his father's death ; and with that thought lingering in his mind, his desires must have reverted often to the old chateau in Oleron. With the fall of Fort William Henry, St. Castin's activities by land and sea were practically at an end. His son Anselm, by his first wife, Mathilde, had reached a young man's estate, and, in a way, like his father, was to achieve some distinction in arms as in peace, and upon him St. Castin was inclined to place some of his burdens, and to him not long after fell the noble title of Baron de St. Castin. The elder St. Castin wearied of the vicissitudes of 298 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN the wilderness, and as the house fires began to light up the winter evenings of 1700-01, flashing their yellow flames up and down the walls of St. Castin's living-room, they painted pictures for him which he had long forgotten to look upon. He grew reminis- cent, and he all at once saw, as one looking out a window, " The village Curate, with lantern and maid, Come through the gateway from the park And cross the court-yard, damp and dark, — A ring of light in a ring of shade," and he was minded to go through that same gateway, and to take his wife along with him, of course. He knows, " For many a year the old chateau Lies tenantless and desolate; Rank grasses in the court-yard grow, About its gables caws the crow ; Only the porter at the gate Is left to guard it, and to wait The coming of the rightful heir." He knows no more that ring of light in its ring of shade winds over the dew-wet grass at dusk ; for "No more the Curate comes at night, No more is seen the unsteady light," dancing in the dark like a will-o'-the-wisp. As St. Castin watches the fire the dreams come, and he is telling his wife, Marie, of the old place they are going to see when the warm days of spring come. He laughs like the boy he used to be, and the good wife pleases him by telling him he is growing young. He THE LAXD OF ST. CASTIN 299 calls in Anselm, and they have long talks together of wjiat he must do when he is gone on his journey, and he makes his plans like a soldier who is about to enter upon an important campaign; for there is much to do, and he is to take his accumulations along, which make up an ample fortune of well-nigh three thou- sand crowns in "good dry gold." His heart is so DYCE'S HEAD LIGHT aglow with his anticipations that he has sent word beforehand that he is coming, and he can hardly await the advent of the south winds and the birds, for they were never so slow before. As for the Baron- ess, her dreams are colored with the tales her hus- band has been pouring into her ears the whole winter through, and, like a child who is to make its first visit to town, she can hardly sleep for the crowding of her thought. She fidgets through the days until she is 300 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN weary of looking down the river for the first singing- birds and the first hints of spring verdure. But the day comes when she rushes through the long, low rooms to find the Baron, and with her arms thrown about his shaggy neclv she laughs in his ears that the ice is going down the river, and that she had heard the bluejay's spring notes, and that the crows were holding a pow-wow on the hills of Biguydoose. It is then St. Castin bethinks him to look in the truth- telling mirror, that swift reveals to him the " bearded cheek And white and wrinkled brow," shadowed by a drift of whitened hairs, that in " The slanted sunbeams glance. In the harsh outhnes of his face Passion and sin have left their trace; Yet, save worn brow and thin gray hair, No signs of weary age are there. His step is firm, his eye is keen, Nor years in broil and battle spent. Nor toil, nor wounds, nor pain have bent The lordly frame of old Castine." He is satisfied with that patrician face, seamed and hardened like the stone walls of the old chateau to which he is so soon going, and with a soft glint in his eye he smiles back at the counterfeit presentment opposite him; and another portrait comes, for his sweet wife has nestled within the shelter of his arm, and "Whose garb and tone and kindly glance Recalled a younger, happier day, THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 301 And prompted memory's fond essay To bridge the mighty waste which lay Between his wild iiome and that gray, Tall chateau of his native France. Whose chapel-bell with far-heard din Ushered his birth-hour gayly in, And counted witii its solemn toll The masses for his father's soul." One day a .shij) .sailed up the river and ancliored. It was not long after that the old curate, hi.s feet clumsy with the weight of years, ambled up the vil- lage street towards the old OU'ron chateau, where " He stops at the porter's lodge to say That at last the Baron of St. Castine Is coming home with his Indian Queen, Is coming without a week's delay; And all the hou.se must be swept and clean, And all things set in good array! " What a house-cleaning there must have been! What a brushing of cobwebs and a whisking of brooms, and a cleaning up of the lawn, a picking up of the dead limbs that the wanton winds had twisted off when the win- ter swooped tlown from the mountains. The great fires swirled up the chimneys and dried up the mould on the walls, and the swifts trooped from out the chimney-tops, where they had squatted for so many years, and circled high in air, in their dismay at such peremptory proceedings, to awake the rooks from their somnolency to catch the infection of the Mas- ter's coming. "Alert since first the day began, The cock upon tiie village church 302 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN Looks northward from his airy percli, As if beyond the ken of man To see the ships come saiUng on, And pass the Isle of Oleron," while the curate, who had played so many games of lansquenet at the chateau in bygone days, trembled under the burden of his anxieties, and the villagers busied themselves getting out their gay holiday at- tire for the fetes that were sure to come with the wel- coming they had in store for the lord of the manor and his JDride. They were all there, agog with delight, — the delight of a mob of children, — these simple peasants, con- sumed with a marvelling curiosity; all but " the feet That Avoiild have been swift to meet The coming of that wayward boy," that had years before come to the end^of their pacing "to and fro Through the chambers of the old chateau, Waiting and waiting to hear the hum Of wheels on the road that runs below, Of servants scurrying here and there, The voice in the court-yard, the step on the stair;" but the sun goes down — the shadows creep through the park, and the gargoyles under the eaves grin as if convulsed with silent mirth; the swallows chatter their bedtime gossip until the lights come out in the castle windows, and the chateau is ablaze with good cheer and hospitable anticipation. THE LAXD OF ST. (ASTIN 303 The poller is at the great gates, nor does he lack for company, with the villagers in a huddle of joyous tumult about his threshold, where the tongues wag with a sound like the humming of a swarm of bees in May. But listen! "There's a sound of wheels and hoot's in the street, A cracking of whips, and scamper of feet, Bells are ringing, and horns are blowing. And the Baron hath come again to his own." Wi..a .-^7^ i^,^ C^.a:0^ ^l^d THE HOOKE HOUSE Once more at tlie (31eron of his boyhood, as the days go, a disapj)ointment smites his lu^art as he scrutinizes the habitues of the ])lace for some familiar lineament whereon he may plant a germ of recognition. The good old curate and the rheumatic porter Renaud, who played at foils with him, and who taught him the lessons one never forgets, the mystery of a woodland 304 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN snare, are all that seem left to him; but they are so old that the span of his absence has widened out in- terminably. Though St. Castin has come to his own again, he has difficulty in fitting himself into the old i)laces, so pygmy-like seems everything after the great out- doors of the Pentagoet wilderness; and compared with his Tarratines, these Oleron folk are a stunted race. He glances furtively at the old chateau from founda- tion-stone to turret-top as he strolls under the lime- trees in the park, as if its intimacies were not yet fully accomplished. Even the mountains and the skies are not the same. The Pyrenees are but huge pinnacles of rock that have lost their mystery, while the sky seems but a patch of blue above the verdurous fres- coes of the tree-tops. Within the chateau it was the same. The turret- stairs were strangely shortened and narrow, and the window, half way up, was but a slit in the wall ; then he seemed always hitting his elbows against things. His thought flew away to Pentagoet, Mercury-like. Think of it as he would, it was hardly the great place in which his boyhood was swathed, else the lodge- gates, smaller and narrower than ever, had taken a stride nearer the stone steps of the pillared portico. The village streets, dwindled to a yellow path between the thatched roofs, were being swallowed up amid their overgrown hedges, and the old family coach seemed to sway perilously near the low eaves as it went up or down — and a stuffy affair it was, to double one up so uncomfortal)ly! He knew it was the THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 305 grand vehicle of his youth, for tliere was an unheak'd scar on the door-panel, and there was the tingle of a switch about his short breeches that lingered tren- chantly in his memory as the penalty of his careless- ness; but there it was, the same old stone-bruise on its cracked and faded yellow door-panel. It was one of the memories that brought a smile and limbered his tongue as he pointed it out to the Haroness. All, even to the low-browed hood that overhung the por- tico pilasters and the stone steps, had shifted "Into the lean and slippered pantaloon, With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side, His youthful hose," of crowding memories, "well-saved, a world too wide For his shrunk shank," the inevitable penalty of age. Strange tales have come over the sea of the stranger adventures of the Baron, and his retainers are puffed with pride and mingled jollity that the old chateau is to be onc(> more the scene of its okl-time good cheer and prodigality, for the St. Castins were never ungen- erous or forgetful of their dejiendents. The happiest of all is the old curate, who has grown childish in his aging; and as he sits once more beside the fire that is singing on the baronial hearth, and sniffs again the fragrant odors from the kitchen, he toasts his lean shins in the friendly warmth, munches his cake between his toothless gums, and sips his wine 306 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN with garrulous recollections, filling the blank pauses with tales of the ancient days and the boyish pranks of his graying host. The old game of lansquenet be- gins again, and as he jjlays with the gruff old soldier he gazes upon the marvellous beauty of the Baroness, and "Transfigured and transfused, he sees The lady of the Pyrenees, The daughter of an Indian chief. Beneath the shadow of her hair The gold-bronze color of her skin Seems lighted by a fire within, As when a burst of sunhght shines Beneath a sombre grove of pines, — - A dusky splendor in the air." But the Baroness sits and dreams, or watches the lansquenet-players; else she wanders over the chateau, trying hard to get acquainted with its great rooms and her retainers, who strive to anticipate her slight- est wish. But the delighted curate eyes her as she goes and comes, and all he can liken her to is the dusky rose that blooms among the trellises that flank the wide portico these summer days. "And ah! he cannot believe his ears When her melodious voice he hears Speaking his native Gascon tongue; The words she utters seem to be Part of some poem of Goudouli. They are not spoken, they ai'e sung! And the Baron smiles, and says, ' You see, I told you but the simple truth; Ah, you may trust the eyes of youth!'" The curate and the Baron get on very well together, for the former never tires of listening to the Baron's THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 307 stories of that far land, which to him is only New France. There is so much to hear and so many c|ues- tions to ask that it is night only too quickly, and the light goes wavering and twisting through the dim shadows of the park as in the old days, only it is a stout peasant-lad who carries the flickering lanthorn instead of the once-time maid. THE CASTLE The days go swiftly to the Baroness, and as the firelight dances up antl down the panelled wains- coting of the great living-room, and the evenings grow longer, St. Cast in dozes in his chair, for the times have grown lazy with him. She had dreams of old Pentagoet: and while the j)ark at Oleron is beau- tiful, and the vine-clad hills are golden at sunset, or purple in the dawn, and the sward is like velvet, yet she sighs for the smell of the wood-smokes of the Tar- ratines, the song of the river, and the color of the Pentagoet woods. Child of Nature, she longs for a 308 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN touch, just a touch, of the old wild things, — an inbreathing of the sweet odors of the swamp-rose; for the great wide woods with their brown carpetings that begin at the crest of the hill that overlooks the mouth of the silvery Penobscot. She sees pictures when her eyes are closed to the yellow flame on the curiously tiled hearth, — where the bay runs up into the land, while the warm sun lays over all so softly; the old fort she knew in her girlhood, that overlooks the ripples of the tide from uplifted banks, is painted against her closed lashes; and then, there is the slow rise of the lands behind, and half w^ay up the slope; the orchard, whose fruits to her were the sweetest and rarest in the world. Below is the wide stretch of the mighty river, twisting and bending like a hunter's bow between the woodland rims, and the canoes, and the loose-flapping sails of the infrequent ships off-shore. Nothing of the white-capped Pyr- enees reminds her of the blue hills to eastward; the isolate dome of huge Katahdin; or the bald rocks of Mont Desert, down the bay; the smell of the salt winds, or the pungent breath of the pines ; — yet she inbreathed them all, over seas that they wTre. But the fire burned on and the lights in the chateau windows shone like low-down stars while the visions came and faded out. A wonderful place was the old chateau, and there was magic in its airs, for she was seeing Pentagoet as she never saw it before; but it was the Baron's home, — as if that were not enough, — and here was a land of peace, of plenty, where the skies were ruddy, but not with the fires which ate up THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 309 the cabins of the settler, or the stain of blood which dripped from Black Point to Quebec. It is said that St. Castin had a longing for the old life of freedom in the heart of the woods; that, unable to recover his great fortune in the hands of the Lieu- tenant-General of Oleron, wjio had for twenty years or more enjoyed its income of £5,000 annually, and which was finally lost altogether to St. Castin and his descendants, and restive under the injustice of the government in not compelling restitution, he returned to Acadia; hut that is doul)tful, for he did not long survive his return to France, having died before 1708. That he had an idea of so doing is evident, as he asked the government for a land grant on the river " De la Pointe au Hestre," where he had some intent of going into the fishery trade at " Molue," taking his remnant of Tarratines along with him. This, however, he never did, and one is pleased to think of him as being laid away under the eaves of the old parish church where he was christened. He had little cause for anxiety, with his Anastasie and the younger Therese so well married, and Anselm, the elder son, bearing the name so cleverly, while, according to L'Auvergat (Lauver- jait), the younger, Joseph Dabadis, was sowing his wild oats with a lavish hand. But the strictures of the priest must be taken with numerous grains of allowance, for the junior St. Castins were of the same peaceable proclivities as their father, and did not enter very enthusiastically into the instigations of L'Auvergat among the Tarratines to keep at their bloody raiding of the English settlements. 310 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN The bitterness of L'Auvergat against the sons is well evidenced by an extract from a letter to Father La Chasse, in which he accuses Anselm of not caring "to marry, and not satisfied with spreading corrup- tion through the whole village, in addition to that, now makes a business of, selling brandy openly, in company with his nephew, the son of M. de Belle Isle. The younger Castin never comes into the village THE NEW ST. FAMILLE, INDIAN TOWN without getting drunk and putting the whole village in an uproar." It is evident that he did not find the St. Castins so plastic as he desired, for the priest was constant in his stirring up of the savages, and accused the St. Castins of apathy in the concerns of the gov- ernment; which was the true solution of his complaint. Had they the same thirst for the blood of the English settler as had L'Auvergat, and been compliant to his plots, perhaps the offspring of the famous Baron would not have been smirched with so scandalous an accusation. THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 311 Anselm was at Beam in 1722, and was as unfortu- nate as his father had been in liis efforts to obtain the restitution of his seignorial rights, being put off upon one pretense and another — the chief est of which was his illegitimacy, in spite of abundant evidence of the legality of his contention. He was later at Sainte Famille; but twenty years after, the parish was in ruins, though a remnant of the Tarratines was to be found along the river. Many relics of the occupancy of St. Cast in have been unearthed from time to time, — coins and Indian curiosities, and notably a copper plate, some eight by ten inches square, upon which was engraved: "1648, ^Junii, F rater Leo Parisien^ii<, in Capuchinorum Missione, posiii hoc fundarnentum in honorem nostrae Domine Sanctae Spei." This plate was without doubt the one which has been described as being nailed ''over the gateway" of the old fort at Pentagoet. It is proof that the Capuchins were in the Pentagoi't field at an early date. Doubt- less the little bell was liung at the same time. The great find of coins was made by Captain Grin- die, in 1840, on the bank of the Bigatluce River, at a place some six miles from the Pentagoet fort. There were some five hundred in all, and were taken from about a stone that lay in the old trail along shore that was used in going from the Pentagoet peninsula to Mont Desert and what is now Frenchman's Bav. 312 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN They were no doubt hidden here by St. Castin, as he likewise buried his gold in other places; for there was no safety in keeping it at the fort. In all the raids made by one and another of the expeditions against St. Castin's trading-house there is no record of any money being taken. It was always merchandise, arms, and ammunition. St. Castin was too wise to trust his wilderness-earned gains to the times, for they were unsettled, and the buccaneers sailed into the Penob- scot Bay whenever they were in the region, whereupon St. Castin usually took to the woods. Other coins have been found in the vicinity of the old fort. Anselm and his brother were the last of the race at Sainte Famille, and not altogether are they forgotten. The soil of beautiful Castine is rich with the tradi- tions of the ancient Jesuit parish, for it was here that, for a quarter of a century, the St. Castins made history. (Jnly their story is left of it all. St. Castin, the Baron, was a romantic character, and it is unfortunate that he had Perrot and De Men- neval for enemies; for it is from the former springs the gossip of St. Castin's alleged libidinous disposi- tion, and from the latter the retouching of the loose pictures painted by the covetous and unprincipled Perrot ; and while these unjjleasant tales have through them become matters of documentary record, they are nothing but hearsay. La Hontan, who was his personal friend, says St. Castin had but one wife, "showing the savages that God is not pleased with in- constant men." That he may have had his youthful follies is beyond controversy. The gross charges THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 313 against him. however, are to be heavily discounted if his honoral)h' tlealings with his feUows, his forbear- ance under contumely, — despoiled as he was at times of his proi)erty, — his humanity, and his loyalty to his Indian wife, Marie, are not to be gainsaid. His character is highly comparable with his contempora- ries, east or west of the Penobscot, and his times; and ,r >- m iiiii^^id %cii^' -*'^ "tt*v *f r|^r>|et), one should go to the standard of his actions among men, rather than to the wagging tongues of Perrot and De Menneval, who were his rivals in trade and influence, for the verification of his reputation. The Castine of to-day is as jiicturcsquely charming as when "Far eastward, o'er the lovely bay, Penobscot's clustered wigwams lay," dozing in the summer sunlight; but it is .shorn of the wildncss of that far-off day when 314 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN "The warriors of the wilderness, Painted and in their battle-dress," went swiftly down these placid waters to join D'lber- ville in his attack on Pematiuid. But now, as then, " The bladed grass revives and lives, Pushes the mouldering waste away, And glimpses of an April day, In kindly shower and sunshine bud The branches of the dull gray wood ; Out from its sunned and sheltered nooks The blue eye of the violet looks," and these are all left of the romance of the Parish of Sainte Famille, the gift of unerring Nature. :^~3^ L'ISLE DES MONTS DESERTS MONT DESERT LISLE DES MONTS DESERTS III! interest of the antiquary in the famous Mont Desert Island cen- tres in and about picturesciue Somes' Sound. It is there one gets jllinipses of the places where for a little sojourned the French, and as well where tradition finds its most fertile soil; a locality where there is more of tragedy tiian ro- mance in its coloring; for Bar Har- bor seems to ha\-e the monopoly of the latter with the opening of the summer season, — the romance of the summer idler. From a historical point of view, one's first acipiaint- ance with "The pray and tluiiulor-smitten pile Which marks afar the Desert Isle " 317 318 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN is through the September voyage of 1604, when De Monts and Champlain sailed away from the Island of the Holy Cross for the Penobscot, in search of the fabled city of which Ingram told such wild and fan- tastic tales. The first island to be christened as they left the St. Croix was Isle au Haut, leaving which they ran upon a hidden reef, staving a ragged hole in the keel of their pattache, or little bark, to find them- selves under the lee of a mighty heap of bald rock, where they dropped anchor; where, on an adjacent spit of land, they saw the upcurling smoke of a sav- age wigwam, their first meeting with the aborigines of Norumbega, who led them a few days later beyond the peninsula of Pentagoet into the country of the famed Bessabez, the Kadesquit for which the Guerche- ville Colony was to set out a short seven years later. The aborigine told Champlain that this baldly moun- tainous island was called Pematici, which he at once christened '' L'isle des Monts Deserts." Its rugged scenery has been served rare, medium rare, well-done, and over-done, yet all who have essayed to write of its singularly elusive marvels of Nature-wrought beauty have scarce compassed the periphery of a single patch of lichen on the boll of one of its rugged trees, or spanned the length of a single scar along the face of one of its beetling cliffs. It is impossible to describe the indescribable, and that is what Nature has here hung out to dry above the environing waters. From the writer it is words, words; and from the artist, it is just paint, — oil for THE LAM) OF ST. CASTIN 319 a vehicle, antl garish coh:)r for body, — brushed over the immaculate canvas with varying technique. Of the islands of the ancient Maine coast two, cer- tainly, arc indubitably linked with the earliest period of exploration and discovery, — L'isle des Monts Deserts and Monhegan. The clustering Isles of Shoals partly in Maine and partly in New Hampshire, share as a third grouj) in the distinction accorded the two former. If the first is identified with Champlain, the second falls to the lot of Weymouth, who was here in the spring of 1605, before De Monts and Champlain had set out on their voyage of the same year to Cape Cod. Both islands are exceedingly beautiful and pic- turescjue, and Ijoth have their outposts to the east: the former in a huge rock-heap that, '"abrupt aiul bare, Lifts its gray turrets in the air, — Seen from afar, like some stroiigliokl Built by the ocean kings of old," and known as Desert Rock: and tlie latter, in the black ledge of Manana — -from eacii of which, after the night has set in, flame the fires that count the hours from sun to sun. Mont Desert's worn and storm-splintered crags, its towering steeps of scarred and sun-burnished granite, — bald, ragged, painted in divers colors by the chemis- try of Nature, — are much the same as when Cham- l)lain sailetl under their shadows, and of which he writes: "The land is very high antl intersected by passes, appearing from the sea like seven or eight 320 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN mountaiii3 ranged near to each other. The summits of the greater part of these are bare of trees because they are nothing but rocks." These mountains are isolate, as are those of Camden, forming a part of no particular system, keeping company with those other estrays of Katahdin and Blue Hill. M. I'Abbe THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 321 Marault says Pemati(i means "that whicli is at the head," which is pertinently applicable to the eastern end of L'isle dea Monts Deserts, which is lofty and startlingly bold in its rigidity of contour. Champlain says further: "The next morning, 6th of September, we made two leagues and perceived a smoke in a creek which was at the foot of the moun- tains and saw two canoes propelled by savages who came within musket-shot to ivconnoiter us." These were the savages who returned the following day, to whom they made sonu^ jjresents in exchange for fish and game, and with whom they afterward went up the Penobscot. It was the following year that Weymouth came. He was followed two years later l)y the Pojiham Col- ony, of which Strachey, in his "Historic of Travaile into Virginia, ''writes as to the first landing of that col- ony on this coast: "They were thwart of the caj)e or headland, w^hich stands in 43 degrees, the ship)) being in 42 degrees and 50 minutes betwixt the place they were now at anil the said caj)e or headland, yt is all full of islands and seep s()und(>s for any ship))ing to goe in by them." This is the latitude of Mont Desert, and l)y some it is suj)p()sed that it was on this island that the Poj)ham Colony made their first landing; but Monhegan is the more generally accepted location. It was probably left for La Saussaye to next make the acquaintance of the island after Champlain left it. From the Nature jioint of view the island is beauti- fully situatetl, for Frenchman's Hay laves its shores on the east, and Blue Hill Hav on the west. On the 322 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN land side are the Narrows, spanned by the long pile bridge which ties it to the mainland, while to sea- ward, off Schooner Head, is the wide ocean whence the storms roll in on the mountainous waters. It is large in area, with its length of fourteen miles by twelve in width crowded full " of hills and dells All rumpled and uneven With green recesses, sudden swells, And odorous valleys," shags of woods, lakes, and domes of rock — -mountain- high. After the raid of Argall it was named by the English Mount Mansell, after Sir Robert Mansell, a noted vice-admiral of the times of Charles I. and James I.; but the English cognomen is now merely a historical association, for Champlain's christening is likely to cling to it for all time. Leaving Champlain, one has to come down to the times of Poutrincourt, who established himself at Port Royal after the re- turn of De Monts to France, by which several new characters are abruptly introduced into the history of the island, and who in fact lend to it its importance in the early annals. There is a tale connected with Frenchman's Bay which had to do with its name, and of which the reader has had Champlain's version in an earlier chapter; but that about to be quoted is the story of Lescarbot's. The incident happened about La grand baye Francoise, well up the Acadian coast on the east sliore of Fundv, and at a considerable distance from THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 323 Frenchman's Bay, yet which, through SulUvan, or some earher annalist, has attached itself to this sheet of water under the nose of Mont Desert. Erondelle translates Lescarbot: ''Hauing soiorned there some 12 or 13 dales, a strange accident hapned, such as I will tell you. There was a certain (Roman) Churchman of a good familiein Paris, that had a desire ^\ "'• r" NEWPORT MOUNTAIN to i^crforme the voyage witii Monsieur De Monts, and that against the liking of his friends, who sent ex- pressly to Honjhur to diuert him thereof, and to bring him backe t(j Paris. The Ships lying at anker in the said Baye of Saint Marie, he put himself in company with some that went to sport thcmselues in the woods. It came to pass that hauing staid to drinke at a brooke, hee forgat there his sword and followed on his way with his companie: which, when hee percciued he re- 324 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN turned backe to seeke it; but hauing found it, forget- ful from what part hee came, and not considering whether hee should go East or West, or otherwise (for there was no path) hee tooke his way quite con- trarie, turning his backe from his companie, and so long trauelled that he found himselfe on the sea shoare, where no ships were to be seen (for they were at the other side of a nooke of land farre reach- ing into the sea), he imagined he was forsaken, and began to bewaile his fortune vpon a rocke. The night being come, euery one being retired, he is found wanting; hee was asked for of those who had beene in the woods, they report in what maner he departed from them, and that since they had no newes of him. Wliereupon a Protestant was charged to haue killed him because they quarrelled some times for mat- ters of Religion. Finally they sounded a trumpet throu the forest, they shot off the Canon diuers times, but in vaine; for the roaring of the Sea, stronger than all that, did expell backe the sound of the said Canons and trumpets. Two, three and foure dais passe, he appeareth not. In the meane while the time hastens to depart, so hauing tarried so long that he was then held for dead, they weighed ankers to go further, and to see the depths of a bay that hath some 40 leagues length and 14 (yea 18) of bredth, which was named La Baye Francoise, or the French Baye." The ships went back to the Island of the Holy Cross on the St. Croix River, where the settlement of De Monts was then building, and Aubrey was left to the mercies of the savages, the wolves, and with such THE LAXD OF ST. CASTJN 325 sustenance as he could i)luck from tlie berry bushes which were in fruitage at tliat time. As soon as they had returned, a small bark was despatched "backe to the bay of Saint Mary with a mine finder that had been carried thither for to get some mines of siluer and Iron. . . . They entred into the said Baie of Saint Marie , by a narrow strait or passage, which is between the land of Port Royal and an Island called the Long Isle; where after some abode th(> said Aubri (the lost man) perceaved them and began with a fee- ble voice to call as loud as he could; and for to help his voice he advised himself to doe as Ariadne did heretofore to Theseus, ' Candidaque iposui lonyae ve'amina Virgae Scilicet oblitos admonitur a mei.' For he j)ut his handkerchcr and his hat on a staues end, which made him better to be knowen. For as one of them heard the voice, and asked the rest of the companie, if it might be the said Monsieur Auhri they mocked and laughed at it. But after they had spied the mouing of the handercher and of the hat, then they began to think that it might be hee. And coming neere, they knew jjerfectly it was himselfe, and tooke him in their Barke with great joy and con- tentment the sixteenth day after he had lost him- selfe." Williamson falls into the same error with Sullivan, and probably quotes him. Sullivan says also "that there were, anciently, many French settlements on that part of the bay, which is opposite to the banks 326 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN of Mount Desert, as well as on the island itself," a statement which is not borne out by the facts; the Mission of St. Saveur was the only settlement of which there is any record. GREEN MOUNTAIN In 1689 the Island of Monts Deserts and other isles in front, and a part of the mainland, were granted to Sieur Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, l^ut he never set- tled here. There was a small French settlement at Passamaquoddy. Church came here in 1704, but mentions no settlement. Cadillac was a Gascon, " the Captain of a detachment of Marines, a man of very THE LAXD OF ST. CASTIN 327 distinf^uished merit." In 1694 he was in command at Michilimakinac. In 1701 he estabhshed the French post, Fort Ponchartrain, at Detroit. The following year he was in Quebec. He was Governor of Louisi- ana in 1712, and in company with De Crozet he was trathng and mining for silver. He went to France in 1717, and though well acquainted with the coast of New England, he has left only a description of the island, rather than the ruins of a settlement. He says: '' From Majais (Machias) to Monts Deserts it is twenty leagues. This is an island which is twelve leagues in circumference and very high and moun- tainous. It serves as an excellent landmark for shipe from Europe, bound either for Port Royal or Boston." He mentions Doiiaquet in connection with Monts Deserts, and, by the way, Cadillac was lord of Doiia- quet and Monts Deserts, and by a patent from the French king. This Doiiaquet was Frenchman's Bay, and he mentions it as an island ''on the northeast side of a river of the same name, which is very beauti- ful and very wide. There is a rock in the middle of the entrance which is not covered at high tide. As you go in, you perceive first two small and very steep islands. The entrance is safe everywhere. Within, there is a basin which is four leagues in circum- ference, and where there is gootl anchorage. . . . " The harbor of Monts Deserts, or Monts Coupes, is very good and beautiful. There is no .sea inside, and vessels lie, as it were, in a box. There are four en- trances. . . . Good masts may be got here, and the 328 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN English formi'i'Iy used to come here for them." It will be noted that Cadillac's account is purely from a utilitarian point of view. He mentions no settlements of the past or present. He refers to Paincuit (Pema- quid) as being the place where a " fort was taken in 16S8 by the Indians. They put eighty men to death, but gave quarter to the Governor and six of the peo- ple^ at the request of one of the chiefs, called Matek- nando, whose son is now in France." St. Castin did not go to France until about 1701, so Cadillac must have been here after that ; and he found Mont Desert as lonely as a desert isle without habitant or habita- tion, unless there may have been some nomad sav- ages here on a fishing-tri]), as was not infrequent. The savages inland went to the seashore periodically for fishing, and to enjoy a clambake, as the consider- able shell-mounds here and there by some river-mouth, or on some easily accessible peninsula, would sug- g(>st. Much speculation has been aroused as to the origin of the shell-heaps along the coast, and it kuxds one to remark in passing that, as a speculation in sweetening for an acidulous soil, it is likely to be emi- nently safe and profitable, and as a field for the culti- vation of the seductive flowers of romance it is not less fertile; for here were held the Feasts of the Gor- mandizers, and that these accumulations of shells are the results of human agency is not to be doubted. They are local in their deposits, being found between the Sagadahoc and Penobscot streams, and most in the neighborhood of the Damariscove waters. Who knows Init the savage may have dried his clams, as THE LAX I) OF ST. CAST IN 329 he did his lobstci*s, for winter use. It is not impos- sible. It was a virg;in stage-setting in which our actors found themselves, witiiout scene-shifter or i)rom])ter: and they ])layed their leanly endowed parts with all the shades of feeling common to the actualities and activities of human affairs, spurred on by the selfish- ness common to humankind, that had for its main objects the extension of th(^ French influence and its accom|)anying territorial aggrandizement, the inci'e- ment of gain by trade in fish and furs with the abo- rigine, and the spreading of the Jesuit propaganda. These were the bases of the Guercheville colonizing expedition, and it was by a mere chance that La Saussaye made his anchorage in Somes' Sound. That the settlement of De Monts up the river of the St. Croix was the first settlement on the coast after the Northmen, and |)ossibly the Dutch at I'em- aquid, who have been supposed to have been the build- ers of its paved streets, its ancient canal, and mill-dam, to be followed by that of Port Royal, is certain. It was a motley company, this first colony of papist and Huguenot i)riests, laborers, artisans, and soldiers, but the colonies of those days differed in their niake-U|) only in degree, not in kind. These were followed by the English expeditions of Raleigh, 1600, to the Car- olina coast, and those of De la Warr to A'irginia, and Poi)ham to the Sagadahoc in the year 1607; the first was actually and the last ajiparently, though not certainly, an abortive effort.. De Monts left the St. Croix for France in the sum- 330 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN mer of 1605, and did not return. Not only was he discouraged by the terrors of the winter, but he had begun to be hampered by the jealousies and machi- nations of the envious. His high and exclusive priv- ileges, confirmed to him by his patent from Henry IV., were the source of his trouble. M. de Poutrincourt, who came over wdth him, charmed by the beauty of the country about Port Royal, wished to found a colony there, and De Monts gave him that immedi- ate territory. The remainder of his grant he conveyed to the Marchioness de Guercheville. Loyola had, on his return from his pilgrimage to the Holy Land, in 1534, established the Order of the Company of Jesus, whose followers were nicknamed Jesuits by Calvin. The former had soon gathered to himself a zealous and considerable constituency. All the peoples of the earth were to be brought under its influence, and missions were to be everywhere planted where people could be found to be baptized, and there was sufficient water with which to perform the sol- emn and holy service. Their attention was early turned to the North American Lidian, and then be- gan the sacrifice of life and money to bring them into the fold of the Church of Rome. Henry had confirmed De Monts' cession of Port Royal to De Poutrincourt, and, being in France, the latter was making extensive preparations for the suc- cess of his colony. The royal order was issued to him to provide suitable accommodations for a Jesuit mis- sion within his domain. The Jesuits had been expelled from France in 1594, but by the subtle influences of THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 331 Church politics had been readmitted in 1604; but De Poutrincourt had little use for these monks. The instigator of this annoyance to De Poutrincourt was Father Pierre Biart, who, learning of this colonial project, at once saw an opening for his order to obtain "^ iST i,*f' PORCUPINE somewhat of a foothold among the savages of the country. This was in 1607, and so odious was the scheme to De Poutrincourt that he delayed the sail- ing of his expedition until 1610, when he managed to get away without taking the uncomfortable Jesuits along with him. He later determined to leave the conduct of his colony to his son, Biencourt, then about nineteen years of age. 332 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN He sent him to France for supplies, only to find the Huguenot merchants detaining the ship for advances made on account of the colony. The priests, Biart and Enemond Masse, who had become anxious in their waiting, were much delighted with the idea that Biencourt had made arrangement for their conduct to the colony, but only to have their vision again clouded with disappointment, when the Huguenots declined peremptorily to allow the Jesuits to go in the ship. Henry had met Ravillac in the Rue de la Ferronerie and had felt the knife of the assassin in his heart. Marie de Medicis held the royal reins. She at once issued an order to the Governor of Dieppe to compel the Huguenots to allow the priests to take passage with Biencourt, but the mandate was un- availing. The Huguenots were firm; and it was only upon the payment to them of their claims by Antoi- nette de Pons, the wife of the Governor of Paris, and Marchioness de Guercheville, that the obstacle was removed from the pathway of the Jesuits. The Mar- chioness was a woman of deeply religious character and of wide influence, by which she was enabled to procure the needed funds from the lords of court, — and so the ship was sent on her voyage, reaching Port Royal in June of 1611. Poutrincourt, incensed at the coming of the Jesuits, left Port Royal the following month for France, where he spent the remainder of his days. With their accustomed disjxjsition to dominate in affairs temporal as in spiritual, they began at once to attempt the direction of the affairs of the colony; but THE LAND OF ST. CASTIX 333 Biencourt, somewhat like his father, having little reverence for them and less affection, independent and high-spirited, young and self-reliant, resented their priestly intermeddling. The priests were in- clined to handle the funds, but Biencourt was per- emptory, and they were thrown upon their own re- sources. The Jesuits then left the colony and began their work among the savages, learning their language, and ministering to them as opportunity afforded. This separation of the priests was the cause of much ill-feeling, and brought about disaster to the Port Royal settlement later, in which Biart was an active factor. The story of these dissensions flew across the seas at the instance of a lay-brother, one Gilbert du Thet, who, returning to France, made a jiersonal com- plaint to the Marchioness, who resolved at once to erect a mission elsewhere, and distant enough from Biencourt so there should be no chance for friction. The more she entertained her 'project, the higher swept the wave of her enthusiasm; but like all enthu- siasts, she found her sailing rough and discouraging: but, succeeding in attaching the (^ueen Regent to her interest, and after that the aid of otiiers of the Court, she chartered a ship of a hundred tons burden, which she began to fit out with all manner of supplies called for l)y the enterprise. Then began the enlisting of the Argonauts, — the priests, the laborers, and artisans who were to form the colony. These obtained, she gave all in charge of Sieur la Saussaye, who was to be the Governor of the new colony. Flying their sails to the winds on the twelfth day of March, 1613, they 334 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN left the Bay of Honfleur with forty-eight in the com- pany, with Charles Flory de Hableville master of the ship. It was an uneventful voyage that brought them into the harbor of Port Royal on the twenty-second day of June of that year, and here Fathers Biart and Masse met the Jesuits, Jaccjues Quentin, the priest, and Du Thet, the lay-brother, wlio had come along in the ship. Were it not for Biart's" Relations des Jesuits,'' which has been the well from which the latter historians have derived their inspirations, only a vivid imagination would have remained as the resource of the relator of the incidents that made up the ill-starred adventure of La Saussaye. But one likes to glean in the old fur- row, and so the reader may pick up the thread of the tale in the language of Biart; or, in other words, he may place his hob-nails in the footi)rints of the in- defatigable Jesuit, or touch elbows, as he prefers. The Jesuit details with photographic minuteness the incidents that gave their sad and tragic color to the picture. He relates: "We were detained five days at Port Royal by adverse winds, when a favorable north-easter having arisen, we set out with the intention of sailing up the Pentagoet River, to a place called Kadesciuit, (the present Bangor,) which had been allotted for our new residence, and which possessed great advantages for this purpose. But God willed it otherwise, for when we had reached the south-eastern coast of the Island of Menan, the weather changed, and the sea w^as cov- ered with a fog so dense that we could not distinguish THE LAND OF ST. CASTJN 335 (lay from night. We were greatly alarmed, for this place is full of breakers and rocks, uj)on which, in the darkness, we feared our vessel might drift. The wind not permitting us to put out to sea, we remained in this position two days and two nights, veering some- times to one side, sometimes to another, as God in- %^ MOUTH OF SOMES SOUND Spired us. Our trihulatinn led us to jjray to (Jod to deliver us from danger, antl send us to some i)lace where we might contribute to His glory. He heard us in His mercy, for on the same evening we began to discover the stars, and in the morning the fog had cleared away. We then discovered that we were near the coast of Mount Desert, an island the savages call Pematic. The |)ilot steered toward the eastern shore, and landed us in a large and beautiful harbor. We returned thanks to God, elevating the Cross, and 336 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN singing praises with the holy Sacrifice of Mass. We named the place and harbor St. Savior. [Possil^ly Northeast Harbor.] ''Now in this ]3ort of St. Savior a violent ciuarrel arose between our sailors and crew and the other {pas- sengers. The cause of it was that the charter granted, and the agreement made in France, was to the effect that the said sailors should be bound to put into any port in Acadia that we should designate, and should remain there three months. The sailors maintained that they had arrived in a port in Acadia, and that the said term of three months ought to date from this arrival. To this it was answered that this i)ort was not the one designated, which w^as Kadescjuit, and therefore that the time they were in St. Savior was not to be taken into account. The pilot held obsti- nately to a contrary opinion, maintaining that no vessel had ever landed at Kadesquit, and that he did not wish to become a discoverer of new routes. There was much argument for and against these views, discussions were being carried on incessantly, a bad omen for the future. "While this ciuestion was pending, the Savages made a fire in order that we might see the smoke. This signal meant that they had observed us, and wished to know if we needed them, which we did. The pilot took the opportunity to tell them that the Fathers from Port Royal were in his ship. The Sav- ages replied that they would be very glad to see one whom they had known at Pentagoet two years before. This was Father Biard, who went immediately to see THE LAXD OF ST. CAST IN 337 them, aiul iiuiuirotl the route to Kadesquit, informing them that he intended to reside there. '''But/ said they, 'if you desire to remain there, why do you not remain instead with us, who have as good a i)hice as Kadescjuit is?' " Tlien they began to praise their settlement, as- suring him that it was so healthy and so pleasant, that wlien the natives are sick anywhere else, they were l)rought there and cured. These eulogies did not greatly impress Father Biard, because he knew suffi- ciently well that the Savages, like other people, over- I'ated, sometimes^ their own possessions. Neverthe- less, they understood how to induce him to remain, for they said, — " ' You must come, for our sagamore Asticou is dangerously ill, and if you do not come, he will die without baptism, and will not go to heaven, and you will be the cause of it, for he wishes to be baj)tized.' ■'The reason so naturally given, made Father Biard hesitate, and they finally persuaded him to go, since he had but three leagues to travel, and there would be no greater loss of time than a single afternoon. " We embarked in their canoe with Sieur dc laMotte and Simon the Interpreter, and we set out. When we arrived at Ast icon's wigwam, we found him ill, but not dangerously so, for he was only suffering from rheumatism; and finding this, we decided to pay a visit to the j)lace which the Indians had boasted was so much better than Kadesquit or the residence of Frenchmen. We found that the Savages had in reality reasonable grounds for their eulogies. We felt wry 338 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN well satisfied with it ourselves, and having brought these tidings to the remainder of the crew, it was unanimously agreed that we should remain there, and not seek further, seeing that God himself seemed to intend it, by a train of happy accidents that had ST. SAVEUR occurred and by the miraculous cure of the child, which I shall relate elsewhere. "This place is a beautiful hill, sloping gently from the seashore, and supplied with water by a spring on each side. The ground comprises from twenty-five to thirty acres, covered with grass, which in some places THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 339 reaches the height of a man. It fronts the south and east, towards Pentagoet Bay, into which are dis- cliargcd the waters of several pretty streams, abound- ing in fish. The soil is rich and fertile. The port and harbor are the finest possible, in a i)osition com- manding the entire coast; the harbor especially is smooth as a pond, being shut in by the large island of Mount Desert, Ix'sides being surrounded by certain small islands which break the force of the winds and waves, and fortify the entrance. It is large enough to hold any fleet, and is navigable for the largest ships up to a cable's length from the shore. It is in latitude forty-four and one-half degrees north, a j^osition more northerly than that of Bordeaux." This location is placetl by Dr. De Costa as on the western side of Somes' Sound, and the spring is still pointed out from which the French Colony quenched its thirst, and is still known as Biard's Spring. The personality thus lent to this bubbling fountain is of the most delightful and romantic inspiration. The other spring is here as well. When the tide is in it overflows the Biard sj)ring. but as it ebbs the water is sweetly fresh and j)ure. and is intensely cold. The fishing-vessels have used it from a time to which the memory of man goeth not back. Father Biard continues: "When we had landed in this place, and planted the Cross, we began to work, and with the work began our disputes, the omen and origin of our misfortunes. The cause of these disjjutes was that our Caj^tain, La Saussaye, wished to attend to agricultur(<. and our other leaders besought him 340 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN not to occupy the workmen in that manner, and so delay the erection of dwellings and fortifications. He would not comply with their request, and from these disputes arose others, which lasted until the English obliged us to make peace in the manner I am about to relate. " The English colonists in Virginia are in the habit of coming every year to the islands of Pencoit, (Pem- aquid,) twenty-five leagues from St. Savior, in order to provide food (fish) for the winter. While on their way, as usual, in the summer of the year 1613, they were overtaken at sea by fogs and mists, which in this region often overspread both land and sea, in summer. These lasted some days, during which the tide drifted them gradually farther than they in- tended. They were about eighty leagues farther in New France than they supposed, but they did not rec- ognize the place." Digressing for a moment, it may be averred with some certainty that this is the only reference to the Treasurer (carrying fourteen guns and a complement of sixty fighting-men) as a fighting-vessel to be found in the annals of history. The legalized pirate Samuel Argal was the leader of these freebooters, for such they were, with England and France at peace each with the other. He was as much a sea rover as was Captain Kidd. He had a commission based on the shadowy claim of the Virginia proprietors to the lands of the Acadia country, and he had about as much hu- manity as had Kidd, if one is to judge by what fol- lows in the Biard relation. THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 341 The Jesuit says: "Some Savages observed their vessel and went to meet them, supposing them to be Frenchmen in search of them. The English under- stood nothing of what the Savages said, but conjec- tured from their signs that there was a vessel near, and that this vessel was French. They understood the word 'Xormans,' which the Savages called us, and the polite gestures of the natives, they recognized the French ceremonies of courtesy. Then the Eng- Hsh, who were in need of provisions, and of every- thing else, ragged, half-naked, and in search of plun- der, infjuired carefully how large our vessel was, how many canoes we had, how many men, etc., and having received a satisfactory answer, uttered cries of joy, demonstrating they had found what they wanted, and that they intended to attack us. The Savages did not interpret it so, however, for they supposed the English to be our friends, who desired so earnestly to see us. Accordingly, one of them guided the Eng- lish to our vessel. As soon as the English saw us they began to prepare for combat, and their guide saw that he had made a mistake, and began to weep and curse those who had deceived him. Many times afterwards he wept and implored pardon for his error of us, and of the other Savages, because they wished to avenge our misfortunes on him, believing he had acted through malice. "On seeing this vessel approach us, we knew not whether we were to see friends or enemies. French- men or foreigners. The pilot therefore went forward in a sloop to reconnoitre, while the rest were arming 342 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN themselves. La Saussaye remained ashore, and with him the greater number of the men. Lieutenant La Motte, Ensign Ronfere, Sergeant Joubert, and the rest went on board the ship. "The Enghsh vessel moved quickly as an arrow, having the wind astern. It was hung with red flags, the arms of England floated over it, and three trum- pets and two drums were ready to sound. Our pilot who had gone forward to reconnoitre, did not return to the ship, fearing, as he said, to fall into their hands, to avoid which he rowed himself around an island. Thus the ship did not contain one-half its crew, and was defended only by ten men, of whom but one. Captain Flory, had any experience in naval contests. Although not wanting in prudence or courage, the Captain had not time to prepare for a conflict, nor had his crew ; there was not even time to weigh anchor, so as to disengage the ship, which is the first step in sea-fights. It would, however, have been of little use to weigh the anchor, since the sails were fastened; for being summer, they had arranged them as an awning to shade the decks. This mishap, however, had a good result, for our men being sheltered during the combat, and the English unable to take aim at them, fewer of them were killed or wounded. "As soon as they approached, our sailors hailed them, but the English replied only by cries of menace, and by discharges of musketry and cannon. They had fourteen pieces of artillery, and sixty artillery- men, who ranged themselves along the side of their vessel, firing rapidly, without taking aim. The first THE LAXD OF ST. CASTIX 343 discharge was terrible; the whole ship was shrouded in fire and smoke. On our side the guns remained silent. Captain Flory cried out, 'Put the cannon in position,' but the gunner was absent. Father Gilbert du Thet, who had never been guilty of cowardice in his life, hearing the Captain's order, and seeing that SOMES SOUND no one obeyed, took the match and fired the cannon as loudly as the enemy's. The misfortune wa.s that he did not aim carefully; had he done so, probably some- thing more useful than noise would have occurred. "The English, after their first attack, |)rei)are(l to board our vessel. Cajitain Flory cut the cable, and thus arrested for a time the j)rogress of the enemy. They then prepared to Hre another volley, and in 344 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN this, Du Thet was wounded by a musket and fell across the helm. Captain Flory and three other men were also wounded, and they cried out that they surrendered. The English, on hearing this cry, went into their boat to board our vessel, our men impru- dently rushed into theirs in order to put off to shore before the arrival of the victors. The conquerors cried out to them to return, as otherwise they would fire on them, and two of our men, in their terror, threw themselves into the water and were drowned, either because they were wounded or, more probably, were shot while in the water. They were both prom- ising young men, one named Le Moine, from Dieppe, and the other named Neveu, from Beauvais. Their bocUes were found nine days afterwards, and care- fully interred. Such was the history of the capture of our vessel. " The victorious Englishmen made a landing in the place where we had begun to erect our tents and dwellings, and searched our Captain to find his com- mission, saying that the land was theirs, but that if we would show that we had acted in good faith, and under the authority of our Prince, they would not drive us away, since they did not wish to imperil the amicable relations between our two Sovereigns. The trouble was they did not find La Saussaye, but they seized his desk, searched it carefully, and having found our commissions and royal letters, seized them, then putting everything in its place, they closed and locked the desk. On the next day, when he saw La Saussaye, the English Captain welcomed him politely. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 345 and then asked to see his commission. La Saussaye replied that his papers were in his desk, which was accordingly brought to him, and he found it was locked and in perfect order, but that the papers were missing. The English Captain immediately changeti his tone and manner, saying, — ' Then, sir, you are imposing on us. You give us to understand that you hold a commission from your King, and yet you can produce no evidence of it. You are all rogues and pirates and deserve death." He then granted j^ermis- sion to his soldiers to plunder us, in which work they spent the entire afternoon. We witnessed the de- struction of our property from the shore, the English- men fastened our vessels to theirs, for we had two, our ship and a boat newly constructed and equipped. We were thus reduced to a miserable condition, and this was not all. " Next day they landed and robbed us of all we still possessed, destroying our clothing and other things. At one time they committed some personal violence on two of our people, which so enraged them that they fled to the woods, like poor crazed creatures, half-naketl, not knowing what was to become of them. "To return to the Jesuits: I have told you that Father du Thct was wounded by a musket-shot dur- ing the hght. The l-^nglish, on entering our ship, placed him under the care of their surgeon, along with the other wounded men. This surgeon was a Catholic, and a very charitable man, and he treated us with great kindness. Father Biard, knowing that Father du Thet was wounded, asked the Captain to 346 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN allow him to be carried ashore, so that he had an op- portunity to receive the last Sacraments, and to praise the just and merciful God in company with his brethren. He died with much resignation, calm- ness, and devotion twenty-four hours after he was wounded. Thus his prayers were granted, for on our ECHO LAKE departure from Honfleur, he had raised his hands and eyes toward heaven, praying that he might no more return to France, but that he might die laboring for the salvation of souls, and especially of the Savages. He was buried the same day at the foot of a large cross which we had erected on our arrival. ''It was not till then that the English recognized the Jesuits to be priests. Father Biard and Father Ennemond Masse went to the ship to speak to the Eng- lish Captain, and explained that they were Jesuits, who THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 347 had travelled into these regions to convert the Sav- ages. Then they implored liini, by the blood of Him whom they both acknowledged as their Redeemer, and by the mercy they hoped for, that he would have pity on the poor Frenchmen, whom CJod had placed in his power, that he would liberate them and permit them to return to France. The Captain heard them quietly, and answered them resix'ctfully. 'But,' said he, 'I wonder that you Jesuits, who are generally supposed to be conscientious and religious men, should be here in company with robbers and pirates, without law or religion/ " Father Biard rei)lied to him, proving that all the crew were good men, and approved by his most Chris- tian Majesty, and refuted so positively the objections of the English Caj)tain, that the latter was obliged to pretend to be convinced. "'Certainly,' said he, 'it was very wrong to lose your letters patent. However, I shall talk with your captain about sending you home.' "And from that time he made the two fathers share his table, showing them much kindness and re- spect. But one thing annoyed him greatly, the es- cape of the pilot and sailors, of whom he could hear nothing. The pilot was a native of Rouen, named Le Bailleur; he had gone away to reconnoitre, as I have already mentioned, and being unable to return to the ship in time, he stayed apart in his sloop, and when night fell, took with him the other sailors, and placed himself in security from the j)Ower of the Eng- lish. At night he came to advise with us as to what 348 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN he had better do. He did this to obhge the Jesuits, for he came to Father Biard, and taking his hand, begged him not to distrust him, assuring him that he would be faithful to him and the other Fathers. As he seemed to speak sincerely, Father Biard thanked him affectionately, and promised to remember his kindness. The Father also said that he would not think of himself until the others had set out, that then he would seek counsel of God; and he warned the pilot not to fall into the hands of the English, be- cause the Captain was very anxious to catch him. "The pilot profited by the warning, for in two or three days after, he retired behind some of the islands, to be in shelter, and to watch for what might happen. The English Captain then resolved not to inflict any farther injury on us, although he might have desired to do so, as I conjectured by his previous conduct. He was a very able and artful man, but nevertheless a gentleman and a man of courage. His crew were neither cruel or unkind to any of us." What the Jesuit wishes one to understand from the last sentences is somewhat obscure. It is evident that in his heart Biard was pleased at the outcome of the venture, secure in the respect likely to be paid to " the cloth," else he could not have called the filcher of La Saussaye's commissions something to be con- ceived only by a wit of the most vicious quality, or have so readily forgiven the murder of Du Thet, the despoiling of their dwellings, and pirating of their ships, and the casting off of his Governor, La Saus- saye, and Father Masse, along with thirteen others THE LAXD OF ST. CASTIN 349 in an open boat, to get on as best they could with the merciless sea and the inliospitable land. Argal and Biart seemed to be kindred spirits, and got on very well together, the latter making the voy- age to ^'irginia apparently without protest, and prob- ably with much pleasure; while the pilot who had eluded Argal found the Governor's party, and. hugging SADDLEBACK LEDGE the shores for safety, by a strenuous use of their oars they made the coast of Nova Scotia, where they were able to get a passage to St. Malo in some trading-ves- sels that hapjiened to be on the southern .shore, which they conceived to hv a great stroke of good fortune, wrested from a most untoward and unpropitious environment. Argal had tlone them a very good turn unwittingly. The other thirteen along with I^iart went to see Sir Thomas Dale, the Governor of ^'irginia, and it was likely to have been a disagreeable visit, for the Governor was in bad humor antl told them he was going to hang them up at once, which he would have 350 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN done, but Argal's conscience, or what there was left of it, was startled into speech, and he told the Gov- ernor that these poor French colonists were innocent ; that La Saussaye had the proper commission from the French Crown, but that he filched it from the Governor's private desk, the which he was obliged to do, to enable him to put a good face on his enterprise, which was none other than the baldest of piracies. And this was the man whom Biart credited with be- ing a gentleman, eating at his table, enjoying his com- panionship, and perhaps planning already the de- struction of Biencourt's little colony at Port Royal. It is for the reason that Biart's character may be better understood that his "Relation" is given in extenso, for he has been held up in various lights by various literati in historic matters. His motives are clear, a great deal clearer than the waters that float them; for he betrays himself, unwittingly, as a man of elastic conscience; not lacking in guile; truckling; the instigator, undoubtedly, of the casting off of his brother priest in the open boat ; withal, a man of deep and abiding animosities, — in fact, he was a typical Jesuit who made religious duty wholly subservient to policy. Dale listened to the story of Argal, and with an itching for further adventuring of the same sort he forgave the pirate and put him in such good counte- nance that he at once fitted out his own ship, the French vessel, and a smaller craft for the invasion of the Bay of Fundy. His purpose was the destruction of Port Royal, and he had soon set out on this enterprise; THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 351 and Father l^iart k('])t liim conijxmy, A\iio is credited by both English and French annahsts, if one accepts Purchas, with an "indigestible malice" against Bien- BASS HARBOR HEAD court. Whatever his puipose, he was an aj)parently willing consort of the piratical Argal, and had little loyalty to his countrymen. lie writes himself down as a traitor, whom the Engli.sh would willingly have hanged; while, at Port Royal, he was little better 352 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN thought of, as one of Biencourt's men told him to " Begone, or I will split your head with this hatchet!" De Costa thought his character needed looking into, with Biart looking on complacently at the destruction of the Port Royal Colony and Biencourt's ruin. Leaving Virginia, Argal sailed direct to the Island of Mont Desert, where he thought he might find another French vessel. He anchored at the scene of his former exploits. It was a picture of Nature in re- pose that greeted this adventurer on plunder bent, with the slow-sinking sun gathering its slant arrows into its golden c^uiver, varied only by the slender smokes from the fires of the savage, that gleamed more brightly as the dusk fell. And then the stars came out, and one can see Argal pacing his deck in anticipation of the destruction he intended to visit on the remnants of the St. Savior settlement the next day; for, says Biart, ''They burnt our fortifications and pulled down our crosses, and put up one as a sign that they were taking possession of the land as Lords. This cross had the name of the King of Great Britain engraved upon it." Not even the grave of the valorous Du Thet escaped Argal 's vandalism, and the spot where lie the ashes of that loyal son of France was at once obliterated, along with the sites of these first rude homes and the slender trenches of its first defenses. St. Savior was destroyed, and its colony scattered, and all the Mar- chioness de Guercheville was able to recover from the ruins of her fond dreams for the proselyting of the savage was the ship of La Saussayc. Perhaps THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 353 that was all that might have been expected from so badly officered an expedition. The seal of con- demnation was upon it from the first, as it is on all enterprises that are founded in the base passions of men. Argal did not go unscathed, for, upon leaving the devastation of Port Royal, he ran into a gale, losing one of his ships. The one which carried the treacherous Biart was driven across seas to the Azores, from whence she sailed to Wales, where the priest, and possibly the Jonah of the voyage, was set on shore, finding his way to France, where he set up as a professor of theology, for which he was seemingly well fitted, his militant disposition finally drifting him into the army, where he burnished the consciences of the soldiers for the remainder of his days. This is the story of the pioneers of Mont Desert and of the only settlement that graced its wilderness of mountains and streams for more than a century. One who knows Mont Desert will at once tell you where Hull's Cove is. It has some interesting associations, being the dwelling-place of Marie Therese de Gregoire, a direct descendant of De la Mothe Cadillac, the Lord of Doiiequet and Mont Desert. As has been noted, Cadillac had a grant of the island from the French Crown, though he never made use of it. and it was some short time after the close of the Revolutionary War, 1786, that the Gregoires, husband and wife, came to this country, where, before the (Jeneral Court in Boston, Madame Gregoire asked for the confirma- tion of her title to the Island of Mont Desert as a granddaughter of M. Cadillac. The General Court 354 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN naturalized the Gregoires, and their three children as well, and confirmed her in the possession of the island, notwithstanding it had in 1762 been granted by the same body to Governor Bernard, with the approval of the King; but his conduct in the Revolutionary days wrought a forfeiture, and opened the way to the Gregoires. The year before the arrival of these French people one-half the island had been granted to Sir John Bernard, but that fell through by non-compli- ance of contract. The recognition of the Gregoires was an exhibition of comity, as Lafayette had made some- what strenuous exertion in her behalf, and with a desire on the part of the new republic " to cultivate a mutual confidence and union between the subjects of His Most Christian Majesty and the citizens of this State." Thus it was that sixty thousand acres of island estate fell to the Gregoires, which included, as well, some part of the mainland, that already occupied by actual settlers being exempted. They went from Boston to Mont Desert, where they immediately offered their lands at the minimum charge of one dollar the acre, even at which price the sales were limited. With their coming one notes that this is the second occupancy of the island after the landing of Champlain, and the coincidence, as well, that it was by the naturalized heir of its first and only French patentee. They built their house back from the shore some half-mile or more, and the site is still pointed out to the curious visitor. It is not difficult to rebuild the THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 355 diminutive castle or chateau of the Grcgoires, for they had some means, and their inclination was, doubtless, to have their surroundings as suggestive of the old France as their circumstances would allow. It was most likely of stone, with so much of that material under foot, and its gray pile loomed up DEVILS DEN, SCHOONER HEAD warmly against the deep tones of the verdurous back- ground, making a (luaint picture in its isolation. Its windows were barred, of course, and its doors were massive, thick-studded with nails, and secured by huge bolts; for here was a life of seclusion, with only the shouts of the children to l)reak the silences that pervaded this monotony of Nature. To the lat- ter here was a continual feast, while to their elders were left only the passing of one day to another, the 356 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN dreams of the regal splendors of the French Court, and the memories of a great family name. Tradition has it that M. Gregoire had his French vintages, del- icate and sparkling, which were reenforced by the more robust and sustaining qualities inlierent in a prime Santa Cruz, with the sweetening of the Bar- badoes to allay its roughness. It is said that an old French friar was wont to come to see the Gregoires, and how late they sat up nights before the ruddy hearth that lent a cheerful glow to the chateau hall, with their sparkling Langue- doc or their hot Santa Cruz between them, no one knows ; for it is safe to assume that between their sips, and whiffs of tobacco, many a story was told of sunny France, and much was brought by the priest by way of gossip as to what was going on in the old country in politics, for that was the Jesuit's stock in trade, — to entertain in order that he might convert. It is barely possible that Madame, stately and proud, or generously solicitous of good humor, or sedately ex- clusive, kept them fair company, and Monsieur saw that her glass was kejjt filled as well. There is a burying-ground a little way up the road, and here are the graves of these people, marked by some rude stones. Nature-hewn, just outside its bar- rier near the southeast corner. It is said that Mon- sieur was the first to set out on the lone journey, to be followed some three years after by the Madame. When she was arrayed for her burial a belt stuffed with gold was taken from her body. After that next to nothing is known of the children of these first per- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 357 manent settlers, and with them the Gregoires had seemingly vanished into obscurity. Wild tales of the unearthing of hidden treasure on the island have been told, and it is currently believed that a part of the pirate Kidd's evil gains were found on the east side of Somes' Sound, opposite Fernald's Point. The tradition is based upon the tale of a ser- vant, whose master was immediately raised from a life of labor and hardship to apparent affluence. The servant said his master found a pot of gold. It may have been true, for if ever there was an ideal pirate's retreat, it was here in isolate and uninhabited Somes' Sound, where, until the coming of the Gregoires, was no sign of other than the savage dweller, whose shell- heaps are the only relics of his occupation. Credu- lous men have dug the ground over, here or there, but the so arduously searched for buried money is as elusive as the Phantom Schooner, — "The ghost of what was once a ship. — " that, from time to time, fraught with the omen of Death to some one of the islanders, sweeps in with bellying canvas, yet " never comes the ship to port Howe'er the breeze may be; Just when she nears the waiting shore She drifts again to sea. No tack of sail nor turn of helm, Nor sheer of veering side; Stern-fore she drives to sea and night Against the wind and tide." 358 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN As she nears the land one discerns the misty forms of her crew standing by her thwarts like statues. Her master leans over the rail and points to the depths of the sea. Taut-rigged, and shapely as a sea- fowl, she skims the waters, and so real is the illusion THE CAVE, SCHOONER HEAD one shouts, "Ahoy!" A sepulchral flame flares from her tops; her masts quiver like the wrinkle of their reflections in the sea; her stays are loosed and the snowy sails blow away on the winds. The weird vision is faded, only to come again when the mists roll in; for this is the land of mists and vaporous mysteries. Whenever the winds blow hither the coolness of the northern waters there comes a sensitized film of low- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 359 hanging vapor upon which whole fleets are photo- graphed, or "low, far islands, looming tall and nigh; And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky;" for here is the home of the Magician whose domain of enchantments is sounded only by the limits of one's imagination. It was in the days when Captain Kidd sailed the seas, and when that redoubtable pirate was haunting the Bahama waters like an uneasy spirit, that the Phantom Ship of Mont Desert began veering across the offing of Schooner Head. Kidd was in wait for some kind of prey, and had for some days hugged the narrow lagoons of the Antilles, dodging in and out the mysterious inlets that open and shut with the shift- ing of the shadows, leaning just far enough over their yellow sand-ribs so he might scan the horizon, and then shrinking to his hiding again. One day his rakish craft had hardly poked her shark-nose over the reef on the flood of the tide, than a huge West Indiaman broke the veil of the morning mist, her topsails towering above the low decks of the pirate. Kidd piped all hands to quarters and ran for the Iniliaman. which fell an easy prey, and ])r()ved a rich prize, — laden with gold and silver ingots for the Spanish mint-master. The treasure was shifted to the pirate's decks, and when the last man of the West Indiaman had walked the |)lank, the ship itself was scuttled, and the sand-hornet had slunk back to its hidintj: in some one of the nianv retreats known only 360 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN to Kidd and his men. It was there they put the gold and silver into a smaller, swifter keel, and Kidd gave its command to a lieutenant, wdth directions to sail for Mont Desert, where was an isolate, unfrecjuented cave used by the pirate as a place for the secreting of their plunder. The sails were run up on the little schooner, and once out on the wide sea she flew with the wings of a bird. It was a pleasant voyage despite the sailor superstition that a woman aboard ship is as bad as a parson, and that was ominous enough, for the lieutenant had his wife along with him for company; but the skies held fair and the winds were kind until they reached the coast of Maine, where the craft ran into a fog so dense that the helmsman could not see the forecastle chains. The craft nosed along toward the island, cutting the fog with a light breeze until about sundown, when the wind stiffened and the fog melted away like a breath on a mirror, revealing, a mile or more to windward, the trim lines of a British corvette. The corvette had a keen nose for suspicious charac- ters, for, descrying the schooner, she immediately sent a shot from her Long Tom after the little craft, which was already showing a pretty wake astern. With the going of the mists the wdnd slackened to a light breeze, giving the schooner the advantage for a little; then it freshened, to kick up a nasty sea, and the corvette had the best of the chase. There was nothing for the schooner to do but to run for the shore, with the hope of finding some one of the many sounds GORGE OF SCHOONER HEAD THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 361 or inlets along the coast whose waters were too shoal for the pursuer. The pirate swung off until she had the wind over her starboard quarter, and was headed, as the skipper reckoned, for the mouth of Otter Cove. The dusk fell rapidly, and he hoped to be able to run in far enough to get the treasure ashore in his boats after scuttling the schooner, and, by ma- king Somes' Sound overland, to find some friendly craft by which he coukl get away while the corvette was beating around by Frenchman's Bay. But the wind had risen to a gale, and he was driven past the entrance to the Cove. He heard the breakers, but, sure of making his harborage, he made for a light spot in the face of the cliff above the ledge of Spout- ing Horn, taking it for an opening in the shore, bowl- ing along under a ten-knot jjreeze. The corvette was game, and kept the course of the flying schooner, her Long Tom barking hoarsely above the tumult of the sea. It was a chance shot, that last, but it knocked the helmsman over his wiieel, and, spinning down the deck, cut the main halliards, and the schooner was doorned ; for down came gaff and mainsail in a heap to the deck. The lieutenant caught the wheel, but luff, wear, to port or starboard, the vessel would not; but flew on like a frightened sea-l^rd over the hid- den reefs, while the pirate crew huddled in their terror well abaft, where the skipper-wife kept fearless com- panionship with her husband at the wheel, both with their faces to the ghastly line of surf that gleamed with a phosphorescent pallor through the night, and marked the rocks of Schooner Head. 362 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN Unless the little craft could climb the stark walls of its towering crags it must go to the bottom. Sud- denly a huge wave caught it, lifted it high in air, and then dropped it with a crash on the dripping ledges of Spouting Horn. The foremast went, and two or SPOUTING HORN three of the ruffians clambered to shore upon it before it fell into the water. The skipper held to the wheel, while the woman dropped to her knees by his side and prayed on that blood-stained deck as only a woman may, while the sea played at bowls with the wooden shell, as a wild beast with its captured prey until the last quivering muscle is stilled. Once more the waves lifted the schooner, to throw it against the THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 363 almost invisible walls, and thon the undertow caught its crushed timbers to swallow them at a single gulp. The lookout on the corvette, to whom the schooner had been visible a moment before, looked in vain for the gray sail that had before loomed in the dark like a huge j)hantom shroud, and to the end of his days he insisted that it was The Flying Dutchman that had led him into the outer breakers of Sjjouting Horn. In years after, the smugglers who haunted the Mont Desert shores, as they made the mouth of Otter Cove on moonlit nights, saw this same gray sail beating across the outer bay, or chafing under the cliffs, and were wont to tell tales of a strange ship rising from out the sea when, "Whistling and shrieking, wild and wide, The mad wind raged, and strong and fast Rolled in the rising tide," and a i)haiit()ni of the sea, wiiosc j)liant<»ni hchnsnian drove his craft over the ledges of Spouting Horn and past the ragged rocks of Schooner Head, was painted against the offing. Mayhaj) these were the rotting sails, dripping with the brine of the sea, of the pirate that were limned on the sky at dusk, or that flecked "tlie outer gray beyond The sundown's golden trail," which made the superstitious fisher-folk wonder whose omen it was when the schooner's ghost rounded the bristling spruces of the headlands down the bay. ■'.Shake, brown old wives, with dreary joy. Your gray-head hints of ill; 364 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN And, over sick-beds whispering low, Your prophecies fulfil. Some home amid yon birchen trees Shall drape its doors with woe ; And slowly where the Dead Ship sails, The burial boat shall row." It is a talc to tell as the moon comes up over the waters, as one sits in the shadows of the Mont Desert cliffs, while out of the slow-rising mists one carves the low rakish hull of Kidd's treasure-laden schooner, with its bellying sails, until the vision is a reality, and one finds relief only by looking off to the cheerful lights of Desert Rock. It is true that Somes' Sound affords the most picturesque scenery of the island. The mountains are painted in its drowsing waters so that their rugged outlines are more clearly discerned and their beauty appreciated; but one's powers of description fail when the essay is made to portray in words the subtle and elusive charm that holds one silent in admiration. Here are jagged peaks and deeps of tangled woods where the sun paints pictures all day long in marvel- lous colors, colors that were never on the palette of the painter. Valleys are grooved everywhere, and a thousand feet in air tower the sunlit crags of the overhanging mountain. One never tires of this mag- nificent display of Nature. Here one may go moun- tain climbing, trout-fishing, or essay the pastoral delights of raking the odorous hay in season, or "drink with glad still lips the blessing of the sky." Mont Desert was a favorite hunting-ground for the THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 365 Indian, and Hubbard has a tale that dates as far back as 1677, when St. Castin had just made his way to Pentagoet. The savages were on the warpath, and it so happened that a son of Parson Cobett, of Ipswich, was in Falmouth at the time that place was raided. He found himself a captive, and was taken to the country of the Penobscot. It was a custom among the savages to attach their captives to themselves as servants. Cobett found himself bound to a savage, who took him to this island, where he was accustomed to pass the winters, making at his leisure his ))lans for his fishings, huntings, and occasional inroads on the settlers. Hubbard says: ''In that desert-like condition was the poor young man forced to con- tinue nine weeks in the service of a savage mis- creant, who would sometimes tyrannize over him, be- cause he could not understand his language, and for want thereof might occasion him to miss his game, or the like." He says of the savage: "On a sudden he took a resolution to send this young man down to Mr. Casteen to procure more powder to kill moose and deer, which it seems is all their way of living at Mount Desert." He made the journey safely, and so impressed " Mr. Casteen" that his ransom was effected for a good coat. Cobett went back to Ipswich, where he no doubt married and t(^ld his children how he had iiunted with the savages when the weather was too cold to be withstood, and how he had fallen in the snow, to be taken on the shoulders of his captors and carried to the wisiwam to be thawed out. He told them great 366 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN stories of the beaver-houses he saw there, for the re- mains of their dams are to be found nowadays, as they may be in many parts of Maine where the settle- ments are older than those at Mont Desert. Here were the haunts of the otter and the mink, for wherever there is an abundance of trout these fur-bearers are likely to be; for they are great and industrious fishers along the wild streams of the interior, though the otter is growing more scarce as the fisherman makes his summer outing farther into the deeps of the woods. Not all the wildness of Mont Desert is shorn, for one does not find a compass amiss whose feet are strange to the shadows of its hooded rocks and the jungles that crowd upon their granite ankles. One finds here not infrequently the aboriginal wildcat, and the red deer roam its woodland aisles as in the days when Argal choked them with the smokes of the burning cabins of La Saussaye. Right here it may be men- tioned that at the destruction of Port Royal by the Virginia freebooter, as the Jesuit Biart, Nero-like, looked on, he expressed the hopeful reflection that it might please the Lord "that the sins therein com- mitted might likewise have been consumed in that conflagration." Wliat a virulent fellow he must have been! Wliat the fate of the Guercheville Colony might have been had it been planted at Kadesquit is only to be guessed; but it is not likely that it would have shared the untoward fate of the settlement on Fer- nald's Point, for that is wher(> Mr. Hamlin has located THE LAND OF ST. CASTLX 367 it. The story of Pentagoet would have read differ- ently, possibly, had the French had twenty years the start of the '' Undertakers;" but it is not settled that the Dutch did not anticipate all these em- bryo civilizations of the French and English. New light is be- ing thrown upon ^ these earliest days -^^ ^ — and the players who ^ stalked across their stage, and it is not OTTER CLIFF 368 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN impossible that there may be a Dutch narration hid- den away somewhere, or lying in wait for the anti- quarian nose. From 1613 to the coming of the Gregoires in 1788 there was no settlement here of white people. It was a desert island indeed so far as its occupation by Europeans is to be considered. Monliegan was occu- pied from an early day, and the occupation was con- tinued with the exception of a few blanks in the grow- ing years, mainly by fishermen; but no diversion seems to have been made to the eastward. Mont Desert was in the neutral zone, and while the slender contingent at Pentagoet was busily occupied in schemes of self-preservation, the English at Pema- quid, along the Sheepscot, and on Arrowsic Island were content with their holding so long as they were undisturbed. It was unfortunate that the authorities of Massachusetts Bay could not have seen their duty clearer, and have kept their itching palms cooled with some soothing lotion other than the soft pile of a Penobscot beaver-skin. Tradition locates the Somes famUy here about 1760, coming from Cape Ann, and the site of his cabin is still pointed out. He was fol- lowed by settlers from Cape Cod, but this conflicts somewhat with the Gregoire account. There is a very interesting tradition that has found lodgment along these green slopes above Southwest Harbor, which is that the famous Talleyrand was born here, where he spent some portion of his boyhood. It is a romantic story, with its high-lights and shad- ows mingling in a tale of love and misplaced confi- THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 369 dence. An ancient cellar is still pointed out at the head of Southwest Harbor, where was once a house, GREAT HEAD and in which, it is averred, with how much truth yet remains to be established, the great dii)lomat of France was born and passed his early years. 370 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN The tale has come down from the older French resi- dents and is something after this fashion. In this old house, now rotted away, there lived a man and his wife who had passed the meridian of life. They were French, and with them lived a granddaughter, whose mother had been laid away in the little burial-ground that overlooked the sea, upon which the father at that time was away on a voyage to a distant port. The girl was turning sixteen, a wild blossom, and a beau- tiful girl whose budding charms had almost blown into the petals of the full flower. It was in these days of 1754 that a French trading-vessel was driven into the harbor in a stress of storm, by reason of which it was here sometime delayed on its voyage. Among its passengers was a fine fellow, whose dress and car- riage bespoke the gentleman. He found his way to the shore, where he made the acquaintance of these islanders, and to whose humble home he found his way daily so long as the vessel remained in the harbor. The attraction was evidently the charming grand- daughter. The acquaintance ripened, so that they were seen much together by the neighbors, in their daily rambles, who boded no good from so sudden an intimacy, as neighbors sometimes will. For all that, the course of their love ran smoothly enough when the man and the maid were together. The days sped and were too soon done, for it was morning only to merge into nightfall. Nature existed for these two alone, and they forgot all but themselves, — the world was theirs, such was the alchemy of Love. THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 371 In their trj'sting-place by the seashore, under the featherj' hem- locks Sat the lovers, clad in the royal purple of twilight ; The sun toppled over the sea into the Vale of To-morrow. Like censers a-swing afar off, at the touch of the Infinite The lonely stars glinunered, as in the stout belt of Orion; Or, thickly strewn, as the sands on the marge of the ocean. Made a luminous path through the shailowy highlands of heaven. Then, reluctant, they went to thefann-house, she lifting her skirts from her ankles. For the dew was caressing the close-shut lids of the clover. He, folding her close from the night-winds, tenderly guiding her footsteps — Steps leaden with slowness, her heart like the down of the eider; Silent she was. or laughing, conning their plans for the morrow. Until, under the fret of the woodbine, that helil the porch in its shadow. They parted, again and again, with many sweet words of affection, That, like odors, soft and delicious, haunting one's garb, beget fond recollection. Played and toyed with her heart, as the tide of the sea with the seaweed. While she watched from her half-open lattice, where the trail of the boat, ever widening. Wrought the gold of the .sea's phosphorescence into glittering hopes of the future. Then camo the tlawn again, when the winds were never softer, the sunshine more beneficent; when under the wand of the Wizard every nodding blossom in the grass bent and courtesied with seihictive in- vitation, and Love shot his arrows all the faster, while the wooing of her Gascon lover grew more ardent. What wonder! for " Fair was she to behold, that maiden of .seventeen summers. Black were her eyes as the berry that grows on the thorn by the wayside, 372 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN Black, yet how softly they gleamed beneath the brown shade of her tresses! Sweet was her breath as the breath of the kine of the meadows." But the Gascon youth whom she had dowered with her girlhood was to sail away. She watched the sailors at the anchors. The sails went slowly up, the clues made fast, one by one, and the ship swung to the tide. The sheets took on the curve of a gull's wing and filled away. She watched the ship, freighted with the romance of her young life, fade into the sea- mists where " the great sun Looked with the eye of love through the golden vapors about him," and night had come again, and the glamour of love was spent. But life kept its even flow at the farmhouse above the waters of Southwest Harbor, its tide of circumstance rising higher, ever higher. Suns rose and set upon its restless horizon; the blossoms went and came again, and one day another Gascon found his way to the farmhouse, — a boy babe. Under its sheltering roof lived the mother and the child, when they were not scanning the horizon. In their eyry among the rocks by the seashore under the feathery hemlocks; for in the heart of the mother was always the prophecy of her Gascon lover's return. It was the seventh sum- mer. The dew was on the clover, and a strange sail was on the horizon. A merchant-vessel sailed into THE LAND OF ST. CASTLY 373 the harbor, armed with heavy fjuns, licr crew clad in the uniform of France. Hardly had her anchors broken the waters apart than a boat shot from her side to make the shore, and one who seemed to be in DEVIL S DEN autiiority had leaj)t to the sands. The ancient hem- locks still held the shore in their soft shadows. The stranger began his inquiries for a child of French par- entage whose age might be seven years, and a fisher- man pointed to the crags that leaned out over the sea. His quest was soon ended, for the lad stood before 374 THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN him, a lithe and comely little fellow, active and of fine physique. He was a lad of promise and the stranger wished to take him away at once, but the mother demurred, for he was all left of those too few days of her romance. But the stranger was persistent, and yet she would not spare him, despite promises of good care, educa- tion, and a noble position in life. He came again and again, his efforts unavailing, to at last bring a heavy sack of coin, which he threw upon the table, and the little fellow had dropped out of sight as if the earth had yawned and swallowed him. The grandparents never saw him again, but the mother lived to hear of her son as the greatest statesman and diplomatist of Europe, — the famous Charles Maurice de Talley- rand-Perigord, Prince de Bene vent. The stranger had kept his word, but whether that was sufficient compensation for the lonesome days that fell to her lot one may never know. It was years later that the French celebrity came to Mont Desert, but whether the mother was living the tradition does not re- late. Talleyrand was an exile from France in 1794 and was in this country. He was at the Hancock house in Boston, an old hostelry that may still be seen border- ing a little alley at the rear of Faneuil Hall. He was in Machias, and at that time was a man of perhaps forty years, and is said to have remarked to Judge Jones, at whose house he was one day taking dinner, that he would like to see "the mountain on the sea," ' and which he exhibited " an innate childish longing to THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN 375 behold." There is a tracHtion extant that the former Lieutenant-Governor Robljins of Massachusetts met Talleyrand here in 1794. Robbins was " a gentleman of extensive information, something of an antiquarian, and whose organ of inquisitiveness was very promi- nent." He met the Frenchman in Boston, and a few weeks after his business interests took him to Mont Desert, where, much to his surprise, Talleyrand, who hap])ened to be there, and apparently incog., evaded his (luestionings and was inclined to snub him. The lieutenant-governor could not keep the secret, and so informed the islanders — for it was not then a sum- mering-place — of the great man who had so quietly come among them, and who had spent his time stroll- ing about the island, which had already aroused their rustic curiosity. As they began to discuss the French- man, some of the older habitues of the ]jlace had taken note of his lameness and his way of walking, and they were not slow in recalling the " I'rench boy" who was taken away by a stranger about the time the Frencli \\i\v terminated. These comments but added fuel to the curiosity of the lieutenant- governor, who thereui^on began a systematic inquiry, and the tales of the old settlers were confirmed, with this additional : that when the lad was about a year old a kettle of scalding water was accidentally over- turned upon his feet, which so crippled his toes that he thereafter walked as one lamed. Williamson regards this as im])ortant evidence in favor of the tradition, and the dii)lomat has been averred to have been the natural son of Captain 376 THE LAND OF ST. CASTIN Bailie Talleyrand, a younger brother of Count de Talleyrand, for which M. Colmache is authority. Griswold, the historian, admits that '\some curious facts have been adduced in support of this opinion;" i.e., that Talleyrand " was a native of Mount Desert, in Maine." Even if it were true, the Frenchman's OLD BRUCE HOUSE, MACHIAS, WHERE TALLEYRAND STOPPED vanity, and his disposition ever to deceive, which was notorious, would lead him to claim Paris as his birth- place. The De Peyster journals and collections referred to by De Costa in his story of Mont Desert are possibly more entertaining than valuable, so far as they may appertain to this island, for they are made up of tales of a credulous constituency. General de Peyster spent some time at Mont Desert nosing about and listening THE LAND OF ST. CAST IN 377 to the tales of its habitues in and about Somes' Sound; and he says that he " stopped at the house of old Mr. Isaac Mayhew, to ask him about the site of the first French settlement. He told me that when he came into this neighborhood seventy-nine years ago (which would have been about 1777), there was no difference of opinion with regard to the site of that colony. As I supposed, Flynn's Point was designated; and he heard his father say that that was the point occu- pied." To the in• O. -^V ^l. ^^^^ vP o>. '^ ■<** ».- ^•^..^^ \ c' ■>^ ■''^. ■ t' ' .c: ■^'' ^o >-, .^^ '^' °- .^^ fi"* ,-/• A^' o. ^°-'*. ,0 °^ -^ o^ c,^^a ,.0 3.0 -n. V V •/•• ^v -^^ . ■,S ,^ .0' o V ./ .0 » ' • "^ »°-'^. ■ri «0 V H P>. , .>^^ ^ •^ o o i V^ -»» •• '* cv ' • " -?; <*>. x^'-n^ JS- •^' o ^-<.. •> ^^ v^ * ' '^'<- -^ <^, N MANCHESTER.