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 BARON DE SAINT CASTIN 
 
 )^-tS^5o 
 
BARON DE SAINT CASTIN 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN FRANCIS SPRAGUE 
 
 Editor of Sprague^ s Jotirnal of Maine History 
 
 PORTLAND, MAINE 
 
 SMITH & SALE, PRINTERS 
 
 191S 
 
Gift 
 Author 
 
 S0V13 i$ih 
 
 >S/3 
 
The Bangor Historical Society and 
 the Piscataquis Society held historical 
 Field Days at Castine^ Maine^ July 
 
 14-15^ 1915- 
 
 The exercises commenced in the eve- 
 ning of July 14^ in Emerson Memorial 
 Town Hall, where an address of wel- 
 come was made by Honorable W. A. 
 Walker on behalf of the Castine Board 
 of Trade, Responses were made by 
 Honorable Henry Lord, President of 
 the Bangor Society, and John Francis 
 Sprague, President of the Piscataquis 
 Society. Other speakers at these meet- 
 ings Tvere Mr. Charles W. Noyes, of 
 New York, Dr. George A. Wheeler^ 
 and Mrs. Louise Wheeler Bartlett, of 
 Castine, Honorable Frank E. Guern- 
 sey, of Dover, Mr. Edward M. Bland- 
 ing, and Dr. William C. Mason, of 
 Bangor, and Professor Wa rren 
 R. Moorehead, of Andover, Ma s s . 
 
 Following is President Sprague^s 
 response on this occasion. 
 
BARON JEAN VINCENT D'ABADDIE 
 DE SAINT CASTIN 
 
 RESPONSE BY MR. SPRAGUE 
 
 Mr. Pi-esident, Metnbers of the Castine Board 
 of Trade ^ and of the Historical Societies, 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 Personally and especially in behalf of the 
 Piscataquis Historical Societ3s I return to 
 you and to the good people of old Castine 
 our sincere thanks and appreciation of your 
 hearty welcome and the many kindnesses 
 and courtesies bestowed upon us to-day. 
 This pleasant occasion will ever remain a 
 sweet and agreeable memory in our minds 
 through all of the future years. 
 
 Castine, deriving its name from one of 
 the most interesting and picturesque char- 
 acters that the annals of the rise and fall of 
 New France in the New World discloses, is 
 assuredly a mecca for all who are inter- 
 ested in the real story of the earliest 
 Colonial life on the coast of Maine and who 
 
love its m3'Stery and its romance. We 
 stand at this hour upon one of the most 
 historic spots on the American continent. 
 Here we may glance back through the vistas 
 of time to that period when by wars and 
 revolutions a new spirit of nationalism was 
 awakening in both England and France ; 
 when England was evolving from a com- 
 munity of agriculturists to a great empire 
 of makers and merchants ; when each was 
 bursting through the narrow confines of 
 mediaeval Europe. And this awakening in 
 the Old World, in the sixteenth century, 
 evolved a wonderful class of men, brave, 
 defiant and far-seeing ; part statesmen and 
 part pirates and wholly daring adventurers ; 
 the forerunners of England's chartered 
 stock companies which followed in the 
 beginning of her commercial greatness. 
 Historians have called this the Elizabethan 
 age. In the last days of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury France had emerged from thirty years 
 of conflict and turmoil which was followed 
 by the assassination of Henrj^ HI and the 
 ascension to the throne of Henry IV, "the 
 
Knight of the White Plume," who for six- 
 teen years had been King of Navarre. He 
 became the rightful King in 1589, but it 
 was not until 1594 that his seat was secure 
 from the intrigues and armed attempts of 
 his enemies to dethrone him. He was one 
 of the greatest of European rulers of that 
 age and although born a Protestant he later 
 embraced the Catholic faith but believed 
 fully in religious freedom. His cardinal 
 principles of government were that France 
 should maintain the hereditary rights of 
 monarchy ; that the Catholics should be in 
 the majority in his councils ; that there 
 should be absolute peace between the Cath- 
 olics and Protestants and complete religious 
 liberty for both. And as a result of this 
 we see him sending forth Champlain a 
 Catholic and DeMonts a Protestant united 
 as explorers and making the first American 
 settlement on our Maine coast in Passama- 
 quoddy Bay, June 24, 1604. 
 
 A century had passed since Columbus 
 had revealed America to the world. Com- 
 merce stirring in France as in the whole of 
 
Europe was aroused from the sleep of 
 feudalism. The ocean and its m3^steries 
 began to fascinate the human mind and 
 navigation was the attraction of the brave 
 and ambitious. 
 
 Henry the Fourth encouraged and fos- 
 tered this spirit of adventure and desire to 
 establish a new France in America and rival 
 England in colonial enterprises. And for 
 a century the coast of Maine was the scene 
 of much of the great struggle that ensued 
 between the Anglo Saxon and the Latin for 
 supremacy in America. 
 
 Historians have handed down to us some 
 recorded facts regarding this land of St. 
 Castin. But its prelude, its shrouded back- 
 ground is Norumbega, ever appearing upon 
 history's pages but never explained, never 
 real yet always existing. Its fame attracted 
 hardy and bold explorers, missionaries and 
 adventurers, and its bewildering tales fas- 
 cinated the European mind. It was a 
 magnificent dream. An alluring phantom 
 never chased to its lair. It was thewill-o'- 
 the wisp of Maine's colonial history. And 
 
it was here on the banks of the ancient 
 Pentagoet and in its vast forest wilds where 
 fable and romance, more often than in any- 
 other place, located the golden city with its 
 wondrous walls of pearls, its riches and its 
 splendor. That these marvelous tales aided 
 greatly in stimlating emigration to America 
 is indisputable. But those who followed 
 the rays, of this Norumbega rainbow found 
 only a coast of grandeur, the huts of sav- 
 ages and wild forestry. And as we to-day 
 sail down the grand old Penobscot, flowing 
 from out the vast wilderness country 
 around and beyond Chesuncook, and from 
 its thousands of lakes and its legion of 
 brooks and ponds making its way to the 
 sea, we may not behold that city of wonder 
 with its houses upheld by pillars of silver 
 and crystal, or the "mountain of silver," 
 or any of the glow of a barbaric splendor 
 which lived in European imagination for 
 more than fifty years during the sixteenth 
 and seventeenth centuries. But we may 
 know and fully realize that we are on ground 
 made sacred by the footprints of Champ- 
 
lain and other early explorers, who were 
 the fathers of American colonization. 
 
 While w^e would pass with haste these 
 rugged characters and d'Aulney and 
 LaTour and their compeers, we fain would 
 tarr}^ for a brief moment in a retrospect of 
 Baron Jean Vincent D'Abaddie St. Castin, 
 who made such a deep impress upon the times 
 in which he lived and whose name is so 
 indelibly interwoven with some of the most 
 important events in our colonial history. 
 It is not for us to know very much of his 
 career. Accurate history, however, pre- 
 sents him as a bold personage yet liberal 
 and tolerant for the age in which he lived. 
 He had no prejudice against the red men 
 but affiliated with them and finally married 
 a daughter of Madocawando, one of the 
 noblest of the Indian chieftains of the 
 Penobscot tribe. Maine's own poet, Long- 
 fellow, one of the world's sweetest singers, 
 loved the lore and the legends and tradi- 
 tions of ancient Maine history. The trag- 
 ed}^ of Father Rale, the Indian battles and 
 his early memories of the woods, the rivers 
 
 10 
 
and lakes and the sea coast and the bays 
 of Maine, enthralled him. Nowhere upon 
 the pages of American literature appears 
 anything more delightful than his story in 
 rhj'-me of the Baron St. Castin. He tells 
 how this young man of noble family edu- 
 cated and cultured left his baronial home 
 in the beautiful country of the Pyrenees in 
 sunny France, "And sailed across the west- 
 ern seas," in quest of fortune and adventure 
 in the New World of marvel and mystery. 
 He draws the pathetic picture of "His 
 father, lonely, old and gray" sitting alone 
 by his fireside mourning the absence of his 
 beloved son and longing for his return. 
 We see the holy father of the church calling 
 on the aged sire and offering him consola- 
 tion : 
 
 " Ah yes, dear friend ! in our young days 
 
 We should have liked to hunt the deer 
 
 All day amid those forest scenes, 
 
 And to sleep in the tents of the Tarratines ; 
 
 But now it is better sitting here 
 
 Within four walls, and without the fear 
 
 Of losing our hearts to Indian queens ; 
 
 II 
 
For man is fire and woman is tow, 
 
 And the Somebody comes and begins to blow." 
 
 Then a fatal letter wings its way" and 
 he learns that "the young Baron of St. 
 Castin," 
 
 " Swift as the wind is and as wild, 
 Has married a dusky Tarratine, 
 Has married Madocawando's child ! " 
 
 "For many a year the old chateau lies 
 tenantless and desolate" until one bright 
 day the good Curate is seen speeding 
 "along the woodland way" humming gayly 
 
 " ' No day is so long 
 But it comes at last to vesper -song.' 
 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 house must be swept and clean 
 And all things set in good array I 
 And the solemn porter shakes his head ; 
 And the answer he makes is : " Lackaday ! 
 ' We will see, as the blind man said 1 ' " 
 
 12 
 
With what feelings of fear and trepida- 
 tion the father looked forward to the com- 
 ing of the wild daughter of the dusky 
 Penobscots ! He looked "to see a painted 
 savage stride 
 
 " Into the room, with shoulders bare, 
 
 And eagle feathers in her hair, 
 
 And around her a robe of panther's hide." 
 
 " Instead, he beholds with secret shame 
 
 A form of beauty undefined, 
 
 A loveliness without a name, 
 
 Not of degree, but more of kind ; 
 
 Nor bold nor shy, nor short nor tall, 
 
 But a new mingling of them all. 
 
 Yes, beautiful beyond belief. 
 
 Transfigured and transfused, he sees 
 
 The lady of the Pyrenees, 
 
 The daughter of the Indian chief. 
 
 Beneath the shadow of her hair 
 
 The gold-bronze color of the skin 
 
 Seems lighted by a fire within. 
 
 As when a burst of sunlight shines 
 
 Beneath a sombre grove of pines, — 
 
 A dusky splendor in the air. 
 
 The two small hands, that now are pressed 
 
 In his, seem made to be caressed, 
 
 13 
 
They lie so warm and soft and still, 
 
 Like birds half hidden in a nest, 
 
 Trustful, and innocent of ill. 
 
 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 are 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 Baron Castine of St. Castin" and 
 his beautiful Indian queen are finally com- 
 pletely welcomed at the old home and fire- 
 side, but not until after they had been "wed 
 as Christians wed," for the crude wedding 
 which had united them on the banks of old 
 Pentagoet, under the shade of the hemlock 
 and fir, did not fully meet with the appro- 
 bation of the church. 
 
 "And things" with them finally came 
 to a happy end." 
 
 " The choir is singing the matin song, 
 The doors of the church are opened wide, 
 
 14 
 
The people crowd, and press, and throng 
 
 To see the bridegroom and the bride. 
 
 They enter and pass along the nave ; 
 
 They stand upon the father's grave ; 
 
 The bells are ringing soft and slow ; 
 
 The living above and the dead below 
 
 Give their blessing on one and twain ; 
 
 The warm wind blows from the hills of Spain, 
 
 The birds are building, the leaves are green, 
 
 And Baron Castine of St. Castine 
 
 Hath Come at last to his own again." 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 017 396 344 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
 017 396 344