# Down East Latch Strings/Chapter 10

Back in Bangor again, we decide to make a brief halt, for the town is well worth a day's examination. One of the oldest and richest places in Maine, it owes its prosperity to the fact that it stands at the head of ship navigation on the Penobscot, and at the same time is not far below the confluence of the great branches which bring lumber and furs from that large region we have been seeing, It thus becomes the trade-centre of all eastern Maine, and is next in size to Portland.
It is a handsome city, the best residence portions covering two high regions overlooking the business part of the town, which occupies a narrow valley between. In the bottom of that ravine flows the deep Kenduskeag, forming a snug berth for small trading vessels. Many of the best residences are grouped on Thomas's hill, whence a grand landscape is spread out, and Katahdin is said to be visible in clear weather. In this part of the town is situated the Congregational Theological Seminary, which has nearly 700 alumni and a high reputation. The city has upon its roll many honorable names, and counts some famous people among its progressive citizens.
It has been conjectured that this point was the destination of the expedition which inadvertently landed on Mount Desert in 1613. As early as 1629, Jesuit missionaries from Quebec had descended the Penobscot, and the valley was possessed by their countrymen for two centuries, one of the forts being near here. During the Revolutionary period Massachusetts settled here, and in 1791 sent to the government a request for incorporation. Their delegate was the Rev. Seth Noble. The story runs that his instructions were to name the place Sunbury. "Mr. Noble, however, was very fond of the old tune of 'Bangor' (called after an English borough) and perhaps inadvertently had that name given to the new town." During the war of 1812 the Penob​scot was hell by the British, In 1833 Bangor become a city, and in 1848 was declared a port of entry.
Its men were among the first to respond to the call for troops in the late Rebellion, and this was the home of that 2nd Maine Regiment which was given the finest stand of colors in the army by ladies of New York, Baltimore and San Francisco—colors which they defended and held at Bull Run by the loss of their whole color-guard and nearly the annihilation of the Georgia men attacking them. Parts of many other regiments were recruited here, including a body of Indians.
Bangor is now a considerable railway centre, though the roads are all under control of a single corporation—the Maine Central. This road connects Bangor with Portland and the western part of the state by its main stem down the Kennebec, from which diverge many branches. Eastward the old line of the European and North American road (now the property of the Maine Central company, with auxiliaries southward to Mount Desert and to Bucksport), runs through to St. John, N. B. This trunk-line gives access to the valley of the East branch of the Penobscot; by connection with the New Brunswick Railway reaches the populous parts of eastern Maine, and the salmon-fishing regions of the Aroostook, upper St. John and Mirimichi, as well as the coast-towns and summer resorts upon the St. Croix. It thus constitutes the highway to the Maritime Provinces of Canada.
Now a few words in regard to the tour in the Maritime Provinces—New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Cape Breton and Prince Edward Island—to which Bangor is the gateway. Should the reader contemplate such a tour (which is well worth the taking), what shall be his course? He is advised to go first to St. John. This is a day's (or a night's) travel; if time is valued the night train (on which are Pullman sleepers) better he taken, for the scenery—almost continual forest—is not of munch account.
St. John, with its suburbs, is the largest city in the Maritime Provinces, and is the natural centre of travel. The town is solid and handsome, but quite American, having been rebuilt of brick and granite on Boston models, after the conflagration of 1877. The most interesting part to a stranger is its wharf-front, built to accommodate tides rising some 25 feet, and its cantilever bridge, suspended over those eccentric falls which pitch upstream or down, according as the tide flows in or out of the St. John river. Old Fort Howe, among the officers of whose garrison, at one time, was the great free-trader William Cobbett, and other points of the environs, are full of interest.
to Grand Falls and Edmunston, and southward to the main line at Fredericton Junction. All of the remarkable scenery and sporting opportunities mentioned on p. 88, et. seq., are therefore easily accessible from Fredericton.
​Returning to St. John let the tourist next turn his face toward Halifax, taking the Intercolonial Railway direct or going by water to Annapolis. We will go by the Annapolis route and return by rail.
The Bay of Fundy opens beyond Cape Spencer, and the course "is laid straight across to the Annapolis basin, which is entered through the remarkable cleft in North mountain called Digby gut. At the head of this basin stands Annapolis Royal, a town of some 6,000 people, on the site of the first French settlement in old Acadia. Discovered by DeMonts in 1004, it was named Port Royal and colonized by Poitrincourt immediately afterward; and from its wharves sailed the expedition of exploration and missionary enterprise of which we hare already learned in our visits to the coast and rivers of Maine. Thus the whole harbor glows in imagination with the "historic light of French adventure." A dismantled fortress, built upon the site of previous fortifications, and itself a picturesque relic of British occupation, overlooks the port and an admirable prospect.
The steamboat is now exchanged for the cars of the Windsor and Annapolis Railway (another railroad runs southward along the Fundy coast to the fishing ports of Digby, Weymouth and Yarmouth opening the Tusket lakes) which extends eastward through the famous farming and fruit-raising valleys of Annapolis and Cornwallis as far as Windsor, passing near the Aylesford and Gasperaux lakes, and skirting the shores of the Basin of Minas, with the Grand Prè of Longfellow's Evangeline as one of the stopping places.
The beautiful and pathetically interesting "Land of Evangeline" is easily visited from Wolfville or Windsor, by steamboats on the Minas basin or by this railway and its carriage excursions. Good judges have called the pictures presented to the eye at various points there, the most beautiful in the Maritime Provinces.
"A good road leads eastward three miles from Wolfville to Lower Horton, a scattered hamlet among the hills. By passing down from this point to the meadows just beyond the railway-station of Grand Prè, the traveller reaches the site of the ancient village. Standing on the platform of the station, he sees a large tree at the corner of the field on the left front. Near that point are the faint remains of the foundations of the Acadian church. The tradition of the country-side claims that the aged willow-tree near by, grows on the site of the shop of Basil the Blacksmith, and that cinders have been dug up at its foot. The destruction effected by the British troops was complete, and there are new no relics of the ancient settlement, except the guarded and knotty trees of the orchards, the lines of willows along the old roads, and the sunken hollows which indicate the sites of former cellars. Near the shore is shown the place where the exiles were put on shipboard."
Between Windsor and Halifax stretches a waste of rocks and scrubby trees.
​Halifax needs no description here. Stages or steamboats communicate between it and all the seaports or inland summering places not reached by railroad. The exceedingly wild and tempestuous coast between Halifax and Cape Sable, with its awful rocks, renowned in the death annals of French and British and Yankee seamen, and its many little fishing ports, sending vessels out to the Banks or all along this perilous lee, can easily be reached and examined by the curious.
Or if you prefer to search the still more primitive manners of the northeastern coast, its scanty settlements are attainable by ship, or by going to New Glasgow, on the Intercolonial Railway, and thence by stage to Antigonish, whence connecting stages rim to Sherbrooke and its gold-fields, to Capes St. George and remote Canso, and, by a ferriage across the strait of Canso, to the villages on the Bras d'Or, in Cape Breton—a journey vividly described in Charles Dudley Warner's cynical Baddeck: And That sort of Thing.
The trip to Cape Breton from Halifax is usually made by one of the frequently going steamers which land you either at Port Hawkesbury, in the scenic Gut of Canso, or at Sydney, the capital of the island, on the northern shore, or one can go by rail to Port Hawkesbury, over the Intercolonial and Eastern Extension Railways. Sydney is in the midst of coal mines, and is connected by railway with the harbor and historic old ruins of the fortress of Louisburg. Baddeck is the picturesque centre of Cape Breton, and in its vicinity profitable hunting for almost every game animal on the American list can be enjoyed. The principal steamers which go to Cape Breton are those of the Quebec and Halifax line, touching at ports in Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick and then ascending the St. Lawrence.
From Sydney, C.B., frequent opportunities occur of crossing to Charlottetown, or Georgetown, on Prince Edward Island. Thence the tourist travels by rail to Summerside, whence he can recross Northumberland strait to Point du Chene, N. B., a terminus of the Intercolonial Railway. This is 18 miles from Moncton, where the main line from Halifax and Trove passes northward toward Gaspè and Quebec.
​This is a thinly settled, forested and rocky coast-region; but most of its numerous rivers contain salmon, and some, like the Miramichi, have a world-wide repute in that respect.
"The Miramichi is the gateway to the sportsman's paradise—the forest wilderness of New Brunswick," remarks one writer. Farther on, at the head of the Bay of Chaleur is Restigouche, a port of call for all the coast-wise steamers, a lumber-mart, and a fine centre for shooting excursions, or voyages among those sea-fishing islands in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, which formed the subject of a splendidly illustrated series of articles in The Century magazine for 1883-4.
Restigouche is in the midst of salmon rivers, and Metapediae still farther on, is another headquarters for this lordly pastime.
Unless our tourist is interested in these special features, or proposes to go through to Quebec and Montreal, he will perhaps not care to take this northerly trip, but with prefer to loiter in the Acadian country between Truro and Moncton, at the head of the Bay of Fundy, and then to go by rail to St. John—a pleasant run through the best farming district of the province.
His homeward trip from that city, if he is wise, will include a visit to St. Andrews, Passamaquoddy bay and the Schoodic lakes.
Two lines of steamers in summer run from St. John to Passamaquoddy bay. Three times a week, one of the large vessels of the international line departs for Eastport, where connection is made with a small steamboat cruising up Passamaquoddy bay and the St. Croix river. If the tourist intends to return to St. John, it is advisable to go out by one route and back by the other; if not, he will get more out of the trip by way of Campobello and Eastport, Me. There is also a railroad (Grand Southern) from St. John to St. Stephen, eighty-two miles, which it is proposed to extend as a coast-line to Penobscot bay. The bay of St. John is interesting both pictorially and traditionally. At Carleton, opposite St. John was built that fur-trading fort of young La Tour the Huguenot, which his wife defended so courageously and where her trust was so shamefully abused.
After the old French rule had begun to wane, this stronghold was left desolate, though many naval skirmish between French and English took place in the offing; and during the Revolution, when 5,000 loyal​ists, banished from New England, were brought here in English vessels to become the nucleus of the present capital, the harbor was made a British naval rendezvous.
After leaving St. John, the steamer to Eastport passes well out into the Bay of Fundy, yet not so far away but that in clear weather the amazingly rough and barren shores are distinctly visible. Split rock and Musquash harbor, where two centuries back a naval fight occurred; Dipper harbor, where the frigate Plumper was wrecked many years ago; Point Lefreau, bearing a double light-house; and the Wolves, islets of rock with a light 111 feet high, off Beaver harbor, are passed in turn. On the Wolves many a wreck has occurred, and to them might well be applied Swinburne's magnificent poem, Les Casquettes:
The steamer now rounds Bliss island, comes within sight of "the rolling hills of Campobello" in the southwest, and traverses the West Isles archipelago, inhabited by fishermen. "Sometimes," notes Mr. Sweetzer, "she meets, in these outer passages, great fleets of fishing-boats, either drifting over schools of fish, or, with their white and red sails stretched, pursuing their prey. If such a meeting occurs during one of the heavy fogs which so often visit this coast, a wonderfully weird effect is caused by the sudden emergence and disappearance of the boats in the dense white clouds."
Soon after passing the White Horse islet, the steamer enters the eastern passage and skirts the shore of Campobello island, now so well known to Boston people as a summer resort.
This island is eight miles long by three miles wide, and belongs to New Brunswick, though it lies right in the harbor of Eastport. It has been occupied for more than a century by the Owens, descendants of a British admiral, to whom it was granted by the crown. He was an eccentric Welshman, and many quaint stories are told of him. His heirs continued to reside upon, and partly cultivate the island. The Owens attempted to gather about them a feudal tenantry, and, had the pre-revolutionary order of things remained, would doubtless have populated the island as an unbroken estate; but the Yankee fishermen, and almost equally independent Bluenoses, thought the time had passed for that sort of thing after Yankee Doodle became a national anthem, and they seized land for homesteads on the southern shore, convenient to their labor. The lordly proprietors resisted and literally "fired them out," by frequently burning their houses and schooners; but were ​finally compelled to let them stay. This settlement is now called Wilson's Beach, and there is another, Welch pool, on the northern shore, to which an hourly ferry-boat runs from Eastport in summer. The island contains nearly 2,000 residents, mainly fishermen and lobster-catchers, who formerly gave much trouble to the authorities by persistent smuggling.
"There was great excitement here in 1866, when many armed Irish patriots came to Eastport, apparently with the design of invading Campobello and twisting the tail of the British lion. The island was nearly deserted by its inhabitants; British frigates and American cutters cruised in the adjacent waters; St. Andrews and St. Stephen were garrisoned by British troops; and General Meade occupied Eastport with a detachment of United States regulars."
This island (like Grand Menan, which lies farther out at sea, and is reached by tri-weekly steamboats in two hours from Eastport) is renowned for the magnificent cliffs with which it confronts the sea, and the deeply-cut, cavernous, romantic coves that indent them; and only less thin Grand Menan has it long been the resort of painters, naturalists and persons fond of marine scenes and deep-water fishing.
In 1880, however, when its proprietor decided to go back to England, Campobello was bought by a syndicate of Boston men, who have set up there what bids fair to become a formidable rival to Mt. Desert, and are widely advertising the attractions of their property. The old Owen homestead has been converted into a big hotel, and two other houses, with all the beauty and elegance demanded of the modern seaside hostelry, have been erected, besides many cottages emulating in architecture and refinement of surroundings those at Newport, Nahant or Bar Harbor. Boarders are also taken by the islanders. New laudings have been constructed, the old roads repaired, and many new ones cut through to the most worthy points of view or to pleasant residence districts.
Eastport is a town sloping up from its wharves in a pretty way. Or, rather, it was, and sometime hence will again be; for in the fall of 1886 a fire swept the town almost out of existence. It is on Moose island, at the head of a harbor, protected from the sea by Campobello; but joined to the mainland by a bridge. Its industries are almost wholly connected with the deep-sea fisheries, and there are here extensive factories for putting up the small herrings which became "sardines" in the market. They are preserved in cotton-seed oil, for the most part, and packed in tin boxes imitating in appearance the imported article. This industry, which amounts to nearly a million dollars a year, has almost supplanted the smoking and pickling of "red" herrings which flourished previous to the rebellion, finding its market in the south, as food for the negroes. Some 370,000 boxes of red herring is the present annual supply of Eastport and its vicinity. The canning of lobsters is another feature of the town's fish-preserving. ​Passamaquoddy bay has seen a deal of fighting; and is now guarded by the guns of Fort Sullivan, which was built in 1808, resisted an attack in 1813, but in 1314 was surrendered to a British fleet, whose marines held the town four years.
Five miles above Eastport, on Pleasant point, or Sybaik, stands an Indian village holding a remnant of a once large local tribe, distinguished by its loyalty to the American colonies during the revolution. The story of this band forms a considerable chapter in Vetromile's learned history of the Abnakis. Another remnant of the same band dwells on the Schoodic lakes.
The scenery here is attractive, hills resting the eyes on both shores. On the eastern side of the bay is the forested and rocky region traversed by the Magaguadavic river and lakes, where deer are still numerous and trout-fishing is good. Near its mouth is a remarkable gorge, through which the waters rush with a roar like Niagara." This furnishes a fine water-power for the cliff-side mills of St. George, a village at the eastern (or northern) entrance to the bay, near which are quarries of a rose-red granite equalling in quality the celebrated "Aberdeen" granite of Scotland. Three miles back, the woods hide Lake Utopia, whence some remarkable pre-historic relics have come to the Canadian museums, and of which still more marvelous legends are related. On a peninsula at the mouth of the St. Croix, stands the provincial seaport and village of St. Andrews.
To the artist and loiterer, St. Andrews is a great comfort. The gratifying assemblage of water and land in its landscapes, whichever way you look; the quaint irregularity of many of its houses; the moss-grown, grass-producing, sleepy appearance of the whole neighborhood; and, most of all, the crumbling old warehouses and ratting, unsafe, delightfully sketchable wharves,—all these are dear to the heart of painter and poet. If it is pathetic, too, this is in a quiet degree, for we feel that the little town, though now under a commercial cloud, is not as one that sorrows without hope; moreover, it is quite likely this impression may give way somewhat as we become better acquainted, and find that the couple of thousand people here are not quite so dead, albeit fully as reposeful, as they seem at first sight.
What is the story of this town with its "air of respectability, as if it had seen better days?"
St. Andrews, anticipating the building of an air line railway, the "St. Lawrence & Quebec," in 1832, had prepared elaborate terminal facilities along the margin of her capital harbor, and when these were rendered naught, she fad little left to grow upon. St. John already outreached her as a port of entry and commercial centre, and the towns farther up the St. Croix, through their superior milling facilities absorbed the lumber trade. So St. Andrews faded into reminiscences, and became little more than a seashore resort for the people of the province, enjoying in that respect the first place. Several of ​the most prominent men in Canada are regular residents during the vacation season, when the village is animated by fashionable pleasure-seekers and a host of less fashionable, but quite as jolly, "common folks." Many New England people, also, have formed the habit of visiting it.
Some years ago, a large modern hotel, "The Argyle," was erected in a commanding situation. This has now passed into new hands, has been renovated, and is about to renew the "wide and enviable notoriety" which we are assured it has attained. Its opportunity for pleasant drives; the presence of handsome yachts and the chance for splendid yachting in ample land-locked waters; and the entire and prompt suspension of all annoyance from hay-fever enjoyed by visitors there, are advantages of no light importance in the catalogue St. Andrews offers. "In every respect that can be suggested, the situation of St. Andrews as a summer resort is favorable; and its future popularity would seem to be assured."
Five or six miles up the St. Croix river from St. Andrews is Nentral, or Doncet's island, where De Monts and Champlain built a post for their first winter in the New World (1604-5), and endured extraordinary hardships, according to Les Carbot. "It is meet," he writes, "to tell you how hard the isle of St. Croix is to be found out to them that never were there; for there are so many isles and great bays to go by (from St. John) before one he at it, that I wonder how one might ever pierce so far as to find it. There are three or four mountains imminent above the others, on the sides; but on the north side, from whence the river runneth down, there is but a sharp-pointed one, above two leagues distant." The mountain referred to is the fine peak of Chamcook, which is often ascended for the sake of the view. It is some three miles from St. Andrews by carriage-road, but the base may be reached by the railroad from the latter place. Many small forest-hidden lakes in its neighborhood contain the speckled trout, and the gray spotted trout called togue. It was the finding of traces of the French winter-quarters on Doncet's island that proved this river to be the "St. Croix" of the old voyagers, and caused the United States to shrink its claims to additional territory back to this stream. The name is said to be "because it runs in the form of a cross; one branch goes up northeast to the Schoodic lakes that bound the state of Maine and New Brunswick; the other brunch runs westward to the Schoodic lakes toward the Passadumkeag river." This is the assertion of the historian of the Abnakis, Father Vetromile, who was missionary to the Indians Etchimins) of this region; but as the first voyagers were not acquainted with the river to this extent, I fear the good priest is simply emulating the pious zeal which led to its first naming in honor of the Holy Cross, without regard to the geographical accuracy. Another supposition is that the cruciform character of the expansion of Oak bay, 10 miles above St. Andrews, was noticed by De Monts and ​suggested the appellation. The name of the cape at the northern margin of Oak bay is an opposite case. It is now known as the Devil's head; but was originally Duval's head, from a man of that cognomen who lived there and had no idea of attaining to a satanic immortality like this.
Half a dozen miles farther brings the steamer to St. Stephen, N. B., and Calais, Me., which are only separated from one another by bridges guarded at each end by customs officers. These towns are active and pleasant. The principal industry is lumber-making, the rapids which make the head of navigation furnishing an inexhaustable water-power. The one incident in their history is the peace which reigned, by mutual agreement, between the two localities whose interests were identical during all the British-American war of 1812. "Level-headed men," remarks Mr. Dawson, sententiously, "addicted to the free interchange of commodities, ave not carried away by martial ardor."
The New Brunswick Railway runs from St. Stephen to St. John, and northward to Houlton, Woodstock, and Frederickton. From Calais there is a short railway to the Schoodic lakes, and stages to Eastport and Machias, connecting with steamers. From Machias westward, mail-coaches run through the sparse settlements at the heads of the ocean inlets, some seventy-five miles to Ellsworth.
The Schoodic lakes must not be forgotten. They lie along the eastern border of the state, and can be reached at their upper end from Danforth (by wagon) or at Vanceboro on the Maine Central; or at their lower end by the railway from Calais to Princeton. A steamer cruises up Grand river and about the lakes, the most important of which is Grand lake, and there are excellent camping grounds. This is the home of the land-locked salmon. and the fish commissioners of the state, not only, but of the United States, have distributed great quantities of their eggs and artificially hatched young to all parts of the country. The word Schoodic, meant lakes surrounded with clearings made by fire; and according to Vetromile the Abnaki name of the St. Croix, Peskadamink kanty, has reference to these, and similar feeders. The writings of Hamlin, Scott, Hallock and other authorities on angling give an account of the fishes and fishing here (May is the best season), and should be consulted by any angler about to make his first visit to these or any other of the Maine lakes. Excellent shooting for ail classes of game can he had in the neighborhood of these lakes, of course.
The railway northward from St. Stephen runs through a rocky, desolate and monotonous forest to McAdam Junction, where you strike the main line of the New Brunswick Railway. Six miles southward is Vanceboro, whence the daily train of the Maine Central Railroad runs to Bangor by sunset. Or, by going to Eastport you can get a steamer for Portland.