The Portland daily press., 1862-07-03
The STATE of Maine-Relatiyely.

tne iilus vi Hef young IIleIl, Iilat otner otdtes
present superior claims to their attention, offer
greater encouragement to enterprise, and af-
ford better stimulants to honest industry. In
deed, the disposition to find fault with our cold
climate, our "down east fogs," our sterile soil,
and our uninviting scenery, has become almost
chronic in certain quarters, and it seems to be
thought proof of wonderful wisdom to sneer
at this portion of our common country as a
good State TO emigrate from. If our observa-
tons are not greatly at fault, this spirit is quite
as prevalent with those who have been born
upon the soil, as with those imported from 9TH
er States.
Look into our school books-the common
school Biographies of few years ago, when it
was more fashionable than at present to picto-
rialize such works-and see how Maine is
represented. To give the plastic mind of
childhood, upon which first impressions are
stamped with an indelibilty seldom witnessed
n after life,-an idea of the great features,
characteristics, productions and pursuits of our
State, not in any particular locality but as
whole, the makers of such books have been ac-
customed to present, not a lively picture of
commercial activity, with its skeleton ships APP
preaching completion, and its snowy canvass
filling before the breeze; not manufacturing
town, with its stately edifices dedicated to the
god of industry; not rural scene, with its
quiet lake, its noisy brook, its merry haymak-
ers, its focks and herds, its frolicing lambs and
its rollicking children; not quiet country
church, where old people worship God and
young people worship each other; not village
schoolhouse in its setting Of green, studded
with bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, mischef-loving
gems; not even a farm-yard with its cows, or
poultry-yard with its feathered subjects of
King Chanticleer, but we find simply an old,
dilapidated sd,cmiu, in some gloomy mountain
stream, overhung by cold, cherries and for
bidding frs, and set off with pendant icicles-
and falling snow-fakes! Such is the pictorial
idea Of Maine which has been photographed
upon the very foreground of the young mind.
A child thus instructed, in the absence of other
and better information, would naturally regard
the SAFE of Maine as a good place to catch
trout, TO trap musquashes, or to procure cheap
uel-particularly green stab-,rood.
1t occurs to us that few years since one of
the most graphic descriptive writers of our
country, was sent on mission to Maine by the
proprietors of widely-known and popular
magazine, to serve up our people and their
ruling interests for the enlightenment and
qualification of all the world in general. and
'.the rest of mankind" in particular. He came,
he saw, he wrote,-and ,chat did he write. and
by what name did he designate us? Why. he
had long, appropriately illustrated article,
entitled "The Loggers Of Maine; as though
Maine was only one vast logging swamp, and
all her sons were clothed in the skins of slain
beasts, lived in camps, on pine silver and ven
ison, and did nothing but cut saw-logs and
manufacture them into lumber for the market.
Now we hope not to be misunderstood. We
do Motive would not-underrate our lumber
ing interests, but we object to holding our
goodly State up before the world forever, as
the home of the bear and the beaver, and oc-
cupied by men only TO reap forest productions,
planted without their agency, and matured
independently Of human enterprise We object
to having Maine, with her varied interests,
held up simply as logging State. She has
mines of wealth more enduring than her pines
to be developed as her forests shall give
place to waving fields, and her musical water
falls shall take on the accompaniment of buzz
zng spindles.
We fear no successful contradiction of the
assertion,-based not on mere local pride, but
extended observation and stubborn facts.-that
Maine stands, by nature, geographical posi-
ton, climate, mineral wealth, fertility of soil,
commercial advantages, and in many other re-
spects, in the rery front rank of States. Our
people-particularly our young people-need
to know, to feel, and to take an honest pride
in this fact.
True, we do not have the rich, Deep fat, ex-
hausless prairies of Illinois; nor do we have
her agues and her shakes. We do not have the
gold placers of California and Oregon; nor do
we have the terrible droughts of the former or
the everlasting winter rains and mud of the
latter. We do not have the sugar plantations
of Louisiana, the rice swamps of Carolina, nor
the cotton fields of Alabama and Mississippi:
nor do we have their alligators, their venom
Gus serpents, their poisonous insects, their yell
low fever and their deadly malaria.
1t is readily admitted that other States ex-
coed us in some one or possibly more advan-
tages-some in one and some in another-but
where is the State that within her own self
combines so great variety and such an appa-
rent contrariety of interests as our own? We
have nearly four hundred miles of sea coast,
stretching from Kittery Point to Quoddy Head,
indented by as fine harbors as ever gave shell
ter to a nations commerce; navigable rivers
penetrating to the very heart of the State the
surface of the land broken into plateaus, caus-
ing the streams, as they leap from one to an
other, to furnish an amount of water power
sufficient to turn the machinery of the world
Think of the exhaustless granite quarries of
Hallowel, Dix Island and Mosquito Mountain,
from which the material for Wall Street, Fort
Sumter and the Custom Houses of Charleston
and New Orleans have been quarried. Think
Of the lime in Thomaston and Camden. sufii-
cient to plaster a nation. Then there are the
slate quarries of BrownEille, the iron of Ka-
tahdin, the marble and mari recently discov-
the feldspar, and numerous other mineral, cal
careous or silicious deposits, scattered all over
the State with a prodigality that should lead
every child of Maine to feel grateful that his
lines have been east i'm the midst of such ahun-