Morning journal and courier., 1891-09-01
NEW ENGLAND,s COAST.


 ly Rocks Where the Green Waves
 Break in SoIitude-The Sea Birds
 Home-Mt. Desert Rock Light
 house-Lighthouse Keepers Remu-
 neration.
 To the Editor of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 Conclusions are not always conclusions! I have only got well under weigh on leay- ing Menan and try to correct one of my own conclusions now-viz.: About Petit Menan's bright light requiring and having no lamp chimney was writing from mem- ory and knew did not see one on the lamp Gn the day time). In accounting for it's absence as I wrote, @ very fine spun theory grew up in my mind, which like many other such, falls before the facts. In looking over my original notes for some thing yet to come, I found there was lamp chimney to go on at night. That set tied it. Besides all the pure air draught chimney is needed to intensity triple burners flame into intense brilliancy!
 do not go into the varied kinds of lights. Fixed white, red, revolving, etc., of the Maine coast, or elsewhere. Their variety and local adaptation; their pecu- liar lenses and machinery, however inter esting, was not 8 particular study to me. Sankaty's and Menan's were the most elab- crate and that has been given at last fair ly correct Any one going through Long Island sound at night has fine view of lights varied of purpose. Daniel Webster has been reported as saying that "Long Island sound ought to be lighted like a ball room!" Doubtless he knew the value of lighthouses to commerce and to safe passenger transit.
 As the day passes meridian, far to west of Menan's fair Pharos, we see Greene Mount, low down on the horizon as the Iris steams eastward.
 We soon reach Naraguagus and Pond Island lighthouse. This island as seen that fair October day so clear and pleasant was a gem of picture' Although l had my color box with me so made to hold bit of canvas twenty inches long in the lid, used it not once on the whole | trip. The Iris moves about too much for color sketching. Steam on she keeps ! off and around and returns at the right | time for the inspectors boat. It is diff cult to get pencil sketch with descrip- | tive lettering for colors in twenty minutes; still have it so. This is the way it looks We'll, up and away behind the light house is a charming gray hill of stone l it is so regular, like a broad based cone, on it's top mast left by the coast survey. I would have liked to ascended those regular | slopes of granite and looked around from
 the base of that staff. What mass of rock | Some mosses and low bright coloreo l bushes vary the predominating grays witt | ye]lows and reds, down here are some o1 l the ever hardy and adventurous spruce
 trees perched on this near ledge by the sea it's rock face broken and hollowed out
 colored deep reddish browns and darl
 purples. Then these shore rocks ragged
 as ever, yellows and green grays ant
 orange browns. All heightened by tht
 gray pyramidal hill in the back ground
 and the green sea now peaceful
 in front. Light house and dwelling
 in one and only one dwelling house beyond
 lonely place! Its chief songs, those of tn
 winds and waves, doubtless often bent ol
 mischief when they revel here. Thos
 strong iron shutters intimate that stron
 measures are needed to keep the wave
 from looking into the windows and search ing the house, or even they are boisterous
 Perhaps they are not iron; still they ar
 strong and remind me of the inspector
 account of another similar one where iro
 shutters had to be substituted; where tn
 waves running high not only broke int
 the windows of the house, but completel
 demolished the adjacent engine house an
 steam whistle there used, carrying tn
 boiler, etc., some distance and even move great block of granite, weighing tons, foot or so from where it lay on the soli , rock mass, although twenty feet or mo1 above the ordinary sweep of the wate1 This, I think, was at Mattinicus, far soutl i, west of Pond Island, L. H. That must | l a place where the heavy ocean swells an , wild breakers sometimes evidently hol 5 high revelry.
 How would you kind reader, like to iy
 on such rock as Mattinicus? say twent ] miles from the main land. The sea birc almost your only visitors from years en i to years end! excepting the Iris conn @ quarterly with provisions and fuel, pa 'd books, and mail matter; friendly letters e you have any friends mindful of you
 such isolation. sOut of sight" often tru n becomes "out of mind"
 ,. What can you do besides attending ,: your light, thankful for ''life's care ]: which has been truly said ''are comforts anything! Yesl you can fish, good sea fl.
 in those waters. A lso perhaps sometim | secure drift wood, spars of vessels. r minders of marine disasters and the walt I of lighthouses. Sometimes watch gre [ steamers bound east or west far on u
 horizon of lonely waters, or sailing vesse I CdIclu1 AOt tO COluO UOO uOdI yOu. OL with strong glass you could make o
 some of the mountains, and even coa line of Maine
 You are not enthusiastic to apply for u situation when vacant-well I must tl l again. What say you to Mt. Desert Roo l lighthouse, twenty miles north of tn 1 island? A bald rock without tre rugged and bleak, only few hundred fe across in any direction, hardly place f. | little grass to grow, reminding of wh lives on mainland. Where the billoy sweep around so that it is often difficu for the inspector's boat to make a landin, | or the larger boat that swings on the Fri starboard side to land the coal and prov sions required by the loan dwellers, times quite impossible; to persist the would cause it to be swamped! sWou not like it. Whats not with seven eight hundred dollars salary and ligh house frees Would you say that cutti, down of salaries fifty dollars or so arour at the different lighthouses, as one 1igh house keeper informed me had been do1 would encourage you to review the su ject and look more favorably to an e gagement in the lighthouse services "No It seems to you, then, as it does to me, free and independent voter,' that our civ service reforms in Ca government of u | people, Dy the people, TOT the people, II : morte! words, ought not to reform in tn | way.
 ] Ihope the case is better now than
 was, but I do not know. The Unite
 States, with 8 very large revenue from in
 ports can afford to pay their lighthou
 men very fully and fairly, and not salari
 cut down out of all proportion to the re
 value of their service and actual har
 ships-for we have large coastwise con merce, if little other, in our own ships
 whatever kind. How much do the ligh house keepers gets was told from $4( , to $500. If ever you come to see numbe
 of these lighthouses as I did, in thei
 lonely places, and see the exact work r
 quired and done as surely as the sun ris
 and sets, that you would think as I do
 can we'll believe. It is no sinecure! man got such position for some local D 1 litical iohherv throuph his local uoliticia a,