The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1891-10-16

record that "three large, eleven middle,
and fourteen small masts were hoisted
on board a vessel and sent as a tribute to
England" Such occasional homage
must have been a justification for mer-
ry-making
The inhabitants themselves were rath-
er enterprising in business; for rum and
lumber were exchangeable quantities
with the ventmesome Campobello cap
tains, who traded with the southern
ports and West Indies, and carried Nova
Scotia grindstones to the States Bolder,
but the quieter in action, were the
smugglers, who, deep amid the woods,
near the only fresh water pond of the is
land, alternately came and vanished.
Much of their spare time was spent in
digging for an iron chest of Spanish
doubloons, buried by ancient buccaneers.
The admiral and his family often rode
! through the woods to watch the men in
the hopeless work, and to obtain their
share of the treasure trove. if ever it
were found. One bright morning ever
digger had fled, leaving deep evacua-
ton i'll the ground, but far down on its
sides marked out by iron rust which had
chung to the earth; the outlines of a chest
were visible. A cart track and the ruins
of four or five huts are all that now re-
main of the sight of this mysterious ac-
tivity. With the departure of these
smugglers disappeared the steady ex-
citement of years, the perpetual topic
of conversation; thereafter the people
could only question each other about
the strange wreck whose rotting timbers
were there century before. Its last
remnants have now been carved into
love tokens.
Saddest were the days when the adj
miral strobe up and down his imaginary
quarter. deck, his empire fishing settle
ment, where boys wages had once been
three cents a day. Eastport still owned
the islands around it; the people brought
in their fish and sold them for groceries
and other articles at stores where it was
credited to them. The little vessels
crossing the bay made it gay for the adj
miral's eye, but his spirit sank as he
fancied that some boat might be drift
ing round an inlet, with its owner frozen
to the mast amid the supplies he was
bringing to his family, who were waiting
i'll vain for their fathers return; or as he
thought of the burden of this ever in
creasing debt and credit system, or of
the perils of smugglers. Later, when
the duties were taken off by the United
States smuggling disappeared, and
CampObello business went down. Could
it have been said to exist?
A few persons possessed enough ready
money to build the picturesque weirs
which fringe the islands with stakes,
driven three or four feet apart, and rib
boned together with round small poles.
The dried foliage and the dripping sea-
weed clinging to them give a CHASTITY
beauty to this living mausoleum of the
herring.
But all this was a narrow confne for
the social and political ambition of the
admiral. An exile because of poverty,
that compelled him to accept the royal
gift, he felt that he must devote himself
to controversial discussions and the cree.
ton of new Episcopal church. Before
this day the people had been Baptists;
personal locality anglicized their relig-
ion. The regularly ordained preacher |
was sent from st. Andrews but four OF
five times a year; on all other appointed |
days the admiral read the beloved ser
vice, even till 1912, when a resident mis-. |
sionery came to live on the island. Thir-
teen years after, in 1876, the church and |
burial ground were consecrated by the |
bishop of the diocese. Most solemn and /
tender must have been those first rites.
when confirmation was administered to .
three persons, and holy communion to .
forty others, in that little building sur
rounded by the dark balsamic frs, and
looking with its cross over the waters to-
glish friends sent money to the church,
and the Owen family gave memorial Of
ferings. The reredos, with the silver
cross, was a memorial to Capt. John
Robinson, the grandson of the admiral.
The block of stone from which the font
was carved was taken from the church
of the Knights Templar at Malta, and
carried to be wrought into graceful
form, and then was borne across the
ocean to this tiny, much loved church.
The chancel carpet, worked on canvass
III cross-stitch; the altar vestments; the
stoles; the chalice wells, green, white,
purple, each bearing the sym
Dol of the cross in varied stitch and de-
sign, were all wrought by the delicate,
fair hands of the admiral's daughter, and
her children, and their friends, as an Of
fering of self-cOnsecration and of devo-
ton to the building up of a higher life
among the islanders. These, too, brought
their gifts, and replaced with chandeliers
the wax candles which had been set in
holes in the book-rests: and when the
sea called away the men, the old lady,
rich in humility and good works, rang
the bell for weekly service.
Two years after this conservation the
admiral died. During the last five years
Of his life he had spent much of his time
in St. John, as he had made second