XXXV.

THE GREAT PENOBSCOT BAY.

WE have come through the forests to the edge of Penobscot Bay-one of the crowning glories of "hundred-harbored Maine." Its shores and islands bear many noble trees, and its head-waters traverse an immense territory covered with forests of pine, spruce, and hemlock. Two hundred millions of feet of lumber will be surveyed at its chief port of Bangor in a single season. The visitor wanders in these great woods and thinks of Longfellow's lines:

"This is the forest primeval. The murmuring pines and the hemlocks,

Bearded with moss, and with garments green, indistinct in the twilight,

Stand like Druids of old, with voices sad and prophetic,

Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their bosoms. Loud from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced neighboring ocean Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest."

This magnificent region of wood and mountain, bay and archipelago, to which we have come recalls many Revolutionary memories. The bold western shores of Penobscot Bay make the well-known Maine counties of Knox and Waldo. Its abutting lands were included in the noted "Muscongus Patent" which King George I. issued and which came to Governor Samuel Waldo. The colonists were sturdy fighters in those days, and at Thomaston, through which we have passed, on the picturesque St. George's River, the English built a fort early in the last century to hold this crown grant, and the French from Acadia must consequently attack it, the monks, it was said, leading their Indian allies, the warlike Tarratines, but being successfully repulsed. This extensive Muscongus Patent embraced a tract thirty miles wide on each side of the Penobscot, and General Waldo, who was colonial gov

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ernor of Massachusetts, thus had a princely domain. But he died before the Revolution, and Waldo county and the town of Waldoboro' now preserve his memory. His patent afterward came to the noted Revolutionary general, Henry Knox, through his wife, and thus Knox became the patroon of Penobscot Bay, building a palace at Thomaston, where he lived in baronial state, maintaining all the dignity and ceremonial of the most aristocratic court, and spending so much money in maintaining his princely scale of living and generous hospitality that he bankrupted himself and almost ruined his Revolutionary compatriot, General Benjamin Lincoln, who became involved with him. General Knox was a splendid man, but he was literally "land poor," although he owned much of the best part of the then province of Maine, which at that time was part of the State of Massachusetts. His descendants and successors have since divided up his extensive principality.

AN EXPLORATION.

Upon part of General Knox's domain, the beautiful waters of the magnificent Penobscot Bay and its many dotted islands, whose rocky contours make the most attractive and capacious archipelago upon the Atlantic coast of the United States, we look out from the diminutive but most picturesque Owl's Head Bay at Rockland. This town of primitive development nestles behind the bold jutting point of the Owl's Head, whose strong and steady light and fog-signal guide the mariner entering the Penobscot. It is a town of sea-captains, fishermen, and lime-burners. Its rocks make the best lime on these coasts. They are quarried and burnt in kilns along the shore, where the product is put in barrels and shipped to market. A hundred kilns illuminate the hills at night, and a million barrels will be sent away in a year. Yet lime is not the only rocky product of this region. The adjacent islands are famous for their granites. Among them is Dix Island, a

compact mass of granite, where the vessels load alongside the ledges whence the blocks are cut. This granite built our Philadelphia Post-office. Vinalhaven Island, down the bay, produces the Bodwell granite that built the grand new Army and Navy Department building in Washington. Fleets of schooners are now bringing this Maine granite in paving-blocks to Philadelphia to improve our streets. These granite islands and the pleasant shores and protruding points of land jutting into the bay at Rockland that have such a superb outlook are just beginning to feel the presence of the summer saunterer. Rustic cottages are going up, and a pretty club-house out on a promontory gives a feature to the view at Owl's Head; but these primitive people seem still too much wedded to the ways of their forefathers to very extensively patronize it. Salt fish and a noontide dinner still prevail in these parts over swallowtail coats and a full-course banquet in the evening.

From Rockland we begin an exploration of this wonderful bay. An ancient stage-coach with four horses, which might have been patronized by General Knox himself, after sundry turnings skilfully managed is judiciously packed by a party of Quaker explorers from the city of Penn, and starts up the coast. We take a winding road among the cottages and bits of forest, giving splendid views out over the bay. We move north-eastward, and the towering and forest-crowned Camden Hills rise higher and higher as the stage-coach approaches that little town. More lime-kilns are along the shores, with their quarries inland, the old coach rocking and rolling as we jolt by them and swiftly slide down the winding way that leads into the steep ravine making the miniature harbor of Rockport, which supports another colony of lime-burners. The male population not thus employed are generally standing listlessly about with their hands in their pockets, mildly wondering who could have had the audacity to thus rudely invade their sleepy village. But we climb laboriously out

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of the Rockport ravine, admiring the gorge through which the stream comes down that has made it, and soon reach Camden, with its bold shores around the pleasant cove that forms its harbor, where enough of Maine's almost lost shipbuilding industry remains to allow of the construction of two large vessels on the sloping bank. This town nestles under the shadow of the towering Camden Hills, which here make such a gorgeous background for the western edge of Penobscot Bay, and round-topped Megunticook Mountain rises fourteen hundred feet above the Camden harbor. Visitors sometimes climb to its top to get the grand view over the broad blue bay and its splendid archipelago, with the ocean at its entrance and the swelling peaks of Mount Desert far to the eastward.

THE ARCHIPELAGO.

At Camden our Quaker party is carefully unpacked from the ancient stage-coach to change from land to water navigation. The road brings us out high above the waters of the cove, so that we carefully pick our way down the steep steps and wooden sidewalks of the hilly streets of Camden to get to the water-side, where a pleasant little steam-yacht awaits us at the wharf. Soon the party, not forgetting the commissariat, are upon the Barbara, ready for a sea-voyage. She swiftly moves out of the diminutive harbor, rocking gently as the quick pulse-beats of her busy little engine keep time with the waves. In a few minutes she has passed out upon the broad bay. In front are the bold forest-clad shores of the islands two or three miles off, spread in grand array broadly across the view. Behind us, as the Barbara briskly paddles along, rise the noble Camden Hills higher and higher, the sloping shores in front of them a mass of delicious green, having little villas peeping out among the trees. We swiftly cross the rippling waters of the great bay, getting a full view of its splendid sweep from the ocean for miles northward and into the deeply-indented

harbor of Belfast, some distance above Camden. The Owl's Head lighthouse marks the limit of the southern view, while over opposite is another little white lighthouse tower nestling among the islands, making a landmark toward which our nimble-paced Barbara is heading. Quickly crossing the bay and leaving its western mountain-backed shores, our active little craft enters the archipelago and passes among the pretty islands into Gilkey's Harbor, an almost completely landlocked sheet of water, where the largest ships can securely float, yet having such thorough protection from the islands enclosing it that the pleasures of the sailing yacht and row-boat can be enjoyed in perfect security. One might suppose this a miniature summer sea in the famed Grecian Archipelago. The sail is magnificent over the smooth waters bordered by the rocky, forest-covered island shores, where sheep browse in the clearings, with an occasional old-fashioned farm-house on the upland. Our little yacht has taken us in past the Ensign Island and Job's Island, and behind Seven-Hundred-Acre Island and Spruce Island, the latter containing a mass of firs of most gorgeous development, rivalling the noted groves of arbor vitæ that have been established at enormous expense on Lake Windermere in the English Lake District.

Soon we approach a little wharf which has just been built in a pleasant cove behind Grindle's Point on Long Island, and land. By recent purchases a large part of Long Island and some adjacent sections have become Philadelphia property for a summer resort. A primitive farm-house on the sloping shore about a thousand feet from the harbor, and elevated nearly a hundred feet above the water, becomes our temporary home. It is a low-spreading, comfortable building, filling the want so many tourists long for. All the rooms are front rooms, and the house is chiefly first floor. From the piazza is an unrivalled view in its combination of land-and-water loveliness. The green