Part 4 (1/2)
The sea rolls in great waves that overwhelm every thing within their reach. More than once I started back at the approach of one of them.
Just outside the first line of breakers rode a flock of wild fowl, and occasionally the mournful cry of a loon, or shriller scream of a sea-gull, mingled with the roar of the surf. Farther out, at the distance of a mile, a wicked-looking rock and ledge was flinging off the seas, flecking its tawny flanks with foam, like a war-horse impatiently champing at his bit.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GREAT HEAD.]
Looking off from Great Head to the eastward, the main-land is perceived trending away until it loses itself in the ocean. At the extremity of this land is Schoodic Point and Mountain, with Mosquito Harbor indenting it. The water between is not the true ”Baye Francoise” of Champlain, Lescarbot, and others. The appellation belongs of right to the Bay of Fundy, perpetuating as it does the misadventure of Nicolas Aubri, one of the company of De Monts, who was lost in the woods there. As this is not the only historic anachronism by many that may be met with on our coasts, I do not propose to quarrel with it, the less that a Frenchman was the first white here. The name has been current for about a century, though on old French maps it is found to lie farther east.
The north wind was beating down yesterday's sea, sweeping over the billows, and whirling their crests far away to leeward. Along the rocks the foam lay like wool-fleeces, or was whisked about, dabbling the grim face of the cliff with creamy spots. Other headlands were mailed in ice.
Mount Desert Rock is about twenty miles south-south-east of the island and from fourteen to eighteen from the nearest land. It has a light-house, built upon naked, shapeless ledges. There is another on Baker's Island, off the entrance to Somes's Sound.
Natural sea-marks, like Great Head Cliff, are preferred by mariners to artificial buoys or beacons. No one that has seen them will be likely to forget the Pan of Matanzas, or the Cabanas of Havana. Before the excellent system inaugurated by the United States Coast Survey, trees, standing singly or in groups, often gave direction how to steer on a dangerous coast. Sometimes they were lopped on one side, or made to take some peculiarity of shape that would distinguish them from all others.
Thus some solitary old cedar becomes a guide-board known to all who travel on ocean highways.
The next point of interest will be found at Otter Creek, which may be reached in good weather by sailing, by the direct road from Bar Harbor, already mentioned, or by crossing the lower ridge of Newport Mountain from Great Head.
After a last look at the sea, which was of a dingy green, and broke angrily as far as the eye could reach in the offing, I entered the trail that was to bring me to Otter Creek.
Newport's southern peak was just overhead, its sharp protuberances made smooth by k.n.o.bs of ice that resembled the bosses of a target. There reached me occasional rapid glimpses of the sea in ascending, but I walked chiefly in a dense growth that excluded all light, except when the glint of the sun through the tree-tops fell in golden bars across my way. Prostrate and uselessly rotting was wood enough to have kept a good-sized village through the winter. The air was light and elastic. I do not think a pleasanter ramble is to be had on the island than this forest-walk.
”O'er windy hill, through clogged ravine, And woodland paths that wound between Low drooping pine-boughs winter-weighed.”
At Otter Creek is a scattered settlement and an inlet of the sea, into which the creek empties. The island traditions say the place was once the favorite retreat of the otter. There are cliffs to admire or study on the sea-sh.o.r.e, and Thunder Cave is there to explore.
In this pocket-edition of Somes's Sound we find ourselves once more under the shadow of Green Mountain, and upon looking back up the valley a pa.s.s opens between it and Newport, through which the road finds its way to Bar Harbor.
The dwellings here, as elsewhere on the island, are humble, and bespeak, in many instances, a near approach to poverty. In the larger villages there are comfortable and even substantial residences, but the impression of unthrift is a.s.sociated with the proper population. The reasons are obvious. The first inhabitants got their livelihood by fis.h.i.+ng, and formerly many vessels were fitted out from the Sound.
Perhaps not a few went for the Government bounty. With the failure of this industry little was left on which to depend. A scanty subsistence at most could be wrung from the soil, though Williamson, the historian of Maine, avers this was once strong and fertile in the valleys. The land, by the removal of crops without restoring the elements essential to it, has been growing poorer year by year. A little hay is cut on the uplands, and at Pretty Marsh are some hundreds of acres of salt meadow.
The mountains have been stripped of their wood to the last merchantable tree. At this unpromising juncture the island became suddenly famous, and is now among the most frequented of American summer resorts. None could be more astonished at their own prosperity than these islanders, who, being, as a whole and in a marked degree, incapable of appreciating the grandeur of the scenes with which they have from infancy been familiar, look with scarce concealed disdain upon the admiration they inspire in others.
Some handsome cottages have already sprung out of the prevailing ugliness at Bar Harbor. At Great Head a tract of considerable extent has been inclosed. The star of Mount Desert is clearly in the ascendant, as, however prudent the city man may be at home, all purse-strings are loosened at the sea-side. The French proverb, ”_Il faut faire ou se taire_” is usually construed into the modern barbaric ”play or pay” at the sh.o.r.e. Not one of these worthy landlords was ever known to fall, like Vatel, on his own sword because there was not enough roast meat.
Nevertheless, at the risk of forfeiting the reader's good opinion, I will say that there are landlords with consciences, and I have both seen and spoken with such on Mount Desert.
Another of my excursions, which afforded new entertainment with new scenes, was a pedestrian jaunt from Otter Creek to North-east Harbor.
This route commands fine ocean views in the direction of the entrance to the Sound and of the outlying islands. You first open Seal Cove, and, crossing the s.h.i.+ngle road at its head, in two miles and a half of farther progress skirting the eastern sh.o.r.e of the Sound, arrive at the head of North-east Harbor, an inconsiderable village, in which Williamson conjectures La Saussaye finally landed.
Seven miles more along the eastern base of Brown's Mountain, in the sombre shadows of which the road nestles, brings us back to the tavern door at Somesville. This road crosses a limb of Hadlock's Pond, and is skirted for some distance by a fine grove of beeches. In summer-time this part of the route is traversed under a canopy of overarching branches, whose dense foliage excludes all but a few straggling rays that let fall a s.h.i.+mmer of delicious sunlight, for the moment glorifying all that pa.s.s beneath.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE OVENS, SAULSBURY'S COVE.]
It may chance that the visitor will first pa.s.s over the section already traversed in these pages; or it may so fall out that he will decide to undertake a run by the sh.o.r.e north of Bar Harbor in advance of other excursions. In this case Salisbury's Cove and the ”Ovens” become his objective.
I have already fore-warned the reader that it is six or seven miles from any initial point to any other given point on Mount Desert Island. This equality of distance sometimes makes a choice embarra.s.sing, since in selecting from two routes the preference is usually given to the shorter. But it will sometimes happen that he will find these longer than statute miles, or that when pursuing his way with all imaginable confidence, it is suddenly blocked by a mountain or a precipice. These contingencies make walking preferable. A horse is no doubt a very useful animal where there are roads.
It is practicable at low tide to reach the Ovens by the beach, but as this involves many difficulties, it is better to take the road beyond Hull's Cove, two miles from Bar Harbor. The cove is said to have been named for a brother of General William Hull. It was resorted to quite early in the settlement of the island. Here was the dwelling-place of the Gregoires, to whom Ma.s.sachusetts ceded the whole island upon proof, exhibited in 1787, that Madame Gregoire was the lineal descendant of Cadillac, who claimed under his grant from Louis XIV. in 1688.[18] The meditative reader may ponder upon this resumption under a French t.i.tle as an evidence that time at last makes all things even. It would not seem inappropriate, inasmuch as two women have had so prominent a share in the history of Mount Desert, to perpetuate the names of Guercheville and Gregoire. The graves of the Gregoires may be seen near the north-east corner of the burial-ground. Monsieur is a.s.serted to have been a _bon-vivant_.