Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 12

CHAUCER.

One hot, slumberous morning in August I found myself in the town of Wells. I was traveling, as New England ought to be traversed by every young man of average health and active habits, on foot, and at leisure, along the beautiful road to Old York. Now Wells, as Victor Hugo says of a village in Brittany, is not a town, but a street, stretching for five or six miles along the sh.o.r.e, and everywhere commanding an extensive and unbroken ocean view.

The place itself, though bristling with history, has been stripped of its antiques, and is in appearance the counterpart of a score of neat, thrifty villages of my acquaintance. I paused for a moment at the site of the Storer garrison, in which Captain Converse made so manful a defense when Frontenac, in 1692, let slip his French and Indians on our border settlements.[63] Some fragments of the timbers of the garrison are preserved in the vicinity, one of which I saw among the collections of a village antiquary. In the annals of Wells the names of John Wheelwright and of George Burroughs occur, the former celebrated as the founder of Exeter, the latter a victim of the witchcraft horror of '92.

John Wheelwright, the cla.s.smate and friend of Cromwell, fills a large s.p.a.ce in the early history of the Bay Colony. A fugitive, like John Cotton, from the persecutions of Laud, he came to Boston in 1636, and became the pastor of a church at Braintree, then forming part of Boston.

He was the brother-in-law of the famous Ann Hutchinson, who was near creating a revolution in Winthrop's government,[64] and shared her Antinomian opinions. For this he was banished, and became the founder of Exeter in 1638. In 1643, Ma.s.sachusetts having claimed jurisdiction over that town, Wheelwright removed to Wells, where he remained two years.

Becoming reconciled to the Ma.s.sachusetts government, he removed to Hampton, was in England in 1657, returning to New England in 1660. He became pastor of the church in Salisbury, and died there in 1679; but the place of his burial, Allen says, is not known. He was the oldest minister in the colony at the time of his death, and a man of p.r.o.nounced character. The settlement of the island of Rhode Island occurred through the removal of William Coddington and others at the same time, and for the same reasons that caused the expulsion of Wheelwright from Boston, as Roger Williams had been expelled from Salem seven years before.

"Wheelwright's Deed" has been the subject of a long and animated controversy among antiquaries; some, like Mr. Savage, p.r.o.nouncing it a forgery because it is dated in 1629, the year before the settlement of Boston. This deed was a conveyance from the Indian sagamores to Wheelwright of the land on which stands the flourishing town of Exeter; and although copies of it have been recorded in several places, the original long ago disappeared. Cotton Mather, who saw it, testifies to its appearance of antiquity, and the advocates of its validity do not appear as yet to have the worst of the argument.[65]

George Burroughs, who fell fighting against terrorism on Gallows Hill--a single spot may claim in New England the terrible distinction of this name--was, if tradition says truly, apprehended by officers of the b.l.o.o.d.y Council at the church door, as he was leaving it after divine service. A little dark man, and an athlete, whose muscular strength was turned against him to fatal account. An Indian, at Falmouth, had held out a heavy fowling-piece at arms-length by simply thrusting his finger in at the muzzle. Poor Burroughs, who would not stand by and see an Englishman outdone by a redskin, repeated the feat on the spot, and this was the most ruinous piece of evidence brought forth at his trial. A man could not be strong then, or the devil was in it.

The road was good, and the way plain. As the sh.o.r.es are for some miles intersected by creeks intrenched behind sandy downs, the route follows a level shelf along the high land. There are pleasant strips of beach, where the sea breaks noiselessly when the wind is off sh.o.r.e, but where it comes thundering in when driven before a north-east gale. Now and then a vessel is embayed here in thick weather, or, failing to make due allowance for the strong drift to the westward, is set bodily on these sands, as the fishermen say, "all standing." While I was in the neighborhood no less than three came ash.o.r.e within a few hours of each other. The first, a timber vessel, missing her course a little, went on the beach; but at the next tide, by carrying an anchor into deep water and kedging, she was floated again. Another luckless craft struck on the rocks within half a mile of the first, and became a wreck, the crew owing their lives to a smooth sea. The third, a Bank fisherman, was left by the ebb high up on a dangerous reef, with a hole in her bottom. She was abandoned to the underwriters, and sold for a few dollars. To the surprise even of the knowing ones, the shrewd Yankee who bought her succeeded at low tide in getting some empty casks into her hold, and brought her into port.

Notwithstanding these sands are hard and firm as a granite floor, they are subject to shiftings which at first appear almost unaccountable.

Many years ago, while sauntering along the beach, I came across the timbers of a stranded vessel. So deeply were they imbedded in the sand, that they had the appearance rather of formidable rows of teeth belonging to some antique sea-monster than of the work of human hands.

How long the wreck had lain there no one could say; but at intervals it disappeared beneath the sands, to come to the surface again. I have often walked over the spot where it lay buried out of sight; and yet, after the lapse of years, there it was again, like a grave that would not remain closed.

A few years ago, an English vessel, the _Clotilde_, went ash.o.r.e on Wells Beach, and remained there high and dry for nearly a year. She was deeply laden with railway iron, and, after being relieved of her cargo, was successfully launched. During the time the ship lay on the beach, she became so deeply buried in the sand that a person might walk on board without difficulty. Ways were built underneath her, and, after a terrible wrenching, she was got afloat. Heavy objects, such as kegs of lead paint, and even pigs of iron, have been exposed by the action of the waves, after having, in some instances, been twenty years under the surface. I have picked up whole bricks, lost overboard from some coaster, that have come ash.o.r.e with their edges smoothly rounded by the abrasion of the sand and sea. There is an authentic account of the re-appearance of a wrecked ship's caboose more than a hundred and seventy years after her loss on Cape Cod. After a heavy easterly gale, the beach is always sprinkled with a fine, dark gravel, which disappears again with a few days of ordinary weather.

[Ill.u.s.tration: OLD WRECKS ON THE BEACH.]

Besides being the inexhaustible resource of summer idlers, the beach has its practical aspects. The sand, fine, white, and "sharp," is not only used by builders--and there is no fear of exhausting the supply--but is hauled away by farmers along sh.o.r.e, and housed in their barns as bedding for cattle, or to mix with heavy soils. The sea-weed and kelp that comes ash.o.r.e in such vast quant.i.ties after a heavy blow is carefully harvested, and goes to enrich the lands with its lime and salt. It formerly supplied the commercial demand for soda, and was gathered on the coasts of Ireland, Scotland, France, and Spain for the purpose. It is the _varec_ of Brittany and Normandy, the _blanquette_ of Frontignan and Aigues-mortes, and the _salicor_ of Narbonne. After being dried, it was reduced to ashes in rude furnaces. Iodine is also the product of sea-weed. You may sometimes see at high-water mark winrows of Irish moss (_carrageen_) bleaching in the sun, though for my blanc-mange I give the preference to that cast up on the shingle, as more free from sand. This plant grows only on the farthest ledges. The pebble usually heaped above the line of sand, or in little coves among the ledges, is used for ballast, and for mending roads and garden-walks. Turning to the sandy waste that skirts the beach, I seldom fail of finding the beach-pea, with its beautiful blossoms of blue and purple. In spring the vine is edible, and has been long used for food by the poorer people.

The beach is much frequented after a storm by crows in quest of a dinner _al fresco_. They haunt it as persistently as do the wreckers, and seldom fail of finding a stranded fish, a crab, or a mussel. They are the self-appointed scavengers of the strand, removing much of the offal cast up by the sea. The crow is a crafty fellow, and knows a thing or two, as I have had reason to observe. The large sea-mussel is much affected by him, and when found is at once pounced upon. Taking it in his talons, the crow flies to the nearest ledge of rocks, and, calculating his distance with mathematical eye, lets his prize fall. Of course the mussel is dashed in pieces, and the crow proceeds to make a frugal meal. I have seen this operation frequently repeated, and have as often scared the bird from his repast to convince myself of his success.

His method of taking the clam is equally ingenious. He walks upon the clam-bank at low tide, and seizes upon the first unlucky head he finds protruding from the sh.e.l.l. Then ensues a series of laughable efforts on the crow's part to rise with his prey, while the clam tries in vain to draw in its head. The crow, after many sharp tugs and much flapping of his wings, finally secures the clam, and disposes of him as he would of a mussel. The Indians, whose chief dependence in summer was upon sh.e.l.l-fish, complained that the English swine watched the receding tide as their women were accustomed to do, feeding on the clams they turned up with their snouts.

In the olden time the beach was the high-road over which the settlers traveled when, as was long the case, it was their only way of safety. It was often beset with danger; so much so that tradition says the mail from Portsmouth to Wells was for seven years brought by a dog, the pouch being attached to his collar. This faithful messenger was at last killed by the savages. For miles around this bay the long-abandoned King's Highway may be traced where it hugged the verge of the sh.o.r.e, climbing the roughest ledges, or crossing from one beach to another by a strip of shingle. Here and there an old cellar remains to identify its course and tell of the stern lives those pioneers led.

When the tide is out, I also keep at low-water mark, scrambling over ledges, or delving among the crannies for specimens. It does not take long to fill your pockets with many-hued pebbles of quartz, jasper, or porphyry that, in going a few rods farther, you are sure to reject for others more brilliant. At full sea I walk along the sh.o.r.e, where, from between those envious little stone walls, I can still survey the Unchanged.

After all that has been printed since the "Tractatus Petri Hispani," it is a question whether there are not as many popular superst.i.tions to-day among plain New England country-folk as at any time since the settlement of the country. The belief in the virtue of a horseshoe is unabated. At York I saw one nailed to the end of a coaster's bowsprit. To spill salt, break a looking-gla.s.s, or dream of a white horse, are still regarded as of sinister augury. A tooth-pick made from a splinter of a tree that has been struck by lightning is a sure preventive of the toothache.

Exceeding all these, however, is the generally accepted superst.i.tion that has led to the practice of bathing on Saco Beach on the 26th of June in each year. On this day, it is religiously believed that the waters, like Siloam of old, have miraculous power of healing all diseases with which humanity is afflicted. The people flock to the beach from all the country round, in every description of vehicle, to dip in the enchanted tide. A similar belief existed with regard to a medicinal spring on the River Dee, in Scotland, called Januarich Wells, one author gravely a.s.serting that so great was the faith in its efficacy that those afflicted with broken legs have gone there for restoration of the limb.

I have found it always impracticable to argue with the pilgrims as to the grounds of their belief. They are ready to recount any number of wonderful cures at too great a distance for my investigation to reach, and may not, therefore, be gainsaid. It is a custom.

All this time I was nearing Ogunquit, a little fishing village spliced to the outskirts of Wells, being itself within the limits of York. At my right I caught a glimpse of the green bulk of Mount Agamenticus, and on the other hand, almost at my elbow, was the sea. So we marched on, as it were, arm in arm; for I was beginning to feel pretty well acquainted with a companion that kept thus constantly at my side. This morning it was Prussian blue, which it presently put off for a warmer hue. There it lay, sunning itself, cool, silent, impenetrable, like a great blue turquoise on the bare bosom of Mother Earth, nor looking as if a little ruffling of its surface could put it in such a towering pa.s.sion.

My sachel always contains a luncheon, a book, and a telescopic drinking-cup. At noon, having left eight miles of road behind me, I sought the shelter of a tree by the roadside, and found my appet.i.te by no means impaired by the jaunt. At such a time I read, like Rousseau, while eating, in default of a tete-a-tete. I alternately devour a page and a piece. While under my tree, a cow came to partake of the shade, of which there was enough for both of us. She gazed at me with a calm, but, as I conceived also, a puzzled look, ruminating meanwhile, or stretching out her head and snuffing the air within a foot of my hand. Perhaps she was wondering whether I had two stomachs, and a tail to brush off the flies.

From the village of Ogunquit there are two roads. I chose the one which kept the sh.o.r.e, in order to take in my way Bald Head Cliff, a natural curiosity well worth going some distance to see. The road so winds across the rocky waste on which the village is in part built that in some places you almost double on your own footsteps. Occasionally a narrow lane issues from among the ledges, tumbling rather than descending to some little cove, where you catch a glimpse of brown-roofed cottages and a fishing-boat or two, snugly moored. The inhabitants say there is not enough soil in Ogunquit with which to repair the roads, a statement no one who tries it with a vehicle will be inclined to dispute. Literally the houses are built upon rocks, incrusted with yellow lichens in room of gra.s.s. Wherever a dip occurs through which a little patch of blue sea peeps out, a house is posted, and I saw a few carefully-tended garden spots among hollows of the rock in which a handful of mould had acc.u.mulated. The wintry aspect is little short of desolation: in storms, from its elevation and exposure, the place receives the full shock of the tempest, as you may see by the weather-stained appearance of the houses.

A native directed me by a short cut "how to take another ox-bow out of the road," and in a few minutes I stood on the brow of the cliff. What a sight! The eye spans twenty miles of sea horizon. Wells, with its white meeting-houses and sh.o.r.e hotels, was behind me. Far up in the bight of the bay Great Hill headland, Hart's and Gooch's beaches--the latter mere ribbons of white sand--gleamed in the sunlight. Kennebunkport and its ship-yards lay beneath yonder smoky cloud, with Cape Porpoise Light beyond. There, below me, looking as if it had floated off from the main, was the barren rock called the Nubble, the farthest land in this direction, with Cape Neddoek harbor in full view. All the rest was ocean. The mackerel fleet that I had seen all day--fifty sail, sixty, yes, and more--was off Boon Island, with their jibs down, the solitary gray shaft of the light-house standing grimly up among the white sails, a mile-stone of the sea.

There are very few who would be able to approach the farthest edge of the precipice called the Pulpit, and bend over its sheer face without a quickening of the pulse. As in all these grand displays in which Nature puts forth her powers, you shrink in proportion as she exalts herself.

For the time being, at least, the conceit is taken out of you, and you are thoroughly put down. Here is a perpendicular wall of rock ninety feet in height (as well as I could estimate it), and about a hundred and fifty in length, with a greater than Niagara raging at its foot--a rock b.u.t.tress, with its foundations deeply rooted in the earth, breasting off the Atlantic; and the ma.s.sy fragments lying splintered at its base, or heaved loosely about the summit, told of many a desperate wrestling-match, with a constant gain for the old athlete. The sea is gnawing its way into the coast slowly, but as surely as the cataract is approaching the lake; and the cliff, though it may for a thousand years oppose this terrible battering, will at last, like some sea fortress, crumble before it.

Underneath the cliff is one of those curious basins hollowed out almost with the regularity of art, in which a vessel of large tonnage might be floated. On the farther side of this basin, the ledges, though jagged and wave-worn, descend with regular incline, making a sort of platform.

On the top of the cliff the rock debris and line of soil show unmistakably that in severe gales the sea leaps to this great height, drenching the summit with salt spray. At such a time the sea must be superb, though awful; for I doubt if a human being could stand erect before such a storm.

The exposed side of Bald Head Cliff faces south of east, and is the result of ages of wear and tear. The sea undermines it, a.s.sails it in front and from all sides. Here are dikes, as at Star Island, in which the trap-rock has given way to the continual pounding, thus affording a vantage-ground for the great lifting power of the waves. The strata of rock lie in perpendicular ma.s.ses, welded together as if by fire, and injected with crystal quartz seams, knotted like veins in a t.i.tan's forehead. Blocks of granite weighing many tons, honey-combed by the action of the water, are loosely piled where the cliff overhangs the waves; and you may descend by regular steps to the verge of the abyss.

The time to inspect this curiosity is at low tide, when, if there be sea enough, the waves come grandly in, whelming the s.h.a.ggy rocks, down whose sides a hundred miniature cascades pour as the waters recede.

Beneath the cliff the incoming tides have worn the trap-rock to gla.s.sy smoothness, rendering it difficult to walk about when they are wetted by the spray. From this stand-point it is apparent the wall that rises before you is the remaining side of one of those chasms which the sea has driven right into the heart of the crag. The other face is what lies scattered about on all sides in picturesque ruin. If the view from the summit was invigorating, the situation below was far from inspiring. It needed all the cheerful light and warmth the afternoon sun could give to brighten up that bleak and rugged sh.o.r.e. The spot had for me a certain sombre fascination; for it was here, more than thirty years ago, the _Isidore_, a brand-new vessel, and only a few hours from port, was lost with every soul on board. Often have I heard the tale of that winter's night from relatives of the ill-fated ship's crew; and as I stood here within their tomb, realizing the hopelessness of human effort when opposed to those merciless crags, I thought of Schiller's lines:

"Oh many a bark to that breast grappled fast Has gone down to the fearful and fathomless grave; Again, crashed together the keel and the mast, To be seen tossed aloft in the glee of the wave!

Like the growth of a storm, ever louder and clearer, Grows the roar of the gulf rising nearer and nearer."

Over there, where the smoke lies above the tree-tops, is Kennebunkport,[66] where they build as staunch vessels as float on any sea. The village and its ship-yards lie along the banks of a little river, or, more properly speaking, an arm of the sea. It is a queer old place, or rather was, before it became translated into a summer resort; but now silk jostles homespun, and for three months in the year it is invaded by an army of pleasure-seekers, who ransack its secret places, and after taking their fill of sea and sh.o.r.e, flee before the first frosts of autumn. The town then hibernates.

The _Isidore_ was built a few miles up river, where the stream is so narrow and crooked that you can scarce conceive how ships of any size could be successfully launched. At a point below the "Landing" the banks are so near together as to admit of a lock to retain the full tide when a launch took place. A big ship usually brings up in the soft ooze of the opposite bank, but is got off at the next flood by the help of a few yoke of oxen and a strong hawser. Besides its ship-building, Kennebunkport once boasted a considerable commerce with the West Indies, and the foundations of many snug fortunes have been laid in rum and sugar. The decaying wharves and empty warehouses now tell their own story.

I was one afternoon at the humble cottage of a less ancient, though more coherent, mariner than Coleridge's, who, after forty years battling with storms, was now laid up like an old hulk that will never more be fit for sea. Together we rehea.r.s.ed the first and last voyage of the _Isidore_.

"Thirty years ago come Thanksgiving," said Ben, in a voice pitched below his usual key, "the _Isidore_ lay at the wharf with her topsails loose, waiting for a slant of wind to put to sea. She was named for the builder's daughter, a mighty pretty gal, sir; but the boys didn't like the name because it sounded outlandish-like, and would have rather had an out-an'-out Yankee one any day of the week."

"There is, then," I suggested, "something in a name at sea as well as ash.o.r.e?"

"Lor' bless your dear soul, I've seen them barkeys as could almost ship a crew for nothing, they had such spanking, saucy names. Captain R---- was as good a sailor as ever stepped, but dretful profane. He was as brave as a lion, and had rescued the crew of an Englishman from certain death while drifting a helpless wreck before a gale. No boat could live in the sea that was running; but Captain R---- bore down for the sinking ship, and pa.s.sed it so close that the crew saved themselves by jumping aboard of him. Seven or eight times he stood for that wreck, until all but one man were saved. He had the ill-luck afterward to get a cotton ship ash.o.r.e at Three Acres, near where the _Isidore_ was lost, and said, as I've heard, 'he hoped the next vessel that went ash.o.r.e he should be under her keel.' He had his wish, most likely.

"The _Isidore_ was light, just on top of water, and never ought to have gone to sea in that plight; but she had been a good while wind-bound, and all hands began to be impatient to be off. Her crew, fifteen as likely lads as ever reefed a topsail, all belonged in the neighborhood.

One of 'em didn't feel noways right about the v'y'ge, and couldn't make up his mind to go until the ship was over the bar, when he had to be set aboard in a wherry. Another dreamed three nights running the same dream, and every blessed time he saw the _Isidore_ strike on a lee sh.o.r.e with the sea a-flying as high as the maintop. Every time he woke up in a cold sweat, with the cries of his shipmates ringing in his ears as plain as we hear the rote on Gooch's Beach this minute. So, when the _Isidore_ set her colors and dropped down the river, Joe, though he had signed the articles and got the advance, took to the woods. Most every body thought it scandalous for the ship to unmoor, but Captain R---- said he would go to sea if he went to h--l the next minute. Dretful profane man, sir--dretful.

"The weather warn't exactly foul weather, and the sea was smooth enough, but all the air there was was dead ahead, and it looked dirty to wind'ard. The ship slipped out through the piers, and stood off to the east'ard on the port tack. I recollect she was so nigh the sh.o.r.e that I could see who was at the wheel. She didn't work handy, for all the ropes were new and full of turns, and I knew they were having it lively aboard of her. Early in the afternoon it began to snow, first lightly, then thick and fast, and the wind began to freshen up considerable. The ship made one or two tacks to work out of the bay, but about four o'clock it closed in thick, and we lost her.

"I saw the Nubble all night long, for the snow come in gusts; but it blowed fresh from the no'th-east; _fresh_," he repeated, raising his eyes to mine and shaking his gray head by way of emphasis. "I was afeard the ship was in the bay, and couldn't sleep, but went to the door and looked out between whiles."

It was, indeed, as I have heard, a dreadful night, and many a vigil was kept by wife, mother, and sweetheart. At day-break the snow lay heaped in drifts in the village streets and garden areas. It was not long before a messenger came riding in at full speed with the news that the sh.o.r.es of Ogunquit were fringed with the wreck of a large vessel, and that not one of her crew was left to tell the tale. The word pa.s.sed from house to house. Silence and gloom reigned within the snow-beleaguered village.

It was supposed the ship struck about midnight, as the Ogunquit fishermen heard in their cabins cries and groans at this hour above the noise of the tempest. They were powerless to aid; no boat could have been launched in that sea. If any lights were shown on board the ship, they were not seen; neither were any guns heard. The ropes, stiffened with ice, would not run through the sheaves, which rendered the working of the ship difficult, if not impossible. No doubt the doomed vessel drove helplessly to her destruction, the frozen sails hanging idly to the yards, while her exhausted crew miserably perished with the lights of their homes before their eyes.

All the morning after the wreck the people along sh.o.r.e were searching amidst the tangled ma.s.ses of drift and sea-wrack the storm had cast up for the remains of the crew. They were too much mangled for recognition, except in a single instance. Captain G----, a pa.s.senger, had by accident put on his red-flannel drawers the wrong side out the morning the _Isidore_ sailed, observing to his wife that, as it was good luck, he would not change them. One leg was found encased in the drawers. The mutilated fragments were brought to the village, and buried in a common grave.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MORNING ROUND]

Some of the old people at the Port declare to this day that on the night of the wreck they heard shrieks as plainly as ever issued from human throats; and you could not argue it out of them, though the spot where the _Isidore's_ anchors were found is ten miles away. As for Joe B----, the runaway, he can not refrain from shedding tears when the _Isidore_ is mentioned.

"But, Ben, do you believe in dreams?" I asked, with my hand on the latch.

"B'leeve in dreams!" he repeated; "why, Joe's a living man; but where's his mates?"

Perhaps they

"Died as men should die, clinging round their lonely wreck, Their winding-sheet the sky, and their sepulchre the deck; And the steersman held the helm till his breath Grew faint and fainter still; There was one short fatal thrill, Then he sank into the chill Arms of Death."