Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 13

I turned away from the spot with the old sailor's words in mind: "A wicked place where she struck; and the sea drove right on. A ragged place, sir--ragged."

Leaving the cliff, I struck across the pastures to the road, making no farther halt except to gather a few huckleberries that grew on high bushes by the roadside. The fruit is large, either black or blue, with an agreeable though different flavor from any of the low-bushed varieties. The local name for the shrub is "bilberry." It frequently grows higher than a man's head, and a single one will often yield nearly a quart.

It was a year of plenty, and I had seen the pickers busy in the berry pastures as I pa.s.sed by. The fruit, being for the time a sort of currency--not quite so hard, by-the-bye, as the musket-bullets of the colonists--is received in barter at the stores. Whole families engage in the harvest, making fair wages, the annual yield exceeding in value that of the corn crop of the State. Maine grows her corn on the Western prairies, and pays for it with canned fish and berries.

At the village store I saw a woman drive up with a bushel of huckleberries, with which she bought enough calico for a gown, half a pound of tobacco, and some knickknacks for the children at home. Affixed in a conspicuous place to the wall was the motto, "Quick sales and small profits." Half an hour was spent in beating the shop-keeper down a cent in the yard, and another quarter of an hour to induce him to "heave in,"

as she said, a spool of cotton. The man, after stoutly contesting the claim, finally yielded both points. "The woman," thought I, "evidently only half believes in your seductive motto."

All along the road I had met women and children, going or returning, with pails or baskets. One man, evidently a fast picker, had filled the sleeves of his jacket with berries, after having first tied them at the wrists. Another, who vaulted over the stone wall at my side, when asked if he was going to try the huckleberries, replied,

"Wa'al, yes; think I'll try and _acc.u.mulate_ a few."

Descending the last hill before reaching Cape Neddock Harbor, I had a good view of the Nubble, which several writers have believed was the Savage Rock of Gosnold, and the first land in New England to receive an English name. The reliable accounts of the early voyagers to our coasts are much too vague to enable later historians to fix the points where they made the land with the confidence with which many undertake to fix them. A careful examination of these accounts justifies the opinion that Gosnold made his landfall off Agamenticus, and first dropped anchor, since leaving Falmouth, at Cape Ann. The lat.i.tude, if accurately taken, would of itself put the question beyond controversy; but as the methods of observing the exact position of a ship were greatly inferior to what they became later in the seventeenth century, I at first doubted, and was then constrained to admit, that the reckoning of Gosnold, Pring, and Champlain ought to be accepted as trustworthy. Gabriel Archer, who was with Gosnold, says, "They held themselves by computation well neere the lat.i.tude of 43 degrees," or a little northward of the Isles of Shoals.

John Brereton, also of Gosnold's company, says they fell in with the coast in thick weather, and first made land with the lead. By all accounts the _Concord_, Gosnold's ship, was to the northward of Cape Ann. Land was sighted at six in the morning of the 14th of May, 1602, and Gosnold stood "fair along by the sh.o.r.e" until noon, which would have carried him across Ipswich Bay, even if the _Concord_ were a dull sailer. In 1603 Martin Pring sailed over nearly the same track as Gosnold. It is by comparing these two voyages that Savage Rock appears to be located at Cape Ann.

Pring, says Gorges, observing his instructions (to keep to the northward as high as Cape Breton), arrived safely out and back, bringing with him "the most exact discovery of that coast that ever came to my hands since; and indeed he was the best able to perform it of any I met withal to this present." Pring's relation wrought such an impression on Sir F.

Gorges and Lord Chief-justice Popham that, notwithstanding their first disasters, they resolved on another effort. He had no doubt seen and talked with Gosnold after his return; perhaps had obtained from him his courses after he fell in with the coast.

The _Speedwell_, Pring's vessel, also made land in forty-three degrees.

It proved to be a mult.i.tude of small islands. Pring, after anchoring under the lee of the largest, coasted the main-land with his boats. The narrative continues to relate that they "came to the mayne in 43-1/2, and ranged to south-west, in which course we found several inlets, the more easterly of which was barred at the mouth. Having pa.s.sed over the bar, we ran up into it five miles. Coming out and sailing south-west, we lighted upon two other inlets; the fourth and most westerly was best, which we rowed up ten or twelve miles." Between forty-three and forty-three and a half degrees are the Saco, then barred at the mouth,[67] the Mousam, York, and the Piscataqua, the "most westerly and best."

"We (meeting with no sa.s.safras)"--to follow the narrative--"left these places and _shaped our course for Savage's Rocks_, discovered the year before by Captain Gosnold." Savage Rock, then, was by both these accounts (Archer and Pring) to the southward of forty-three degrees, while the Nubble, or rather Agamenticus, is in forty-three degrees sixteen minutes.

"Departing hence, we bare into that great gulf which Captain Gosnold overshot the year before." This could be no other than Ma.s.sachusetts Bay, for Gosnold, according to Brereton, after leaving Savage Rock, shaped his course southward ("standing off southerly into the sea") the rest of that day and night (May 15th), and on the following morning found himself "embayed with a mighty headland," which was Cape Cod.

Pring, on the contrary, steered into the bay, "coasting, and finding people on the north side thereof." If my conjecture be correct, he was the first English mariner in Boston Bay.

It is hardly possible that a navigator falling in with the New England coast in forty-three or forty-three and a half degrees, and steering south-west, should not recognize in Cape Ann one of its remarkable features, or pa.s.s it by unperceived in the night. He would have been likely to find Savage Rock and end his voyage at the same moment.

Champlain and Smith are both in evidence. The former, who examined the coast minutely two years after Pring (June, 1605), has delineated "Cap des Isles" on his map of 1612, which accompanied the first edition of his voyages. The account he gives of its position is as clear as that of Archer is obscure. Says the Frenchman, in his own way:

"Mettant le cap au su pour nous esloigner afin de mouiller l'ancre, ayant fait environ deux lieux nous apperc.u.mes un cap a la grande terre au su quart de suest de nous ou il pouvoit avoit six lieues; a l'est deux lieues apperc.u.mes trois ou quatre isles a.s.sez hautes et a l'ouest un grand cu de sac."

Here are the bearings of Cape Ann, the Isles of Shoals, and of Ipswich Bay defined with precision. Champlain also puts the lat.i.tude of Kennebunk River at forty-three degrees twenty-five minutes, which shows Pring could hardly have explored to the eastward of Cape Elizabeth.

Smith, in 1614, described Cape Ann and Cape Cod as the two great headlands of New England, giving to the former the name of Tragabigzanda; but Champlain had preceded him, as Gosnold had preceded Champlain. On the whole, Gosnold, Pring, and Champlain agree remarkably in their lat.i.tude and in their itinerary.

At Cape Neddoek I "put up," or rather was put up--an expression applied alike to man and beast in every public-house in New England--at the old Freeman Tavern, a famous stopping-place in by-gone years, when the mail-coach between Boston and Portland pa.s.sed this way. Since I knew it the house had been brushed up with a coat of paint on the outside, the tall sign-post was gone, and nothing looked quite natural except the capacious red barn belonging to the hostel. The bar-room, however, was unchanged, and the aroma of old Santa Cruz still lingered there, though the pretty hostess a.s.sured me, on the word of a landlady, there was nothing in the house stronger than small beer. It was not so of yore, when all comers appeared to have taken the famous Highgate oath: "Never to drink small beer when you could get ale, unless you liked small beer best."

The evening tempted me to a stroll down to the harbor, to see the wood-coasters go out with the flood. Afterward I walked on the beach.

The full moon shone out clear in the heavens, lighting up a radiant aisle incrusted with silver pavement on the still waters, broad at the sh.o.r.e, receding until lost in the deepening mystery of the farther sea.

The ground-swell rose and fell with regular heaving, as of Old Ocean asleep. As a breaker wavered and toppled over, a bright gleam ran along its broken arch like the swift flashing of a train. Occasionally some craft crossed the moon's track, where it stood out for a moment with surprising distinctness, to be swallowed up an instant later in the surrounding blackness. Boon Island had unclosed its brilliant eye--its light in the window for the mariner. It had been a perfect day, but the night was enchanting.

FOOTNOTES:

[63] Colonel Storer kept up the stockades and one or more of the flankarts until after the year 1760, as a memorial rather than a defense.

[64] This relationship is disputed by Mr. Joseph L. Chester, the eminent antiquary. Winthrop, it would seem, ought to have known; Eliot and Allen repeat the authority, the latter giving the full name of Mary Hutchinson.

[65] Both sides have been ably presented by Dr. N. Bouton and Hon.

Charles H. Bell.

[66] Once, and much better, Arundel, from the Earl of Arundel.

[67] An old sea-chart says, "Saco River bear place at low water."

[Ill.u.s.tration: WHAT THE SEA CAN DO.]

CHAPTER IX.

AGAMENTICUS, THE ANCIENT CITY.

"Land of the forest and the rock, Of dark-blue lake and mighty river, Of mountains reared aloft to mock The storm's career, the lightning's shock-- My own green land forever."

WHITTIER.

Ho for Agamenticus! It is an old saying, attributed to the Iron Duke, that when a man wants to turn over it is time for him to turn out. As there are six good miles to get over to the mountain, and as many to return, I was early astir. The road is chiefly used by wood teams, and was well beaten to within half a mile of the hills. From thence it dwindled into a green lane, which in turn becomes a foot-path bordered by dense undergrowth. Agamenticus is not a high mountain, although so noted a landmark. There are in reality three summits of nearly equal alt.i.tude, ranging north-east and south-west, the westernmost being the highest. At the mountain's foot is a scattered hamlet of a few unthrifty-looking cabins, tenanted by wood-cutters, for, notwithstanding the axe has played sad havoc in the neighboring forests, there are still some clumps of tall pines there fit for the king's ships. You obtain your first glimpse of the hills when still two miles distant, the road then crossing the country for the rest of the way, with the mountain looming up before you.

Along sh.o.r.e, and in the country-side, the people call the mount indifferently "Eddymenticus" and "Head o' Menticus." Some, who had lived within a few miles of it since childhood, told me they had never had the curiosity to try the ascent. One man, who lived within half a mile of the base of the western hill, had never been on any of the others. The name is unmistakably of Indian origin. General Gookin, in his "Historical Collections of the Indians in New England," written in 1674, has the following in relation to the tribes inhabiting this region: "The Pawtuckett is the fifth and last great sachemship of Indians. Their country lieth north and north-east from the Ma.s.sachusetts, whose dominion reacheth so far as the English jurisdiction, or colony of the Ma.s.sachusetts, now doth extend, and had under them several other small sagamores, as the Pennacooks, Agawomes, Naamkeeks, Pascatawayes, Accomintas, and others."[68]

The climb is only fatiguing; it is not at all difficult. The native forest has disappeared, but a new growth of deciduous trees, with a fair sprinkling of evergreens, is fast replacing it. In some places the slender stems of the birch or pine shoot up, as it were, out of the solid rock. Following the dry bed of a mountain torrent, and turning at every step to wonder and admire, in half an hour I stood on the top. The summit contains an acre or more of bare granite ledge, with tufts of wiry gra.s.s and clumps of tangled vines growing among the crevices. Some scattered blocks had been collected at the highest point, and a cairn built. I seated myself on the topmost stone of the monument.

A solitary mountain lifting itself above the surrounding country is always impressive. Agamenticus seems an outpost of the White Hills, left stranded here by the glacier, or upheaved by some tremendous throe. The day was not of the clearest, or, rather, the morning mists still hung in heavy folds about the ocean, making it look from my airy perch as if sky and sea had changed places. Capes and headlands were revealed in a striking and mystical way, as objects dimly seen through a veil. Large ships resembled toys, except that the blue s.p.a.ce grasped by the eye was too vast for playthings. Cape Elizabeth northward and Cape Ann in the southern board stretched far out into the sea, as if seeking to draw tribute of all pa.s.sing ships into the ports between. Here were the Isles of Shoals, lying in a heap together. That luminous, misty belt was Rye Beach. And here was the Piscataqua, and here Portsmouth, Kittery, and Old York, with all the sea-sh.o.r.e villages I had so lately traversed. As the sun rose higher, the murky curtain was rolled away, and the ocean appeared in its brightest azure.

The sea is what you seldom tire of, especially where its nearness to the chief New England marts shows it crowded with sails bearing up for port.

Craft of every build, flags of every nation, pa.s.s Agamenticus and its three peaks in endless procession--stately ships

"That court'sy to them, do them reverence As they fly by on their woven wings."

Old Ocean parts before the eager prow. You fancy you see the foam roll away and go glancing astern. Here is a bark with the bottom of the Tagus, and another with the sands of the Golden Horn, sticking to the anchor-fluke; and here a smoke on the horizon's rim heralds a swifter messenger from the Old World--some steamship climbing the earth's rotundity; and yet water, they say, will not run up hill! When I looked forth upon this moving scene my lungs began to "crow like chanticleer."

I waved my hat, and shouted "a good voyage" to sailors that could not hear me. I had no fear of listeners, for the Old Man of the Mountain tells no tales. To stand on a mountain-top is better, to my mind, than to be up any distance in a balloon. You have, at least, something under you, and can come down when you like. What a fulcrum Agamenticus would have made for the lever of Archimedes!

Landward, the horizon is bounded by the White Hills--the "Crystal Mountains, daunting terrible," of the first explorer.[69] They look shadowy enough at this distance--seventy miles as the crow flies--Mount Washington, grand and grim, its head m.u.f.fled in a mantle of clouds, overtopping all. The lofty ranges issuing from these resemble a broken wall as they stretch away to the Connecticut, with Moosehillock towering above.

"To me they seemed the barriers of a world, Saying, 'Thus far, no farther!'"

The busy towns of Dover and Great Falls, with the nearer villages of Eliot and Berwick, are grouped about in picturesque confusion, a spire peeping out of a seeming forest, a broad river dwindling to a rivulet.

After feasting for an hour upon this sight, I became more than ever persuaded that, except in that rare condition of the atmosphere when the White Hills are visible far out to sea, Agamenticus must be the first land made out in approaching the coast anywhere within half a degree of the forty-third parallel. Juan Verazzani, perchance, certainly Masters Gosnold and Pring, saw it as plainly as I now saw the ships below me, where they had sailed.

I thought it fitting here, on the top of Agamenticus, with as good a map of the coast spread before me as I ever expect to see, to hold a little chat with the discoverers. If Hendrik Hudson haunts the fastnesses of the Catskills--and a veracious historian a.s.serts that he has been both seen and spoken with--why may not the shade of Captain John Smith be lurking about this headland, where of yore he trafficked, and, for aught I know, clambered as I have done?

Right over against me, though I could not see them, were the Basque provinces, whose people the Romans could not subdue, and whose language, says the old French proverb, the devil himself could not learn. Cape Finisterre was there, with its shoals of sardines and its impotent conclusion of a name, as if it had been the end of the world indeed!

Archer says, in his relation of Gosnold's voyage,[70] that the day before they made the land they had sweet smelling of the sh.o.r.e as from the southern cape and Andalusia, in Spain. It was, says Brereton, "a Basque shallop, with mast and sail, an iron grapple and a kettle of copper, came boldly aboard of us." In 1578 there were a hundred sail of Spanish fishermen on the Banks of Newfoundland to fifty English. Spanish Biscay sent twenty or thirty vessels there to kill whales; France sent a hundred and fifty; and Portugal fifty craft of small tonnage to fish for cod. The Indians who boarded Gosnold could name Placentia and Newfoundland, and might have come from thence in their shallop, since they so well knew how to use it. But if Brereton's surmise was right, then some of those daring fellows from the Ba.s.se Pyrenees were first at Savage Rock. He says, "It seemed, by some words and signs they made, that some Basques, or of St. John de Luz, have fished or traded in this place, being in the lat.i.tude of 43 degrees."