Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast Part 6

M'Lean had received intelligence of the sailing of the Ma.s.sachusetts armada. His fort was not yet capable of defense. Two bastions were not begun; the two remaining, with the curtains, had not been raised more than four or five feet, and he had not a single gun mounted. Captain Mowatt of detestable memory,[28] with three British vessels of small force, was in the harbor. He took a position to prevent a landing on the south side of the peninsula. A deep trench was cut across the isthmus connecting with the main-land, securing that pa.s.sage. No landing could be effected except beneath the precipice, two hundred feet high, on the west. M'Lean dispatched a messenger to Halifax, and redoubled his efforts to strengthen his fort.

On the third day after their arrival the Americans succeeded in landing, and, after a gallant fight, gained the heights. This action--an augury, it would seem, of good success to the a.s.sailants, for the enemy had every advantage of position and knowledge of the ground--is the single crumb of comfort to be drawn from the annals of the expedition. Captain Moore was in this affair.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FORT GEORGE.]

Instead of pursuing his advantage, General Lovell took a position within seven hundred and fifty yards of the enemy's works, and began to intrench. There was fatal disagreement between the general and Saltonstall. The sum of the matter was that Lovell, fearing to attack with his present force, sent to Boston for re-enforcements. Then General Gates was applied to for help. Two weeks pa.s.sed in regular approaches on Lovell's part, and in exertions by M'Lean to render his fort impregnable. At the end of this time, Sir George Collier arrived from New York with a fleet, and raised the siege. General Lovell says the army under his orders had very short notice of the arrival of this force, by reason of a fog that prevented its being seen until its near approach. The land forces succeeded in gaining the western sh.o.r.e of the river at various points, but had then to make their way through a wilderness to the settlements on the Kennebec. The fleet of Saltonstall was either destroyed or captured.

It was not long after the complete dispersion of the ill-starred Pen.o.bscot expedition that General Peleg Wadsworth succeeded in entering the British fort on the hill at Bagaduce. He had more difficulty in leaving it.

After the disbanding of his militia, the general made his quarters at Thomaston, where he lived with his wife in apparent security. A young lady named Fenno and a guard of six militia-men completed his garrison.

General Campbell, commanding at Bagaduce, was well informed of Wadsworth's defenseless condition, and resolved to send him an invitation to come and reside in the fortress. A lieutenant and twenty-five men arrived at dead of night with the message at Wadsworth's house. The sentinel challenged and fled. General Wadsworth defended himself with Spartan bravery. Armed with a brace of pistols, a fusee, and a blunderbuss, he fought his a.s.sailants away from his windows and the door, through which they had followed the retreating sentinel. In his shirt, with his bayonet only, he disdained to yield for some time longer, until a shot disabled his left arm. Then, with five or six men lying wounded around him, the windows shattered, and the house on fire, Peleg Wadsworth was able to say, "I surrender." They took him, exhausted with his exertions and benumbed with cold, to the fort, where he was kept close prisoner. Some time after, Major Burton, who had served with the general, was also made prisoner, and lodged in the same room with him. Wadsworth applied for a parole. It was refused. Governor Hanc.o.c.k sent a cartel with an offer of exchange. It was denied. One day he was visited by Miss Fenno, who in five words gave him to know he was to be detained till the end of the war. Peleg Wadsworth then resolved to escape.

The prisoners were confined in a room of the officers' quarters, the window grated, the door provided with a sash, through which the sentinel, constantly on duty in the pa.s.sage, could look into the room as he paced on his round. At either end of this pa.s.sage was a door, opening upon the parade of the fort, at which other sentinels were posted. At sunset the gates were closed, and the number of sentinels on the parapet increased. A picket was also stationed at the narrow isthmus connecting with the main-land.

These were not all the difficulties in their way. Supposing them able to pa.s.s the sentinels in the pa.s.sage and at the outer door of their quarters, they must then cross the open s.p.a.ce and ascend the wall under the eye of the guards posted on the parapet. Admitting the summit of the rampart gained, the exterior wall was defended with strong pickets driven obliquely into the earthen wall of the fort. From this point was a sheer descent of twenty feet to the bottom of the ditch. Arrived here, the fugitives must ascend the counterscarp, and cross the _chevaux-de-frise_ with which it was furnished. They were then without the fortress, with no possible means of gaining their freedom except by water. To elude the picket at the Neck was not to be thought of.

The prisoners' room was ceiled with pine boards. Upon some pretext they procured a gimlet of a servant, with which they perforated a board so as to make an aperture sufficiently large to admit the body of a man. The interstices were cut through with a penknife, leaving the corners intact until the moment for action should arrive. They then filled the holes with bread, and carefully removed the dust from the floor. This work had to be executed while the sentinel traversed a distance equal to twice the depth of their own room. The prisoners paced their floor, keeping step with the sentry; and as soon as he had pa.s.sed by, Burton, who was the taller, and could reach the ceiling, commenced work, while Wadsworth walked on. On the approach of the soldier Burton quickly rejoined his companion. Three weeks were required to execute this task. Each was provided with a blanket and a strong staff, sharpened at the end. For food they kept their crusts and dried bits of their meat. They waited until one night when a violent thunder-storm swept over the peninsula.

It became intensely dark. The rain fell in torrents upon the roof of the barracks. The moment for action had come.

The prisoners undressed themselves as usual, and went to bed, observed by the sentinel. They then extinguished their candle, and quickly arose.

Their plan was to gain the vacant s.p.a.ce above their room, creeping along the joists until they reached the pa.s.sage next beyond, which they knew to be unguarded. Thence they were to make their way to the north bastion, acting as circ.u.mstances might determine.

Burton was the first to pa.s.s through the opening. He had advanced but a little way before he encountered a flock of fowls, whose roost he had invaded. Wadsworth listened with breathless anxiety to the cackling that apprised him for the first time of this new danger. At length it ceased without having attracted the attention of the guards, and the general with difficulty ascended in his turn. He pa.s.sed over the distance to the gallery unnoticed, and gained the outside by the door that Burton had left open. Feeling his way along the wall of the barracks to the western side, he made a bold push for the embankment, gaining the rampart by an oblique path. At this moment the door of the guard-house was flung open, and a voice exclaimed, "Relief, turn out!" Fortunately the guard pa.s.sed without seeing the fugitive. He reached the bastion agreed upon as a rendezvous, but Burton was not there. No time was to be lost. Securing his blanket to a picket, he lowered himself as far as it would permit, and dropped without accident into the ditch. From here he pa.s.sed softly out by the water-course, and stood in the open air without the fort. It being low tide, the general waded the cove to the main-land, and made the best of his way up the river. In the morning he was rejoined by his companion, and both, after exertions that exacted all their fort.i.tude, gained the opposite sh.o.r.e of the Pen.o.bscot in safety. Their evasion is like a romance of the Bastile in the day of Richelieu.

The gallant old general removed to Falmouth, now Portland. One of his sons, an intrepid spirit, was killed by the explosion of a fire-ship before Tripoli, in which he was a volunteer. A daughter married Hon.

Stephen Longfellow, of Portland, father of the poet.

When the _corps d'armee_ of Rochambeau was at Newport, the French general conceived the idea of sending an expedition to recapture Pen.o.bscot, and solicited the consent of Washington to do so. The French officers much preferred acting on an independent line, but the proposal was wisely negatived by the commander in chief. The man to whom Rochambeau expected to intrust the naval operations was La Peyrouse, the distinguished but ill-fated navigator.

Other earth-works besides those already mentioned may be traced. Two small batteries that guarded the approaches on the side of the cove are distinct. Some of these works were renovated during the reoccupation of Castine by the British in 1812. Others seen on the sh.o.r.es of the harbor are of more recent date.

A speaking reminder of by-gone strife is an old cannon, lying on the greensward under the walls of Fort George, of whose grim muzzle school-girls were wont to make a post-office. There was poetry in the conceit. Never before had it been so delicately charged, though I have known a perfumed billet-doux do more damage than this fellow, double-shotted and at point-blank, might effect.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Lescarbot, vol. ii., p. 471.

[20] Named for General John Thomas, of the Revolution.

[21] Williamson's "History of Maine."

[22] Jefferson had his Monticello, Washington his Mount Vernon.

[23] Its Indian name was Pa.s.sageewakeag--"the place of sights, or ghosts." It contained originally one thousand acres, which the settlers bought of the heirs of Brigadier Waldo at two shillings the acre.

Belfast was the first incorporated town on the Pen.o.bscot. It suffered severely in the Revolution from the British garrison of Castine.

[24] In 1797 there were twenty vessels owned in Pen.o.bscot River, two of which were in European trade.

[25] The upper and larger part is called North Castine.

[26] Castine was not incorporated under its present name until 1796. The Indian name of the peninsula was Bagaduce, or Biguyduce.

[27] Gordon, vol. iii., p. 304.

[28] The man who destroyed Falmouth, now Portland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUINS OF FORT PENTAGOeT, CASTINE]

CHAPTER V.

CASTINE--_continued._

"Baron Castine of St. Castine Has left his chateau in the Pyrenees, And sailed across the western seas."

LONGFELLOW.

I confess I would rather stand in presence of the Pyramids, or walk in the streets of buried Pompeii, than a.s.sist at the unwrapping of many fleshless bodies. No other medium than the material eye can grasp a fact with the same distinctness. It becomes rooted, and you may hang your legends or traditions on its branches. It is true there is a cla.s.s who journey from Dan to Beersheba, finding all barren; but the average American, though far from unappreciative, too often makes a business of his recreation, and devours in an hour what might be viewed with advantage in a week or a month.

After this frank declaration, the reader will not expect me to hurry him through a place that contains so much of the crust of antiquity as Castine, and is linked in with the Old-world chronicles of a period of surpa.s.sing interest, both in history and romance.

Very little of the fort of the Baron Castin and his predecessors, yet enough to reward the research of the stranger, is to be seen on the margin of the sh.o.r.e of the harbor, less than half a mile from the central portion of the town. The gra.s.s-grown ramparts have sunk too low to be distinguished from the water in pa.s.sing, but are evident to a person standing on the ground itself. Not many years will elapse before these indistinct traces are wholly obliterated.[29]

The bank here is not much elevated above high-water mark, while at the wharves it rises to a higher level, and is ascended by stairs. The old fort was placed near the narrowest part of the harbor, with a firm pebbly beach before it. Small boats may land directly under the walls of the work at high tide, or lie protected by the curvature of the sh.o.r.e from the heavy seas rolling in from the outer harbor. The high hills over which we were rambling in the preceding chapter ward off the northern winds.

A portion of the ground covered by old Fort Pentagoet is now occupied by buildings, a barn standing within the circ.u.mvallation, and the dwelling of Mr. Webb between the sh.o.r.e and the road. A little stream of sweet water trickles along the south-west face of the work, and then loses itself among the pebbles of the beach.

Fort Pentagoet, at its rendition by Sir Thomas Temple, in 1670, after the treaty of Breda, was a rectangular work with four bastions. The height of the curtains within was eight feet. On entering the fort a _corps de garde_, twelve paces long and six broad, stood at the left, with a _logis_, or quarter, on the opposite side of the entrance. On the left side were also two store-houses, each thirty-six paces long by twelve in breadth, covered with shingles. Underneath the store-houses was a cellar of about half their extent, in which a well had been sunk.

Above the entrance was a turret, built of timber, plastered with clay, and furnished with a bell. At the right hand was a barrack of the same length and breadth as the store-houses, and built of stone. Sixty paces from the fort was a cabin of planks, in which the cattle were housed; and at some distance farther was a garden in good condition, having fruit-trees. There were mounted on the ramparts six six-pounder and two four-pounder iron cannon, with two culverins. Six other pieces were lying, useless and dismounted, on the parapet. Overlooking the sea and detached from the fort was a platform, with two iron eight-pounders in position.

The occupant of the nearest house told me an oven constructed of flat slate-stones was discovered in an angle of the work; also that shot had been picked up on the beach, and a tomahawk, and stone pipe taken from the well. The whole ground has been explored with the divining-rod, as well within as without the fort, for treasure-trove; though little or nothing rewarded the search, except the discovery of a subterranean pa.s.sage opening at the sh.o.r.e.

These examinations were no doubt whetted by an extraordinary piece of good luck that befell farmer Stephen Grindle, while hauling wood from a rocky hill-side on the point at the second narrows of Bagaduce River, about six miles from Castine peninsula. In 1840 this worthy husbandman saw a shining object lying in the track of his oxen. He stooped and picked up a silver coin, as bright as if struck within a twelvemonth. On looking at the date, he found it to be two hundred years old. Farther search was rewarded by the discovery of several other pieces. A fall of snow interrupted the farmer's investigations until the next spring, when, in or near an old trail leading across the point, frequented by the Indians from immemorial time, some seven hundred coins of the nominal value of four hundred dollars were unearthed near the surface.

All the pieces were of silver.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PINE-TREE SHILLING.]

The honest farmer kept his own counsel, using his treasure from time to time to pay his store bills in the town, dollar for dollar, accounting one of Master Hull's pine-tree shillings at a shilling. The storekeepers readily accepted the exchange at the farmer's valuation; but the possession of such a priceless collection was soon betrayed by its circulation abroad.

Dr. Joseph L. Stevens, the esteemed antiquary of Castine, of whom I had these particulars, exhibited to me a number of the coins. They would have made a numismatist's mouth water. French ecus, Portuguese and Spanish pieces-of-eight, Bremen dollars, piasters, and cob-money,[30]