Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast

The shores of the river are seen fringed with weirs. Salmon, shad, alewives, and smelts are taken in proper season, the crops of the sea succeeding each other with the same certainty as those of the land. Before the beginning of the century salmon had ceased to be numerous. Their scarcity was imputed to the Penobscot Indians, who destroyed them by fishing every day in the year, including Sundays. This king among fishes formerly frequented the Kennebec, the Merrimac, and were even taken in Ipswich River, and the small streams flowing into Massachusetts Bay.

From Belfast I crossed the bay by Islesboro to Castine. I confess I looked upon this famous peninsula, crowned with a fortress, furrowed with the intrenchments of forgotten wars, deserted by a commerce once considerable, little frequented by the present generation, with an interest hardly inferior to that stimulated by the associations of any spot of ground in New England.

The peninsula of Castine presents to view two eminences with regular outlines, of which the westernmost is the most commanding. Both are smoothly rounded, and have steep though not difficult ascents. The present town is built along the base and climbs the declivity of the eastern hill, its principal street conducting from the water straight up to its crest, surmounted by the still solid ramparts of Fort George. The long occupation of the peninsula has nearly denuded it of trees. Its external aspects belong rather to the milder types of inland scenery than to the rugged grandeur of the near sea-coast.

Passing by a bold promontory, on which the light-tower stands, the tide carries you swiftly through the Narrows to the anchorage before the town. Ships of any class may be carried into Castine, while its adjacent waters would furnish snug harbors for fleets. You have seen, as you glided by the shores, traces, more or less distinct, of the sovereignty of Louis XIV., of George III., and of the republic of the United States. Puritans and Jesuits, Huguenots and Papists, kings and commons, have all schemed and striven for the possession of this little corner of land. Richelieu, Mazarin, and Colbert have plotted for it; Thurloe, Clarendon, and Bolingbroke have counter-plotted. It has been fought over no end of times, conquered and reconquered, and is now of no more political consequence than the distant peak of Katahdin.

There is very little appearance of business about Castine. It is delightfully lethargic. Few old houses of earlier date than the Revolution remain to give the place a character of antiquity conformable with its history. Nevertheless, there are pleasant mansions, and cool, well-shaded by-ways, quiet and still, in which the echo of your own footfall is the only audible sound. The peninsula, which the inhabitants call the "Neck," in distinction from the larger fraction of the town, is of small extent. You may ramble all over it in an afternoon.[25 - The upper and larger part is called North Castine.]

If it is a good maxim to sleep on a weighty matter, so it is well to dine before forming a judgment of a place you are visiting for the first time. Having broken bread and tasted salt, you believe yourself to have acquired some of the rights of citizenship; and if you have dined well, are not indisposed to regard all you may see with a genial and not too critical an eye. Upon this conviction I acted.

At the tavern, the speech of the girl who waited on the table was impeded by the gum she was chewing. While she was repeating the carte, the only words I was able to distinguish were, "Raw fish and clams." As I am not partial to either, I admit I was a little disconcerted, until a young man at my elbow interpreted, sotto voce, the jargon into "Corned fish and roast lamb." At intervals in the repast, the waiting-girl would run into the parlor and beat the keys of the piano, until recalled by energetic pounding upon the table with the haft of a knife. Below stairs I was present at a friendly altercation between the landlord and maid of all work, as to whether the towel for common use had been hanging a week or only six days. But "travelers," says Touchstone, "must be content;" and he was no fool though he wore motley.

I ascended the hill above the town on which the Normal School is situated, and in a few moments stood on the parapet of Fort George. And perhaps in no part of New England can a more beautiful and extensive view be had with so little trouble. It was simply enchanting. Such a combination of land and water is seldom embraced within a single coup d'œil. The vision is bounded by those portals of the bay, the Camden range on the south-west, and the heights of Mount Desert in the east. A little north of east is the solitary Blue Hill, with the windings and broad reaches of water by which Castine proper is nearly isolated from the main-land. Turning still northward, and now with your back to the town, you perceive Old Fort Point, where, in 1759 Governor Pownall built a work to command the entrance to the river. Farther to the westward is Brigadier's Island, and the bay expanding three leagues over to Belfast.

Fort George, a square, bastioned work, is the best preserved earth-work of its years in New England. A few hours would put it in a very tolerable condition of defense. The moat, excavated down to the solid rock, is intact; the esplanade hardly broken in outline. The position of the barracks, magazine, and guard-house may be easily traced on the parade, though no buildings now remain inside the fortress. The approach on three sides is by a steep ascent; especially is this the case on the side of the town. Each bastion was pierced with four embrasures. The position was of great strength, and would have been an ugly place to carry by escalade. A matter of a few hours once determined the ownership of Castine for England or the Colonies in arms.

Now let us take a walk over to the more elevated summit west of Fort George. Here are also evidences of military occupation in fast-perishing embankments and heaps of beach pebbles. What are left of the lines look over toward the English fort and the cove between it and the main-land. A broad, level plateau of greensward extends between the two summits, over which neither you nor I would have liked to walk in the teeth of rattling volleys of musketry. Yet such things have been on this very hill-top.

The story of these fortifications is drawn from one of the most disgraceful chapters of the Revolutionary war. It is of a well-conceived enterprise brought to a disastrous issue through incapacity, discord, and blundering. There are no longer susceptibilities to be wounded by the relation, though for many years after the event it was seldom spoken of save with mingled shame and indignation. Little enough is said of it in the newspapers of the time, for it was a terrible blow to Massachusetts pride, and struck home.

In June, 1779, Colonel Francis M'Lean was sent from Halifax with nine hundred men to seize and fortify the peninsula, then generally known as Penobscot.[26 - Castine was not incorporated under its present name until 1796. The Indian name of the peninsula was Bagaduce, or Biguyduce.] He landed on the 12th of June, and with the energy and decision of a good soldier began the work of establishing himself firmly in his position.

In the British ranks was one notable combatant, Captain John Moore, of the Fifty-first foot, who fell under the walls of Corunna while commanding the British army in Spain. As his military career began in America, I may narrate an incident illustrating his remarkable popularity with his soldiers. In 1799, at Egmont-op-zee, the Ninety-second fiercely charged a French brigade. A terrific mélée ensued, in which the French were forced to retreat. In the midst of the combat two soldiers of the Ninety-second discovered General Moore lying on his face, apparently dead; for he was wounded and unconscious. "Here is the general; let us take him away," said one of them, and, suiting the action to the word, they bore him to the rear. The general offered a reward of twenty pounds; but could never discover either of the soldiers who had aided him. Moore's death inspired Wolfe's admired lines, pronounced by Lord Byron "the most perfect ode in the language:"

"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried."

"Moore," said Napoleon, "was a brave soldier, an excellent officer, and a man of talent. He made a few mistakes, inseparable, perhaps, from the difficulties with which he was surrounded." Being reminded that Moore was always in the front of battle, and generally unfortunate enough to be wounded, he added, "Ah! it is necessary sometimes. He died gloriously; he died like a soldier."

Great alarm was produced by M'Lean's bold dash. Immediate application was made to Massachusetts, of which Maine still formed a part, for aid to expel the invader. Hancock was then governor. General Gates commanded the Eastern Department, with head-quarters at Providence. The Massachusetts rulers put their heads together, and, thinking on the brilliant achievement of their fathers at Louisburg in 1745, resolved to emulate it. They raised a large land and naval force with the utmost expedition, laying an embargo for forty days in order to man their fleet with sailors. General Gates was neither consulted nor applied to for the Continental troops under his orders.[27 - Gordon, vol. iii., p. 304.]

The Massachusetts armament appeared off Penobscot on the 25th of July. The army was commanded by Solomon Lovell, the fleet by Captain Saltonstall, of the Warren, a fine new Continental frigate of thirty-two guns. Peleg Wadsworth was second in command to Lovell; Paul Revere, whom Longfellow has immortalized, had charge of the artillery. The land forces did not number more than twelve hundred men, but might be augmented to fifteen hundred or more with marines from the fleet. These troops were militia, and had only once paraded together under arms. The flotilla was formidable in appearance and in the number of guns it carried, but lacked unity and discipline quite as much as the army. Plenty of courage and plenty of means do not make soldiers or win battles.

M'Lean had received intelligence of the sailing of the Massachusetts 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 - The man who destroyed Falmouth, now Portland.] 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 passage. 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 assailants, 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.

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 passed 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 shore 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 Penobscot 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 assailants 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 Hancock 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 passage, could look into the room as he paced on his round. At either end of this passage 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 pass the sentinels in the passage and at the outer door of their quarters, they must then cross the open space 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 passed 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 space above their room, creeping along the joists until they reached the passage next beyond, which they knew to be unguarded. Thence they were to make their way to the north bastion, acting as circumstances might determine.

Burton was the first to pass 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 passed 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 passed 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 passed 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 fortitude, gained the opposite shore of the Penobscot 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'armée of Rochambeau was at Newport, the French general conceived the idea of sending an expedition to recapture Penobscot, 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 shores 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.

CHAPTER V.

CASTINE —continued

"Baron Castine of St. Castine
Has left his château 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 assist 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 class 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 surpassing 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 shore of the harbor, less than half a mile from the central portion of the town. The grass-grown ramparts have sunk too low to be distinguished from the water in passing, but are evident to a person standing on the ground itself. Not many years will elapse before these indistinct traces are wholly obliterated.[29 - In 1759 Governor Pownall took possession of the peninsula of Castine, and hoisted the English flag on the fort. He found the settlement deserted and in ruins. —Gov. Pownall's Journal.]

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 shore 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 Pentagoët is now occupied by buildings, a barn standing within the circumvallation, and the dwelling of Mr. Webb between the shore 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 Pentagoët, 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 passage opening at the shore.

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.

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 écus, Portuguese and Spanish pieces-of-eight, Bremen dollars, piasters, and cob-money,[30 - "The clumsy, shapeless coinage, both of gold and silver, called in Mexico máquina de papa, lote y cruz ("windmill and cross-money"), and in this country by the briefer appellation of "cobs." These were of the lawful standards, or nearly so, but scarcely deserved the name of coin, being rather lumps of bullion flattened and impressed by a hammer, the edge presenting every variety of form except that of a circle, and affording ample scope for the practice of clipping: notwithstanding they are generally found, even to this day, within a few grains of lawful weight. They are generally about a century old, but some are dated as late as 1770. They are distinguished by a large cross, of which the four arms are equal in length, and loaded at the ends. The date generally omits the thousandth place; so that 736, for example, is to be read 1736. The letters PLVS VLTRA (plus ultra) are crowded in without attention to order. These coins were formerly brought here in large quantities for recoinage, but have now become scarce." – William E. Dubois, United States Mint.I think the name of "cob" was applied to money earlier than the date given by Mr. Dubois. Its derivation is uncertain, but was probably either "lump," or from the Welsh, for "thump," i. e., struck money.] clipped and battered, with illegible dates, but melodious ring, chinked in better fellowship than the sovereigns whose effigies they bore had lived in. A single gold coin, the only one found in the neighborhood of Castine, was picked up on the beach opposite the fort.[31 - On an old map of unknown date Castin's houses are located here.]

The theory of the presence of so large a sum on the spot where it was found is that when Castin was driven from the fort by Colonel Church, in 1704, these coins were left by some of his party in their retreat, where they remained undiscovered for more than a century and a quarter. Or it may have been the hoard of one of the two countrymen of Castin, who, he says, were living two miles from him in 1687.

The detail of old Fort Pentagoët just given is believed to describe the place as it had existed since 1654, when captured by the colony forces of Massachusetts. General Sedgwick then spoke of it as "a small fort, yet very strong, and a very well composed peese, with eight peese of ordnance, one brass, three murtherers, about eighteen barrels of powder, and eighteen men in garrison."[32 - Sedgwick's Letter, Historical Magazine, July, 1873, p. 38.]

It would require a volume to set forth in extenso the annals of these mounds, scarce lifted above the surface of the surrounding plateau. But to arouse the reader's curiosity without an endeavor to gratify it were indeed churlish. I submit, therefore, with the brevity, and I hope also the simplicity, that should characterize the historic style, the essence of the matter as it has dropped from my alembic.