144 NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES 



can traders, including as it did many of the nearby vil- 

 lages in what is now called the Passamaquoddy district. 

 Lubec, settled at the same time, remained a part of East- 

 port until 1811. 



The fisheries of Maine, carried on with some degree of 

 success before the settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth, 

 were our country's first enterprise. During the colonial 

 period Maine never became a permanent base for the pur- 

 suit of the fisheries, neither did it establish its real impor- 

 tance in the industry. There were famous fishing stations, 

 as at Pemaquid and Monhegan, but these served more as 

 rendezvous for outside fleets than as centers for a fish trade 

 that was the product of the natives of the coast. The 

 fisheries of the state, instead of being developed locally and 

 in turn helping in the establishment of other forms of in- 

 dustry in the region, were for too long a period the plunder- 

 ground for fishermen of other places who came only to 

 carry off the treasure of the sea and left the fishing coast, 

 like a plundered province, poorer because of its natural 

 wealth. With the establishment of settlements along the 

 whole water front of the state the fisheries were developed 

 locally more and more until, by the opening of the nine- 

 teenth century, the people began to realize that their com- 

 mercial and political independence from Massachusetts 

 lay in securing for themselves the natural wealth of the 

 adjacent waters. 



The settlement of Eastport formed the last link in a 

 chain of fishing hamlets that stretched from the Piscataqua 

 to the Saint Croix. Fishing and lumbering, the two in- 

 dustries that made possible the settlement and civilization 

 of Maine, were carried on hand in hand from the first. 

 When the timber line retreated from the shore, the coast- 

 wise farmers joined hands with the fishing interests so 

 intimately that for nearly a century it was difficult to tell, 

 in the case of hundreds of the inhabitants of the Maine 



