£l)c -farmer's iHcmtljhj bisitor. 



105 



enumerated. Leaving Portsmouth up the Pis- 

 cataqua and its Salmon falls branch to Berwick, 

 the road, at first nearly in a tangent, encircles at 



the north around Agamentietis in the direction 

 towards Allied— uniting the Dover with the 

 Portsmouth roads— when it turns from a course 

 west of north to a direction nearly east from 

 Berwick at the old village of Douty's falls. The 

 last fifteen miles before reaching Portland — in- 

 deed perhaps more than fifteen miles through 

 Wells and the Kennebunks— the country is a 

 pure level with the surface soil originally of the 

 pine growth long since denuded of its beautiful 

 tall trees for litlle or no profit or income to the 

 owners of the soil. York and Cumberland 

 counties were lll3 original lumber region of 

 Maine when, as a district of Massachusetts with 

 New Hampshire in all its seashore separating 

 the mother from its dependent, more than half 

 the territory of New England had only a single 

 representative in Congress in the person oT 

 Judge Thatcher, who as but yesterday ceased to 

 do duty upon the bench of the Massachusetts 

 supreme court : while this beautiful lumber 

 lasted there was not enough of the. productions 

 of agriculture to keep the few people from 

 starving. The habits of the lumber-men then 

 were not what we saw" the habits of the red 

 shirts upon the Penobscot on the fourth of July: 

 with the indictments of stringent laws in Maine, 

 under the swearing of persons employed by 

 temperance funds as spies for reporting viola- 

 tions of the law — with these prosecutions enter- 

 ed as noil by the hundred after failure of some 

 of them in long trials at the people's expense — 

 with the intemperate sticklers for temperance 

 put down in the employment of spies to swear 

 in the institution o( cpii tarn suits — of many thou- 

 sands including lumbermen and laborers of all 

 work — wc did not see at the grand meetings of 

 tdl political parties at Bangor on the 4th of July 

 a single staggering drunken man. All this will 

 prove, not that those who preach, but those who 

 silently practice the temperate use to invalids, 

 and the non-use to the healthful, of ardent spirits 

 within their own dwellings and so fir as personal 

 example will have effect, have done that work in 

 amendment of common labors which is claimed 

 as a matter of holy pharasaical ostentation by 

 temperance pretenders who gather money from 

 the confiding and the simple under the pretence 

 that they have accomplished, and are yet to ac- 

 complish, the great work of reform. 



The plains ol York to which we have alluded, 

 more of clay than our own plains upon the 

 Merrimack, seem to have a thin soil, by some 

 supposed to be incapable of fertility: this soil 

 looks "flat, stale and unprofitable," as if dead to all 

 fruitful production. Our opinion is that what 

 underlays this thin surface mould is quite suffi- 

 cient, with lew stimulants, so to enliven it as to 

 make the land highly fruitful in the grasses, 

 grains and vegetables. If the land can be made 

 good and productive, it may be done at less ex- 

 pense than rocky uplands tire usually recovered. 

 The experiment of atmospheric action, of freez- 

 ing and thawing portions ol the underlaying 

 ground, is worthy of trial. Of the Scarborough 

 plains, elevated litlle above the extensive salt 

 marshes, and these last little above the sea, we 

 are quite confident an easy restoration to fertility 

 and heavy production might be effected. The 

 great farmers of Scarborough anil of the Saco 

 plains, the Kings and the Storers, the Springs, 

 the Thorntons, the Moodys and the Cutts, rich 

 in lands as in all the resources which favor 



wealth, have perhaps had too large farms for 

 continued profit. The small farmers fifty years 

 ago in this upper south-west portion of Maine 

 pursued only a system calculated to run out 

 farms soon after the first crop was taken off. 

 Twenty-live winters tigo we saw loads of bay 

 passing up country from the seaboard for the 

 sustenance of lumbering teams in a country 

 more natural to the production of the grasses 

 than that from which the hay was carried. 



Our observations of the country over the wa- 

 ter from Portland to Bangor, a full hundred and 

 fifty miles, must he as rapid as our passage in 

 the steamboat Senator. Portland is one of those 

 large seaboard towns of the earlier class, in 

 which there has been litlle deterioration of busi- 

 ness or lack of success in gains of wealth to en- 

 terprise in the last hundred years : burnt down 

 by cruel British warfare at the opening of our 

 glorious revolution, it subsequently look up its 

 name and consequence ; and in all the time it 

 has kept on the lead in the piogress of growth 

 to all the numerous towns of Maine that are 

 highly favored for interior trade and external 

 commerce. 



Portland is a peninsula nearly or quite sur- 

 rounded by water at the point of the Casco bay 

 indented into the country by the estuaries mak- 

 ing the mouths of the smaller Saccarappa on 

 the south-west and the larger Presumpscott 

 river at the north-east of the town. The city of 

 Portland is built on the water side of an amphi- 

 theatre rising on the hack side of the town till it 

 suddenly falls away in a steeper bank. Facing 

 the harbor in front and lying along westward is 

 the town of Cape Elizabeth half encircling it 

 towards the sea; and on the other segment of 

 the half circle are the islands of the harbor, af- 

 fording ample protection to the shipping when 

 storm and tempest lashes the ocean shore. The 

 coast all the way from Portland to the mouth of 

 the Keiinebeck; and from that by the whole sea 

 front of Lincoln county to its extreme point at 

 Owl's head, is indented with more water than 

 land extending several miles up the country : of 

 these indentations in Cumberland county may 

 we reckon points of land narrow and long, con- 

 stituting first a part of Brunswick, and further 

 down Harpswell, a town whose inhabitants are 

 principally engaged in the fisheries. Up the 

 estuary which discharges at its mouth the united 

 waters of the Androscoggin, Kennebeck, Cat- 

 hance and other tributaries, lies the flourishing 

 and wealthy town and harbor of Bath, with its 

 point of laud extending towards the sea consti- 

 tuting the town of Phippsburgh. Below this 

 are islands and peninsulas making several entire 

 towns in Lincoln, as Arrowsic, Georgetown, 

 VVestport and Booth bay, &c. on the outside, ami 

 Woo'wich, Wiscassett, Edgecombe, Newcastle 

 and Nohlehorongh further in the interior. At 

 the extremity of the coast turning up the wide 

 mouth of the Penobscot, we come to the penin- 

 sula which makes the extensive town of Thom- 

 aslon, at whose ports east and west are laying 

 hundreds of ships to receive the lime which is 

 used along the w hole seaboard of the Atlantic 

 coast; in the ports ol' the gulf of Mexico and in 

 several of the West India islands, as the best 

 material of the kind for building to be found in 

 the Union. Above Thomaston on the one side 

 faces the county of Waldo — on the other side 

 Hancock, the whole of which is hut a peninsula 

 with its appendant islands constituting some en- 

 tire towns, as Islchorougii, Vinalbaven and Deer 

 Isle within the Penobscot bay: further down 



the coast are the Blue hill first, and the French- 

 man's bay beyond, their estuaries uniting anil 

 forming the more extensive island of Mount 

 Desert. These coasts are described as a sample 

 of the seaboard of Maine, in whose whole extent 

 it will he difficult not to find an estuary or har- 

 bor into which the ship may run for protection 

 in any impending storm. 



Up the Penobscot on the Waldo side, we have 

 Camden first, second only to Thomaston lor the 

 supply of its lime kilns. Coming up the river a 

 noble height, smoothed into grass and grain 

 fields with alternating pastures and young wood- 

 lands, meets us in the view. Passing Lineoln- 

 ville and Norlhport with Isleborough of great 

 length in front, the Penobscot bay opens upon 

 the flourishing town of Belfast, beyond which 

 the large towns of Prospect and Frankfort make 

 up the entire front of Waldo, coming up to- 

 Hampden as the first in Penobscot county 

 below Bangor, now grown, almost exclusively 

 from its great lumber business, into a population 

 exceeding sixteen thousand souls. 



The present was the second time of our visit- 

 ing Bangor and the county of Penobscot. We 

 went there on a sudden political occasion in the 

 month of October eight years ago: we traversed 

 the county of Penobscot three days then to Do- 

 ver the capital of the new county of Piscataquis 

 on a river of that name coining into the Penob- 

 scot fifty miles above, ignorant of all the points 

 of compass: we saw Katadn in the long dis- 

 tance stretching beyond the heights at Exeter 

 and Charlestown : we were carried sixty miles 

 in good sleighing in that month of October 

 then; but neither the covering snow, nor the 

 cold destitution of sun-shine failed us to avoid 

 the impression until then new that this interior 

 of Penobscot was excellent land, and that in no 

 part of New England than this were there better 

 livers, all the faculiiies for physical comforts, 

 which do but establish, support and maintain 

 the higher intellectual enjoyments in this land 

 of health, wealth and peace. 



Our opportunity to see the country on this 

 late visit hastily entered upon, was not all we 

 intended it should be. For the six days tarrv 

 at Bangor every day it was rainy, damp and cold 

 enough in this month of July to make a cheer- 

 ful wood fire acceptable. We diil not go to 

 Aroostook, as we might and should, had it been 

 fair weather, nor did we return north about 

 through Exeter, Dexter and the county of Som- 

 erset, as friends settled there from New Hamp- 

 shire invited. 



On the morning of the fourth of July the sun 

 in Penobscot first shone out upon us; and with 

 that glorious sun of Independence appeared in 

 Bangor such a crowd of human faces coining in 

 by carriages on land ami by steamboats on the 

 water as we had not often before seen in any 

 other than crowded larger cities. Considering 

 bow large a portion of the upper country from 

 Bangor remains yet in forest, how excellent is 

 the land lor cultivation, the soil invariably grow- 

 ing better as we go further into the country: 

 how well watered with bays indenting the sea- 

 board all the way and with the largest livers of 

 New England with their numerous tributaries 

 coming from extensive lakes near their sources 

 — considering that nearly all the land is feasible, 

 easy of cultivation and of great strength— it 

 will be difficult to fix a boundary to what the 

 State of Maine may be a century hence. 



The opening of every new survey of lands 

 expands the boundaries of Maine as upon the 



