108 



<ftljc Saxmtfs JWontljto lUsitor. 



the revolution. John Mitchell, the father in law, 

 moved from Londonderry to Belfast in the year 

 1764, at the first opening of the country that far tip 

 the Penobscot: his grandson pointed us on the 

 shore over the bridge on the east side of the hay 

 to the place where the pioneers made their first 

 pitch : the present town of Belfast is a mile 

 or more distant on the west side. Mr. Mitchell, 

 as a surveyor and geographer at that early day, 

 constructed the map of Maine which has been 

 introduced as authority, and has been laid up in 

 the archives of Europe, guiding to the boundary 

 negociations which have been so interesting 

 down to latter times. His map was necessa- 

 rily imperfect and much restricted, as the coun- 

 try at the north had not then been explored. 

 The bend of the St. John's river winding north- 

 ward further than the St. Lawrence at Quebec 

 and the extent of the highlands reaching further 

 north-east, were then but imperfectly under- 

 stood. With this deficiency, Mitchell's map was 

 a model map of the country at that time highly 

 creditable to the author, for which the British 

 government at home, as in duty bound, made 

 some compensation. Mr. White shewed us the 

 ancient map and plan of a grant of 100,000 acres 

 of land in Maine and New Brunswick on the 

 side of the St. Croix, including and covering 

 Moose Island, now Eastport, and two or three 

 towns of Maine of the main laud northerly, em- 

 bracing Rohbinstown, &e. This grant made to 

 Francis Barnard, Thomas Pownall, John Mitch- 

 ell, Thomas Thornton, and Richard Jackson, 

 esquires, with other grants marked upon the 

 plan, of which were 10,000 acres to Aug. Old- 

 ham, 10,000 to Edward Crosby, and 10,000 to 

 John Masarene, Esq. extending some of them 

 still further into what is now New Brunswick, 

 show that to Maine and not Nova Scotia belong- 

 ed the country further eastward than the present 

 Si. Croix boundary. It is shameful to American 

 commissioners and agents that no map can be 

 constructed which will not give the present 

 British island of Grand Mennn as within the 

 limits and along the coast of the State of Maine. 



Of the grantees of lauds in Maine, it is be- 

 lieved, that Francis Barnard and Thomas Pow- 

 nall were titled lords as well as "esquires." 

 John Mitchell, early of the class resisting British 

 encroachment, after having resided at his Belfast 

 settlement ten years, was driven away by the 

 British in the year 1774: with his family he 

 came back to Chester; and it is a singular fact 

 which we no where recollect to have seen men- 

 tioned in print, that this enterprising and distin- 

 guished man, the father of a numerous offspring 

 some of the same name, lived in our own neigh- 

 borhood from 1774 to the year 1802, where he 

 died in the 90th year of his age. Hon. William 

 White, who married his daughter, also lived in 

 Chester until Ins DOth year, when he died in the 

 year 1829. An elder son at Belfast was followed 

 there by another son, who graduated at Dart- 

 mouth College about the year 1807, and read 

 law with Amos Kent, Esq. of Chester. A still 

 younger son, James, our informant, was a col- 

 league with Professor IJpliam under the instruc- 

 tion of President Allen, and Professors Carter 

 and Dean, at the time of die University struggle 

 at Hanover in 18KJ: be has resided at Belfast, 

 not as a practising lawyer, but a man of business 

 since 1818, marrying so late in life as to be the 

 father at fifty years of age of a beautiful group, 

 with a young mother, of eight children from 

 sixteen years of age downward. 



Belfast has a daily stage to Augusta three 



times a week alternating on different roads be- 

 tween a tier of towns northerly and southerly. 

 The Saturday (July 8) of our travel was the 

 route southerly through Moutville touching 

 towns in both Lincoln and Kennebeck. It is 

 among our mortifications to witness the neglect 

 to agriculture arising from the pursuits growing 

 out of the early lumbering in this country. How 

 degraded had become the farms embracing some 

 of the best lands in old Rockingham from the 

 coopering business, which in many instances 

 was but the indication of the misery of intem- 

 perance and poverty. Some parts of the interior 

 of Waldo not many miles out of Belfast looked 

 the same poverty-stricken cultivation upon what 

 had been, and what must again become, good 

 and productive land. The making of lime bar- 

 rels at thirteen cents apiece to be sent down to 

 Thomaston, twenty or thirty miles, was using 

 up the wood and timber as a better business 

 than farming, when the neglected cultivation 

 was hut a poor encouragement in the product to 

 the labor bestowed upon it. Two dollars a day and 

 more as temporary employment in the call for 

 shipbuilders is a temptation to the father of a 

 family tending to the prostration of business at 

 home: the fences rotting down leave fields and 

 pastures exposed to a common highway. What 

 can females do but seek employment in the 

 towns where their brothers are gone ? The 

 mother at home has but an unwelcome task to 

 lit up her house for an expected children's visit. 

 The moment when the stimulated demand for 

 labor at the higher price ceases, throws the men 

 and women away from home out of employ- 

 ment ; and the misery results natural to this 

 slate of things in the entire incapacity of the 

 farm at home (if it yet continue the property of 

 the owner who has suffered it to be abused) to 

 afford any present aid to a livelihood of himself 

 and family. 



Passing Moutville, we were reminded of that 

 well-recollected face which, seemingly as of yes- 

 terday, tittered in no voice of strained delicacy, 

 whether in the state house or the pulpit, the 

 convictions of an honest ami a patriotic heart. 

 Elder Ebenezer Knowlton, perhaps a dozen 

 years ago, removed from Pittsfield in our own 

 neighborhood, to Moutville in Maine, a town of 

 Waldo county situated midway between Belfast 

 and Augusta: he soon there became what he 

 had been here a representative and afterwards a 

 senator in the legislature. He deceased five 

 years ago; and to him has succeeded also as a 

 legislator (one year speaker of the House) bis 

 son Ebenezer Knowlton: this son, like his fa- 

 ther, is also a preacher of ihe Freewill Baptist 

 denomination. The beautiful farm which was 

 there cultivated well as was the elder's farm in 

 Pittsfield — perhaps more easy and natural to 

 high production— lay some fourth of a mile out 

 of our way. We could pee enough of it to be- 

 lieve that both father and son (John Colby 

 Knowlton its present occupant) knew the farm- 

 er's art of sure profits from making their land 

 more productive. A little to the west of the 

 slope of land on which the Knowlton farm is 

 situated the road passes over a valley and 

 stream with mills: on the side of the road next 

 to trie farm is one of those neat new churches 

 which some of the itinerating denominations are 

 erecting in most of the New England towns. 

 The church yard is distinguished by a single 

 granite obelisk rising above the marble head- 

 stones to the graves around it. We stlpposi d 

 and anticipated correctly that this was the place 



of deposite for the remains of Ebenezer Knowl- 

 ton, who there died probably as the most distin- 

 guished man of the neighborhood. 



The poorest part of Maine, much yet unculti- 

 vated, of which we have passed, is the towns of 

 Liberty and Appleton in Waldo, and Washington 

 and Patricktown in Lincoln : new roads com- 

 monly present bad specimens of country ; and 

 our observation here, ranging through what had 

 been pine or other evergreen forests, may have 

 mistaken us the general character of these 

 towns. Kennebeck county, however, presents 

 good farms and rich land in all the towns we 

 have seen. On this route Windsor coming upon 

 Augusta to the eastward of Kennebeck river, 

 the only town passed, presented in larger swells 

 than that of the Knowlton farm at Moutville, 

 most beautiful fields of growing grass and grain, 

 corn and potatoes, with cattle and sheep ranging 

 on luxuriant pastures. 



The week spent in the Penobscot country 

 brought us on Saturday night to Augusta, the 

 capital of Maine, at which in a long summer 

 session the Legislature is still sitting. The Au- 

 gusta house with its inmates over the Sabbath 

 afforded that kind of rest which we then wanted 

 with a knowledge of all the interesting matters 

 about the State of Maine to which curiosity 

 prompted. We went to c'hurch to attend the 

 ministrations of a young clergymen, more learn- 

 ed but not more interesting in the preached 

 part than that which we had listened to in a 

 less fashionable but not less attentive audience 

 on the previous Sunday. 



The journey home on Monday morning, quick 

 by steamer down the Kennebeck to Portland, 

 will delay us not long in the description. On 

 this river, as on the Penobscot and along the 

 bays, were numerous nets and decoys in which 

 the salmon are taken. The fresh salmon so 

 abound that we had not a daily dinner in Maine 

 where the favorite fish was not one of the dishes : 

 pickled after it is boiled and cold, it is a most 

 palatable accompaniment for the supper tea ta- 

 ble. The decoys for salmon are bushes set in a 

 direct line along the shore towards the middle of 

 the stream arresting the direct course of the fish 

 as he makes his way up : he turns to find a pas- 

 sage and winds his way opening forward in a 

 crooked labyrinth in which if he turns to go out 

 on cither side he always finds an obstruction. 

 The price of salmon on the Penobscot and Ken- 

 nebeck rivers, from whence boxes are sent daily 

 to Boston and the towns along shore to New 

 York, is fifteen cents a pound. At Dennysvillc 

 on the St. Croix beyond Eastport the price of 

 fresh salmon is only five cents the pound. 

 More numerous and plentiful is this fish, beauti- 

 ful in form and fine in flavor as its flesh is fine in 

 texture, richest and most nutritive for weight 

 of meat of probably any of the other fish that 

 swims the ocean, lake, brook or river, as we go 

 eastward in the streams running into the bay of 

 Fundy and the ocean from New Brunswick, 

 Nova Scotia, Newfoundland including the entire 

 coast down to Labrador. 



The cheap travelling either to Augusta by the 

 Kennebeck or Bangor by the Penobscot, coining 

 from competition between the railroad route to 

 Portland and the steamboat route all the way 

 Irom Boston, reduced to the price of one dollar 

 in the special express lines where the ticket is 

 taken for the whole distance, would induce al- 

 most every person pleased with the variety ot 

 objects presented in rapid travel to enjoy the op- 

 portunity. When the wind blows from the east, 



