THE UNIQUE ISLAND OF MOUNT DESERT 



77 



colony at Salem and its appointed gov- 

 ernor, sailed by between the island — 

 whose lofty heights he makes the western 

 "Cape," or boundary, of the Bay of 

 Fundy — and Mount Desert Rock, finding 

 there "fair sunshine weather and so 

 pleasant a sweet air as did much refresh 

 us ; and there came a smell from off the 

 shore like the smell of a garden." 



That day there came a wild pigeon, 

 too, and rested on his ship — a species 

 now extinct through wanton slaughter — 

 and he tells how they put the ship a-stays 

 in 30 fathoms of water, and took "in two 

 hours, with a few hooks, sixty-seven cod- 

 fish" — and very great fish they were, 

 some of them a yard and a half long and 

 a yard in compass ; and how a whale lay 

 in their way and "would not shun them," 

 so that they sailed by within a stone's 

 throw of aim as he lay spouting water, 

 with his back hunched up a yard above 

 the sea. 



A GIFT TO THE NATION 



Three centuries — a few years more or 

 less — after Champlain sailed beneath the 

 granite range of the Mount Desert moun- 

 tains and the French colonists had 

 broken ground upon the fertile shore, a 

 group of summer residents, who had long 

 found pleasure, in the various beauty of 

 the island and a restful home upon its 

 shores, gathered in response to a call 

 from Dr. Charles W. Eliot, then presi- 

 dent of Harvard University, to associate 

 themselves together for the purpose of 

 ■conserving the wild, inspiring beauty — 

 supreme in its own way — the many-sided 

 interest and open freeaon. -Ki the nature 

 which had meant so much to them. 



Gradually the undertaking thus begun 

 lias grown, till now the association holds 

 l^etween five and six thousand acres on 

 the island in one continuous reservation, 

 which includes the highest mountain 

 peaks and the greater part of the water- 

 shed of the high-lying lakes between them 

 whence the water supplies of the resi- 

 dential portions of the island are chiefly 

 -drawn. The area also includes much 

 forest land, with deep valleys which offer 

 admirable shelter for wild life, open 

 marshes and pools suitable for wading 

 and aquatic birds, streams on which 

 teaver formerly built their dams and 



which would make fit homes for them 

 again, and the best opportunity along the 

 whole Maine coast for preserving and 

 exhibiting in a single tract its native flora. 



This ownership the association hopes 

 ultimately to extend, as opportunity to do 

 so at reasonable cost shall offer, till it in- 

 cludes the whole range of bold, ice-worn 

 granite hills, from 12 to 15 miles in 

 length, which extends across the island, 

 offering magnificent views of sea and 

 land, together with the cool lakes, the 

 wooded valleys, and the one noble fiord 

 on our Atlantic coast which lie between 

 them. 



The completion of this purpose wnll 

 create a wild park of remarkable beauty, 

 unique character, and great variety of 

 landscape feature, whose permanent and 

 best development in accordance with the 

 spirit of their undertaking the members 

 of the association feel will be provided 

 for most wisely by placing it — except in 

 special portions carefully selected and set 

 aside for arboretum and other educa- 

 tional or scientific purpose — in the hands 

 of the Federal government as a gift to 

 the nation. 



Saved to future generations as it has 

 been to us, in the wild primeval beauty 

 of the nature it exhibits, of ancient rocks 

 and still more ancient sea, with infinite 

 detail of life and landscape interest be- 

 tween, the spirit and mind of man will 

 surely find in it in the years and centu- 

 ries to come an inspiration and a means 

 of growth as essential to them ever and 

 anon as are fresh air and sunshine to the 

 body. 



MYRIADS OF LAND AND WATER BIRDS ''' 



When America was first discovered 

 the coast of Maine was the habitat of 

 myriads of land and water birds. Cham- 

 plain, in his account of his second voyage 

 along that coast, tells of the multitude of 

 fowls of the air which he beheld. Hak- 

 luyt, in his "Discovery of Norumbega," 



* The preceding paragraphs are bj' George B. 

 Dorr; the succeeding paragraphs, until the 

 heading "Mount Desert contains a greater di- 

 versity of plant life, etc.," by Ernest Howe 

 Forbush, and the concluding paragraphs, be- 

 ginning with the above heading, are by M. L. 

 Fernafd, Curator Gray Herbarium, Harvard 

 Universitv. 



