6 



SIEUR DE MONTS NATlONAIv MONUMENT. 



less attempts at settlement followed, led by French knights at St. Croix, 

 French Jesuits at Mount Desert, and English cavaliers at Sagadahock; 

 all of them years in advance of the EngUsh Colony at New Plymouth. 

 Then followed a long period of fishing and fur trading, during which 

 Maine belonged to neither New France nor New England. Rival French- 

 men fought and besieged each other in truly feudal fashion at Penobscot 

 and St. John. The numerous French names on the eastern coast bear 

 witness still to the long French occupation there; as, for instance, Grand 

 and Petit Manan, Bois Bubert, Monts Deserts and Isle au Hault, and 

 Burnt Coat — English apparently, but really a mistranslation of the 

 French, Cote Brule. 



No Englishmen settled east of the Penobscot until after the capture of 

 Quebec; when they did, more fighting followed in the wars of the Revo- 

 lution and of 1 812. The settlers fished and hunted, cut hay on the salt 



Copyright by National Geographic Society. 



The top of Newport Mountain under whose shadow at the close of day Champlain 

 must have sailed when he first reached the island. 



marshes, and timber in the great woods; then, in later times, took to ship- 

 building. These, the occupations of a wild and timbered coast, still form 

 its business in great part. The fisheries are an abiding resource and 

 fleets of more than two hundred graceful vessels may be often seen in 

 port together, waiting the end of a storm. Hunting is carried on at 

 certain seasons in the eastern counties, where deer are numerous, and 

 innumerable inland lakes and streams are full of trout. The large pines 

 and spruces of the shore woods have long since been cut, but Bangor still 

 sends down the Penobscot a fleet of lumber schooners, loaded from the 

 interior, every time the wind blows from the north. 



It was in the early sixties that what may be called the discovery of the 

 picturesqueness, the wild beauty and refreshing character of the Maine 

 coast took place. Then, through the resort to it of a few well-known 

 landscape painters, the poor hamlet of Bar Harbor leaped into sudden 

 fame and it became evident that the whole coast had an important 



