opportunities that offer — for themselves, their children, 

 and their children's children in other portions of the 

 ontinent. 



Professor Fernald wrote his plea for conservation 

 of the Acadian flora through the establishment of plant 

 sanctuaries upon Mount Desert Island — a place of 

 extraordinary natural fitness for the purpose — before 

 it was known whether or not the United States Govern- 

 ment would accept the lands then offered it upon the 

 Island for a national monument and park. 



The warm interest of the Secretary of the Interior, 

 the Hon. Franklin K. Lane, in a project which would 

 extend the benefits of the National Parks Service to the 

 great eastern section of the country, with its dense city 

 populations, resulted in the establishment upon Mount 

 Desert Island of the first national park area — war 

 monuments aj^art — east of Arkansas. This monument 

 initiates, accordingly, a new departure on the Govern- 

 ment's part, a broadening of its policy for nature con- 

 servation and the establishment of recreation areas for 

 its people amidst the older eastern country. And 

 it is fitly chosen for such purpose, its grey granite moun- 

 tains fronting the Acadian Seas traversed by the early 

 voyagers and already annually visited in the sixteenth 

 century by fishing fleets from Brittany. It is with that 

 wild Breton coast, famous always for its hardy, fearless 

 race of seamen, and with the Bay of Biscay shores be- 

 hind which lay de Monts' and Cham plain's boyhood 

 homes that the history of eastern North America is first 

 associated. 



This early Acadian period of the first settlements it 

 is that the Sieur de Monts National Monument is intended 

 to commemorate historically. But, historic interest 

 apart, as what Alexander von Humboldt first called, in his 

 home tongue, a "Nature" monument, Mount Desert in its 



9 



