on the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the huts of an errant 

 population of fishermen and fur-traders. 



Kude as it then was, Acadia had charms— and has 

 them still — in its wilderness of woods and its wilderness 

 of waves; the rocky ramparts that guard its coasts; its 

 deep, still bays and foaming headlands; the towering 

 clitf s of Grand Menan ; the innumerable islands that clus- 

 ter about Penobscot Bay; and the romantic highlands 

 of Mount Desert, down whose gorges the sea-fog rolls 

 like an invading host while the spires of firs and spruces 

 pierce the surging vapors like lances in the smoke of 

 battle. Leaving Pentegoet and sailing westward all day 

 along a solitude of woods, one might reach the English 

 outpost of Pemaquid, and thence, still sailing on, might 

 anchor at evening off Casco Bay, and see in the glowing 

 west the distant peaks of the White Mountains. 



Inland, Acadia was all forest, as vast tracts of it are 

 primeval forest still. Here roamed the Abenakis with 

 their kindred tribes, a race wild as their haunts. Their 

 villages were on the waters of the Androscoggin, the 

 Saco, the Kennebec, the Penobscot, the St. Croix, and 

 the St. John ; here in spring they planted their corn, 

 beans, and pumpkins, and then, leaving them to grow, 

 went down to the sea in their birch-canoes. They re- 

 turned towards the end of summer, gathered their har- 

 vest, and went again to the sea, where they lived in 

 abundance on ducks, geese, and other water-fowl. During 

 the winter, most of the women, children, and old men 

 remained in the villages; while the hunters ranged the 

 forest in chase of moose, deer, caribou, beavers, and 

 bears. 



Their summer stay at the seashore was perhaps the 

 most pleasant, and certainly the most picturesque, part 

 of their lives. Bivouacked by one of the innumerable 

 coves and inlets that indent these coasts, they passed 

 their days in that alternation of indolence and action 

 which is a second nature to the Indian. Here in wet 



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