Seeing the eastern states

Front matter

SEEING THE EASTERN

STATES

JOHN T. FARIS

Foreword

FOR the fortunate traveler who plans to journey through the Eastern States by train, by automobile, or on foot, this volume is designed as an aid in mapping out routes, a companion on the way, a reminder of the historic associations from Portland to Pittsburgh and from Niagara Falls to New York, New J ersey and Delaware.

But should the projected vacation journey so carefully planned prove impossible the long summer will seem to loom ahead dark, gloomy, forbidding. Such a vision is so unpleasant that most people are apt to resist the suggestion that they decide to make the best of a bad business and get as good a vacation as possible without leaving home. How can they be expected to find pleasure in a place the resources of which were exhausted long ago?

But have the resources of the square miles near home been entirely exhausted? Has it never occurred to us that there is a possibility of seeing the familiar things in a new way, to say nothing of seeing among them familiar sights that never met our eyes before?

Perhaps the roads and the streams and the trees close to our homes have more to show us and to tell us than we have thought. Let us listen to them, and so be ready for the greater* enjoyment of the scenes that are near as well as of those that are farther away. And if there is a time when we cannot even go to scenes around home, let us keep in mind the statement of W. P. James, the English author of the book, **The Lure of the Map," that if he had to choose one work to

FOREWORD take with him to a desert island he would take an atlas. The title essay in the volume dwells lovingly on the fascinations of the map. Have you ever tried an atlas as a substitute for an impossible vacation journey? It makes a better substitute than many people would think.

The map should be read in the light of figures — both arable and rhetorical — like those given by an editorial writer in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, concerning a large portion of the territory described in Seeing the Eastern States. He told of **that most extraordinary natural division of America known as the great coastal ellipse that reaches from Maine to Maryland, with Portland and Washington as the two f od, and which takes in the lower end of Maine, a third of New Hampshire, all of Massachusetts, Ehode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey and Delaware, with a fifth of New York State, a fourth of Pennsylvania and a half of Maryland. This geographic ellipse, whose backbone is the axis of the Falls Line,'' on the geological formation of the continent, is an empire in itself, in which is found not only more than one-fifth of the population of the country, but the most dazzling manifestation of that civilization which the world calls American. ...

Within this ellipse is also found a radiant countryside that ranges from the mountains and lakes of New England to the Palisades of the Hudson — compared with which the glories of the Ehine sink into insignificance — and the quieter rural beauties of the rolling country round about Philadelphia. And everywhere throughout this countryside its humanization has added a touch of unusual charm to that which is beautifu] in itself and is a challenge to the mere arti-

FOREWORD ficially arranged aspects of Old World landscapes.

Merely to touch the fringes of the significance of this coastal empire is to stimnlate the imagination with rarities, since within it are not only found the resources of the New World in glittering superabundance but the rich spoils of the whole earth. It was Kipling who, entering New York harbor on one occasion, saw there, for the nonce, *the most stupendous loot' man had ever gathered together. But New York, while the culmination, is only part of this coastal empire which, with the capital of the nation within its metes and bounds, determines not only the destiny of America but that of the world.''

Then think of adding, to the superb country described by the editorial writer, the remainder of Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Pennsylvania, and all of Vermont — omitting only Maryland, which has been included in an earlier volume in this series ! What an opportunity the territory provides for the traveler, the sportsman, or the seeker after rest!

The author speaks gratefully of help received from many while he was Seeing the Eastern States, including Colonel Henry W. Shoemaker, of McElhattan, Pennsylvania, L. K. Stubbs of West Chester, Pennsylvania, George P. Singer of St. David's, Pennsylvania, and William P. Dawson, of Lynn, Massachusetts. He says * * thank you ' ' to Henry van Dyke for permission to use poems quoted in this volume, and to Edward Stratton Holloway for the artistic beauty of the frontispiece.

JoMW T. Pabis

Philadelphia,

Contents

CHAFTBB PAQB

I. FOLLOWING THE RUGGED COAST OP MAINE 15

II. THE ROMANCE OF LAFAYETTE NATIONAL PARK. . 22

Chapter II The Romance Of Lafayette National Park, Mount Desert

IT does not seem natural to speak of a National Park in the East; somehow the words take the hearer in imagination to the West where mountains and lakes, waterfalls and canyons provide fit settings for majestic playgrounds of the people.

Yet since February 17, 1919, it has been necessary to revise such notions, for then President Wilson approved the action of Congress in setting apart as the heritage of the vacation-seeker and the lover of nature the most appealing portions of Mount Desert, the island on the coast of Maine that has excited the wonder and admiration of visitors, from the days of Champlain, who, in 1604, in company with the Sieur de Monts, approached Mount Desert in wonder and entered Frenchman's Bay with profound satisfaction. The Bay still has the original name, just as the island bears to this day a slight modification of the title given it by Champlain — * 4 'Isle des Monts Desert,'' the island of the lonely mountains.

Champlain passed on, but other Frenchmen followed him. Nine years later a shipload of emigrants braved the surf that beats on the rocky precipices, guardians of the island, and made a missionary settlement at the entrance to Somes Sound, the estuary to the north of Southwest Harbor that has been called **the one true fiord on the Atlantic Coast of North America from

THE ROMANCE OF LAFAYETTE NATIONAL PARK

Newf oundland s outhward. " The colony— a part of the Acadian settlement — did not survive long, yet Parkman declares that its establishment marked the real beginning of settlements that led to the long conflict between the French and the English in North America.

The next home-makers in the ' ' Isle of Enchantment' ? came from Massachusetts. Even before 1760 some daring pioneers sought the bold promontories and the inviting valleys of Mount Desert.

Shrewd Francis Bernard, Governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony, decided to do something to claim the Maine country for Massachusetts. He did not see why he might not at the same time win valuable property for himself. At any rate he succeeded in persuading the General Court of Massachusetts to grant to him one half of all Mt. Desert.

Governor Bernard's dreams of an island principality were not to be fulfilled. His estates were confiscated because of his royalist leanings. Later, however, he willed his half of the island to his son John. The General Court confirmed the claim of the son when he proved his loyalty to the Colonies, but he chose to mortgage his possessions for a small sum that he might make his home in England.

In the days following the Eevolution Mount Desert real estate was in demand. In 1785 there appeared a claimant for all of the island in the person of Bartolemy de Gregoire, who came from France with his wife. He declared that a grant of the island had been made by Louis XIV to her grandfather, Antoine de la Motte Cadillac, later the founder of Detroit. A letter from Lafayette urged the favorable consideration of the petition. The plea of the Frenchman who had done so much for the* Colonies was not to be resisted, and that part of the land then in possession of the state was transferred to the heir.

The French adventurer*' lived for a time at HulPs Cove, then a few miles northwest of the later location of Bar Harbor. Gradually he let his vast estate slip from him. The last sale, made by Henry Jackson for £1247, included twelve islands, which contained in all more than twenty-five hundred acres.

Once Bar Harbor stood for Mount Desert, but the lovers of the wild have entered coves and harbors all around the scores of miles of serrated coast. Now they seek Northeast! Harbor and Seal Harbor, Southwest Harbor and Somesville. But why name a few choice resorts when all the island is an alluring treasurehouse of ponds and lakes and craggy mountains ; streams and cliffs and mysterious defiles ; trees and flowers and luxuriant undergrowth? It is possible to travel twenty miles in one direction and twenty miles in another direction, over this marvelous land of about one hundred square miles, and to discover many surprises in every mile. There is the Sea Wall, a cliff several miles below Southwest Harbor, where the breakers dash in fury. The granite Otter Cliff is approached from the famous oc^ean drive. Above one of the most delightful of these ocean drives the Cadillac Trail surmounts a sturdy sea cliff.

The Green Mountain Trail looks down on Otter Creek, a little harbor whose limits are fixed by great headlands that are fit company for heights said to be among the greatest between the St. Lawrence and the Amazon. Pemetic Mountain, one of the commanding heights of an island distinguished by the only moun-

THE ROMANCE OF LAFAYETTE NATIONAL PARK tains that approach the Atlantic coast, looks down on a wild, deep gorge and over Eagle Lake to where Bar Harbor seeks the water. Below the Gouldsboro Hills lies Upper Frenchman's Bay, while close to the bay is another gorge, whose deep passage through the rocks provides a way from Bar Harbor to the southern shore of the island.

The lovers of Mount Desert's unparalled scenery long ago determined that it must revert to the people who so prodigally parted with it to the Tory governor and the French adventurer. They wished to see it made a national vacation ground, a sanctuary for the birds that pause here in their migrations, a refuge for the fur-bearing animals that once lived securely in the streams and the ponds. Gradually they gained title to thousands of acres, laid out trails and roads which made practicable trips into the interior and along the coast, while these did not detract from the wild beauty of the surroundings, and finally they prevailed on the United States to take over the lands for the people.

This patriotic gift to the nation became then the nucleus of the Lafayette National Park, which contains great tracts deeds to which were made by the heirs of William Bingham of Philadelphia. And Bingham gained title from the Henry Jackson who bought the last of the holdings of De Gregoire!

Chapter III Mount Ktaadn, The Home Of Pamola

WON'T it be good when the tourist can steal on Mount Ktaadn in an automobile?'* a thoughtless man said to the lover of the Maine wilderness.

* * In an automobile ! ' ' was the response. * * An automobile road to the most wonderful mountain east of the Rockies, the most resplendent of Maine's hidden glories ? It is unthinkable that there should be a turnpike to the skirt of the peaks where, according to Abenakis legend, mysterious Pamela had her awesome residence and held her dread court!

*'Let automobiles come within a few miles, if this must be. But it would be folly to talk of doing more than improve the final stretches of the trail so that packhorses could follow them in security. Then we can continue to approach the marvel of the wilderness with reverence; we can be still as successive visions of the Creator's majesty unfold to view; we can rejoice in the knowledge that there is a spot, within easy reach of Boston or New York, where the tumult and the shouting will be forgotten in dreamy hours of communion with tremendous rocky precipices, limpid upland lakes, and lofty sky pastures so recently trodden by the caribou ; we can rouse in the night at the sullen roar of the avalanche, and pass the golden mountain days amid the deposits that hide the secrets of the glacial geology of northern Maine,"

MOUNT KTAADN, THE HOME OF PAMOLA

Modern improvements witliin the sacred precincts of Ktaadn seem to such enthusiasts as profane as the attempt to oell the mountain Katahdin. **Call it Ktaadn,'' they say, ^'and so do your best to reproduce in a single syllable the pronunciation of the Indians as they told of their highest land. These savages had such boundless reverence for the mountain that when, in 1804, Charles Turner, the first white man to make the perilous ascent, approached the peak, the native guides refused to climb with him to Pamela's dwellingplace. The angry being, who had the body of a man and the head of a great eagle, would send dire punishment upon them I Every avalanche told of his displeasure, the thunder's roar was the story of his wrath, and the lightnings were only the flashing of his all-seeing eyes."

The Indians have departed, but the glory of Ktaadn remains, hidden in the fastnesses of the lake-girt wilderness, luring the dweUer in the haunts of bustle and confusion, promising untold satisfaction to those who are not dismayed by the thought of the days of toil in the canoe and on the trail that are its allies as it maintains its distance from the heedless and the irreverent.

Today many approach the sacred mountain by the West Branch of the Penobscot Eiver, the route chosen long ago by Henry D. Thoreau. But some prefer to vary the route by going from Lily Bay or Moosehead Lake, then by automobile to Kokad-jo or first Eoach Pond, then to itipogenus, entering the West Branch at Eipogenus Gorge, one of the renowned sights of the wilderness. From this the way is down river, past

Monument Rock, to the mountain, or still farther down to Abol Falls, and up the Abol trail to the summit.

Some may say that this is nothing but a tiresome list of names. Not to the men or women who have permitted the fever of the wild to have its way in the heart ! They are not ashamed to tell how the blood is stirred by the mere tracing of the course to the mountain on a detail map of Maine. How they pity those for whom that map is dumb, lifeless. To them it whispers of the forest trail; it speaks eloquently of the canoe gliding swiftly on the surface of the still reaches of the stream, or poising for a dash through the rapids ; it thunders with the waters as they fall from the river into the lake.

After the canoe trip amid the secrets of lakes and falls and rivers comes the trail with its fascinating glimpses of mountain glory, glimpses that finally — if the enshrouding mists are kind — ^melt into the soul-satisfying view of the monarch whose granite slopes rise 5,268 feet above the sea, without foothills or near mountain neighbors to take away from its solitary grandeur.

The mountain thus disclosed has been described vividly for the author by William F. Dawson, artistexplorer, whose wonderful photographs of Ktaadn plead insistently with those who see them to go into the wilderness and feel the mountain :

Imagine a giant starfish, the back of which is a nearly level plateau forty-three hundred feet above sea level and more than five hundred acres in extent. The arms to the west and south stretch out radially as great ridges to the plain below, while between are gullies or ravines so steep as to be unclimbable save for the two or three slides. An arm from the southeast comer

MOUNT KTAADN, THE HOME OF PAMOLA extends on a great curve first east and then north until it has merely encircled the natural amphitheatre known as the Great or South Basin. That basin is two and one half miles from north to south and one and three quarter miles from east to west. The ridge carries the Main Summit, 5268 feet; the East Peak, 5255 feet; Chimney Peak, about 4700 feet; and Pamela, 4800 feet. Near the Main Peak a minor ridge runs north into the Basin, and the part thus set off constitutes an enormous horseshoe with the opening almost due north. In the middle of the horseshoe is Chimney Pond, 2900 feet in elevation, and surrounded on three sides by granite walls that rise almost perpendicularly for 2000 feet and more.

**From the northern end of the plateau a ridge or elevation extends three or four miles to the north and northeast, finally descending to the plain in gentle slopes. It carries three slight elevations of about 4700 feet total altitude known as the North Peaks. Three miles north of the Main Peak the North Basin extends east for a mile and a half. Its floor is 3700 feet elevation and its width about a mile. Like the South Basin, its plan view is a horseshoe, and its northern walls are so steep that avalanches are of frequent occurrence."

That description was written after a succession of ascents which failed to yield photographs satisfactory to the mountaineer; he had been able to go only in August, when the advancing season makes the trail less difficult. But he resolved to go in early June, that he might surprise the sun in the depths of the great Basin. This trip was made in 1920, after the winter of Maine's greatest snowfall in fifty years. With one companion he pushed on in the face of difficulties that seemed ahnost unsurmountable, and succeeded in finding the sun ready to make the photograph that accompanies this chapter.

The beginning of what Mr. Dawson has called **a

week of romance'' was at Staceyville, on the Bangor and Aroostook Eailroad. He had chosen the Lunksoos Trail, by way of the East Branch of the Penobscot, in spite of the fact that the river was too deep to ford and the brooks were full. His companion, a seasoned woodsman, thought it possible to make the thirty miles to the mountain, if they would travel light.'*

The first night was spent at the Hunt Place of which Thoreau told so long ago. Lunch next day was eaten at the Devil's Elbow, scene of the death of scores of river-drivers who ventured too much in their efforts to break timber jams in Wissataquoik.

Ktaadn Lake is on the Lunksoos Trail. There the party ate their dinner of fish, taken in what is known as one of the unspoiled fishing places of Maine. Sport is good in that region, for there also are bear near the lakes, though not enough of them to satisfy all hunters. The men bound for the mountain were told of two trappers who had gone away disgusted because they had secured only four of the beasts I

From Sandy Stream Pond there is a stiff climb of fourteen hundred feet within three or four miles. The necessity of cutting a trail through fallen trees added to the difficulties of the way, but these merely prepared the men for real enjoyment of their sleep that night on a bed of balsam boughs, under a four pound tent.

At length the climbers started over the mountain, for it was their purpose to descend on the other side

MOUNT KTAADN, THE HOME OF PAMOLA and go on to the West Branch. The first part of the journey, to the Eidge, was made hy a route probably never before taken. The only way to pass through the stunted spruce on the plateau beyond the Eidge was along the old caribou trail. This led on toward Abol Shde, which, from the top, looks as if it had no bottom. **Near the top a number of huge bowlders are fastened together, in some indescribable way that bars the path except for an opening near the base known as the Needle's Eye. The smaller rocks are not so well anchored and one must proceed with extreme caution, lowering himself from rock to rock and only occasionally taking a few steps on the steep granite gravel. ' '

The night was spent on a level spot, in a cabin of the Maine Forestry Commission. Next day the arduous climb down the slide was continued luntil Millinocket Tote Eoad greeted the men of the trail, and led them on to the West Branch. There they took to the water and marvelled that **no modern machinery functions more beautifully than the children of the forest when handling a canoe."

Ambejijis Lake and Pemadumcook Lake were waiting for the pilgrims of 1920, as for Thoreau in 1846. But a little later they entered the train that would have been disdained by the earlier visitor. And next day the photographer was back in the city, while his guide was making ready for more of the visitors who have learned to hearken to the call of the Maine Wilderness.

Chapter IV Through Maine In A Canoe

IT is not strange that Massachusetts tried her best to hold fast to Maine. For nearly fifty years she resented the proposed separation of her possession to the north from the day, in 1775, when Governor Bowdoin spoke of the design of these countries to set np a separate government as *'of very evil tendency."

Opposition might have been even more spirited if anyone had foreseen the day when the demand for lumber would make invaluable the stores of timber so vast that, even after years of wasteful cutting, there still remain thousands of square miles of dense woodland. No one dreamed of the harnessing of water power like that, for instance, at Lewis ton, where there are thirteen thousand horse power, and this is but one of the vast developments, actual and possible, in a state where there is said to be more undeveloped water power than in any other section of the eastern part of the country.

The commercial and economic possibilities of Maine are great, but in the mind of many they are overshadowed by the thought that this is the country for the sportsman. To these the great trees of the endless forests that rise like needles toward the sky speak, not of lumber, but of the camp, and the moose, and the trail, and the matchless music made by the wind as it sighs through the branches. The lakes and the rivers i

SUPPER ON ROCKY POND, MAINE

SURPRISING THE DEER BY FLASHLIGHT

THROUGH MAINE IN A CANOE say nothing of commerce; their message is for the fisherman and the master of the fragile canoe.

An editorial writer in the New York Times once said, **No man in Maine can walk abroad in his sleep without risking a fall into lake water.'' And it is almost as difficult to avoid catching fish in these lakes. They say that some anglers at Rangeley Lakes refuse to take home trout under three pounds in weight ; they throw them back that the fish may have time to grow up ! Yet it must not be thought that the fish are caught so easily that there is no sport in their conquest.

The woods are full of deer, and the moose await the coming of those who seek them with camera : there is no open season for these monarchs of the forest, though the hunter is permitted to kill two deer in the brief season. There is no close season on bears or bobcats ; in fact that is a state bounty to those who bring in their pelts.

But the great sport in Maine is canoeing. A map of the possible canoe routes in the state looks like the astronomer's chart of the canals on Mars. Some of them, isolated, are ia the southwest section of the state, but most of them are in the wilderness country farther north. There they connect and interlock so completely that it is possible to travel close to a thousand miles in this alluring fashion, usually, in the season, within easy reach of camps and guides and assistance in transporting supplies and canoes over the larger carries.

One^ of the milder canoeing ventures may be made on the Kennebec, both below and above Augusta, the old Koussinoc of the Abenakis. A second canoeing ground is Lake Sebago, which Portland claims as her own particular lake. Its picturesque rock-bound shores,

3 33 where trees find precarious foothold, are as attractive for the tourist who wishes to feast his eyes on the glories about him, as are the fish in the deep waters for those who prefer to think of a feast later by the camp fire.

A vacation experience for the more ambitious is offered by the Rangeley Lake chain, which includes Lake Umbagog in New Hampshire. Once a visitor declared, **Who has not seen Rangeley is disqualified for speaking on New England's scenic beauty. ' ' Then he went on to tell how it appealed to every sense : * Ho the sight, with crystal waters and spire-like pines, covering strange, half -penetrable shadows ; to the hearing, with those sounds which only the trained woodsmen can interpret; to the smell, with odors replete with associations ; and to the touch, with the cool cleanliness of the forests and breezes that are only the undertone of the great, free woods that never sleep, but are forever rocking the tops of the loftiest trees and drawing the scudding clouds across the mountain peaks."

The sportsman who has fished and canoed on Rangeley will have abundant appetite for the yet greater fascination of the more northerly canoe routes. Of these that down the Allagash River is by many held to be the most wonderful trip of its kind on the continent. Two hundred and three miles of river and lake, of falls and rapids, of carries through the forest, of camps amid the silent solitude of the Maine woods! Women as well as men make the journey, which requires at least eight days, though it is far better to take four weeks and give opportunity for wilderness joy to soak in so that it will never come out.

The starting point is on Moosehead Lake, which

THROUGH MAINE IN A CANOE

Thoreau called **a suitably wild-looking sheet of water, sprinkled with small, low islands, covered with shaggyspruce and other wildwood." Years have passed, but the general aspect of the country is much as it was when Thoreau paddled over its waters. Mount Kineo still frowns down on the lake, which is of princely size — ^twelve miles wide and thirty miles long.

The West Branch of the Penobscot approaches within a few miles of Moosehead. Northeast Carry is the attractive name given to the portage that opens the way to twenty miles of delightful river journeying. And this is only the beginning. Chesuncook Lake leads to Umbazooksus Stream, and Umbazooksus Lake. Carries varying from ten rods to a mile are the links that unite the lake and river. When Allagash River is entered, the journey is interrupted only by the Falls until the St. John River is reached at Fort Kent. But even then attractions do not cease. Across the stream in New Brunswick live descendants of the Acadians, and twelve miles down the St. John are the Grand Falls, where water power waits for complete development that will give astonishing results. On the American side is Aroostook County, the famous potato-raising region where a farmer has succeeded in growing 2672 bushels in a five-acre plot.

The St. John River itself offers a canoe trip even longer than the Allagash, a trip full of thrills and surprises for more than two hundred miles. Then, for variety, there is the journey up the West Branch of the Penobscot, and that on the East Branch, and numerous side trips among the lakes and rivers which have names as strange and scenery as inviting as those on the longer routes.

Chapter V Sauntering Through New Hampshire

TO many people New Hampshire means the White Mountains, and Lake Winnepesaukee ; and it does not occur to them that it is worth their while to know anything about parts of the state not included in the wonderful mountain section, except as they are compelled to cross a few counties more or less on the way to the lake whose name twists in accordance with the contour of its shore line, or to the mountains that pierce the clouds to the north of the lake.

Yet New Hampshire has much to offer the visitor who is willing to be leisurely, who is ready to saunter along the roads that are so wonderfully fine for the automobile. But think of the other roads on which the driver of an automobile would not dream of going! Think also of the tracks and paths, as well as of the woodlands by the roadside !

Portsmouth is a fine starting point either for the automobilist or for the walker. But even here the walker has the advantage, for he can seek out picturesque corners that are hidden from the tourist who travels more prosaically. He wiU find lanes bordered by nameless old houses, with doorways and porticoes over which the architect would rave, as well as splendid trees that lean affectionately toward their neighbors or guard the gateways to gardens that speak of past generations. He will find churches whose architecture would loudly proclaim