USA > Maine > A history of the discovery of Maine > Part 5
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THE COAST OF MAINE.
11. DEVIATION OF THE MAGNETIC NEEDLE.
The deviation of the magnetic needle in our days amounts, in the Gulf of Maine, to a variation of from thirteen to fourteen degrees west. The variation, of course, has been different at different times, and through the course of centu- ries. As the old navigators of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were little acquainted with this deviation, and could not bring it into account, their tracks and courses, and also their coast-lines, were not truly laid down on their charts. In examining their old charts we should have this always in mind, though perhaps it would, from other reasons, not be worth our while to try to fix the amount of magnetic varia- tion for every period of time, and to make out how it may have influenced and injured the observation of every old explorer and the correctness of his chart.
12. CAPES, HEADLANDS, PENINSULAS, INDENTATIONS.
The continental region bordering the coast of the Gulf of Maine presents, throughout, an elevated hilly and rocky country, built up by volcanic action, and presenting granite, syenite, and several other eruptive or metamorphic rocks, alternating with silurian strata, fossiliferous limestone, and argillaceous schists.
The rivers coming out from the interior, the waves and tides of the ocean, ice and snow, and other eroding agencies, have worked upon the softer substances, and have scooped out along the coast an innumerable quantity of friths, head- lands, narrow peninsulas, high, sharp-projecting points, necks, islands, reaches, bays, and coves, with which the coast is lined and serrated.
These numberless indentations are quite a peculiar and characteristic feature of the coast of Maine. No other sec-
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tion of the entire east coast of the United States has a similar character and configuration. Only beyond the limits of the Union, along the shores of the more northern British pos- sessions, do we find coast-lines which offer the same singular aspect ; and it is remarkable enough, that they are nearly all in the same position with respect to the ocean as that portion of the coast which we have in view.
The south-eastern coasts of Nova Scotia, Cape Breton Island, and Newfoundland are all serrated, indentated, torn to pieces, and ragged like the coast of Maine ; and they all, like this, face the broad ocean and are open to its action : whilst the northern and western shores of these same coun- tries, which are turned to the interior of the Bay of Fundy and of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are much more rounded or straightened, without a great number of deep friths and head- lands. It would appear from this, that the waves and tides of the ocean have been among the principal agencies by which those indentations were scooped out.
We find, however, very similarly indentated coasts through- out all the cold regions of the north, as well on the eastern as on the western side of America ; and again in Greenland, Iceland, and also in northern Europe, in Scotland, Scandi- navia, etc. Then, again, we find them in the cold regions of the South, in the Strait of Magellan, in Patagonia, Terra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, etc. It is, therefore, very probable, that ice and snow and the action of the glaciers had something to do with their formation.
It is impossible, and also unnecessary, to mention and describe here all the innumerable capes, spits, and necks of our coast. I will enumerate only those which, during the period of its early history, appear to have come into considera- tion and to have got a noted name.
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1. Cape Cod. The peninsula of New England, at the south of our gulf, with a pointed angle, runs far out to the east, and projects much beyond the general line of the east coast. It ends with a narrow, low, sandy, more or less hilly piece of country, called Barnstable, or Cape Cod, peninsula. This peninsula turns with a still narrower spit of land like a hook to the north, and ends with a crooked headland, at present called Cape Cod.
The whole may be considered as forming the entrance- cape of the Gulf of Maine. By several islands to the south of it, particularly by Nantucket Island, and then by several dangerous banks and shoals, called the Nantucket Shoals, stretching out still further toward the east and into the ocean, the whole locality is made more prominent; and from the beginning of navigation it must have been a very striking and remarkable object for all the mariners sailing along the coast. On the entire cast coast of the United States only one cape (Cape Hatteras) exists, which may be compared to Cape Cod with respect to conspicuousness and importance in the history of navigation.
Cape Cod could scarcely escape observation by any navi- gator coming along our shores from the north. Those coming from the south sometimes may have been turned off from the coast by the Gulf-stream without getting in sight of the cape. Cape Cod, therefore, usually has been descried from the north. The Northmen, the Spaniard Gomez, the French under De Monts, the English under Gosnold, were all, sailing from north to south, arrested by this cape.
The Northinen compared the crooked figure of the cape to the prow of a vessel, and called it "Cape Shipsnose" ( Kialarnes). The Spaniards were frightened by the dan- gerous shoals at the south-east of it, and named it "Cabo de Arecifes" (Cape of the Riffs). The French and Dutch 4
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were struck by the appearance of its sandy white bluffs, which shine far out into the sea, and named it sometimes the White Cape, or the White Hook (Cape Blanc, Witte Hoeck). An English captain at last, from the fish which he caught there, gave to it its present name, " Cape Cod."
In the course of our investigations, we shall have occasion often to refer to this cape, which occupies so prominent a figure in the navigation of the coast, and which, when we meet with it on the old charts; gives us useful hints concern- ing them, and enables us, sometimes, to trace the routes of the navigators.
2. Cape Ann. From Cape Cod along the shores of our gulf to the north, we find no other more prominent point than Cape Ann, the extreme point of the rocky peninsula of Essex county. It is high and conspicuous, and was probably often seen by early navigators. I believe that I have found some traces of it in the reports of the old Northmen on our coast, and I suppose that it was the same cape, which, at a later date, the Spaniards called "Cabo de Sta Maria" (St. Mary's Cape).
3. Cape Elizabeth. Cape Elizabeth, in its configuration, elevation, and appearance somewhat similar to Cape Ann, is, in several respects, one of the most remarkable points on our coast.
First, it stands out several miles beyond the general line of the coast to the sea, and is very conspicuous. Then it makes a change in the direction of the coast-line, which, as far as this cape, runs more northerly, and then, with an obtuse angle, it turns more to the east. At the same time, it marks a change in the condition and nature of the coast. To the south of Cape Elizabeth, among the rocky
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necks and spits, are sometimes to be found low sandy beaches. But beyond Cape Elizabeth, to the north-east, these sandy beaches totally disappear, and everything is converted into innumerable cliffs, necks, tongues, and islands. From this it appears possible, that it was this cape which the Spaniards called " Cabo de muchas islas" (cape of the many islands), and which they so often depicted on their charts somewhat to the west of Penobscot Bay .* It is, however, also possible, that the neighboring cape, "Bald-head," surrounded on both sides by numerous islands, was meant by that old Spanish name.
The rest of the many capes and spits on the coast of Maine are so much alike, that none of them can be called strikingly prominent. None of them have been so often men- tioned and so clearly designated by the old navigators, as to enable us to recognize and identify them. I omit, therefore, a particular description of them.
4. Cape Sable. The southern part of Nova Scotia forms a broad square-shaped peninsula. It runs out under a more or less right angle, the extreme point of which is called, from very old times, " Cape Sable." It forms the north-eastern entrance-cape of the Gulf of Maine, being distant from its south-eastern entrance-cape (Cape Cod) about 230 miles. The cape must have been noticed at a very early time by navigators sailing along the coast. On very old maps, made in the first half of the sixteenth century, we find sometimes depicted in these latitudes of our coast a square-shaped piece of country corresponding with that south-eastern end of Nova Scotia, and we therefore conclude that Cape Sable was, in such cases, meant. Soon after the middle of the sixteenth
* The numerous islands in Casco Bay, lying north-east of Cape Eliza- 1- th, give peculiar appropriateness to the Spanish name .- ED.
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century we have a Portuguese map, on which Cape Sable is unmistakably indicated under its present name, which . probably was given to it by the old Portuguese or French fishermen from the Great Banks.
13. ISLANDS.
The islands along the coast of Maine are innumerable. All the bays and inlets are full of them. In one bay (that of Casco) have been counted as many as there are days in the year. The islands are of all sizes, some quite large, others small and diminutive. Many being elevated, rocky, covered with trees and meadows, serve much to diversify and embellish the aspect of the coast. They run in a nearly uninterrupted chain along the entire coast from Cape Eliza- beth in the west, to Quoddy Head in the east. Some of them, having pretty high mountains, serve as landmarks to navigators. For instance, the hills of Mount Desert, which are elevated to more than fifteen hundred feet, can be seen at sea from a great distance. Some of the small islands stand somewhat out from the coast, lonely and lost in the midst of the ocean. The water between them is generally deep and favorable for navigation. There are not many hidden rocks and treacherous heads half covered by water.
These rocky islands and islets form a most characteristic feature of the coast of Maine. And every early visitor appears to have been struck by them. They are mentioned in the first description of the coast by the French captain Verrazano, in the year 1524. They are also depicted in the first descriptive chart of Maine which we possess, that of the Spaniard Ribero, made after the journals of the navigator · Gomez.
No other section of the entire coast of the United States is found, which, in respect to islands, headlands, indenta-
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tions, and particularly to the number of rocky islets, can be compared to the coast of Maine. On the south of Cape Cod, all the coasts of the United States, as far down as Florida, are low, sandy, uniform, and have, instead of islands, sandy long-stretched beaches, which, though they may be separated by water, are not easily recognized as islands.
If, therefore, we see on an old chart of the United States a chain of coast-islets depicted in about our latitude, we have a right to presume that the coast of Maine was intended. Without those islands, the historian would often have great difficulty in determining the locality.
14. HARBORS, BAYS, AND INLETS.
The coast of Maine all along is full of excellent harbors, safe ports of refuge, and beautiful bays. The harbor of Portland, in the south-western part of the State, is one of the best of the entire Atlantic coast. From thence toward the north-east there exists, in fact, every mile or two, a roadstead or open inlet for a ship to run into ; whilst at the south of Cape Cod, along the greater part of the east coast of the United States, continuous sandy shores, like a rarely broken bulwark, stand against the shelter-seeking vessel ; deep harbors being an exception. Probably, therefore, the old Northmen from Iceland and Greenland, when they came down to the south to cut wood and barter furs for their northern countries, did not dislike these coasts. And like- wise the fishermen of the Great Banks, long before the settlement of the country, may have often resorted to them for shelter and refuge.
The most striking and widest open bays on the coast are Penobscot and Passamaquoddy ; and they, in early times, may have been explored, entered, and used before the rest. We find them indicated on some very early maps, when no
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other bay whatever is indicated on them. That very re- markable Casco Bay, with the harbor of Portland, may also sometimes be recognized on old charts.
15. RIVERS.
The territory of the State of Maine forms a rough and hilly plane inclined toward the ocean from north to south. Its principal rivers, therefore,-the St. Croix, the Penobscot, the Kennebec, the Saco,-follow more or less this direction. None of them are very long, and being obstructed by many rapids and falls, even down to the neighborhood of the sea, are also not very far navigable. They, consequently, have not occasioned or facilitated discoveries into the interior, as the St. Lawrence, the Hudson, the Mississippi, etc., have done.
The greatest exception to this is the Penobscot, by far the most important river of the State. It drains the entire central part of Maine. All its heads and tributaries are included in the territory of the State, and this territory may be considered as having attached itself from all sides to this river system. The State of Maine might be called the Penobscot country, this river being its main artery.
The Penobscot, at its mouth, forms the largest and most beautiful of all the numerous bays or inlets of the coast, and is very deep and navigable for the largest vessels about sixty miles from the ocean upward to the city of Bangor, where tides and vessels are stopped by rocks and falls.
The widely open mouth attracted the attention of all the exploring navigators sailing along the coast, and it was visited by the Spaniards on their first exploring expedition to our regions. We see it depicted on the Spanish maps as the longest river of the whole region, and they gave to it names like the following : " Rio Grande" (the great river), or
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. "Rio hermoso" (the beautiful river). And the principal of the early Spanish explorer of these regions; Gomez, left his name to this river, which, perhaps, he considered to be one of his most important discoveries. It was sometimes called "Rio de Gomez" (the river of Gomez). It was afterwards often visited by French navigators and fishermen from the Great Bank, and they appear to have built there, before the year 1555, a fort or settlement, which must have been the first European settlement ever made on the coast of Maine .* The Indians of Maine, also, thought highly of this river. Their principal chief, according to the well-known Captain John Smith, an early English describer of the coast of Maine, resided on its sliores ; and even now, when every- where else in Maine the Indians have disappeared, the few remnants of them, the little Penobscot tribe, cling to the borders of this their old beloved principal canoe-trail.
The Kennebec, in size and importance, is the second river of Maine. Its chief artery runs down from north to south like that of the Penobscot, and has a very similar develop- ment and course. It is navigable for sea-going vessels about fifty miles upward. But its mouth is hidden among many inlets and necks of land very similar to each other, and not as easily recognized as the widely open mouth of the Penob- scot. The Kennebec, in its lower section (called "Saga- dahoc"), was not found, therefore, till a later time, and came not much into notice during the sixteenth century.
The same may be said of the Saco, and the Piscataquis, a wide and deep river, which at present forms the boundary between the States of Maine and New Hampshire.
The St. Croix River, in the greater part of its course, separates the State of Maine from the province of New
* See upon this chapter XI, paragraph 1, of this volume.
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Brunswick. It ends with a widely open mouth, the Passa- maquoddy Bay, already mentioned.
As nearly all these rivers, particularly the Penobscot and the St. Croix at their broad mouths, look so grand and prom- ising, they were thought, by early discoverers, to have been much larger than they really are, and as they had their heads in the vicinity of the river St. Lawrence, they sometimes were taken as branches or outlets of this river, and have been depicted as such on old maps. Nay, some old discov- erers and geographers had the idea that they were oceanic passages or channels from the Atlantic to the western sea, which they suspected to be very near to the west of Maine, as we shall have occasion to show more particularly here- after.
This short review of the physical features of the coast of Maine contains, I believe, all that is wanted for the under- standing of the earliest history of its discovery. In a volume on the history of subsequent times, the subject should be taken up again more in detail.
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CHAPTER II.
THE DISCOVERIES OF THE NORTHMEN IN NORTH-EASTERN AMERICA DURING THE MIDDLE AGE .*
'1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
THE great continents of our globe run out toward the South Pole in two pointed peninsulas, separated from each other by broad deserts of water ; whilst on toward the North Pole the dry land becomes broader, and the ocean is cut up · into several more or less contracted straits, gulfs, and arms of the ocean.
The human race, spreading itself over the habitable surface of the globe, had, therefore, much more facility in discov- ering and taking possession of one piece of country after another in the north, than in the south. Between the north- east of Asia and the north-west of America remains but a narrow channel, " Behring Strait;" and here some have sup- posed the first discovery of the American continent by an Asiatic race must have taken place, and that America here received, by an immigration from the East, her first inhabitants.
Between the north-east of America and the north-west of Europe the waters are much broader. But here several
* Nearly all of what I state and relate in this chapter is taken-sometimes literally-from the excellent work, " Antiquitates Americana, Hafnia, (Copenhagen), 1837," written and collected by C. C. Rafn, except some general remarks, and the observations on the old history of the coast of Maine, which are my own.
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peninsulas and islands are found, forming a chain of stations for the communication of the old and new world.
From the West Indies, the line of the American east coast runs in a north-eastern direction ; and from the high north, the coast of arctic America and Labrador come down in a south-eastern course, forming a great peninsula, of which Newfoundland is the most eastern point, stretching far out toward Europe.
Not very fat from this north-eastern American peninsula, the southern part of the great island of Greenland presents itself; and, further on, Iceland, the Faroe, and the Shetland group, all separated from each other by sections of the ocean, which, under favorable circumstances, even by small craft, may easily be passed in a few days' sailing.
Scandinavia and Great Britain, also, stretch from the body of Europe, like colossal arms projecting into the ocean toward the north-west, approaching the above-mentioned parts of America and the islands between.
The territory of the State of Maine, the particular object of our researches, forms a part of that large north-eastern peninsula of America. It stands exactly where the Amer- ican east coast very decidedly takes a turn toward Europe; and it may, therefore, have been affected, in a high degree, by all the migrations, voyages, discoveries, and conquests which, from the remotest times to our century of telegraphs and cables, have been the connecting links of commerce, navigation, and intercourse between the East and the West.
Perhaps long before any annals were written, some people may have passed over from Europe along the stations of this great high road to America, and from America to Europe. The similarity in manners and race existing among the abo- rigines of the north of Europe (the Laplanders, Samoyedes, etc.) and those of the north of America (the Esquimaux) is
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not, perhaps, alone a consequence of climate and natural circumstances experienced by both races. The mounds and fortifications discovered in America, and the old instruments used by the nations, which, before our Indians of the present day, had taken possession of the country, are so similar to the objects of this kind found in Northern Europe, that this similarity can scarcely be otherwise explained than by a direct intercourse between the races.
The Roman historians reported, at least in one case, of some strange people having come over from the West in a boat, and having appeared on some coast of Northern Europe. From what nation and country these strangers came, nobody knew ; perhaps they were fishermen driven by storm from the Shetlands or Faroe, or from distant "Thule," perhaps even Esquimaux from Greenland or Labrador. Several cases of the arrival of boats with strange people from the west, in Scotland and other parts of Northern Europe have been mentioned .* During the innumerable centuries of the existence of the human race, such events may have happened many times. In the same manner, vessels from Europe may have been driven by storms to the west ;; and so population may have become dispersed from island to island, and from one continent to the other.
The inhabitants of the western and northern parts of the British islands appear to be the first Europeans who have- at least by tradition-sustained a claim to the discovery of American countries in the West. It is said that Madoc, a prince of Wales, in the year 1170, had found islands in the
" See upon this, Humboldt, Kritische Untersuchungen, vol. 1, pp. 470- 470. Berlin, 1852.
1 An example of a European (French) fisher-boat, said to have been driven in early times (in the year 1501) from Europe to Canada, is quoted by Humboldt, 1. c. p. 472.
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far western parts of the ocean .* And then we have an old tradition of Irishmen having gone to the west and found there a beautiful country in which they settled, lived for a long time, and left their progeny. But this myth is put into a more southern region of America,-Florida and South Carolina ; the examination of its probability belongs to the mythological history of those States.t
The fact, also, that we find the Irish before any European nation in Iceland, is more interesting for our subject. Irish Christians are the first Europeans which well-ascertained history shows us, were immigrants and inhabitants of this large island ; and if we consider, as some do, Iceland as being American ground, we ought to say that the Irish were the first well-proved discoverers of some part of America. At what time the Irish arrived in Iceland has not been ascer- tained. * When the Northmen arrived there in the year 860, they found some of these Irish there, designated in the Scan- dinavian Chronicles by the name of " Papas."
2. DISCOVERY OF ICELAND AND GREENLAND.
The Northmen, in the eighth and ninth centuries, had commenced a strong emigration from their own country ; they took possession of the Shetlands, the Faroe, and the islands of the northern part of Great Britain ; and had become the most powerful sea-faring nation on the ocean border of the north-west of Europe. They made conquests and gathered plunder in every direction.
But, for us, the most interesting branch of their activity was that which conducted them to the north-east of America.
* See upon this, William Owen, The Cambrian Biography, p. 233. London, 1803.
t See on this, Rafn, Antiquitates Americante, p. 449. Hafnia (Copen- hagen), 1837.
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In this direction they found countries which were either uninhabited, or inhabited by barbarous tribes. The North- men here could not destroy so much as in civilized Europe, which they ravaged and plundered. . But they created new settlements, and introduced European spirit and enterprise.
Naddod, a Scandinavian, called the Sea-king, in the year 860, and Gardar, a Dane, soon after, are said to have been the first Northmen who, driven by storms, came in sight of Iceland, and reconnoitered it. The good news which they brought home from it induced others to follow their track, and the Northman, Ingolf, in the year 874, was the first who settled there. He and his men found there the Christian Irishmen, the "Papas" or "Papar," whom they dispos- sessed and drove out, until none were left before the over- whelining invasion of these new-comers.
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