USA > Maine > Hancock County > Mount Desert > Mount Desert : a history > Part 18
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THE LADDER TRAIL, BEEHIVE MOUNTAIN
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LAFAYETTE NATIONAL PARK
ministration and control. Duplication of exhib- its already in the National Park system must be carefully avoided in order that the individuality of the members of the system may be main- tained.
"When once established by the Congress along well-studied boundary lines, they must be conserved in their natural state untouched by inroads of modern civilization, so that coming generations, as well as the people of our own time, may be assured their use for the purposes of recreation, education, and scientific research."
The Park is remarkable in its combination in a comparatively small area of woodland, lake, mountain, marsh and seashore scenery. It affords exceptional opportunities for wild-life sanctuaries for both plants and animals. In it the floras of the Northern and Temperate Zones meet and overlap. Land climate meets sea climate, each tempering the other. Champlain's term "desert" in his description of the hills meant, in accord- ance with the original significance of the word, " wild and solitary"; not "devoid of vegetation." Vegetation, on the contrary, grows upon the island with exceptional vigor. The original na- tive forest must have been superb, and superb it will again become under the Government's protection. Wild flowers are abundant in their season and among them are a number of species of conspicuous beauty. Because of their loveliness
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these were in danger of extermination until the National Park was formed. The rocks, frost- split and lichen-clad with granite sands between, are of a character that makes the mountain tops wild rock gardens of inspiring beauty. The island lies, too, directly in the coast migration route of birds, and it possesses, also, a rich bio- logical research field in the neighboring ocean and in the tidal pools and rock caves along the shores. To take advantage of these opportuni- ties an association has been formed under the name of the Wild Gardens of Acadia, to utilize, in conjunction with the Government, the oppor- tunities offered for botanical study; and a Ma- rine Biological Laboratory has been established .at Salisbury's Cove, where work is carried on and lectures given every summer on the marine life of the region and its biological relations.
At Islesford on Little Cranberry Island the discriminating and patient energy of Professor William Otis Sawtelle has established a Museum of the island history which is unique and inval- uable. Here are collected books, maps, pictures, furniture, and memorabilia of all kinds illustrat- ing every phase and aspect of the story of Mount Desert. Professor Sawtelle has also enriched our historical knowledge with three monographs in- volving long research and carrying final author- ity in their respective fields. These are "Sir Francis Bernard and his grant of Mount Desert,"
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which was first printed in the Proceedings of Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Vol. XXIV, and reprinted as a pamphlet in 1922; "Sir Sam- uel Argall - The First Englishman at Mount Desert," which was first read before the Maine Historical Society on October 25, 1923; then printed in Sprague's Journal of Maine History, Vol. 12, No. 4, and then issued in pamphlet form; and "Daniel Gott, Mount Desert Pioneer, His Ancestors and Descendants," a very thorough genealogical account of one of the pioneer fam- ilies, published in 1926. The most complete de- scription of Lafayette Park is contained in an illustrated pamphlet written by Mr. Robert Ster- ling Yard, Executive Secretary of the National Parks Association, and published by that Asso- ciation in 1924.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
THE notes appended to each chapter of this book give the references to the sources of information, but some general account of the books that have been written about Mount Desert may well be given here.
The original writings from which are derived our know- ledge of the early history of the island are available in French and English editions. First in order and in impor- tance stands the Journal of Champlain's Voyages, which was first published in Paris in 1613. The best French edition is that published at Quebec in 1870, by l'Abbé Laverdière - a monumental work of Canadian scholarship. The stand- ard English edition of this fascinating record of sturdy and modest heroism was published by the Prince Society of Bos- ton in 1880. The first volume, with a translation of the narrative by Dr. Charles Pomeroy Otis and a Memoir of Champlain by the Rev. Edmund F. Slafter, contains the account of the preliminary voyage of 1603. The second volume contains the journal of the coastwise expedition of 1604, the discovery and naming of Mount Desert, and the story of the fortunes of the Saint Croix colony. Both volumes are illustrated with maps and portraits. Other translations or extracts can be found in the Collections of the Maine Historical Society, vii, 343 (paper by John Marshall Brown) ; in the Bangor Historical Magazine, ii, 229; in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, iv, 103, 143, 149; viii, 429 ; in Willis's Early Collections of Voyages to America (New England Histor- ical and Genealogical Register, xv) ; and in the Lives of Champlain already noted.
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
The narrative of Father Pierre Biard, Relation de la Nouvelle France, de ses terres, naturel du pays et de ses habitans, item Du Voyage des Pères Jesuites aux dictes contrées, et qu'ils yont jusque a leur prinse par les Anglois, was published at Lyons in 1616, and is the chief source of our knowledge of the Saint Sauveur colony and its fate. This narrative is reprinted in the first volume of the Rela- tions des Jesuites, issued by the Canadian government in 1888, and also in the superb edition of the Relations pub- lished under the editorship of Reuben Gold Thwaites in 1896-1901. A translation of the more important chapters is also given in Alexander Brown's Genesis of the United States (1890), ii, 709-725, in the books by Dr. DeCosta hereafter noted, and in the Collections of the Maine His- torical Society, viii, 323. A letter written by Father Biard to Father Claude Acquaviva, General of the Society of Jesus, in 1614, giving an account of the destruction of Saint Sauveur, was printed in Caryon's Première Mission des Jesuites au Canada (1864). A translation of this letter by Prof. F. M. Warren, with an introduction by John Mar- shall Brown, is presented in the Collections of the Maine Historical Society, second series, ii, 411. See also the paper by Mr. Enoch Lewis in Maine Historical Collections, i, 428. Further original information about Saint Sauveur is contained in the letter addressed in 1613 by Henri de Mont- morenci to James I of England. This letter of protest is printed in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, ii, 187, and in Alexander Brown's Genesis of the United States. The story of the destruction of Saint Sau- veur from the English point of view is told in Raphe Ha- mor's A True Discourse of the Present Estate of Virginia, printed in London in 1615. See also Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, fourth series, ix, 42 and note 498, the Collections of the New York Historical So- ciety, second series, i, 333-342, and Jeremy Belknap's Life of Argall in American Biography, vol. ii.
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Invaluable sidelights upon the adventures of the French explorers and colonists are given in Marc Lescarbot's im- mortal Histoire de la Nouvelle France, which was first printed in Paris in 1609, issued in a quaint English trans- lation by Pierre Erondelle in the same year, and has since gone through many editions. The translation by Erondelle is given, abbreviated in Purchas's Pilgrims, vol. iv, and in full in Churchill's Collection of Voyages, vol. viii. For the account of the different editions of Lescarbot see the Amer- ican Historical Review, vi, 67. The story is again told in the famous history of New France written by Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix, first published in 1744. The standard English edition of this great work, edited by John Gilmary Shea and illustrated with maps and plates, was completed in 1872 and issued in six volumes. The account of Saint Sauveur occurs in i, 27, 51, 270-280. Further historical references are given in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, iv, 103, 149; viii, 429. See also Sul- livan's History of Maine (1795), Williamson's History of Maine (1832), the standard Histories of Nova Scotia by T. C. Haliburton and Beamish Murdock, both of which con- tain accounts of the Saint Croix and Saint Sauveur colonies, and John G. Shea's The Catholic Church in Colonial Days, p. 220.
Accounts of the Sieur de la Mothe Cadillac and his con- nection with Mount Desert can be found in the Collections of the Maine Historical Society, vi, 273, the New York Colo- nial Documents, ix, 671, the Historical Magazine, iv, 340.
The diary of Governor Bernard's voyage and the story of his projects are to be found in the collection of Sparks's Manuscripts deposited in the Library of Harvard College. Extracts are printed in the Bangor Historical Magazine, i, 179; ii, 185 ; v, 30; and in Dr. Lapham's Guidebook.
The later history has been derived from the town and church records, and from the genealogies and traditions of the older family stocks on the island.
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
The wonder of the story told by the earlier annalists was revealed to the English-speaking world by the greatest of American historians. Parkman's Pioneers of France in the New World, the first of the series of volumes that tell with matchless force and beauty the thrilling story of New France and New England, was published in 1865. Francis Parkman was a tireless and incomparable investigator of the original sources of information, and a master of the purest English style. He believed that color and beauty are not merely the decoration of historical writing but an essen- tial part of history, and therefore his narrative, while accu- rate and impartial, has all the fascination of romance. He was at once a naturalist, philosopher, artist, and, in no small measure, a poet. Never have the characteristics of the iron- bound and fir-clad coast been more accurately and charm- ingly depicted. His descriptions of Champlain and of the achievements, hopes, and failures of the French adventurers are extraordinarily picturesque, true to life but glowing with color. His narrative of the events associated with the early history of Mount Desert is necessarily brief, as these events made but a short scene of the great drama of New France, but the outline of the story is complete, and the later histo- rian cannot hope to do more than fill out the picture sketched by a great master's hand.
The long array of books and articles that deal primarily with the island's story begins with the coming of the sum- mer visitors.
In 1867 the Rev. Benjamin F. DeCosta wrote, in the form of letters for the press, the record of a journey in the previous summer along the coast of Maine. These letters were published in a limited edition in 1868, then added to and finally published in 1871 by A. D. F. Randolph & Co. with the title Rambles in Mount Desert, with Sketches of Travel on the New England Coast.1 In this narrative Dr. 1 Dr. DeCosta was born in Boston in 1831, graduated at the College
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
DeCosta incorporated a considerable part of Père Biard's story of the Jesuit settlement and not a little of the legend- ary lore about the island. This book and the author's later Handbook of Mount Desert (1878) were for many years the best known descriptions of Mount Desert.
In 1886, Dr. E. B. Lapham, of Augusta, wrote a histor- ical sketch of the island in connection with his Guidebook to Bar Harbor and Mount Desert Island. This was re- vised two years later, as in the interval Dr. Lapham had become better acquainted with the sources of historical in- formation discovered by Parkman and by the editors and publishers of the Jesuit Relations, and forms the first com- plete though very brief narrative of the island history.1
of William and Mary, and then spent several years in Europe as a student of early American history. In 1857 he was ordained to the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church, and served as rector of churches in North Adams and Newton, Mass. In the Civil War he was chaplain of the 18th Massachusetts Regiment, and later was en- ployed as editor of several religious periodicals. For two years he was editor of the Magazine of American History. In 1881 Dr. De- Costa became the rector of the Church of St. John the Evangelist in New York, where he continued until in 1899 he renounced the Episco- pal ministry and was received into the Roman Catholic Church. Upon the death of Mrs. DeCosta he went to Rome to prepare himself for the priesthood and was ordained in 1903. He died in New York November 4, 1904. Dr. DeCosta was a fluent and versatile writer, and was the author of some thirty volumes, including religious and historical works, fiction, and poems. He was an indefatigable inves- tigator of antiquarian problems, and, if his judgment was sometimes unreliable, his industry was invaluable in discovering sources of infor- mation and tracing forgotten paths.
1 Dr. Lapham was born in Greenwood, Maine, August 21, 1828. He studied at Colby, attending medical lectures at Brunswick, and finishing his course in New York in 1856. He then began the practice of medicine at Bryant's Pond, and continued there until the war. He entered the United States service on September 18, 1862, as commis- sary sergeant in the 23d Maine Regiment. He won steady promotion in this regiment and in the 7th Maine Battery, to which he was afterwards transferred, and was mustered out October 30, 1865, as brevet major of volunteers. He then returned to the practice of his
.
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Three natives of the island have made valuable contribu- tions to the local history. The first of these was Ezra A. Dodge, who was born at Mount Desert, June 15, 1847. When not quite fifteen years old he enlisted in the army as a member of Company G, First Regiment Heavy Artillery, February 23, 1863. He was wounded in the Wilderness, promoted September 1, 1865, and mustered out on the 11th of the same month. He then attended school at Dean Academy, Franklin, Mass., and returned to the island a sufferer from malaria contracted in the army. As his health allowed, he began to contribute to newspapers, and was a regular correspondent of the Ellsworth American and Bar Harbor Herald. His little History of Mt. Desert was is- sued in pamphlet form in Ellsworth by N. K. Sawyer, in 1871, and afterwards as a guidebook by Brown Thurston in Portland. His historical account deals chiefly with the permanent settlement of the island and is drawn mostly from facts gleaned from old settlers. Mr. Dodge died at Bass Harbor, October 24, 1881, at the age of thirty-four.
Another eager student of local history was the Rev. Oliver H. Fernald, who was born at Southwest Harbor, January 19, 1835, the son of John and Sophronia Wasgatt Fernald, and the second of eight children. He was fitted for college at the Maine Wesleyan Seminary, graduated at Wesleyan University in 1863, and was. successively a
profession at Bryant's Pond and served in the state legislature, as postmaster, as school officer, and as a commander of the Grand Army posts both at Bryant's Pond and at Augusta. In 1871 he withdrew from the practice of medicine and became one of the editors of the Maine Farmer, with which he was connected for eleven years. In 1884 he resigned this editorship to devote all his time to historical studies, which had long been his avocation. He became a member of the Maine Historical Society in 1882, and was also a member of most of the historical and genealogical societies of New England. He was a ready and fertile writer. He compiled histories of Woodstock, Paris, Norway, Bethel, Rumford, Hallowell, Maine, and, as editor of the Maine Genealogist and Biographer, compiled many family genealogies. He died at Augusta, February 22, 1894.
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
teacher at Providence, R. I., and a pastor in a number of New England towns and cities. In 1885 he was trans- ferred to the East Maine Conference, and was for three years pastor in his native town. In 1900, on account of failing health, he retired and lived at his home on Fernald's Point, the site of the Jesuit colony, until his death, July 23, 1903. In his later years he was an indefatigable gath- erer of facts relating to the island history, and portions of the material he obtained have been published from time to time. His manuscript notes contain many interesting ac- counts of the life of the early settlers on the island.
Mr. Eben M. Hamor has contributed in no small degree to our knowledge of the island history and to the making of this book. He was born at Eden, March 26, 1822, son of William and Experience Hamor, grandson of David and Experience Hamor, and great-grandson of John and Mary Rodick Hamor, who were the first settlers at Hull's Cove. Mr. Hamor was for twenty-four years a teacher in the island schools, eleven years in one district and nine years in another. In 1866 he and his brother Jonathan opened a store at Somesville and later moved it to its present location at West Eden, where Mr. Hamor has been postmaster for twenty-five years. He was for many years the only land surveyor in Eden, and almost all the deeds of the present owners of real estate in the town are drawn in accordance with his surveys. He has served the town of Eden as su- perintendent of schools, treasurer, selectman, assessor, representative and senator in the state legislature. He has been a frequent contributor to newspapers and periodicals on subjects connected with the town and family history. His address at the Centennial Celebration at Bar Harbor in 1895 and several manuscript volumes contain the records of his researches.
Mrs. Clara Barnes Martin was the first to write a guide- book. Her Mount Desert, a descriptive pamphlet of thirty- six pages, was issued by Brown Thurston & Co., at Port-
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
land, in 1867. It passed into the hands of Loring, Short & Harmon of Portland and went through six editions, con- stantly increasing in size and becoming embellished with photographs and maps. There followed the books of De- Costa, Dodge, and Lapham, which have been already noted, and which were primarily guidebooks containing historical matter. A number of similar books or souvenirs have since been issued by the transportation companies or by enterpris- ing publishers such as that edited by Mr. O. F. R. Waite, Guide Book for the Eastern Coast of New England, Lee & Shepard, 1871, or Chisholm's Mount Desert Guide Book, written by Mr. M. F. Sweetser, or Picturesque Maine, by the same writer, or Summer Resorts in Maine, by Mr. George H. Haynes, and finally the invaluable Baedeker, edited by Mr. J. H. Muirhead and published in 1893.
Magazine articles dealing with the island have been nu- merous, such as George Wood Nichols' Mount Desert, in Harper's Magazine, xiv, 322 (1872), W. H. Bishop's Fish and Men in the Maine Islands, in Harper's Magazine (1880), From Mission Peak to Mount Desert, in Overland Monthly (1884), Robert Grant's A Plea for Bar Harbor, in Outing, vi, 515 (1885), Henry W. Rugg's Vacation Ex- perience, in Freemason's Repository, xiii, 468 (1884), J. Arbuckle, A Temperate Experience on Mount Desert, Lip- pincott's Magazine, xiv, 250 (1882). An article on The Romance of Mount Desert, written by the editor of this volume and contributed to the New England Magazine for August, 1898, is incorporated in the present narrative.
The nine volumes of the Bangor Historical Magazine, conducted under the industrious and accomplished editor- ship of Mr. J. W. Porter, contain scattered articles describ- ing events in the island's history, translations of original documents, genealogical notes, town records, and other ma- terial of which frequent use has been made in this book.
Interesting notes of visits to Mount Desert are contained in Bryant's Picturesque America, published in 1872, and
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Samuel Adams Drake's Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast (1875), The Making of New England (1888), The Pine Tree Coast (1891), Mrs. E. B. Chase's Over the Border (1889), Joel Cook's An Eastern Tour at Home (1889), Charles Dudley Warner's Their Pilgrimage (1887), Mary Crowninshield's All among the Lighthouses, Boston (1886).
In President Charles W. Eliot's volume on American Contributions to Civilization is contained an article on the Forgotten Millions, originally printed in the Century Mag- azine, and containing the record of a thorough study of social conditions in the town of Mount Desert in 1880. The same writer's John Gilley, Boston, 1904, gives the true story of one of the hardy pioneers and of the conditions of family life on the island in the nineteenth century.
Of fugitive verses about Mount Desert there is ample store of varying merit. The best are John Weiss's two po- ems, Great Head and Green Mountain, first printed in Old and New, in 1873, and later in Mr. Longfellow's collection of Poems of Places, Mrs. F. L. Mace's Midsummer on Mount Desert, printed with illustrations in Harper's Maga- zine, Ixxi, 181 (1885), Rev. W. R. Huntington's sonnets From Green Mountain and The White Squadron, in Son- nets and a Dream, New York, 1904, and the poems of Mrs. Annie Sawyer Downs of Andover, long a summer resident at Southwest Harbor.
The novels and short stories which make Mount Desert the scene of imaginary adventures, and which often contain excellent descriptions of the scenery and the life of the sum- mer visitors, are numerous. Among them may be mentioned Miss Woolsey's (Susan Coolidge) For Summer Afternoons (1876), Oxygen : a Mount Desert Pastoral, by Robert Grant (1879), Golden Rod : an Idyl of Mount Desert, by Constance C. Harrison (1879), and Bar Harbor Days, by the same author (1887), Anna Blake's A Midsummer Night's Adventure, in Harper's Magazine, Ixi, 617 (1880),
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Arthur Swazey's A Boston Girl (1886), Mary G. Darling's Gladys (1887), A. A. Hayes' The Jesuit's Ring (1887), Alsop Leffingwell's The Mystery of Bar Harbor (1887), F. W. Pearson's An Idyl of Bar Harbor (1888), G. E. Goo- gin's Strange Adventures of a Summer Tourist (1891), F. Marion Crawford's Love in Idleness : a Tale of Bar Har- bor (1894).
Books primarily of illustrations, photographs, or sketches have been prepared by John A. Mitchell : The Summer School of Philosophy (1881), Henry G. Peabody's The Coast of Maine (art. on Mount Desert, by Susan Coolidge), Louis K. Harlow's Picturesque Coast of New England (1887), and With Pen and Pencil at Mount Desert, by L. W. B. (1886), with many illustrated souvenirs and albums of characteristic views.
The maps begin with the series of Charts of the Coast and Harbours of New England, composed and engraved by Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres, for the use of His Majesty's ships in North America, from surveys taken under the direction of the Lords of Trade. These charts were apparently published in Halifax in 1777, “ in conse- quence of an application of the Right Honorable Lord Viscount Howe, Commander-in-Chief." Four years later another series containing many harbor charts was issued "under the direction of the Right Honorable the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty. There were also " com- posed " by Des Barres, who is called "Surveyor of the Coast and harbours of North America," with four assistants who are named in the title of the " Atlantic Neptune," which was the name given to the second series.
In 1789 John Peters made a survey of lots on the De Gregoire grant which is described in the Bangor Hist. Mag. v, 30. Mr. E. A. Dodge published a map in 1872, and the Boston and Maine Railroad in 1880. Samuel Wasson's Sur- veys of Hancock County were published in Augusta in 1878. The United States Coast Survey Chart of the island was
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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
issued in 1882, and the Coast Chart, which includes the island, in 1883. A Harbor Chart of Bar Harbor followed in 1885. Colby & Stuart issued a land map of the island in 1887. Many maps are issued by the transportation companies and the land companies, and are contained in the guide- books, but most of them are very inaccurate. Lists and references can be found in the Bibliography of the Maps of Maine, printed in E. C. Smith's Moses Greenleaf, Maine's First Map Maker, Bangor, 1902. The standard map is that prepared for the Flora of Mount Desert by Charles Eliot and E. L. Rand, and first published in 1893. It is based on the Coast Survey Chart, but the new roads, the town bound- aries, and additional wood roads and paths have been de- lineated, the post-offices indicated, the nomenclature made accurate, and many names never before placed on a map presented. It is the result of very careful studies, and has been revised by Messrs. Rand, Waldron Bates, and Herbert Jacques, and kept up to date in successive editions. In 1904 the admirable maps of the United States Geological Survey covering the island were published.
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