USA > Maine > Cumberland County > Sebago Lake Land in history, legend & romance > Part 3
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SEBAGO LAKE LAND
50 odd years ago to permit the old guide Ed Gilman to spear no less than fifty-two salmon all in one night at North Sebago.
Salmon were running fairly large as late as 1911, when a fourteen pounder won the David Bispham cash prize for the biggest catch of the season. And a curious fish yarn that might be hard to beat is the true story of how the late Jim Pooler, the once popular host at the Falmouth Hotel in Portland, had his line and tackle carried overboard by a big one, to be hooked later complete, fish, line and all by Will Nason of North Sebago.
Of this fact there is no question, that the man who has been fortunate enough to hook even an eight or ten pound salmon and succeeded in landing him has been given more thrills and excitement than the ordinary fisherman exper- iences in a lifetime.
Other large ones have been taken from Sebago waters, one 35 pounder in 1907. But that one came from a weir where salmon were being held for stripping purposes, and has never been rated as a rod and reel catch.
The year 1907 curiously enough, was a banner year for the 'big' ones in Sebago Lake, for it produced not only a sixteen pounder but also the world's record landlocked salmon ever taken on hook and line. The story of its capture as told by Henry S. Beverage, in the Portland Sunday Telegram constitutes perhaps the strangest fish story ever told, and illustrates most vividly the old axiom that 'truth is ofttimes stranger than fiction'.
"It was in the summer of 1907, that Mr. Edward B. Blakely of New York and a summer resident of South Casco set out alone in a rowboat early in the forenoon.
He recalls vividly that he had no luck, blistered hands being the only things he could show for his labor, and he had half a mind to quit after going ashore for lunch.
Feeling better with the inner man replenished, he decided to give the fish another try, but after a short and
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KING SALMON - SALMO SEBAGO
painful session with the oars he gave it up, anchored the boat just off the Songo Bar, and started smelt fishing. His trolling tackle which he describes as an old steel rod and a hand-me-down line, he left as it was, the hook, baited with a shiner, in the deep water over the stern. The smelts were biting, and he was busy for a short time after anchoring the boat, the salmon line forgotten.
He was considering changing his location to a spot farther out in the Lake where Harry Kennard was also smelt fishing, with good results. All at once the rod on the stern began acting crazily. The tip went out of sight in the water, the reel began to sing, and by the time Blakely had reached it a huge silver form broke out of the lake a few yards astern.
It was not only unbelievable, it was frightening. Blakely called to Kennard, "Is that fish on my line?" Harry replied that it was, but added the observation that it wouldn't be there long. Did Blakely want any help? Kennard asked. The man with the fish admitted that he did; his boat was anchored, he had two smelt lines in the water, and no net, he explained. So Kennard lifted his anchor, had his fishing companion row him along side and got into the boat with Blakely, taking the oars and heading for deeper waters.
During the next hour and a half the fish put on an exhibition that would have shamed a tarpon. He was out of the water twelve times, many jumps taking him several feet into the air. For variety he would go to bottom and sulk. Blakely said there were times when he could feel the fish rubbing his snout in the sand, trying to break the line or disgorge the hook.
He gradually tired and was brought alongside. The only implement aboard to bring him in was a crude gaff, made by fastening a large fishhook on a stick. When Kennard reached out to gaff the fish, he made another bid for free- dom, the gaff hook which had caught him in his side being straightened out by the power of his rush. Hurt and frightened more than before, he used his remaining energy
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SEBAGO LAKE LAND
to put on another series of leaps and rushes. It became apparent to both men that the fish could never be lifted into the boat even though tired to exhaustion. Then Kennard had an idea; the next time the monster came alongside they would "wash" him in.
They did just that; both men leaning on one side of the boat until it began taking in water. The rush of water brought the fish with it, and a quick movement righted the boat, though not until it was quarter filled with Sebago water.
Blakely declares that he sat on the fish despite the water in the boat until Kennard rowed them ashore. Not until then, two hours and ten minutes after the fish struck, did he disgorge the hook. While he had been playing the fish, the Sebago Lake steamer, loaded with sight-seers, came up the lake headed for the Songo. When the boat came in near shore Blakely held up his prize. Everyone on the steamer rushed to one side of the craft, with the result that she began taking water, and a catastrophe was averted only through prompt action by some of the level-headed passengers.
As reports of the fish got around people came from all over the Sebago section to see it, and it was not until hours later that the salmon was weighed. It tipped the scales at twenty- two pounds and eight ounces. Undoubtedly it would have weighed twenty-three pounds when first taken from the water."
From 5 to 6 pounds seems to have been the average size catch of late years, the prize winner of the Memorial Week Fishing Derby held at the lake this year (1949) weighing slightly over five pounds. But another truly all-time record was achieved at Sebago Lake when a 101/2 pound brown trout was hauled from its depths this Spring.
A striking tribute is paid to "king" salmon by an enthusi- astic writer-"And of all the fish of passage to the sea, the ' salmon is the most remarkable. He is certainly the noblest and ranks the highest in intellectual instinct. His keen and
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KING SALMON - SALMO SEBAGO
lively eye not only measures the objects of his pursuit, but he smells them and tastes them, and if in a capricious mood rejects the bait after having taken hold of it as every salmon fisherman knows to his chagrin. The experienced angler justly looks upon him as the 'king of inland waters' and what can compare with his beautiful proportions, his rapid and graceful motions, his silvery hues, his rich and delicate flavor?"
But the picture of Sebago Lake fishing would not be com- plete without some mention of horse and buggy days, when excited groups of local and out-of-state fishermen garbed in the gaudy but then fashionable sport-store attire would crowd the Mountain Division train to Mattocks. Then came the thrilling moment of the trip - the lively and somewhat hazardous eight-mile jaunt to the fishing grounds through deep forests, precariously perched on Chute's rackety buck- board. Mention should be made too of some of the famous old-time Sebago fishing guides such as Mark Bachelder, of North Sebago; and Carleton Martin, Dave Burnell and Thomas Hill from East Sebago the latter being the favorite guide of the late Leon Spaulding, the Sportsman millionaire.
Legend-like stories are already beginning to surround the picturesque weather-beaten figure of old Linc Daniels, who passed on some twenty years ago. Linc's sworn mission in life was to catch that big fish which had always eluded him by an annoying trick of removing the hook by rubbing against a stone on the bottom. He knew there were big ones in the lake. "He'd seen 'em as big as whales, by gorry" up on the spawning grounds of Crooked River. "Yes sir, hundreds of 'em. 30 and 40 pounders, and he'd get a hook into one of 'em, as sure as shootin' before he cashed in his checks."
They tell of his last tragic fishing trip in search of his life's quest, full of years, and stiffened with rheumatics.
Towards eventime in the channel that runs out from Bachelder's Brook he had at last hooked his 'whale'. Imme- diately forgotten was age and stiffened joints, and he played
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SEBAGO LAKE LAND
his quarry with all his old-time skill and fire. But just at the supreme moment when he went to net his prize, his shaking hands faltered, and with a silver flash the big fish plunged into the depths of the lake, carrying with it the end of the broken fishline as the tip of the bamboo rod cracked against the side of the boat. And that was the end of old Linc, for as he lost his big fish he lost heart and spirit, and it wasn't long afterwards that he cashed in his checks without accomplishing his life's desire.
Fortunately, however, to catch fish is not all of fishing. To a host of springtime anglers and true lovers of nature, the fun of fishing is sometimes more important than the fish, for to them will come at first hand the heartening messages of a belated spring. In the meadows and woodlands where swift waters run, they will hear the music of returning song- birds, they will see the thickening boughs against the April sky, and the sweet scents of an awakening earth will be in their nostrils.
And too, it is the season of the year when one is subject to that indefinable longing to escape the mad swirl of civiliza- tion. Some say it is the heritage from our savage ancestors, inherent in every one of us, that compels the desire to spend a short space of our lives at least, in the silent places :-
"Do you know the blackened timber - do you know the racing stream?
With the raw night-angled log jam at the end?
And the bar of sun-warmed shingle where a man may bask and dream
To the click of shod - canoe-poles round the bend?
It is there that we are going with our rods, reels and traces,
To a silent smoky Indian that we know,
To a couch of new-pulled hemlock with the star- light in our faces
For the Red Gods call and we must go."
(Kipling)
The Cumberland & Oxford Canal Early Lake Travel
I NCREDIBLE as it may seem to a yachting enthusiast of today, time was when he could have sailed a craft up to sixty feet in length, out of Boston harbor, along the coast of Massachusetts and Maine to Portland, and then inland fifty miles to the head of Long Lake in Harrison, without once stepping off his own deck. This was during the colorful period of the famous Cumberland and Oxford Canal, one of the most extraordinary and unfortunate enterprises ever conceived in the State of Maine. Few men, if any, can hearken back to that exciting period when the canal was in operation, with more than a hundred canal boats plying a lively trade between Sebago Lake and Portland, carrying passengers and general freight.
In the early days of Maine's transportation, before the era of railroads and good roads, the long winding trail through the valley of the White Mountains was the main thoroughfare that connected the city of Portland with the vast territory to the north, which abounded in rich farm produce and excellent stands of timber and hardwood. And the Portland of those days was the trading metropolis for everybody east of the Connecticut River in New Hampshire, and the eastern fringe of Vermont. The only means of con- veyance in existence then was by ox or horse teams. Consequently to quote an early historian :
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SEBAGO LAKE LAND
"The streets of the then fast growing settlement of Portland were invariably clogged with long strings of oxen hauling heavy loads to the Portland waterfront for shipment to Massachusetts and the West Indies. Lumber from Saccarappa (now Westbrook) and from the saw mills on the Saco River, shooks from Fryeburg, Hiram, and Baldwin, and barrel staves from Standish. 'Varmonters' from the Coos country, dressed in vivid blue woolen smocks, driving their red pungs."
When loaded and equipped for a journey a pung must have made quite a spectacle. In the body of the vehicle sat the farmer's wife with maybe a child or two, all bundled up with buffalo robes. Around them were heaped all the things prepared for sale; - cheese, dried herbs, bundles of knitted stockings and wristers, and farm produce, - until the whole outfit looked like a miniature mountain on runners. As for the man himself, he trotted alongside, for there was no room for him on board. And to the side of every departing pung there was securely tied a huge hunk of frozen bean porridge, and a hatchet with which to chop a piece when hungry. Thus the old familiar rhyme :-
"Bean porridge hot, bean porridge cold, Bean porridge in the pod, nine days old."
Sometimes teams stretched for more than a mile out on the old Stroudwater road, halting for refreshments at the notori- ous Horse Tavern which stood somewhere in the vicinity of Union Station, a favorite place for these noisy teamsters. The peaceful early morning slumbers of the irate citizens would be rudely disturbed by the raucous cries of the drivers goading their plodding beasts, and their loud exclamations, "Gee Star" and "Whoa hisk" could be heard for long dis- tances, leaving the suffering populace to infer that the oxen were exceedingly deaf.
The wharf largely used for the shipping out of these goods
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THE CUMBERLAND AND OXFORD CANAL
was old Portland Pier, featured in the popular doggerel verse of those days, and known to all sailors from New York to Singapore:
"Old horse, old horse, what brought you here? From Saccarap to Portland Pier. I've carted boards this many a year Till killed by blows and sore abuse, They salt me down for sailor's use."
Doubtless many worn-out oxen found their ignominous end- ing in the tough rations served in forecastles of the old-time sailing ships of that period, but it was officially denied that horse beef or "old horse" as the sailors derisively nicknamed it, was ever really served as food. Nevertheless the early sailors were quite convinced that worn out horses were slaughtered for their meal table:
"And if you don't believe my story true,
In the harness cask you'll find my shoe."
The exigencies of the War of 1812, demonstrated the country's need for quicker transportation, and the second decade of the last century saw the development of waterways by means of canals. As early as 1791, a committee of Portland men was chosen to ascertain the practibility of a "canal from Sebago Pond to the Presumpscot River". Nothing came of their proposals until after Maine became a separate state in 1820. The next year a charter was granted by the Maine legislature to construct a canal from Waterford in Oxford County to the navigable waters of Fore River in Portland, under the name of the Cumberland and Oxford Canal Corporation.
Certainly Dame Nature lent herself admirably to the ven- ture, for ever since time immemorial when the Indians traveled to and fro between the mountains and the sea, the
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SEBAGO LAKE LAND
waterway extending from Harrison at the head of Long Lake through Brandy Pond, along the sinuous Songo to Sebago Lake, to the mouth of the Presumpscot River had been a favorite means of travel. The report of the canal committee, intended to encourage investors, paints a glowing picture indeed :
"Of the vast quantities of fuel and lumber of all kinds that will necessarily be brought down the canal, Portland will be the grand receptacle. It is estimated by competent judges that no less than twenty thousand cords of wood are con- sumed annually in the Town of Portland, which at an average price of four dollars per cord amounts to eighty thousand dollars. This article may be purchased, when the canal shall have been completed, in Standish and on the shores of Sebago Pond, at ONE DOLLAR per cord. If the present generation of men can be made sensible of their true interests, and awakened to a just sense of social duties, they will not only secure a plentiful harvest for their exertions and toils, but will establish a claim of gratitude on the coming age, that will insure them of imperishable fame."
The engineer who had constructed the Erie Canal was selected to estimate its cost and feasibility. He placed the probable expense at $130,804. This was considered a very low estimate by the canal committee, although they "did not deem it their duty to spend time or paper in argument to convince the skeptical, as it was clearly correct." The first meeting of the shareholders was held in Portland, November 27, 1823. To aid the undertaking the Maine legislature that same year created a lottery to raise $50,000, the amount raised and paid into the State treasury after the prizes had been deducted, to be turned over to the Canal Corporation.
The lottery tickets were snapped up, not only in Maine but in Massachusetts and other sections of New England. It is said that a deacon of a Baptist Church at what is now Oxford, drew one of the capital prizes of $5000 and, to ease his conscience, devoted part of it to build a new church.
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THE CUMBERLAND AND OXFORD CANAL
Dealers in lottery tickets made window displays of them, and inserted advertisements in the Portland and Boston papers. One dealer in tickets headed his advertisement with this verse :
"Whether native, French, English, or Scot, If you venture a little it may be your lot To gain a high prize, and then you may say I'll work in fair weather and rest a wet day."
But somehow, even the alluring lottery prizes did not pro- duce the hoped for revenue. The undaunted promoters however, found in a sympathetic legislature, further aid. In 1825, the Canal Bank at Portland was chartered with a capital of $300,000. One of the principal conditions of the charter was that a quarter part of the capital should be invested in the stock of the Canal Company. Thus came into being the present Canal Bank of Portland. With all these aids and individual subscriptions and loans, construc- tion was begun in 1825, and soon the whole countryside was alive with hordes of imported burly Irishmen, who with hand picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows excavated the earth and built the tow paths.
The bank along the route was dotted with rude hastily built shanties which overflowed with women and children, sometimes five or six families to a hut. These were strange doings indeed, amidst the normally quiet valleys of the Presumpscot. The enterprise was, what its promotors called, a stupendous one, for not only was it necessary to dig a channel twenty miles long and wide enough for boats to navigate but, as Sebago is two hundred and sixty feet above tidewater level, no less than twenty-eight locks had to be constructed as well. These were eighty feet long and ten feet wide in the clear. The sides were massively con- structed of stone masonry with strong wooden gates at either end, and were operated by balance beams. Of the
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SEBAGO LAKE LAND
twenty-eight locks constructed, only one remains in good condition, the Songo River Lock, which is still operated today as it was a century ago.
The route of the canal which started near White's Bridge on Sebago Lake went parallel with the Presumpscot River through the towns of Standish, Windham, and Gorham to a point a little above the mills at Westbrook, where it left the river and cut across the country to Stroudwater, terminating at a point near the foot of Clark Street in Portland. The locations of these locks are of interest because of the names, now obsolete, which they bore. The first lock at the Sebago Lake entrance to the canal was called "Upper Guard Lock". Another lock was near the road leading from Standish to North Windham. One lock was at Steep Falls, two at Middle Jam, below Steep Falls, one lock about a mile below Middle Jam, two at Great Falls, two at Whitney's Falls, one at Sandbank, one at Dundee Falls, two at Kemps, one at Gambo (now known as Newhall), two at Little Falls, and two at Mallison's or "Horse beef" Falls in Windham. It was necessary to build seven locks near Stroudwater to bring the canal on a level with low water at low tide. The final lock was at the foot of Clark Street called "Guard Lock" Each lock gave an average fall of ten feet, and the canal had a fall of about one foot to a mile.
The method of passing through the locks was a very simple and practical affair. Let us suppose that a boat was making its way from Portland to some point on the lake. The lock tender would be warned of its approach by a long loud blast on a tin horn, or sometimes a lively ra-ta-ta on a bugle, which would echo through the neighborhood for miles. The lock-tender, if he were on the job, would have the lock empty and the lower gate wide open. The boat would then be steered in and the gate behind it would be closed, and the upper gates opened, allowing the water to
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Famous guide Linc Daniels, holding world's record landlocked salmon caught on rod and line, by Edward Blakely of New York City in 1907. Weight 221/2 pounds, length 38 inches.
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THE OLD C. & O. CANAL AS IT APPEARS TODAY AT THE IRON BRIDGE ON ROUTE 35, FROM SEBAGO LAKE STATION TO NORTH WINDHAM.
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- N.G. JONES
7 M
Upper left hulk of old canal boat Ethel at Naples. Upper right the Arthur Willis, last canal boat to go through the canal. Center pen sketch of canal in operation. Lower left canal boat loading wood. (Courtesy George B. Illsley). Lower right a bit of historic towpath near covered bridge in Windham.
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HORSEBEEF (MALLISON'S) FALLS ON THE PRESUMPSCOT RIVER, SOUTH WINDHAM, - SITE OF THE FIRST MILL BUILT IN 1740.
(Courtesy Maine Publicity Bureau)
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PICTURESQUE COVERED BRIDGE OVER PRESUMPSCOT IN WINDHAM, - THE LAST OF ITS KIND IN CUMBERLAND COUNTY.
(Courtesy Maine Publicity Bureau)
SEBACO LAKE
PBASINI
+
SEBAÇO L
IKE STATION
WESTCOTTWINDHAM FALLS MIDDLE JAM
STANDISH
CUMBERLANDX & OXFORD
GREAT FALLS
ISLAND FALLS
LEAVITTS FALLS .
GAMBO FALLS
RIVER
LITTLE FALLS
HORSE BEEF
FALLS
GORHAM
CANAL
WESTBROOK
RALL ROAD
STROUDWATER
FORE RIVER
MAP SHOWING ROUTE OF CUMBERLAND AND OXFORD CANAL.
WHITE'S BRIDGE
LAINE CENTRAL RAIL ROAD
"Old Church", Standish built in 1806, painted a dull brick red, and spoken of locally as "The Old Brown Church."
=
ANDERSON
1
Unique tomb of John Anderson in old Smith Cemetery, South Wind- ham, - said to be a fac- simile of Washington's grave at Mount Vernon.
PLEASANT ELM-SHADED VILLAGE OF RAYMOND
(Courtesy John Marshall)
THE CUMBERLAND AND OXFORD CANAL
enter the bottom. Then the boat would slowly rise to the upper level.
More often than not a hitch would occur, and the atmosphere would be thick with soul-stirring and highly flavored adjectives, - or at times the sides of the canal would cave in, suspending all traffic. The red-shirted crews would then congregate at the nearest village tavern, and spend the time in boisterous fun telling stories, boxing and wrestling. Sometimes bitter feuds would break out between the boatmen and the lock-tenders, and nothing used to annoy the boatmen more than when the boys of the neighborhood would call after them, "Fresh water sailors on the raging canal."
The canal boats which sailed across the lakes and were towed through the canal were of unique construction. They were about sixty-five feet in length, ten feet in beam, and nearly five feet deep, blunt of bow, square stern, and flat- bottomed, and when unloaded drew only three feet of water. Instead of a keel, they were provided with two center-boards, one near the bow, and another abaft the mainsail, which held them closer to the wind than a keel craft could point. Their rigging consisted of a foresail and mainsail with a hoist of thirty feet, but no bowsprit or jib. A small platform was decked over the bow, and in the stern was a small cabin which served the triple purpose of cook- room, dining-room, and sleeping room for passengers and crew, the latter usually consisting of two men besides the captain. The masts were set in jaws so as to be lowered like the "shutting of a knife", when passing under a bridge in the canal.
The cost of constructing a boat averaged about five hun- dred dollars, and while they were made to carry about thirty tons of freight, they generally were overloaded to twice that amount. The crew were paid thirty-five dollars a month, while the captain usually got fifty, unless he was the owner. but the humble driver of the tow horses had to be satisfied
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with twenty dollars. Some of the prominent boat owners were Benjamin Walker, Christopher Sampson, James Potter, Elijah Libby, Luther Fitch, William Henry Chadbourne, Otis Knight, Chase Brothers, Roger and Joel Mason, Hugh and Jesse Plummer, Benjamin Davis, Elijah Fulton, and Sam Mitchell, besides many others who owned each a single boat. The owners were generally the captains, and gave their boats such fancy names as Waterwitch, Sebago, Honest Quaker, Boisterous, Speedwell, Columbia, Legislator, Peacock, Reindeer, Mary Ann, Chancellor, Leader, and the Jack Downing. And what these boats lacked in lines, as a yachts- man would say, they more than made up for in their gaudy appearance and gaily garbed boatmen.
From Harrison Village at the head of Long Lake to the entrance of the canal at the Basin was approximately thirty miles. From the Basin to Portland was twenty miles, thus making about fifty miles of navigable waters which played a great part in the development of the surrounding country. Mills sprang up along the route, and lumber, shooks, cord- wood, hoops, and farm products were "canal boated" to Portland, while groceries, furniture, and general merchan- dise were included in the return cargoes. Toll rates were figured on so much a mile, - apples three miles for each barrel, powder so much a ton, masts and spars seven dollars a load flat, and wood for fuel two to three cents a mile per cord. Ten cents a mile was charged for each hogshead of rum, but passengers could travel for half a cent a mile. No boat was allowed to go faster than four miles per hour through the canal, and none could pass through on the Sabbath.
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