CASTINE.
"A wind came up out of the sea,
And said, 'O mists, make room for me.'"
LONGFELLOW.
Whoever has turned over the pages of early New England history can not
fail to have had his curiosity piqued by the relations of old French
writers respecting this extreme outpost of French empire in America. The
traditions of the existence of an ancient and populous city, going far
beyond any English attempt in this corner of the continent, are of
themselves sufficient to excite the ardent pursuit of an antiquary, and
to set all the busy hives of historical searchers in a buzz of
excitement.
That scoffer, Lescarbot, would dispose of the ancient city of Norumbega
as Voltaire would have disposed of the Christian religion--with a
sarcasm; but, if there be truth in the apothegm that "seeing is
believing," the forerunners of Champlain came, saw, and made a note of
it. "Now," says the advocate, "if that beautiful city was ever in
nature, I should like to know who demolished it; for there are only a
few cabins here and there, made of poles and covered with the bark of
trees or skins; and both habitation and river are called Pemptegoet, and
not Agguncia."[19]
I approached the famed river in a dense fog, in which the steamer
cautiously threaded her way. Earth, sky, and water were equally
indistinguishable. A volume of pent steam gushing from the pipes
hoarsely trumpeted our approach, and then streamed in a snow-white plume
over the taffrail, and was lost in the surrounding obscurity. The decks
were wet with the damps of the morning; the few passengers stirring
seemed lifeless and unsocial. Here and there, as we floated in the midst
of this cloud, the paddles impatiently beating the water, were visible
the topmasts of vessels at anchor, though in the dimness they seemed
wonderfully like the protruding spars of so many sunken craft. Hails or
voices from them sounded preternaturally loud and distinct, as also did
the noise of oars in fog-bewildered boats. The blast of a fog-horn near
or far occasionally sounded a hoarse refrain to the warning that issued
from the brazen throat of the Titan chained in our galley.
At this instant the sun emerging from his dip into the sea, glowing with
power, put the mists to flight. First they parted on each side of a
broad pathway in which sky and water re-appeared. Then, before brighter
gleams, they overthrew and trampled upon each other in disorderly rout.
A few scattered remnants drifted into upper air and vanished; other
masses clung to the shores as if inclined still to dispute the field.
Owl's Head light-house came out at the call of the enchanter, blinking
its drowsy eyes; then sunlit steeples and lofty spars glanced up and out
of the fog-cloud that enveloped the city of Rockland.
The vicinity of a town had been announced by cock-crowing, the rattling
of wheels, or occasional sound of a bell from some church-tower; but all
these sounds seemed to heighten the illusions produced by the fog, and
to endow its impalpable mass with ghostly life. Vessels under sail
appeared weird and spectral--phantom ships, that came into view for a
moment and dissolved an instant after--masts, shrouds, and canvas
melting away--
"As clouds with clouds embrace."
Rockland is a busy and enterprising place in the inchoate condition of
comparative newness, and of the hurry that postpones all improvements
not of immediate utility. Until 1848 it had no place on the map. Back of
the settled portion of Rockland is a range of dark green hills, with the
easy slopes and smooth contours of a limestone region. I know not if
Rockland will ever be finished, for it is continually disemboweling
itself, coining its rock foundations, until perchance it may some day be
left without a leg to stand on.
Penobscot Bay is magnificent in a clear day. The fastidious De Monts
surveyed and passed it by. Singularly enough, the French, who searched
the New England coast from time to time in quest of a milder climate and
more fertile soil than that of Canada, were at last compelled to abide
by their first discoveries, and inhabit a region sterile and
inhospitable by comparison. Had it fallen out otherwise, Quebecs and
Louisburgs might have bristled along her sea-coast, if not have changed
her political destiny.
Maine has her forests, her townships of lime, her granite islands, her
seas of ice--all, beyond dispute, raw products. Fleets detach themselves
from the banks of the Penobscot and float every year away.
"One goes abroad for merchandise and trading,
Another stays to keep his country from invading,
A third is coming home with rich and wealthy lading.
Halloo! my fancie, whither wilt thou go?"
The sumptuous structures we erect of her granite are only so many
monuments to Maine. I have seen, on the other side of the continent, a
town wholly built of Maine lumber. While Boston was yet smoking, her
neighbor was getting ready the lumber and granite to rebuild her better
than ever. So these great rivers become as mere mill-streams in the
broader sense, and, at need, a telegraphic order for a town or a fleet
would be promptly filled.
There is no corner, however remote, into which Maine enterprise does not
penetrate. The spirit of adventure and speculation has pushed its
commerce everywhere. With a deck-load of lumber, some shingles, or
barrels of lime, schooners of a few tons burden, and manned with three
or four hands, may be met with hundreds of miles at sea, steering boldly
on in search of a buyer. An English writer narrates his surprise at
seeing in the latitude of Hatteras, at the very height of a terrific
storm, when the sea, wreathed with foam, was rolling before the gale,
one of these buoyant little vessels scudding like a spirit through the
mingling tempest, with steady sail and dry decks, toward the distant
Bahamas.
Rockland was formerly a part of Thomaston,[20] and is upon ground
anciently covered by the Muscongus, or Waldo patent, which passed
through the ownership of some personages celebrated in their day. A very
brief _resume_ of this truly seignorial possession will assist the
reader in forming some idea of the state of the old colonial magnates.
It will also account to him for the names of the counties of Knox and
Lincoln.
Prior to the French Revolution there were distinctions in society
afterward unknown, the vestiges of colonial relations. Men in office,
the wealthy, and above all, those who laid claim to good descent, were
the gentry in the country. Habits of life and personal adornment were
outward indications of superiority. The Revolution drove the larger
number of this class into exile, but there still continued to be, on the
patriots' side, well-defined ranks of society. There was also a class
who held large landed estates, in imitation of the great proprietors of
England. These persons formed a country gentry, and were the great men
of their respective counties. They held civil and military offices, and
were members of the Great and General Court.
The Muscongus patent was granted by the Council of Plymouth, in 1630, to
John Beauchamp of London, and John Leverett of Boston, England. It
embraced a tract thirty miles square, extending between the Muscongus
and Penobscot, being limited on the west and north by the Kennebec
patent, mentioned hereafter as granted to our colony of Plymouth.
Besides Rockland and Thomaston, the towns of Belfast, Camden, Warren,
and Waldoboro are within its former bounds. In 1719 the Muscongus grant
was divided for the purpose of settlement into ten shares, the ten
proprietors assigning two-thirds of it to twenty associates. I have
examined the stiff black-letter parchment of 1719, and glanced at its
pompous formalities. At this time there was not a house between
Georgetown and Annapolis, except on Damariscove Island.[21]
[Illustration: GENERAL HENRY KNOX.]
The Waldo family became in time the largest owners of the patent. Samuel
Waldo, the brigadier, was the intimate friend of Sir William Pepperell,
with whom he had served at Louisburg. They were born in the same year,
and died at nearly the same time. Their friendship was to have
perpetuated itself by a match between Hannah, the brigadier's daughter,
and Andrew, the son of Sir William. After a deal of courtly
correspondence that plainly enough foreshadows the bitter disappointment
of the old friends, Hannah refused to marry Andrew, the scape-grace. In
six weeks she gave her hand, a pretty one, 'tis said, to Thomas Flucker,
and with it went a nice large slice of the patent. Flucker became the
last secretary, under crown rule, of Massachusetts. He decamped with his
friends the royalists, in 1776, but his daughter, Lucy, remained behind,
for she had given her heart to Henry Knox, the handsome young
book-seller of colonial Boston, the trusted friend whom Washington
caressed with tears when parting from his comrades of the deathless
little army of '76.
The old brigadier fell dead of apoplexy at the feet of Governor Pownall,
while in the act of pointing out to him the boundary of his lands. Mrs.
Knox, the artillerist's wife, inherited a portion of the Waldo patent,
and her husband, after the Revolution, acquired the residue by
purchase. Here his troubles began; but I can not enter upon them. He
built an elegant mansion at Thomaston, which he called Montpelier.[22]
The house has been demolished by the demands of the railway, for which
one of its outbuildings now serves as a station.
[Illustration: GENERAL BENJAMIN LINCOLN.]
General Knox involved in his personal difficulties his old comrade,
General Lincoln, though not quite so badly as Mr. Jefferson would make
it appear in his letter to Mr. Madison, in which he says, "He took in
General Lincoln for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which breaks
him." The same writer has also recorded his opinion that Knox was a
fool; but the resentments of Mr. Jefferson are known to have outrun his
understanding. Through the embarrassments incurred by his friendship,
General Lincoln became interested in the Waldo patent.
Lincoln was about five feet nine, so extremely corpulent as to seem much
shorter than he really was. He wore his hair unpowdered, combed back
from his forehead, and gathered in a long cue. He had a full, round
face, light complexion, and blue eyes. His dress was usually a blue
coat, and buff small-clothes. An enormous cocked hat, as indispensable
to an old officer of the Revolution as to the Little Corporal, or as the
capital to the Corinthian column, completed his attire. He had been
wounded in the leg in the battles with Burgoyne, and always wore boots
to conceal the deformity, as Knox concealed his mutilated hand in a
handkerchief.
This old soldier, Lincoln, who had passed very creditably through the
Revolution, was, like the fat boy in "Pickwick," afflicted with
somnolency. In the old Hingham church, in conversation at table, and it
is affirmed also while driving himself in a chaise, he would fall sound
asleep. During his campaign against Shays and the Massachusetts
insurgents of 1786, he snored and dictated between sentences. He
considered this an infirmity, and his friends never ventured to speak to
him of it.
Another charming picture is the approach to the Camden Hills. I saw
their summits peering above fog-drifts, flung like scarfs of gossamer
across their breasts. Heavier masses sailed along the valleys,
presenting a series of ever-shifting, ever-dissolving views, dim and
mysterious, with transient glimpses of church-spires and white
cottages, or of the tops of trees curiously skirting a fog-bank.
Sometimes you caught the warm color of the new-mown hill-sides, or the
outlines of nearer and greener swells. These hills are a noted landmark
for seamen, and the last object visible at sea in leaving the Penobscot.
The highest of the Megunticook peaks rises more than fourteen hundred
feet, commanding an unsurpassed view of the bay.
After touching at Camden, the steamer continued her voyage. The menial
warmth of the sun, with the beauty of the panorama unrolled before them,
had brought the passengers to the deck to gaze and admire. I chanced on
one family group making a lunch off a dry-salted fish and crackers, the
females eating with good appetites. Near by was a German, breakfasting
on a hard-boiled egg and a thick slice of black bread. My own
compatriots preferred the most indigestible of pies and tarts, with
pea-nuts _a discretion_. Relics of these repasts were scattered about
the decks. The good-humor and jollity that had returned with a few rays
of sunshine led me to think on the depression caused by the long nights
of an Arctic winter, as related by Franklin, Parry, Kane, and Hayes. A
greeting to the sun! May he never cease to shine where I walk or lie!
Driving her sharp prow onward, the boat soon entered Belfast Bay. Many
vessels, some of them fully rigged for sea, were on the stocks in the
ship-yards of Belfast. The Duke of Rochefoucauld Liancourt, during his
visit in 1797, noticed that some houses were painted. The town then
contained the only church in the Waldo patent. As might be inferred, the
name is from Belfast, Ireland![23]
[Illustration: FORT POINT.]
The bay begins to contract above Camden, bringing its shores within the
meaning of a noble river. Indeed, as far as I ascended it, the Penobscot
will not lose by comparison with the Hudson. The river is considered to
begin at Fort Point, the site of Governor Pownall's fort. Above the flow
of tidewater its volume decreases, for the Penobscot does not drain an
extensive region like the St. Lawrence, nor has it such a reservoir at
its source as the Kennebec. At Orphan Island the river divides into two
channels, making a narrow pass of extreme beauty and picturesqueness
between the island and the western shore. Nowhere else, except in the
Vineyard Sound, have I seen such a movement of shipping as here. A fleet
of coasters were standing wing and wing through the Narrows. Tow-boats,
dragging as many as a dozen heavy-laden lumbermen outward-bound, came
puffing down the stream. As they entered the broad reach near Fort
Point, one vessel after another hoisted sail and dashed down the bay.
The Narrows are commanded by Fort Knox, opposite Bucksport.[24]
In coming out of Belfast we approached Brigadier's Island, from which
the forest had wholly disappeared. General Knox, whose patent covered
all islands within three miles of the shore, offered three thousand
dollars to the seven farmers who then occupied it, in land and ready
money, to relinquish their possession. Vessels were formerly built on
the island, and it was famous for its plentiful supplies of salmon. In
old times a family usually took from ten to sixty barrels in a season,
which brought in market eight dollars the barrel. The fish were speared
or taken in nets. Owners of jutting points made great captures.
The shores of the river are seen fringed with weirs. Salmon, shad,
alewives, and smelts are taken in proper season, the crops of the sea
succeeding each other with the same certainty as those of the land.
Before the beginning of the century salmon had ceased to be numerous.
Their scarcity was imputed to the Penobscot Indians, who destroyed them
by fishing every day in the year, including Sundays. This king among
fishes formerly frequented the Kennebec, the Merrimac, and were even
taken in Ipswich River, and the small streams flowing into Massachusetts
Bay.
From Belfast I crossed the bay by Islesboro to Castine. I confess I
looked upon this famous peninsula, crowned with a fortress, furrowed
with the intrenchments of forgotten wars, deserted by a commerce once
considerable, little frequented by the present generation, with an
interest hardly inferior to that stimulated by the associations of any
spot of ground in New England.
The peninsula of Castine presents to view two eminences with regular
outlines, of which the westernmost is the most commanding. Both are
smoothly rounded, and have steep though not difficult ascents. The
present town is built along the base and climbs the declivity of the
eastern hill, its principal street conducting from the water straight up
to its crest, surmounted by the still solid ramparts of Fort George. The
long occupation of the peninsula has nearly denuded it of trees. Its
external aspects belong rather to the milder types of inland scenery
than to the rugged grandeur of the near sea-coast.
Passing by a bold promontory, on which the light-tower stands, the tide
carries you swiftly through the Narrows to the anchorage before the
town. Ships of any class may be carried into Castine, while its adjacent
waters would furnish snug harbors for fleets. You have seen, as you
glided by the shores, traces, more or less distinct, of the sovereignty
of Louis XIV., of George III., and of the republic of the United States.
Puritans and Jesuits, Huguenots and Papists, kings and commons, have all
schemed and striven for the possession of this little corner of land.
Richelieu, Mazarin, and Colbert have plotted for it; Thurloe, Clarendon,
and Bolingbroke have counter-plotted. It has been fought over no end of
times, conquered and reconquered, and is now of no more political
consequence than the distant peak of Katahdin.
There is very little appearance of business about Castine. It is
delightfully lethargic. Few old houses of earlier date than the
Revolution remain to give the place a character of antiquity conformable
with its history. Nevertheless, there are pleasant mansions, and cool,
well-shaded by-ways, quiet and still, in which the echo of your own
footfall is the only audible sound. The peninsula, which the inhabitants
call the "Neck," in distinction from the larger fraction of the town, is
of small extent. You may ramble all over it in an afternoon.[25]
If it is a good maxim to sleep on a weighty matter, so it is well to
dine before forming a judgment of a place you are visiting for the first
time. Having broken bread and tasted salt, you believe yourself to have
acquired some of the rights of citizenship; and if you have dined well,
are not indisposed to regard all you may see with a genial and not too
critical an eye. Upon this conviction I acted.
At the tavern, the speech of the girl who waited on the table was
impeded by the gum she was chewing. While she was repeating the _carte_,
the only words I was able to distinguish were, "Raw fish and clams." As
I am not partial to either, I admit I was a little disconcerted, until a
young man at my elbow interpreted, _sotto voce_, the jargon into "Corned
fish and roast lamb." At intervals in the repast, the waiting-girl would
run into the parlor and beat the keys of the piano, until recalled by
energetic pounding upon the table with the haft of a knife. Below stairs
I was present at a friendly altercation between the landlord and maid of
all work, as to whether the towel for common use had been hanging a week
or only six days. But "travelers," says Touchstone, "must be content;"
and he was no fool though he wore motley.
I ascended the hill above the town on which the Normal School is
situated, and in a few moments stood on the parapet of Fort George. And
perhaps in no part of New England can a more beautiful and extensive
view be had with so little trouble. It was simply enchanting. Such a
combination of land and water is seldom embraced within a single _coup
d'oeil_. The vision is bounded by those portals of the bay, the Camden
range on the south-west, and the heights of Mount Desert in the east. A
little north of east is the solitary Blue Hill, with the windings and
broad reaches of water by which Castine proper is nearly isolated from
the main-land. Turning still northward, and now with your back to the
town, you perceive Old Fort Point, where, in 1759 Governor Pownall built
a work to command the entrance to the river. Farther to the westward is
Brigadier's Island, and the bay expanding three leagues over to Belfast.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM FORT GEORGE.]
Fort George, a square, bastioned work, is the best preserved earth-work
of its years in New England. A few hours would put it in a very
tolerable condition of defense. The moat, excavated down to the solid
rock, is intact; the esplanade hardly broken in outline. The position of
the barracks, magazine, and guard-house may be easily traced on the
parade, though no buildings now remain inside the fortress. The approach
on three sides is by a steep ascent; especially is this the case on the
side of the town. Each bastion was pierced with four embrasures. The
position was of great strength, and would have been an ugly place to
carry by escalade. A matter of a few hours once determined the ownership
of Castine for England or the Colonies in arms.
Now let us take a walk over to the more elevated summit west of Fort
George. Here are also evidences of military occupation in fast-perishing
embankments and heaps of beach pebbles. What are left of the lines look
over toward the English fort and the cove between it and the main-land.
A broad, level plateau of greensward extends between the two summits,
over which neither you nor I would have liked to walk in the teeth of
rattling volleys of musketry. Yet such things have been on this very
hill-top.
The story of these fortifications is drawn from one of the most
disgraceful chapters of the Revolutionary war. It is of a well-conceived
enterprise brought to a disastrous issue through incapacity, discord,
and blundering. There are no longer susceptibilities to be wounded by
the relation, though for many years after the event it was seldom spoken
of save with mingled shame and indignation. Little enough is said of it
in the newspapers of the time, for it was a terrible blow to
Massachusetts pride, and struck home.
In June, 1779, Colonel Francis M'Lean was sent from Halifax with nine
hundred men to seize and fortify the peninsula, then generally known as
Penobscot.[26] He landed on the 12th of June, and with the energy and
decision of a good soldier began the work of establishing himself firmly
in his position.
[Illustration: SIR JOHN MOORE.]
In the British ranks was one notable combatant, Captain John Moore, of
the Fifty-first foot, who fell under the walls of Corunna while
commanding the British army in Spain. As his military career began in
America, I may narrate an incident illustrating his remarkable
popularity with his soldiers. In 1799, at Egmont-op-zee, the
Ninety-second fiercely charged a French brigade. A terrific _melee_
ensued, in which the French were forced to retreat. In the midst of the
combat two soldiers of the Ninety-second discovered General Moore lying
on his face, apparently dead; for he was wounded and unconscious. "Here
is the general; let us take him away," said one of them, and, suiting
the action to the word, they bore him to the rear. The general offered a
reward of twenty pounds; but could never discover either of the soldiers
who had aided him. Moore's death inspired Wolfe's admired lines,
pronounced by Lord Byron "the most perfect ode in the language:"
"Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note,
As his corpse to the rampart we hurried;
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buried."
"Moore," said Napoleon, "was a brave soldier, an excellent officer, and
a man of talent. He made a few mistakes, inseparable, perhaps, from the
difficulties with which he was surrounded." Being reminded that Moore
was always in the front of battle, and generally unfortunate enough to
be wounded, he added, "Ah! it is necessary sometimes. He died
gloriously; he died like a soldier."
[Illustration: FORT GRIFFITH.]
Great alarm was produced by M'Lean's bold dash. Immediate application
was made to Massachusetts, of which Maine still formed a part, for aid
to expel the invader. Hancock was then governor. General Gates commanded
the Eastern Department, with head-quarters at Providence. The
Massachusetts rulers put their heads together, and, thinking on the
brilliant achievement of their fathers at Louisburg in 1745, resolved to
emulate it. They raised a large land and naval force with the utmost
expedition, laying an embargo for forty days in order to man their fleet
with sailors. General Gates was neither consulted nor applied to for the
Continental troops under his orders.[27]
The Massachusetts armament appeared off Penobscot on the 25th of July.
The army was commanded by Solomon Lovell, the fleet by Captain
Saltonstall, of the _Warren_, a fine new Continental frigate of
thirty-two guns. Peleg Wadsworth was second in command to Lovell; Paul
Revere, whom Longfellow has immortalized, had charge of the artillery.
The land forces did not number more than twelve hundred men, but might
be augmented to fifteen hundred or more with marines from the fleet.
These troops were militia, and had only once paraded together under
arms. The flotilla was formidable in appearance and in the number of
guns it carried, but lacked unity and discipline quite as much as the
army. Plenty of courage and plenty of means do not make soldiers or win
battles.
M'Lean had received intelligence of the sailing of the Massachusetts
armada. His fort was not yet capable of defense. Two bastions were not
begun; the two remaining, with the curtains, had not been raised more
than four or five feet, and he had not a single gun mounted. Captain
Mowatt of detestable memory,[28] with three British vessels of small
force, was in the harbor. He took a position to prevent a landing on the
south side of the peninsula. A deep trench was cut across the isthmus
connecting with the main-land, securing that passage. No landing could
be effected except beneath the precipice, two hundred feet high, on the
west. M'Lean dispatched a messenger to Halifax, and redoubled his
efforts to strengthen his fort.
On the third day after their arrival the Americans succeeded in landing,
and, after a gallant fight, gained the heights. This action--an augury,
it would seem, of good success to the assailants, for the enemy had
every advantage of position and knowledge of the ground--is the single
crumb of comfort to be drawn from the annals of the expedition. Captain
Moore was in this affair.
[Illustration: FORT GEORGE.]
Instead of pursuing his advantage, General Lovell took a position within
seven hundred and fifty yards of the enemy's works, and began to
intrench. There was fatal disagreement between the general and
Saltonstall. The sum of the matter was that Lovell, fearing to attack
with his present force, sent to Boston for re-enforcements. Then General
Gates was applied to for help. Two weeks passed in regular approaches on
Lovell's part, and in exertions by M'Lean to render his fort
impregnable. At the end of this time, Sir George Collier arrived from
New York with a fleet, and raised the siege. General Lovell says the
army under his orders had very short notice of the arrival of this
force, by reason of a fog that prevented its being seen until its near
approach. The land forces succeeded in gaining the western shore of the
river at various points, but had then to make their way through a
wilderness to the settlements on the Kennebec. The fleet of Saltonstall
was either destroyed or captured.
It was not long after the complete dispersion of the ill-starred
Penobscot expedition that General Peleg Wadsworth succeeded in entering
the British fort on the hill at Bagaduce. He had more difficulty in
leaving it.
After the disbanding of his militia, the general made his quarters at
Thomaston, where he lived with his wife in apparent security. A young
lady named Fenno and a guard of six militia-men completed his garrison.
General Campbell, commanding at Bagaduce, was well informed of
Wadsworth's defenseless condition, and resolved to send him an
invitation to come and reside in the fortress. A lieutenant and
twenty-five men arrived at dead of night with the message at Wadsworth's
house. The sentinel challenged and fled. General Wadsworth defended
himself with Spartan bravery. Armed with a brace of pistols, a fusee,
and a blunderbuss, he fought his assailants away from his windows and
the door, through which they had followed the retreating sentinel. In
his shirt, with his bayonet only, he disdained to yield for some time
longer, until a shot disabled his left arm. Then, with five or six men
lying wounded around him, the windows shattered, and the house on fire,
Peleg Wadsworth was able to say, "I surrender." They took him, exhausted
with his exertions and benumbed with cold, to the fort, where he was
kept close prisoner. Some time after, Major Burton, who had served with
the general, was also made prisoner, and lodged in the same room with
him. Wadsworth applied for a parole. It was refused. Governor Hancock
sent a cartel with an offer of exchange. It was denied. One day he was
visited by Miss Fenno, who in five words gave him to know he was to be
detained till the end of the war. Peleg Wadsworth then resolved to
escape.
The prisoners were confined in a room of the officers' quarters, the
window grated, the door provided with a sash, through which the
sentinel, constantly on duty in the passage, could look into the room as
he paced on his round. At either end of this passage was a door, opening
upon the parade of the fort, at which other sentinels were posted. At
sunset the gates were closed, and the number of sentinels on the parapet
increased. A picket was also stationed at the narrow isthmus connecting
with the main-land.
These were not all the difficulties in their way. Supposing them able to
pass the sentinels in the passage and at the outer door of their
quarters, they must then cross the open space and ascend the wall under
the eye of the guards posted on the parapet. Admitting the summit of the
rampart gained, the exterior wall was defended with strong pickets
driven obliquely into the earthen wall of the fort. From this point was
a sheer descent of twenty feet to the bottom of the ditch. Arrived here,
the fugitives must ascend the counterscarp, and cross the
_chevaux-de-frise_ with which it was furnished. They were then without
the fortress, with no possible means of gaining their freedom except by
water. To elude the picket at the Neck was not to be thought of.
The prisoners' room was ceiled with pine boards. Upon some pretext they
procured a gimlet of a servant, with which they perforated a board so as
to make an aperture sufficiently large to admit the body of a man. The
interstices were cut through with a penknife, leaving the corners intact
until the moment for action should arrive. They then filled the holes
with bread, and carefully removed the dust from the floor. This work had
to be executed while the sentinel traversed a distance equal to twice
the depth of their own room. The prisoners paced their floor, keeping
step with the sentry; and as soon as he had passed by, Burton, who was
the taller, and could reach the ceiling, commenced work, while Wadsworth
walked on. On the approach of the soldier Burton quickly rejoined his
companion. Three weeks were required to execute this task. Each was
provided with a blanket and a strong staff, sharpened at the end. For
food they kept their crusts and dried bits of their meat. They waited
until one night when a violent thunder-storm swept over the peninsula.
It became intensely dark. The rain fell in torrents upon the roof of the
barracks. The moment for action had come.
The prisoners undressed themselves as usual, and went to bed, observed
by the sentinel. They then extinguished their candle, and quickly arose.
Their plan was to gain the vacant space above their room, creeping along
the joists until they reached the passage next beyond, which they knew
to be unguarded. Thence they were to make their way to the north
bastion, acting as circumstances might determine.
Burton was the first to pass through the opening. He had advanced but a
little way before he encountered a flock of fowls, whose roost he had
invaded. Wadsworth listened with breathless anxiety to the cackling that
apprised him for the first time of this new danger. At length it ceased
without having attracted the attention of the guards, and the general
with difficulty ascended in his turn. He passed over the distance to the
gallery unnoticed, and gained the outside by the door that Burton had
left open. Feeling his way along the wall of the barracks to the western
side, he made a bold push for the embankment, gaining the rampart by an
oblique path. At this moment the door of the guard-house was flung open,
and a voice exclaimed, "Relief, turn out!" Fortunately the guard passed
without seeing the fugitive. He reached the bastion agreed upon as a
rendezvous, but Burton was not there. No time was to be lost. Securing
his blanket to a picket, he lowered himself as far as it would permit,
and dropped without accident into the ditch. From here he passed softly
out by the water-course, and stood in the open air without the fort. It
being low tide, the general waded the cove to the main-land, and made
the best of his way up the river. In the morning he was rejoined by his
companion, and both, after exertions that exacted all their fortitude,
gained the opposite shore of the Penobscot in safety. Their evasion is
like a romance of the Bastile in the day of Richelieu.
The gallant old general removed to Falmouth, now Portland. One of his
sons, an intrepid spirit, was killed by the explosion of a fire-ship
before Tripoli, in which he was a volunteer. A daughter married Hon.
Stephen Longfellow, of Portland, father of the poet.
When the _corps d'armee_ of Rochambeau was at Newport, the French
general conceived the idea of sending an expedition to recapture
Penobscot, and solicited the consent of Washington to do so. The French
officers much preferred acting on an independent line, but the proposal
was wisely negatived by the commander in chief. The man to whom
Rochambeau expected to intrust the naval operations was La Peyrouse, the
distinguished but ill-fated navigator.
Other earth-works besides those already mentioned may be traced. Two
small batteries that guarded the approaches on the side of the cove are
distinct. Some of these works were renovated during the reoccupation of
Castine by the British in 1812. Others seen on the shores of the harbor
are of more recent date.
A speaking reminder of by-gone strife is an old cannon, lying on the
greensward under the walls of Fort George, of whose grim muzzle
school-girls were wont to make a post-office. There was poetry in the
conceit. Never before had it been so delicately charged, though I have
known a perfumed billet-doux do more damage than this fellow,
double-shotted and at point-blank, might effect.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[19] Lescarbot, vol. ii., p. 471.
[20] Named for General John Thomas, of the Revolution.
[21] Williamson's "History of Maine."
[22] Jefferson had his Monticello, Washington his Mount Vernon.
[23] Its Indian name was Passageewakeag--"the place of sights, or
ghosts." It contained originally one thousand acres, which the settlers
bought of the heirs of Brigadier Waldo at two shillings the acre.
Belfast was the first incorporated town on the Penobscot. It suffered
severely in the Revolution from the British garrison of Castine.
[24] In 1797 there were twenty vessels owned in Penobscot River, two of
which were in European trade.
[25] The upper and larger part is called North Castine.
[26] Castine was not incorporated under its present name until 1796. The
Indian name of the peninsula was Bagaduce, or Biguyduce.
[27] Gordon, vol. iii., p. 304.
[28] The man who destroyed Falmouth, now Portland.
[Illustration: RUINS OF FORT PENTAGOET, CASTINE]