romantic and tragic interest, to call into exercise the finest talents
of the dramatist and novelist. Every cliff and headland has its
aboriginal legend; the village, now thrifty and quiet, had its days of
slaughter and conflagration, its tale of devoted love or cruel
treachery; while the city, now tumultuous with the pressure of
commerce, in its "day of small things," had its bombardment and
foreign army, and its handful of determined freemen, who achieved
prodigies of single handed valor. Now that men are daily learning the
worth of humanity, its hopes and its trials coming nearer home to
thought and affection; now that the complicated passions of refined
and artificial life are becoming less important than the broad, deep,
genuine manifestations of the common mind, we may hope for a bolder
and more courageous literature: we may hope to see the drama free
itself from sensualism and frivolity, and rise to the Shaksperian
dignity of true passion; while the romance will learn better its true
ground, and will create, rather than portray--delineate, rather than
dissect human sentiment and emotion.
The State of Maine is peculiarly rich in its historically romantic
associations. Settled as it was prior to the landing of the Pilgrims,
first under Raleigh Gilbert, and subsequently by Sir Ferdinando
Gorges, whose colony it is fair, in the absence of testimony, to infer
never left the country after 1616, but continued to employ themselves
in the fisheries, and in some commerce with the West Indies, up to the
time of their final incorporation with the Plymouth settlement. Indeed
the correspondence of Sir Richard Vines, governor of the colony under
Sir Ferdinando Gorges, with the Governor of Plymouth, leaves no doubt
upon this head; and it is a well known fact that the two settlements
of De Aulney and De la Tour at the mouths of the Penobscot and
Kennebec rivers, even at this early age, were far from being
contemptible, both in a commercial and numeric point of view. Added to
these was the handful of Jesuits at Mont Desert, and we might say a
colony of Swedes on the sea-coast, between the two large rivers just
named, the memory of which is traditional, and the vestiges of which
are sometimes turned up by the ploughshare. These people probably fell
beneath some outbreak of savage vengeance, which left no name or
record of their existence.
Subsequently to these was the dispersion of the Acadians, that
terrible and wanton piece of political policy, which resulted in the
extinction and denationalizing of a simple and pious people. The
fugitive Acadians found their way through a wilderness of forests,
suffering and dying as they went, some landing in distant states,
(five hundred having been consigned to Governor Oglethorpe of
Georgia,) and others, lonely and bereft, found a home with the humble
and laborious farmers of this hardy state, whose finest quality is an
open-handed hospitality. These intermarrying with our people here,
have left traces of their blood and fine moral qualities to enhance
the excellence of a pure and healthful population.
Then followed the times of the Revolution, when Maine did her part
nobly in the great and perilous work. Our own Knox was commandant of
the artillery, and the bosom friend of Washington: our youth sunk into
unknown graves in the sacred cause of freedom; and our people, poor as
they were, for the resources of the state were then undeveloped, cast
their mite of wealth into the national treasury. Northerly and
isolated as she is, her cities were burned, and her frontiers
jealously watched by an alert and cruel enemy. Here, too, Arnold sowed
his last seeds of virtue and patriotism, in his arduous march through
the wilderness of Maine to the capital of the Canadas, an exploit
which, considering the season, the poverty of numbers and resources,
combined with the wild, unknown, and uncleared state of the country,
may compete with the most heroic actions of any great leader of any
people.
A maritime state, Maine suffers severely from the fluctuations of
commerce, but is the first to realize the reactions of prosperity. Her
extended seaboard, her vast forests, her immense mineral resources,
together with a population hardy, laborious, virtuous, and
enterprising; a population less adulterated by foreign admixture than
any state in the Union, all point to a coming day of power and
prosperity which shall place her foremost in the ranks of the states,
in point of wealth, as she is already in that of intelligence.
We have enumerated but a tithe of the intellectual resources of
Maine--have given but a blank sheet as it were of the material which
will hereafter make her renowned in story, and must confine ourselves
to but a single point of historic and romantic interest, connected
with the earlier records of the country. We have alluded to the first
governor, Sir Richard Vines, a right worthy and chivalric gentleman,
the friend and agent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, of Walter Raleigh, and
other fine spirits of the day. His residence was at the Pool, as it is
now called, or "Winter Harbor," from the fact that the winter of
1616-17 was passed by Vines and his followers at this place. After a
residence of eighteen or twenty years, devoted to the interests of the
colony, the death of his patron, the transfer of the Maine plantation
to the Plymouth proprietors, together with domestic and pecuniary
misfortunes, induced Sir Richard Vines to retire to the Island of
Barbadoes, where we find him prosperous and respected, and still
mindful of the colony for which he had done and suffered so much.
Prior to his departure, and probably not altogether unconnected with
it, he had incurred the deadly hatred of John Bonyton, a young man of
the colony, who in after years was called, and is still remembered in
tradition as the "Sagamore of Saco." The cause of this hatred was in
some way connected with the disappearance of Bridget Vines, the
daughter of the governor, for whom John Bonyton had conceived a wild
and passionate attachment. Years before our story she had been
suddenly missing, to the permanent grief and dismay of the family, and
the more terrible agony of John Bonyton, who had conceived the idea
that Bridget had been sent to a European convent, to save her from his
presence. This idea he would never abandon, notwithstanding the most
solemn denials of Sir Richard, and the most womanly and sympathizing
asseverations of Mistress Vines. The youth listened with compressed
lip, his large, remarkable eye fixed with stern and searching scrutiny
upon the face of the speaker, and when he was done the reply was
always the same, "God knows if this be true; but, true or false, my
hand shall be against every man till she be found."
Accordingly we find the youth, who seems to have been possessed of
those rare and strong points of character which go to make the hero,
in constant collision with the people of the times. Moody and
revengeful, he became an alien to his father's house, and with gun and
dog passed months in the wildest regions of that wild country. With
the savage he slept in his wigwam, he threaded the forest and stood
upon the verge of the cataract; or penetrated up to the stormy regions
of the White Mountains; and anon, hushed the tumultuous beatings of
his heart in accordance with the stroke of his paddle, as he and his
red companions glided over that loveliest of lakes, Winnepisoge, or
"the smile of the Great Spirit."
There seemed no rest for the unhappy man. Unable to endure the
formalities and intermedlings, which so strongly mark the period, he
spent most of his time on the frontiers of the settlement, admitting
of little companionship, and yielding less of courtesy. When he
appeared in the colony, the women regarded his fine person, his
smile, at once sorrowful and tender, and his free, noble bearing with
admiration, not unmingled with terror; while men, even in that age of
manly physique looked upon his frame, lithe yet firm as iron, athletic
and yet graceful, with eyes of envious delight. Truth to say, John
Bonyton had never impaired a fine development by any useful
employment, or any elaborate attempts at book-knowledge. He knew all
that was essential for the times, or the mode of life which he had
adopted, and further he cared not. His great power consisted in a
passionate yet steady will, by which all who came within his sphere
found themselves bent to his purposes.
The Pilgrims even, unflinching and uncompromising as they were, felt
the spell of his presence, and were content to spurn, to persecute,
and set a price upon the head of a man whom they could not control.
Yet for all this John Bonyton died quietly in his bed, no one daring
to do to him even what the law would justify. He slept in perfect
security, for he knew this, and knew, too, that the woods were alive
with ardent and devoted adherents, who would have deluged the soil
with blood had but a hair of his head been injured. The Sagamore of
Saco was no ordinary man; and the men of the times, remarkable as they
were, felt this; and hence is it, that even to this day his memory is
held in remembrance with an almost superstitious awe, and people point
out a barrow where lie the ashes of the "Sagamore," and show the
boundaries of his land, and tell marvelous tales of his hardihood and
self-possession.
They tell of a time when a price had been set upon his head, how, when
the people were assembled in the little church for worship, John
Bonyton walked in with gun in hand, and stood through the whole
service, erect and stern as a man of iron, and no one dared scarcely
look upon him, much less lift a finger against him; and how he waited
till all had gone forth, even the oracle of God, pale and trembling,
and then departed in silence as he came. Surely there was greatness in
this--the greatness of a Napoleon, needing but a field for its
exercise.
CHAPTER II.
Methought, within a desert cave,
Cold, dark, and solemn as the grave,
I suddenly awoke.
It seemed of sable night the cell,
Where, save when from the ceiling fell
An oozing drop, her silent spell
No sound had ever broke.--ALLSTON.
Among the great rivers of Maine the Penobscot and Kennebec stand
preeminent, on account of their maritime importance, their depth and
adaptability to the purposes of internal navigation; but there are
others less known, yet no less essential to the wealth of the country,
which, encumbered with falls and rapids, spurn alike ship and steamer,
but are invaluable for the great purposes of manufacture. The
Androscoggin is one of these, a river, winding, capricious and most
beautiful; just the one to touch the fancy of the poet, and tempt the
cupidity of a millwright. It abounds with scenery of the most lovely
and romantic interest, and falls already in bondage to loom and
shuttle. Lewiston Falls, or Pe-jip-scot, as the aboriginals called
this beautiful place, are, perhaps, among the finest water plunges in
the country. It is not merely the beauty of the river itself, a broad
and lengthened sheet of liquid in the heart of a fine country, but the
whole region is wild and romantic. The sudden bends of the river
present headlands of rare boldness, beneath which the river spreads
itself into a placid bay, till ready to gather up its skirts again,
and thread itself daintily amid the hills. The banks present slopes
and savannas warm and sheltered, in which nestle away finely
cultivated farms, and from whence arise those rural sounds of flock
and herd so grateful to the spirit, and that primitive blast of horn,
winding itself into a thousand echoes, the signal of the in-gathering
of a household. Cliffs, crowned with fir, overhang the waters; hills,
rising hundreds of feet, cast their dense shadows quite across the
stream; and even now the "slim canoe" of the Indian may be seen poised
below, while some stern relic of the woods looks upward to the ancient
hunting sites of his people, and recalls the day when, at the verge of
this very fall, a populous village sent up its council smoke day and
night, telling of peace and the uncontested power of his tribe.
But in the times of our story the region stood in its untamed majesty;
the whirling mass of waters tumbling and plunging in the midst of an
unbroken forest, and the great roar of the cataract booming through
the solitude like the unceasing voice of the eternal deep. Men now
stand with awe and gaze upon those mysterious falls, vital with
traditions terribly beautiful, and again and again ask, "Can they be
true? Can it be that beneath these waters, behind that sheet of foam
is a room, spacious and vast, and well known, and frequented by the
Indian?"
An old man will tell you that one morning as he stood watching the
rainbows of the fall, he was surprised at the sudden appearance of an
Indian from the very midst of the foam. He accosted him, asked whence
he came, and how he escaped the terrible plunge of the descending
waves. The Indian, old and white-headed, with the eye of an eagle, and
the frame of a Hercules, raised the old man from the ground, shook him
fiercely, and then cast him like a reptile to one side. A moment more
and the measured stroke of a paddle betrayed the passage of the stout
Red Man adown the stream.
Our story must establish the fact in regard to this cave--a fact well
known in the earlier records of the country, more than one white man
having found himself sufficiently athletic to plunge behind the sheet
of water and gain the room.
It was mid-day, and the sun, penetrating the sheet of the falls, cast
a not uncheerful light into the cave, the size and gloom of which were
still further relieved by a fire burning in the centre, and one or
more torches stuck in the fissures of the rocks. Before this fire
stood a woman of forty or fifty years of age, gazing intently upon the
white, liquid, and tumultuous covering to the door of her home, and
yet the expression of her eye showed that her thoughts were far beyond
the place in which she stood.
She was taller than the wont of Indian women, more slender than is
customary with them at her period of life, and altogether, presented a
keenness and springiness of fibre that reminded one of Arab more than
aboriginal blood. Her brow was high, retreating, and narrow, with
arched and contracted brows, beneath which fairly burned a pair of
intense, restless eyes.
At one side, stretched upon skins, appeared what might have been
mistaken for a white veil, except that a draft of air caused a portion
of it to rise and fall, showing it to be a mass of human hair. Yet so
motionless was the figure, so still a tiny moccasoned foot, just
perceptible, and so ghastly the hue and abundance of the covering,
that all suggested an image of death.
At length the tall woman turned sharply round and addressed the object
upon the mats.
"How much longer will you sleep, Skoke? Get up, I tell thee."
At this ungracious speech--for Skoke[13]means snake--the figure
started slightly, but did not obey. After some silence she spoke
again, "Wa-ain (white soul) get up and eat, our people will soon be
here." Still no motion nor reply. At length the woman, in a sharper
accent, resumed,
"Bridget Vines, I bid thee arise!" and she laughed in an under tone.
The figure slowly lifted itself up and looked upon the speaker.
"Ascashe,[14] I will answer only to my own name."
"As you like," retorted the other. "Skoke is as good a name as
Ascashe." A truism which the other did not seem disposed to
question--the one meaning a snake, the other a spider, or
"net-weaver."
Contrary to what might have been expected from the color of the hair,
the figure from the mat seemed a mere child in aspect, and yet the
eye, the mouth, and the grasp of the hand, indicated not only maturity
of years, but the presence of deep and intense passions. Her size was
that of a girl of thirteen years in our northern climate, yet the fine
bust, the distinct and slender waist, and the firm pressure of the
arched foot, revealed maturity as well as individualism of character.
[Footnote 13: I do not know how general is the use of this word
amongst the Indians. The writer found it in use amongst the Penobscot
tribe.]
[Footnote 14: As-nob-a-ca-she, contracted to Ascashe, is literally a
net-weaver, the name for spider. This term is from Schoolcraft.]
Rising from her recumbent posture, she approached the water at the
entrance of the cave till the spray mingled with her long, white
locks, and the light falling upon her brow, revealed a sharp beautiful
outline of face scarcely touched by years, white, even teeth, and eyes
of blue, yet so deeply and sadly kindling into intensity, that they
grew momentarily darker and darker as you gazed upon them.
"Water, still water, forever water," she murmured. Suddenly turning
round, she darted away into the recesses of the cave, leaping and
flying, as it were, with her long hair tossed to and fro about her
person. Presently she emerged, followed by a pet panther, which leaped
and bounded in concert with his mistress. Seizing a bow, she sent the
arrow away into the black roof of the cavern, waited for its return,
and then discharged it again and again, watching its progress with
eager and impatient delight. This done, she cast herself again upon
the skins, spread her long hair over her form, and lay motionless as
marble.
Ascashe again called, "Why do you not come and eat, Skoke?"
Having no answer, she called out, "Wa-ain, come and eat;" and then
tired of this useless teasing, she arose, and shaking the white girl
by the arm, cried, "Bridget Vines, I bid you eat."
"I will, Ascashe," answered the other, taking corn and dried fish,
which the other presented.
"The spider caught a bad snake when she wove a net for Bridget Vines,"
muttered the tall woman. The other covered her face with her hands,
and the veins of her forehead swelled above her fingers; yet when she
uncovered her eyes they were red, not with tears, but the effort to
suppress their flow.
"It is a long, long time, that I have been here, Ascashe," answered
Bridget, sorrowfully.
"Have you never been out since Samoret left you here?" asked the
net-weaver; and she fixed her eyes searchingly upon the face of the
girl, who never quailed nor changed color beneath her gaze, but
replied in the same tone, "How should little Hope escape--where should
she go?" Hope being the name by which Mistress Vines had called her
child in moments of tenderness, as suggesting a mother's yearning hope
that she would at some time be less capricious, for Bridget had always
been a wayward, incoherent, and diminutive creature, and treated with
great gentleness by the family.
"Do you remember what I once told you?" continued the other. "You had
a friend--you have an enemy."
This time Bridget Vines started, and gave utterance to a long, low,
plaintive cry, as if her soul wailed, as it flitted from its frail
tenement, for she fell back as if dead upon the skins.
The woman muttered, "The white boy and girl shouldn't have scorned the
red woman," and she took her to the verge of the water and awaited her
recovery; when she opened her eyes, she continued, "Ascashe is
content--she has been very, very wretched, but so has been her enemy.
Look, my hair is black; Wa-ain's is like the white frost."
"I knew it would be so," answered the other, gently, "but it is
nothing. Tell me where you have been, Ascashe, and how came you here?
O-ya-ah died the other day." She alluded to an old squaw, who had been
her keeper in the cave.
At this moment a shadow darkened the room, another, and another, and
three stalwart savages stood before the two women. Each, as he passed,
patted the head of Bridget, who shook them off with moody impatience.
They gathered about the coals in the centre, talking in under tones,
while the women prepared some venison which was to furnish forth the
repast.
CHAPTER III.
And she who climbed the storm-swept steep,
She who the foaming wave would dare,
So oft love's vigil here to keep,
Stranger, albeit, thou think'st I dote;
I know, I know, she watches there.--HOFFMAN.
That night the men sat long around the fire, and talked of a deadly
feud and a deadly prospect of revenge. Ascashe listened and counseled,
and her suggestions were often hailed with intimations of
approval--for the woman was possessed of a keen and penetrating mind,
heightened by passions at once powerful and malevolent. Had the group
observed the white occupant of the skins, they would have seen a pair
of dark, bright eyes peering through those snowy locks, and red lips
parted, in the eagerness of the intent ear.
"How far distant are they now?" asked the woman.
"A three hours walk down stream," was the answer. "To-morrow they will
ascend the falls to surprise our people, and burn the village.
To-night, when the moon is down, we are to light a fire at still-water
_above_ the falls, and the Terrentines will join us at the signal,
leave their canoes in the care of the women, and descend upon our
foes. The fire will warn our people how near to approach the falls,
for the night will be dark." This was told at intervals, and to the
questionings of the woman.
"Where is the Sagamore of Saco," asked Ascashe.
"John Bonyton heads our foes, but to-night is the last one to the
Sagamore."
At this name the white hair stirred violently, and then a low wail
escaped from beneath. The group started, and one of the men, with
Ascashe, scanned the face of the girl, who seemed to sleep in perfect
unconsciousness; but the panther rolled itself over, stretched out its
claws, and threw back his head, showing his long, red tongue, and
uttered a yawn so nearly a howl, that the woman declared the sounds
must have been the same.
Presently the group disposed themselves to sleep till the moon should
set, when they must once more be upon the trail. Previous to this,
many were the charges enjoined upon the woman in regard to Bridget.
"Guard her well," said the leader of the band. "In a few suns more she
will be a great medicine woman, foretelling things that shall come to
the tribes."
We must now visit the encampment of John Bonyton, where he and his
followers slept, waiting till the first dawn of day should send them
on their deadly path. The moon had set; the night was intensely dark,
for clouds flitted over the sky, now and then disburdening themselves
with gusts of wind, which swayed the old woods to and fro, while big
drops of rain fell amid the leaves and were hushed.
Suddenly a white figure stood over the sleeping chief, so slight, so
unearthly in its shroud of wet, white hair, that one might well be
pardoned a superstitious tremor. She wrung her hands and wept bitterly
as she gazed--then she knelt down and looked more closely; then, with
a quick cry, she flung herself into his bosom.
"Oh, John Bonyton, did I not tell you this? Did I not tell you, years
ago, that little Hope stood in my path, with hair white as snow?"
The man raised himself up, he gathered the slight figure in his
arms--he uncovered a torch and held it to her face.
"Oh, my God! my God!" he cried--and his strength departed, and he was
helpless as a child. The years of agony, the lapse of thirty years
were concentrated in that fearful moment. Bridget, too, lay motionless
and silent, clinging to his neck. Long, long was that hour of
suffering to the two. What was life to them! stricken and changed,
living and breathing, they only felt that they lived and breathed by
the pangs that betrayed the beating pulse. Oh, life! life! thou art a
fearful boon, and thy love not the least fearful of thy gifts.
At length Bridget raised herself up, and would have left his arms; but
John Bonyton held her fast.
"Nay, Hope, never again. My tender, my beautiful bird, it has fared
ill with thee;" and smoothing her white locks, the tears gushed to the
eyes of the strong man. Indeed, he, in his full strength and manhood,
she, diminutive and bleached by solitude and grief, contrasted so
powerfully in his mind, that a paternal tenderness grew upon him, and
he kissed her brow reverently, saying,
"How have I searched for thee, my birdie, my child; I have been
haunted by the furies, and goaded well nigh to murder--but thou art
here--yet not thou. Oh, Hope! Hope!"
The girl listened intent and breathless.
"I knew it would be so, John Bonyton; I knew if parted we could never
be the same again--the same cloud returns not to the sky; the same
blossom blooms not twice; human faces wear never twice the same look;
and, alas! alas! the heart of to-day is not that of to-morrow."
"Say on, Hope--years are annihilated, and we are children again,
hoping, loving children."
But the girl only buried her face in his bosom, weeping and sobbing.
At this moment a red glare of light shot up into the sky, and Bridget
sprung to her feet.