The Kennebec River, the Indian "large water place," is one of the
greatest streams of Maine, having its source in its largest lake,
Moosehead, surrounded by forests. This lake is at an elevation of over
a thousand feet, is thirty-five miles long, and has a surface of two
hundred and twenty square miles. The shores are generally monotonous,
excepting where the long peninsula of Mount Kineo is projected from
the eastern side so far into the lake as to narrow it to little more
than a mile width. Mount Kineo is nine hundred feet high, rising
abruptly on the south and east, but sloping gradually to the water on
the other sides. To the northeast, Spencer Mountain is seen rising
four thousand feet, with Katahdin, the Indian "greatest mountain," in
the distance. This magnificent summit, the highest in Maine, rises
nearly fifty-four hundred feet. All about Moosehead Lake and far to
the northward over the Canadian border is a vast forest wilderness,
full of lakes and streams, visited chiefly by the timber-cutters and
sportsmen, and one of the favorite hunting and angling regions of the
country. From the southwestern extremity of the lake the Kennebec
River flows out towards the sea, and in a winding course of a hundred
miles descends a thousand feet of rapids and cataracts, until it
reaches the tidal level at Augusta. It narrows at Solon to only forty
feet as it goes over the Carrituck Falls of twenty feet. Then it
passes Old Point and comes to Norridgewock, where several ancient elms
of enormous size border the street along the river bank. This is the
scene of Whittier's poem of _Mogg Megone_, and along here lived the
ancient Norridgewocks. At Old Point was their chief town, and as early
as 1610 French missionary priests sent out from Quebec settled among
them, the famous Jesuit, Sebastian Rale, coming about 1670 and living
there over forty years, being not only the spiritual but finally the
political head of the tribe. He was a man of high culture, and had
been professor of Greek at the College of Nismes, in France. The tribe
belonged to the Canabis branch of the Abenaquis nation, and he
prepared a complete dictionary of their language (now preserved in
Harvard University), which he described as "a powerful and flexible
language--the Greek of America."
In the early eighteenth century wars broke out between these Indians
under the French flag and the Puritans of New England. It is said that
Father Rale had a superb consecrated banner floating before his
church, emblazoned with the cross, and a bow and sheaf of arrows. This
was often borne as a crusading flag against the Puritan border
villages. Norridgewock was destroyed by a sudden raid in 1705, and
peace following, an envoy was sent to Boston to demand an indemnity,
and also that workmen be sent to rebuild the church. Both were
promised on condition that they would accept a Puritan pastor, but
this was declined. The Indians rebuilt their village, and it was again
destroyed by a plundering raid in 1722, and in revenge they then made
a fearful ravaging expedition in which the Maine coast towns paid
dearly. The English seacoast colonists consequently decided that for
protection Norridgewock must be taken and the tribe driven away, a
price being set upon Rale's head. In August, 1724, a strong party of
New England rangers marched secretly and swiftly, and, before their
presence was known, had surrounded the village and began firing
through the wigwams. A few Indians escaped, but nearly the whole
tribe--men, women and children--were massacred. Charlevoix writes of
it that "the noise and tumult gave Père Rale notice of the danger his
converts were in, and he fearlessly showed himself to the enemy,
hoping to draw all their attention to himself, and to secure the
safety of his flock at the peril of his life. He was not disappointed.
As soon as he appeared the English set up a great shout, which was
followed by a shower of shot, when he fell dead near to the cross
which he had erected in the midst of the village. Seven chiefs, who
sheltered his body with their own, fell around him." His mutilated
body was afterwards found at the foot of the cross and buried there.
The place lay desolate for a half-century, when English settlers came
in 1773, and in 1833 a granite memorial obelisk was erected on the
site of the ancient church. Thus Whittier describes the tragedy:
"Fearfully over the Jesuit's face,
Of a thousand thoughts, trace after trace,
Like swift cloud shadows, each other chase.
One instant, his fingers grasp his knife,
For a last vain struggle for cherished life,--
The next, he hurls the blade away,
And kneels at his altar's foot to pray;
Over his beads his fingers stray,
And he kisses the cross, and calls aloud
On the Virgin and her Son;
For terrible thoughts his memory crowd
Of evils seen and done,--
Of scalps brought home by his savage flock
From Casco and Sawga and Sagadahock
In the Church's service won.
"Through the chapel's narrow doors,
And through each window in the walls,
Round the priest and warrior pours
The deadly shower of English balls.
Low on his cross the Jesuit falls:
While at his side the Norridgewock
With failing breath essays to mock
And menace yet the hated foe,--
Shakes his scalp-trophies to and fro
Exultingly before their eyes,--
Till cleft and torn by shot and blow,
Defiant still, he dies."
The Kennebec, turning grandly to the eastward, five miles below pours
over the falls of Skowhegan, descending twenty-eight feet upon rough
ledges, having a picturesque island ending at the crest of the
cataract, with the stream beyond compressed within the high, rocky
walls of a canyon. Here are numerous factories and a population of six
thousand. Eighteen miles beyond, the river, having resumed its
southern course, tumbles down the Taconic Falls at Waterville, a town
of seven thousand people and extensive cotton-mills, also having the
Colby College of the Baptist Church where General Benjamin F. Butler
was a student. Farther down the Kennebec are the ruins of Fort
Halifax, near the confluence with Sebasticook River, draining various
lakes to the northeastward. This was one of the chain of forts built
in the middle eighteenth century to defend the Puritan coast towns
from French and Indian raids, and large Indian settlements formerly
occupied the broad intervales in the neighborhood. Twenty miles below
Waterville is Augusta, the Maine capital, situate at the head of
navigation, the city being beautifully located upon the high hills and
their slopes bordering the river. Just above the town is the great
Kennebec dam, built at an expense of $300,000 to make an admirable
water-power, and rising fifteen feet above high water. Here are over
ten thousand people, among whom lived for many years James G. Blaine,
who died in 1893. There are large textile factories giving employment
to the inhabitants, and the chief building is the State House, of
white granite, fronted by a Doric colonnade, standing upon a high hill
and surmounted by a graceful dome. Across the Kennebec is the fine
granite Insane Hospital in extensive ornamental grounds, while down by
the bank are the remains of Fort Western, built as a defensive outpost
in 1754, being then surrounded by palisaded outworks garnished with
towers. It was here that Benedict Arnold gathered his expedition
against Quebec in 1775, going up the Kennebec, crossing the border
wilderness and enduring the greatest hardships, before he appeared
like an apparition with his army of gaunt heroes under the walls of
that fortress.
Below Augusta is the quiet town of Hallowell, and then Gardiner, and
beyond, the Kennebec spreads out in the broad expanse of Merry Meeting
Bay, where it receives the Androscoggin coming up from the southwest.
Along here are seen to perfection the two great crops of these
rivers--the lumber and the ice. The largest icehouses in existence
line the banks, and the prolific ice-crop of these pure waters, thus
gathered by the millions of tons, is shipped by sea from Gardiner and
Bath throughout the coast and over to Europe. The people seem to saw
logs all summer and cut ice all winter. The river next passes Bath,
formerly a great ship-building port, and still doing much work in the
construction of steel vessels, though the population has rather
decreased of late years. The town, with its front of shipyards and
kindred industries, fringes the western river-bank for two or three
miles, and on either hand the rocky shores slope steeply down to the
water. A clergyman from Salem bought this domain in 1660 from
Damarine, the old sachem of Sagadahoc, whom the whites called Robin
Hood, but the place did not grow much until after the Revolution, when
extensive shipbuilding began. It is about thirteen miles from the
sea, the Kennebec entering the Atlantic through Sheepscott Bay, an
irregular indentation of the coast studded with many attractive
islands. At Bath, more than anywhere else in New England, has been
practically realized Longfellow's invocation:
"Build me straight, O worthy master!
Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel,
That shall laugh at all disaster,
And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!"