Beyond the archipelago, eastward from the Penobscot estuary, is the
noted island, presenting the only land along the Atlantic coast where
high mountains are in close proximity to the sea. It appears to-day
just at it did to Champlain when he first saw it in September, 1604,
and, being impressed with its craggy, desolate summits, named it the
_Isle des Monts déserts_, the "Island of Desert Mountains." He then
wrote of it, "The land is very high, intersected by passes, appearing
from the sea like seven or eight mountains ranged near each other; the
summits of the greater part of these are bare of trees, because they
are nothing but rocks." In approaching from the southwestward by sea,
the distant gray recumbent elephant that has been lying at the horizon
gradually resolves its two rounded summits into different peaks; but
the finer approach is rather from the northward by the railway route,
which is the one most travelled. The quick advance of the train
unfolds the separate mountain peaks, and the whole range is well
displayed, there being apparently eight eminences, but upon coming
nearer, others seem to detach themselves. Green Mountain is the
highest, rising over fifteen hundred feet, near the eastern side,
while Western Mountain terminates the range on the other side, and at
the eastern verge is Newport Mountain, having the fashionable
settlement of Bar Harbor at its northern base. There are several
beautiful lakes high up among these peaks, the chief being Eagle Lake.
Beech and Dog Mountains have peculiarities of outline, and a wider
opening between two ponderous peaks shows where the sea has driven-in
the strange and deeply carved inlet of Somes' Sound, six miles from
the southern side, to almost bisect the island. Hung closely upon the
coast of Maine, in Frenchman Bay, this noted island, the ancient
Indian Pemetic, is about fifteen miles long, of varying width, and
covers a hundred square miles. It has many picturesque features, its
mountains, which run in roughly parallel ridges north and south,
separated by narrow trough-like valleys, displaying thirteen distinct
eminences, the eastern summits being the highest, and terminating
generally at or near the water's edge on that side in precipitous
cliffs, with the waves dashing against their bases. Upon the
southeastern coast, fronting the ocean, as a fitting termination to
the grand scenery of these mountain-ranges, the border of the Atlantic
is a galaxy of stupendous cliffs, the two most remarkable being of
national fame--Schooner Head and Great Head--the full force of old
ocean driving against their massive rocky buttresses. Schooner Head
has a surface of white rock on its face, which when seen from the sea
is fancied to resemble the sails of a small vessel, apparently moving
in front of the giant cliff. Great Head, two miles southward, is an
abrupt projecting mass of rock, the grim and bold escarpment having
deep gashes across the base, evidently worn by the waves. It is the
highest headland on the island. Castle Head is a perpendicular
columned mass, appearing like a colossal, castellated doorway, flanked
by square towers.
[Illustration: _Along the Coast at Bar Harbor, Me._]
For more than a century after Champlain first looked upon this island,
the French made ineffectual attempts at settlement, but it was
not until 1761 that any one succeeded in establishing a permanent
home. Then old Abraham Somes, a hardy mariner from Cape Ann, came
along, and entering the Sound that bears his name, settled on the
shore, and his descendant is said to still keep the inn at Somesville
on the very spot of his earliest colonization. After the little colony
was planted, the cultivation of the cranberry and the gathering of
blueberries kept the people alive, these being almost the only
food-products raised in the moderate allowance of soil allotted the
island. The population grew but slowly, though artists and summer
saunterers came this way, and about 1860 it began to attract the
pleasure-seekers. When the island, in its early government, was
divided into towns, the eastern portion was called, with a little
irony, Eden. Bar Harbor, an indentation of Frenchman Bay, having a bar
uncovered at low tide, which named it, being easy of access, the
village of East Eden on its shores became the fashionable resort. It
has a charming outlook over the bay, with its fleets of gaily-bannered
yachts and canoes and the enclosing Porcupine Islands, but there is
not much natural attractiveness. It is a town of summer hotels and
boarding-houses, built upon what was a treeless plain, the outskirts
being a galaxy of cottages, many of great pretensions. Here will
congregate ten to twenty thousand visitors in the season, and Bar
Harbor has become one of the most fashionable resorts on the Atlantic
coast. Its bane, however, is the fog, a frequent sojourner in the
summer, though even fogs, in their way, have charms. There are days
that it lies in banks upon the sea, with only occasional incursions
upon the shore, when under a shining sun the mist creeps over the
water and finally blots out the landscape. But light breezes and warm
sunshine then soon disperse it and the view reappears. The fog-rifts
are wonderful picture-makers. Sometimes the mist obscures the sea and
lower shores of the attendant islands, leaving a narrow fringe of
tree-tops resting against the horizon, as if suspended in mid-air.
Often a yacht sails through the fog, looking like a colossal ghost,
when suddenly its sails flash out in the sunlight like huge wings.
Thus the mist paints dissolving views, so that the fogs of Mount
Desert become an attraction, and occasionally through them appears the
famed mirage which Whittier describes:
"Sometimes in calms of closing day
They watched the spectral mirage play;
Saw low, far islands looming tall and high,
And ships, with upturned keels, sail like a sea the sky."
Somes Sound has off its entrance on the southern side of Mount Desert,
the group of Cranberry Islands with a lighthouse on Baker's Island,
the outermost of the cluster. These make a picturesque outlook for the
summer settlements which have grown around the spacious indentations
of North East Harbor and South West Harbor, on either side of the
entrance to the Sound. To the eastward is another indentation in the
southern coast, Seal Harbor, also a popular resort, having one of the
finest beaches on the island. The five high rocky Porcupine Islands
partially enclosing Bar Harbor get their names from their bristling
crests of pines and spruces, one of them, the Bald Porcupine, having
some stupendous cliffs. The visits to the cliffs along the shores and
the ascent of the mountains are the chief excursions from Bar Harbor.
Four miles southward is the summit of Green Mountain, its sides being
rugged, and the charming Eagle Lake to the westward nestling among the
mountain peaks. The view from the top is fine, over the deeply-cut
Somes Sound, penetrating almost through the island, and the grand
expanse of Maine coast, seen, with its many bays and islands,
stretching from the Penobscot northeast to Quoddy Head. All around to
the southward and eastward spreads the open ocean bounded by the
horizon, and like a speck, to the south-southeast, twenty miles away,
is the lighthouse upon the bleak crag known as Mount Desert Rock, far
out at sea, the most remote beacon, in its distant isolation, upon the
New England coast.