The Maine coast beyond Mount Desert has more deep harbors and long
peninsulas. Here are Englishman's Bay, Machias Bay, Cutler Harbor and
others, and finally Passamaquoddy Bay, opening into the Bay of Fundy.
Grand Manan Island lies off this Bay, the first land of the British
Maritime Provinces, twenty-two miles long and distant about nine miles
from the coast of Maine, the frowning yet attractive precipices of its
western verge rising four hundred feet. Over opposite in Maine, as the
strait between the two narrows, are dark, storm-worn crags, which end
with a promontory bearing a conspicuously red and white-striped
lighthouse tower. This is the termination of the coast of Maine and of
the United States at Quoddy Head, and the entrance to St. Croix River
to the northward, the boundary between New England and the Canadian
Province of New Brunswick. Quoddy Head is a long peninsula, with
Campobello Island directly in front. Just beyond is another peninsula,
bearing a village of white cottages, rising on the slopes of a high
rounded hill having a church with a tall spire perched upon its
pinnacle. This is Lubec, the easternmost town of the United States.
Out in front upon Campobello lived for many years the eccentric old
sailor, William Fitzwilliam Owen, a retired British Admiral, who built
there on the rocks a regulation "quarter-deck" of a man-of-war,
whereon he solemnly promenaded in full uniform and issued orders to a
mythical crew. Finally he died, and as he had desired, was buried by
candlelight in the churchyard of the little chapel he had built on
the island. Campobello is now a summer resort, with numerous hotels
and cottages. All these waters are filled with wicker-work fish-weirs,
wherein are caught the herring supplying the Eastport sardine-packing
establishments. This is another town of white houses on an island
adjoining the mainland, having a little fort and a prominent display
of the sardine-factories in front, with a background of fir-clad hills
in Maine.
St. Croix River falling into Passamaquoddy Bay is, for its whole
length of one hundred and twenty-five miles, the national boundary.
Upon Neutral Island near its mouth was made the first unfortunate
settlement of Acadie by the Sieur De Monts in 1604. He named both the
island and river St. Croix because, just above, various bends of the
river and its branches form a cross. The St. Croix discharges the
noted Schoodic Lakes far up in the forest on the boundary, which have
become a favorite resort of sportsmen and anglers. It brings down many
logs, and the sawmills have made the prosperity of the twin towns of
Calais and St. Stephen on its banks, which represent the two nations,
and being very friendly, are connected by a bridge. Upon a peninsula
near the mouth of the river is St. Andrews, in New Brunswick, which
like most other places in this pleasant region is developing into a
summer resort. When De Monts came and landed, he named the country
Acadie because that was what the Indians called it. The Indians,
however, in pronouncing it made the sound like "a-quoddy," and from
this is derived Passamaquoddy, the name of the bay into which the St.
Croix flows, the word _Pesmo-acadie_ meaning the "pollock place of
plenty," as these fish were prolific there. It is at North Perry in
Maine, a village on the western verge of the bay and between Eastport
and Calais, that the Government has erected the obelisk marking the
forty-fifth parallel of north latitude, midway between the equator and
the pole.
The Canadian Province of New Brunswick into which we have now come in
the journey "Down East" is described as "a region of ships, of pine
trees, salmon, deals, hemlock bark and most excellent red granite."
The first impression upon entering it is made by the highways, where
the change from the United States to the British methods is shown in
the reversal of the usual "rule of the road," from right to left. The
vehicles all "keep to the left," and hence the appropriate proverb:
"The rule of the road is a parodox quite,
In driving your carriage along,
If you keep to the left you are sure to go right,
If you keep to the right you go wrong."
We have also got into the region of the Bay of Fundy, the Portuguese
_Bayo Fondo_, or "deep bay," with its high tides. This huge inlet of
the Atlantic is about one hundred and seventy miles long, thrust up
between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, stretching from thirty to
fifty miles wide between them. Its eastern extremity branches into two
arms, the northern, Chignecto Bay, about thirty miles long, and the
southern, Minas Channel, opening into the Minas Basin. Besides the St.
Croix, this bay also receives St. John River, the greatest in the
Maritime Provinces. The bay is remarkable for its tides, which are
probably the highest in the world, owing to the concentration of the
tidal wave by the approach of the shores and the gradual shoaling of
the bottom. The very moderate tides of the Massachusetts coast
increase to about nine feet rise at the mouth of the Kennebec. The
configuration of the Maine coast to the northeast further increases
this to fifteen or twenty feet rise at Eastport. Beyond this the Bay
of Fundy is a complete _cul-de-sac_, and the farther the tide gets in
the higher it rises. In St. John harbor it becomes twenty-one to
twenty-three feet, and farther up it is greater, in Minas Basin the
rise reaching forty feet, and in Chignecto Bay, near the upper
extremity, sixty feet. These tremendous tides cause peculiar
phenomena; they make the rivers seem to actually run up-hill at times,
while the tidal "bore" or wall of water, which is the advance of the
flood, moves up the streams and across the extensive mudflats with the
speed of a railway train, often catching the unsuspecting who may be
wandering over them. The elaborate wharves made for boat-landings are
built up like three-story houses, with different floor-levels, so as
to enable the vessels to get alongside at all stages of the tide.