[Footnote: The census taken by order of Meules in 1686 gives a total
of 885 persons, of whom 592 were at Port Royal, and 127 at Beaubassin.
By the census of 1693, the number had reached 1,009.]
Rude as it was, Acadia had charms, and it has them still: in its
wilderness of woods and its wilderness of waves; the rocky ramparts
that guard its coasts; its deep, still bays and foaming headlands; the
towering cliffs of the Grand Menan; the innumerable islands that
cluster about Penobscot Bay; and the romantic highlands of Mount
Desert, down whose gorges the sea-fog rolls like an invading host,
while the spires of fir-trees pierce the surging vapors like lances in
the smoke of battle.
Leaving Pentegoet, and sailing westward all day along a solitude of
woods, one might reach the English outpost of Pemaquid, and thence,
still sailing on, might anchor at evening off Casco Bay, and see in
the glowing west the distant peaks of the White Mountains, spectral
and dim amid the weird and fiery sunset.
Inland Acadia was all forest, and vast tracts of it are a primeval
forest still. Here roamed the Abenakis with their kindred tribes, a
race wild as their haunts. In habits they were all much alike. Their
villages were on the waters of the Androscoggin, the Saco, the
Kennebec, the Penobscot, the St.
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