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The Sieur de Monts NaGooal Monument

and its Historical Associations

DEPARIMEN'T OF THE INTERIOR

FRANKLIN K. LANE, SECRETARY
NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
SPE INea MATHER. DiRECTOR

SIEUR DE MONTS NATIONAL MONUMENT

GEORGE BUCKNAM DORR.
CUSTODIAN.

The time is fast coming when National Parks and Forest
Reservations, placesof beauty and refreshment within occasion-
al reach by all, will be recognized as fundamental needs, needs
of the people, in our national life. The West, aided by the
Government’s great ownership of lands, has led the way in
this and shown its foresight. In the East, where gifts of land
or purchases by the Government were necessary, the need has
been longer in obtaining recognition, the first step toward
meeting it by the establishment of a purely recreative area
under the National Park Service being taken by the Secretary
of the Interior last July, in recommending to the President
the acceptance of the Sieur de Monts National Monument.

This area, not a purchase by the Government but a gift
from citizens, includes the mountainous and finest landscape
portion of Mount Desert Island on the coast of Maine, whose
crowning glory in a resort and scenic sense that island is and
has been for the last half century.

Technically termed a Monument because created by the
President and Secretary of the Interior under the authority
given them by the so-called Monuments Act of 1906 and
because of its historic interest, it is by nature, beauty, and
resort importance a true National Park in every popular
sense and destined when developed to become one of the most
widely visited and recreationally useful park areas on the
continent.

It cannot long stand alone in the East; the human need for
such areas of refreshment within reach of our great eastern
cities and those of the fast-crowding lake and Mississippi
regions is too serious for that. But it will in all likelihood
remain unique forever as the one national park — using the

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word in its true, popular sense — bordering on the sea;
and it must remain always supreme in landscape interest and
refreshing quality upon our eastern coast. Beautiful as itis
in other ways, this is its unique possession, that it is the only
tract of national park land in the country offering to its visitors
the refreshment, the ever-varying interest and beauty and the
limitless expanses of the ocean —in contrast to the magnifi-
cent domains of mountain lands, western or eastern, that its
companion parks may offer.

Because of this and the great human value of the tract as
a recreational area, guarded in beauty and made free to all,
it is felt that its name should be made indicative of 1ts charac-
ter and tell more plainly what it offers. To this end a bill,
approved by the National Park Service, is being introduced
in Congress by Senator Hale of Portland, Maine, familiar
from boyhood with the beauty and resort importance of the
region, asking that the name be changed from the Sieur de
Monts National Monument to the Sieur de Monts National
Park. A similar change is already planned in a conspicuous
instance in the West, that of the Grand Canyon, a true park
area in every popular sense, but technically termed till now a
National Monument since created, like the Sieur de Monts,
by act of the Administration.

Physically, the Sieur de Monts National Monument is a
bold range of seaward-facing granite hills, extraordinarily
mountainous in character and wonderful in the variety, the
interest and beauty of the climbs they offer. One only, but
the highest, rising from the border of the ocean over fifteen
hundred feet, offers opportunity for road construction. When,
sooner or later, such a road — one by no means difficult to
build — shall be constructed, restoring along a better route
the old buckboard road which formerly led up to a hotel upon
the summit, it will become at once, with modern motor travel,
one of the great scenic features of the continent. As one
ascends, superb views of land diversified by lakes and bays
and stretching far away to distant hills, disclose themselves
successively, and when one reaches the summit, the mag-

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SURF AT OTTER CLIFFS

nificent ocean view that opens suddenly before one is a sight
few places in the world can parallel. The vastness of the
ocean seen from such a height, its beauty both in calm and
storm, and its appeal to the imagination yield nothing even
to the boldest mountain landscape, while the presence of that
cool northern sea, surging back and forth and deeply pene-
trating the land with its great tidal flood, gives the air a stim-
ulating and refreshing quality comparable only to that found
elsewhere upon alpine heights. And as on alpine heights the
herbaceous plants that shelter their life beneath the ground
in winter bloom with a brilliancy and flourish with a vigor
rarely found elsewhere, so here the ocean presence and long
northern days of summer sun combine with the keen air to
make the gardens of the Island famous and the national park-
lands singularly fitted to serve as a magnificent wild garden
and plant sanctuary, at once preserving and exhibiting the
native plants and wild flowers of the Acadian region which
the Monument so strikingly represents.

This native quality of the place is noted, curiously, in
Governor Winthrop’s Journal, when he came sailing by one
early summer day in 1630 on his way to Salem, bringing its
Charter to the Massachusetts Colony whose Governor he was
to be, and found ‘“‘fair sunshine weather and so pleasant a
sweet air as did much refresh us; and there came a smell
from off the shore like the smell of a garden.”

As a bird sanctuary, too, these parklands, placed as they
are directly on the great natural migration route of the
Atlantic shore and widely various in favorable character,
need proper guardianship only to become a singularly useful
instrument in bird life conservation, while adding not a little
through the presence of the birds to their own interest and
charm.

Geologically, the Monument, with its adjacent coastal
rocks and headlands, forms a wonderful exhibit. Essentially,
it is a bold and rugged group of granite peaks, immensely old
though far less ancient than the primeval sea-laid rocks —
hard, bent and twisted sands and clays — up through which

7

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they are thrust. These peaks, geologists say, united into a
single mass, once bore an alpine height upon their shoulders
which looked across wide valley lands toward a distant sea.
Time beyond count laid bare the mountain base, which the
slow southward grinding of the ice-sheet later trenched into a
dozen deeply isolated peaks. Between them, hollows, deeper
than the present level of the sea in places, now contain a
number of beautiful fresh-water lakes and one magnificent
fjord which nearly cuts the island into two. Finally, owing
to a general subsidence along the coast, the sea swept inland,
flooding round the ice-eroded remnant of the ancient moun-
tain to form the largest rock-built island on the Atlantic shore
from the St. Lawrence southward, and its highest elevation.

In places on the island’s southern shore, the granite comes
down to the ocean front, forming the boldest headlands and
thrusting out to meet the sea’s attack the grandest storm-
swept rocks upon our coast; in other places, the enclosing
sedimentary rocks, hardened by the enormous heat and pres-
sure caused by the granitic upburst, oppose the ocean with
dark, furrowed cliffs of different character but equally mag-
nificent, in shine or storm.

The whole Acadian region of eastern Maine, which the
sieur de Monts National Monument represents with rare
completeness in a single tract of concentrated interest, is rich
in delightful features, in forests, lakes and streams, and the
wild life of every kind — plant, animal and fish — that haunts
them. Its value as a vast recreative area for the whole nation
to the eastward of the Rockies is even yet but little realized,
although from the first opening of the fishing season in the
spring to the close of hunting in the fall an immense tide of
recreative travel streams continually through it.

The new National Monument, and future Park as it will
doubtless be, lies — with all the added beauty of the ocean
and interest of historic association — close beside the main
entrance to this region, where the Penobscot mingles its fresh
water with the sea. From the Monument, delightful trips by
train, by boat, by motor, may be made on every side — up

9

FROM ECHO LAKE

BEECH CLIFF,

and down the coast; to New Brunswick, Cape Breton and
Nova Scotia; or to the magnificent lake and forest regions
of the interior. And to it, one may come, as to no other
national park area on the continent, by boat as well as train
or motor.

The chapter of world history which the Sieur de Monts
National Monument commemorates, that of the first founding
of Acadia, in 1604 — half a generation before the landing of
the Pilgrim Fathers on the Massachusetts shore, and of
the long French occupation of the Acadian region, extending
from the Kennebec to Cape Breton, which followed it, is full
of human interest as told in the pages of Champlain and Les-
carbot in quaint old French, and by numerous later writers.

De Monts, a Huguenot of noble family in southwestern
France, came out commissioned by Henry IV — Henry of
Navarre — to occupy for France, and colonize, ‘“‘the lands
and territory called Acadia,’’ extending, as it was then defined,
from the 4oth to the 46th degrees of latitude—those approxi-
mately of Philadelphia and Montreal to-day; to establish
friendly trade relations with its natives; to explore its coasts
and rivers; to govern it, and represent in it and on its seas
the person of the King; and to bring its people, ‘barbarous,
and without faith in God,” into knowledge and practice of
the Christian religion.

It was a great adventure, largely conceived and bravely
carried out. De Monts planted the fleur-de-lis on the Amer-
ican shore, and for more than a century and a half it stayed
there. That it is not floating there to-day is due to forces
greater than national, to the growth of the democratic spirit
and democratic principles of government in the English
colonies, which gave them an inherent power that mounted like
a rising tide till it possessed and overflowed their continent,
and is to-day profoundly influencing the world.

De Monts himself, to say a word of him, was sprung from
one of the most ancient families in France, distinguished in
arms and military employments from the time of the First Cru-
sade, when four brothers out of six journeyed ‘‘beyond the Sea’”’

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and two remained there — killed in the storming of Jerusalem.
True to the family traditions, his father, Jean de Monts, baron
of Cabrairolles in Languedoc, near Béziers, served in the
army ‘“‘from his earliest youth,’’ was successively Ensign or
standard-bearer, Lieutenant, Captain of Arquebusiers, and
finally ‘‘Mestre de Camp” in 1586, with five hundred standard-
bearers under him.

A Huguenot, he fought under Coligny in the defeat of
Moncontour, then under Henry IV in the victories of Coutras
and Ivry. He took part afterward in the capture of St. Denis
and was wounded — for the second time severely — at the
siege of Eperney, in 1592, dying two years later of his wounds.
He was a typical soldier of his time and station, one of those
of whom Sismondi wrote: “The King (Henry IV) counted in
his cavalry five thousand men of birth( gentilshommes) whose
courage was sustained by a personal sense of honor, and who
were superior to all other cavalry.”’

He married, on the 20th day of May, 1572, Delphine de
Latenay, daughter of the noble Antoine, ‘‘ancien Capitaine,”’
and of Marguerite de la Mairie. His oldest son, Jean, suc-
ceeded him as baron of Cabrairolles. Pierre, his second son,
who came out to America, was seigneur of Guast and governor
of Pons, one of the Huguenot places of security established by
Henry IV, who, Champlain tells us, had “great confidence in
him for his fidelity and the good services he had rendered
him in the (recent) wars.’’ And governor of Pons he still
remains, apparently, when we catch our last glimpse of him in
Champlain’s pages, after Henry’s death, though the tide had
then set strongly against the Huguenots, and Pons was pres-
ently to be dismantled of its protecting walls by Henry’s
son, Louis XIII.

Pons itself, its relation to the Huguenots and de Monts apart,
is an interesting old city of the feudal times whose powerful
lords, the Sires de Pons, were sovereign princes in their region,
descended from the dukes of Aquitaine. They made war,
signed treaties, and received the King of France as “‘cousin,”’
claiming the sword he wore that day whenever they paid hom-

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BIRCH WOODS AND FERNS UPON A GRANITE UPLAND

age to him, which they did in full armor with their vizors
down. Their castle was stormed by Richard Coeur de Lion
in 1179, and was surged around successively by French and
English in the wars of Aquitaine.

To-day the place is an attractive city still, with picturesque
ruins of the old chateau and later buildings of the 15th and
16th centuries, now used as a Hotel de Ville, which were
de Monts’ official residence no doubt when not across the
sea. 7

Delightful gardens, overgrown with roses, occupy in part
the ancient castle site, with a stern old 12th century ‘‘keep’’
beside them, while the castle chapel, of a later date, opens
through a noble romanesque portal onto a lower garden. A
clear river flows beneath, from whose vanished bridge of
Roman empire date, the early city drew its name: Pons or
mbpmage. “Itis an ancient land throughout, of ruins and rich
pasturages and productive vineyards, to whose western bound-
ary come the breezes, the salt air and breaking surf of the At-
lantic, and from whose shore the waves stretch off unbroken-
ly toward America and the Acadian coasts.

De Monts brought out to America with him, as lieutenant
and cartographer, Samuel Champlain — his chronicler and
fast friend thereafter — who, older than he by half a dozen
years, was born in the little salt-gathering and exporting town
of Brouage on the Bay of Biscay shore, not far from Pons and
in a district subject to its lords. Near by was the mouth of
the Charente —declared by Henry IV to be “‘the finest stream
in the Kingdom’’—with the ancient city of Saintes not far
above, the capital of the Gallic Santones whose name it has
brought down to us from Caesar’s time.

Of Brouage, an antiquarian neighbor of it wrote three
quarters of a century ago: “On a plain that the waves cov-
ered twice a day, and along the border of a canal which brought
into its midst the highway of the ocean, salt evaporated from
the sea was gathered and the vessels which came to carry it
away left behind upon the bank the stones and gravel brought
for ballast. Little by little a mound, not over 80 paces long,

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oo

rose above the level of the marshland and on it there settled
a colony of salters, fishermen and sailors. This was the origin
of Brouage, later made by Richelieu one of the naval strong-
holds of the west and then depopulated by deadly exhalations
from the marshes till now grass grows in the courts of its
abandoned houses and trees rise among their ruins, spread-
ing over them branches twisted by the ocean gales.”

In 1568 — the year after Champlain was born — Brouage
was seized and held for the Sire de Pons, who took the side of
the Catholic party in the Civil War, although Saintonge itself
was strongly Huguenot. Two years later—when Champlain
was three years old —it was besieged and taken by the
Huguenots, who held it then for half a dozen years, when it
was again besieged by the Catholics, under the duke of May-
enne, and taken after months of resolute defence — the
Huguenots, exhausted by privation, capitulating but marching
out with arms and baggage, with drums beating and flags flying.

Such were the times and scenes amongst which Champlain
grew up, and such, with the sea, the influences which took part
in shaping him, but the influence of the sea was strongest; of
that he writes, in the dedication of his book to the Queen-
mother in 1613; ‘‘Among all most excellent and useful arts,
that of navigating has always seemed to me to hold first place.
For so much the more that it is hazardous, and accompanied
by a thousand wrecks and perils, so much the more is it es-
teemed beyond others, being in no way suited to those who
lack courage or self-confidence. This art it is that from my
earliest youth has drawn me to itself, and led me to expose
myself during nearly my whole life to the impetuous waves
of the ocean.”’ otis

Sailing from de Monts’ first colony at the mouth of the St.
Croix — our present national boundary —to explore the
westward coast, Champlain made his first landing within this
country’s limits on Mount Desert Island, close to Bar Harbor
probably, on its seaward side —wherever he first found safe
beaching or good mooring for his damaged boat, stove on a
hidden rock, he says, on entering Frenchman’s Bay.

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SIEUR DE MONTS SPRING, THE ENTRANCE TO THE EMERY PATH, AND THE
SWEET WATERS OF ACADIA-—A MEMORIAL TO FRANCE

Champlain describes the mountains of the Monument as
he saw them then, with deep, dividing gorges and bare rocky
summits, and named the island from them, giving it, in a
French form, the name which it still bears, the ‘‘Isle des
Monts deserts.”

FLORENTINE IRIS

ORIENTAL POPPY

The Desert and the Wilderness shall rejoyce, and the waste ground
be glad and flourish as the rose.

—TIsaiah xxxov: I.
* 1583 Edition.

GARDEN. APPROACHES TO THE NATIONAL
MONUMENT

Mount Desert Island is remarkable for the vigor with
which the hardy herbaceous plants that make the beauty and
delight of northern gardens grow in favorable locations on it,
and for their brilliant bloom. There, too, bloom follows bloom
unbrokenly from spring to fall, keeping fresh the sense with
constant change.

To establish in connection with the national park—using
the word, as elsewhere in this paper, in its popular sense —a
splendid permanent exhibit of these hardy plants, gathered
for their beauty’s sake from the whole temperate world, has
been from the first, like the wild gardens and the wild life sanc-
tuaries intended in the park itself, an essential feature of the
plan from which the park resulted.

Nothing could be devised that would be more useful in
furthering the development of a true art of gardening and
landscape gardening in this country than such an opportunity
to observe and study at their best the hardy plant materials
which it must use. And nowhere else upon the Continent could
a wider or more representative public be found to appreciate
and profit by it than comes each summer to the Island—a
public that will come henceforth in constantly increasing num-
bers as the park, with its great waiting gifts of interest and
beauty, is developed in accordance with the broadly formu-
lated plans of the Secretary of the Interior and National Park
service. |

With this in view, an opportunity for such a hardy plant
exhibit in the form of garden walks extending from the park,
which occupies the Island’s mountain range, towards Bar
Harbor, its most general and famous point of entrance, has
been secured, and plans for it are being now worked out.

2I

A BIRD AND PLANT SANCTUARY ON THE WILD GARDENS PATH

BEAVERDAM POOL.

Two of the boldest mountain groups upon the Island bring
the park within easy walking distance from the town. The
eastern of these is that of Newport and Picket Mountains;
the western, that of Dry Mountain and the Kebos. Against
them both, facing abruptly to the north and east, the thrust
of the arrested Ice Sheet in the Glacial period, as its huge mass
moved slowly seaward past them, must have been tremendous.

Evidence of it is not only visible in their rugged cliffs and
precipices but in two deep basins ground out from the ancient
Cambrian rock adjoining them.

One of these, Beaverdam Pool, lies at the foot of Newport
mountain; the other, the Spring Heath —once a considerable
lake but now completely filled with glacial clays and gravel
peat and granite sands — reaches broadly out towards Bar
Harbor from the eastern foot of Dry Mountain, forming a
splendid exhibit of one of the most characteristic features of
the north.

Portions of primeval forest, with massive trunks of ancient
yellow birch and hemlock, border still these basins on their
side towards the mountain; both make superb approaches to
the Monument; and both are rich naturally in soil and water,
in bird life and in plant life.

The one under Newport Mountain, with its brook valley
reaching to the public road, has been already deeded to The Wild
Gardens of Acadia for a plant and bird sanctuary; the one
beneath Dry Mountain, acquired by the Sieur de Monts
Spring Company for protection of its waters and for its scenic
beauty, has been placed beneath the same control, and offered
freely to the Government to use as though its own in its ap-
proaches and as a water source.

The Heath basin especially is remarkable for a succession
of deep-seated springs that rise apparently from a line of
fracture between the granite and the more ancient sea-laid
rock it shattered asit rose. Singularly pure, unvarying in tem-
perature or volume, and brought down probably from far away
by seaward tilting of an ancient coastal plain they make, with
their free gift of water to the passer-by, aunique, delightful fea-

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“GNOd YOREYVH SSVdWOD

ture in connection with the climbs that start or end along
this base.

These basins, of the Spring and Pool, with their interesting
native life, their wild flowers, trees and ferns and the wild
background of the mountains, are natural wild garden areas,
and so should stay. But leading to them three hardy gar-
den walks are planned, approaches to the Monument. The
one upon the bay, or eastward, side enters from the Old Post
Road at Compass Harbor Pond, in the midst of Iris and other
hardy gardens, and follows up Compass Harbor Brook through
the ravine which it has cut from deep deposits of the Glacial
period until the latter loses itself in the upland which divides
this watershed from that of the Wild Gardens’ basin under
Newport Mountain.

This land, from Compass Harbor Pond till the divide is
reached, has formed part till now, when given for the path, of
the Mount Desert Nurseries’ hardy gardens, and the beauty
of the flowers which they have grown upon it, familiar to all
who have visited the Island during the last twenty years, is
a good earnest for the future, establishing, as do the many
private gardens on the Island now, the remarkable possibili-
ties of the soil and climate for such an exhibition.

Much work has been already done upon this path, which is
the result of a long studied plan. The pond from which it
starts is itself a natural water garden, around whose edge
the native flags and cardinal flowers and superbum lilies
mingle delightfully with English meadow-sweets, purple
loosestrife and Siberian irises, while in its water the fragrant
native pond lilies grow along with hardy species from abroad.
Above, in the ravine, picturesquely wooded, moist and shady,
ferns and all kinds of shelter-loving plants grow wonderfully,
while over the upland which succeeds it an apple-shaded walk,
a dozen feet in width between alternately-placed trees, leads
on to a grove of native thorns which marks the entrance into
the Wild Gardens’ tract beneath the mountain.

Here, along this upland portion of the walk — sheltered
from the wind by shrubbery plantations — the beautiful old

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hardy plants of English and Colonial gardens—monkshoods,
peonies and irises, larkspurs, phloxes, lilies, starworts, globe
flowers, and a host of others—with their new companions can
be grown in the deep soil with little care. Many of them, like
the day lilies and the Solomon's seal, the lily of the valley and
the peach-leaved bell-flower, become completely naturalized and
often hold their own successfully against invading native plants.

memaile to the’ west ot this, another path— named in
memory of Mr. and Mrs. Morris K. Jesup of New York, to
whom Bar Harbor owes its beautiful Public Library and
New York City its magnificent Natural History Museum’s
great endowment—leads from the neighborhood of the Build-
ing of Arts, placed directly facing the nearer mountains of
the Monument in one of the most beautiful situations in the
world, down past the golf links with a fifty-foot strip reserved
along its side for hardy garden planting; then drops to the
level of the sheltered heath, which it crosses presently —
shaded by maple woods — and passes on, skirting the Delano
Wild Gardens and the mountain base, to meet the Kane
Path and the entrance to Kurt Diederich’s Climb at the outlet
Gmtne Darm.. This path, until the heath is reached, lies. over
cultivated farmland of an earlier time, with a deep soil and
south exposure, and there is no better spot upon the Island
for planting of the kind intended, nor a course more interesting.

Between these other two a third approach—the Cadillac—
is planned, starting from the Bar Harbor Athletic Field and
Park, where the Government office is, and following up the
brook that comes down to it from the. mountains and the
spring. Along this also remarkable opportunities exist for
arboretum and experimental planting, while the wild fern and
woodland gardens, succeeding to the open heath, which it
will enter as it nears the Spring, show under singularly favor-
able conditions the range and beauty of the native flora.

The plan for these approaches has been adopted only after
long consideration and study of the plants intended to be
shown, as well as of the landscape opportunity and soil con-

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ditions. It has received the warm approval, not only of the
secretary of the Interior and National Park Service but,
of architects and gardeners and botanists of international
authority and reputation.

Among them all, none has said a better word of hopeful-
ness and encouragement regarding it than the writer of the
letter —written in the earlier stages of the undertaking —with
which this paper closes, Mr. C. Grant LaFarge of New York,
a director of the American Institute of Architects, trustee and
secretary of the American Academy at Rome, an architect of
wide experience who has made a lifelong study also of our
native flora and these garden plants.

GEORGE B. Dorr.

Dear George :—

The papers which you have asked me to examine, setting forth the
project for developing a wild-life sanctuary and tree and plant exhibit
and experiment station on Mount Desert Island, seem to me to
describe a plan of comprehensive and striking interest. You ask me
to tell you what I think of it. It appeals to me on so many sides
that I can hardly deal with them all. As one long concerned with
the question of preserving our native fauna in the only effective ways,
such as game refuges and laws protecting migratory species, there is
much I should like to say on this phase of the scheme as well as on its
splendid aspect as a permanent great natural pleasure ground for
many people. But these I must pass by to emphasize a specific
point which strikes me forcibly, in view of my professional convictions.

Our community is aware but dimly, and in spots, of the tremendous
strides being made in the art of architecture in America. Only those
who, with open minds and trained eyes, contrast the body of our
performance with its current equivalent in the Old World can appre-
ciate it, and realize that it is cause, not for boasting but, for ardent
hope and constantly greater effort. Many forces are at work, among
them none stronger than the rapid and sure elevation and increase of
our educational methods.

Along with our architectural advance must go that of the sister
art of landscape design. There is no need for me to point out to you
the intimacy of the alliance or the urgent necessity that equipment
for the practice of the latter be, both theoretically and practically,
of the fullest.

No constructive art can achieve its full development while those
who practice it think in terms of its expression upon paper, and not
in terms of the materials they have to use. There is only one way
to gain the power to use these materials; that is, to have a close
and comprehensive personal acquaintance with them. The more we

29

survey the great triumphs of landscape art in the Old World, the
clearer 1t becomes to us that those who designed and built and planted
them worked with knowledge and in sympathetic understanding of
the natural surroundings and resources, the native flora of the region
and the trees and plants that could be grown in it successfully; that
they were the very antithesis of paper performers, inspired by hazy
views derived from the perusal of seductive catalogues.

I have an invincible belief in our need for the completest study of
past examples. I shall not rest until we have added a Fellowship
in Landscape Design to our American Academy in Rome. But. I also
am sure that the men who are to do great work in this country — and
our vision hardiy tells us yet how marvellous it may be — must
know, to their fingertips, what this country offers of trees and shrubs
and flowers and ali growing things, and what may be done with them.
When they know this, and use their knowledge, we shall have Ameri-
can gardens. To acquire this knowledge under present conditions
is well-nigh impossible. The country is too vast; its flora too scattered.
Even the most superb examples of wild growth are but stimulating
suggestions, not made available by opportunity for close study and by
certainty of what transplanting, cultivation, care and breeding will
accomplish.

Your plan offers all this. If you succeed with it, I see all those
who would equip themselves with what their art demands of them
flocking to it from all quarters of the country. It would be a god-
send, not only to those who live in approximately similar regions—
there is none just like 1t—but to those others whose lives are cast in
far less interesting places, of dull, topography and limited flora. I
can think of no one thing that could be done in America, more greatly
to contribute to and to advance the art and the practice of American
landscape design. Good luck to you.

Sincerely yours,
(Signed) C. Grant LAFARGE

January 22, 1614

The White Mountain
National Forest

Crawford Notch in n7O7

PUBLISHED BY

THE WILD GARDENS OF ACADIA

THE WHITE MOUNTAIN NATIONAL FOREST

HERBERT A. SMITH.
FOREST SERVICE EDITOR.

The Federal Government is building up a National Forest
in the White Mountain region of New Hampshire by the
purchase of the necessary lands from private owners. As
the lands are bought they are put under administration.
The first land was bought in 1913. By the close of 1916 title
had been acquired to 205,289 acres, and arrangements had
been completed for the purchase of 76,970 acres more. The
total acquired or covered by approved contracts of sale at the
opening of the summer of I9I7 is 375,000 acres.

This is equal to about half of what may be called the main
mass of the White Mountains — the region stretching from
the southern base of the Sandwich range on the south to the
Ammonusuc and Moose River Valleys on the north, and in-
cluding the Presidential, Carter, and Franconia Ranges. UlIti-
mately the Forest will probably reach a size of something like
amillion acres. This is about the average size of the National
Forests which the Government has established in the moun-
tain regions of the West, out of the publiclands. It will carry
the Forest northward over the mountains beyond the Ammon-
usuc and Moose Rivers as far as and including the Pliny
Range. Some of the land already bought lies in this northern
extension of the White Mountain region.

The Government is buying up these forested mountains
in order that all the interests of the public in their right use
and protection may be fully safeguarded through orderly,
intelligent development of their value. The Nation is taking
over in the White Mountains a productive resource, in order
that it may continue to be productive, and productive of all
the public benefits which can be realized with skilful manage-
ment. These benefits are chiefly the regulation of water
supplies, the sustained yield of wood, and the enjoyment by
the people of the rare recreative and scenic value of the

3

MOUNT WEBSTER — FROM MOUNT WILLARD

region. To adjust and harmonize these diversified forms of
use so that all may go on at once without needless sacrifice
of one to another, and with preference for that of highest
public value where interests conflict, is the task which the
Government has undertaken.

Unrestricted private ownership of mountainous forest
land risks the sacrifice of important public interests to indi-
vidual interests, waste and impairment of the resources, and,
in the end, widespread devastation. In the White Mountains
recognition of the public loss began nearly forty years ago.
The cutting of the virgin forests by lumbermen and the ravages
wrought by fire aroused inquiry for some method of protecting
time iaterests of the public. But it was not until 1911 that
legislation authorizing protective measures was secured. In
that year Congress provided for the acquisition by the Gov-
ernment of lands whose control would “‘promote or protect the
navigation of streams on whose watersheds they lie’’ — the
so-called Weeks Law. In accordance with this law, the Nation
is now purchasing the White Mountain land, but much of it
without the original stand of timber, and some of it so desolated
by fire that the restoration of timber growth can take place
only after the lapse of many years.

Nevertheless, action came not too late to save the glory
of New England's finest mountains, for the present generation
and for all time. Scarred though their sides and summits
are by occasional disfiguring breaks in the forest mantle of
living green, dark-hued where the spruce and fir wrap the
upper slopes, emerald and vivid below the evergreen belt
where the hardwoods crowd into the conifers, they are still
to the eye much what they were a hundred years ago.

Even then visitors had begun to pilgrimage into the
almost unbroken wilderness that stretched from the up-
lands of the Connecticut Valley to the Maine border and
from Winnipesaukee to Canada, to look upon the rugged
“White Hills’ in their lonely grandeur. These first pilgrims,
forerunners of the tens of thousands who each summer now
make the easy journey from point to point in luxury, found
rude accommodation in the occasional cabins of pioneer settlers.

5

NIVLNNOW ONIN YavVls

Letter

In 1797, and again in 1803, President Timothy Dwight of
Yale College rode on horseback up the Connecticut Valley and
through the Crawford Notch. An account of what he saw is
given in his “Travels in New York and New England,” pub-
lished in 1823. Settlement of the country back from the valley
towns was at an early stage; the roads were of the worst, the
houses few and scattered. Yet the ravages of fire had begun.

‘When we entered upon this farm in 1803,’’ he wrote, ‘‘a fire
which not long before had been kindled in its skirts had spread
over an extensive portion of the mountain on the northeast;
and consumed all the vegetation, and most of the soil, which
was chiefly vegetable mould, in its progress. The whole
tract, from the base to the summit, was alternately white
and dappled; while the melancholy remains of half-burnt
trees, which hung here and there on the sides of the immense
steeps, finished the picture of barrenness and death.”’

Thomas Starr King refers in his admirable work,‘“*The White
Hills; Their Legends, Landscape, and Poetry,” to the devasta-
tion of Mount Crawford by a great fire which, according to
“old Mr. Crawford,” occurred about 1815. ‘‘The time may well .
arrive,’ he writes, ‘‘when careful records of these irreparable
mischiefs, which destroy in their progress the very vitality
of our mountains, and leave nothing but crumbling rocks, the
shelter of a strange and spurious vegetation, — nothing but
the ruins of nature — shall possess a mournful value.”’ But it
was not until a much later day, when the lumbermen began
to operate extensively in the pure spruce forests of the upper
slopes, that the fire menace reached a point at which public
sentiment became sufficiently aroused to demand with in-
sistence some efficient remedy.

It was the arrival of the era of the railroad which really
opened the White Mountains to the public. Through the
first half of the nineteenth century their spreading fame drew
a slowly increasing number of travelers into the region, in
spite of the obstacles presented by indifferent accommoda-
tions and lack of transportation facilities.

In 1819 Abel Crawford opened a footway to Mount Wash-

7

SaGnO0O1D AHL AO SAMVT AHL GNV NOLONIHSVYM LNNOW

ington, and in 1822 Ethan Allen Crawford opened a road along
the Ammonusuc; these attracted attention and visitors. But
in 1837, King tells us, the White Mountains were still a secluded
district where the inns offered ‘‘only the homely cheer of country
fare,and the paths to Mount Washington were rarely trodden
by any one who did not prize the very way, rough as it might
be, too much to search for easier ones.”’

In 1840 the first horse was ridden to the summit. The dec-
ade which followed was that in which railroads began to play
a part in the economic development of the State. From the
middle of the century on, the popularity of the White Moun-
tains grew fast. |

In 1846 there was published in Boston ‘The White Moun-
tain and Lake Winnepissiogee Guide Book’’; and from 1849 to
1859 there was an average of a new guide book a year for
White Mountain travelers. One published in Concord, N. H.,
in 1850 makes mention of the Mount Washington House, kept
by Horace Fabyan, as containing about 100 rooms, “‘new,
light, and airy, the majority erected during the last two years.”
At Littleton, the White Mountain House, ‘‘one of the most
pleasant and convenient stopping places to be found any-
where on the route,’’ is ‘“‘fitted up in the most modern style
regardless of expense, and everything desirable or usual in
hotels is there found.’’ Between such points of resort stages
ran regularly for the tourists. Even though the encomiums
of the guide books are liberally discounted, they show how
the summer visitors were coming in.

In the period of prosperity and expansion which came
in the seventies the number of persons in the East seeking
summer recreation increased apace. The vacation habit was
forming. By 1880 the commercial value to the State of the
yearly influx of visitors and tourists had become fully recog-
nized as of very great importance. At the same time, the
development of private lumbering operations and the ravages
of forest fires after lumbering were producing results that
called forth vigorous protests against the despoliation of the
forests and the marring of scenic beauty.

9

ANIAVY S.INVWYAMONL ONIMOHS—HOLON WVHMNId NOS NOLONIHSVM LNNOW

In 1881 conditions had reached a point which brought about
action by the State. A commission was created by the legis-
lature to inquire into the extent to which the forests were be-
ing destroyed, and into the wisdom or necessity for the adoption
of forest laws.

The report of this commission pointed out that at least half
the State was most valuable for permanent timber production,
that the great waterpowers within and without the State
demanded forest preservation, and that the scenic and recrea-
tion value of the region was much too important as a State
asset to be recklessly sacrificed. Thus the reasons for pre-
venting the evils inevitable under private ownership and
unrestricted exploitation of the forests were even at that time
recognized. That nevertheless it took a full generation to
secure a remedy was not for lack of knowledge of the need to
do something, but because a course of action which would put
a stop to the admitted evils and which public sentiment would
support had not been found.

In the meantime, destruction of the forest was advancing
at a rapidly accelerating pace. In 1850 the reported value of
New Hampshire’s lumber cut was a little over one million
dollars; in 1870, over four and a quarter million; in 1890, over
five and a half million; and in 1900, nearly nine and a quarter
million. And this progressive drain upon the forest resources
of the State was accompanied by a change in the methods
used, which made the lumbering more and more destructive.

First the white pine was cut out. Then the spruce of the
lower slopes bore the brunt of the attack. As the demand
for lumber increased it paid to cut smaller and smaller trees,
with the result that lumbering grew steadily more intensive.
In the earlier stages, the cutting was to a large extent a pre-
liminary to agricultural development. Since the forest in the
lower and less rugged portions of the region was typically
mixed hardwoods and conifers, or ‘‘softwoods,’’ and since it
was chiefly the latter which the !umbermen sought, the lum-
bering in this form of growth did not as a rule strip the land.
But as the century advanced towards its close, the loggers

Il

3TIdOU"d AHL MO1SE SGOOM CaxIW

began to reach the pure spruce timber which protected the
upper slopes.

A rapidly developing pulp industry for the manufac-
ture of newsprint paper opened a market for material too
small for the lumber manufacturer. Moreover, when the
scene of operations was the thin-soiled upper slopes covered
with conifers it did not pay to leave anything behind which
had a sale value, for whatever remained was likely to be
blown down by the wind. ‘The debris in the wake of the logger
became a fire-trap of the most formidable character. Pro-
tection against fire was not worth its cost to the private owner,
whose interest was limited to getting all that he could from the
existing stand. Left to itself, therefore, natural economic
development could have but one result — the sweeping out
of existence of the timber resource and the final desolation of
the entire region above the hardwoods.

It was the growing perception of this fact that brought the
awakening of the public to a sense of what it had at stake.
But how to apply a remedy was a difficult question. The
State commission appointed in 1881 made its report in 1885,
but proposed no constructive program beyond a plan for the
inauguration of a system of fire protection of a primitive and
inadequate character. A second commission, appointed in
1889, reported in 1891 that the cost of State forest ownership
on an extensive scale was too great to make this course prac-
ticable. It did, however, recommend purchases by the State
of “carefully selected sections of the mountain region, of
small extent, to be held perpetually and so cared for and pro-
tected that their natural wild attractiveness shall be per-
manently maintained.”

An outcome of the report of this commission was the
creation, in 1893, of a permanent State Forest Commission.
Partly through purchase and partly through gift, the State
has come into possession of a number of small tracts contain-
mein all about.9,000 acres. But by the beginning of the
present century the logic of the situation was beginning to
make clear that if the large problem was to be solved it must

13

NIVLNONOW G1vd@ WOYsA AMV OHOA
ANAOS LSAYOA V

be solved quickly, and on broader lines than those along
which State action could be looked for.

Organized effort for Federal ownership began in Igor. It
was set on foot partly by residents of Massachusetts, who
realized that the interests affected were not limited to New
Hampshire. ‘Two years later, the first bills providing for the
purchase of lands in the White Mountains were introduced
M@ee@oncress. But the plan at first found small favor.
Forestry as a national undertaking was still in its early
infancy, if indeed it could fairly be said to have been born.
Some sixty-two million acres of ‘‘forest reserves’ had been
created in the West, but plans for putting their resources to
good use had not been devised and only the most rudimentary
administrative provision for their care had been made.
In short, they were reserves 1n every sense of the word —
Government property metaphorically placarded ‘Keep Out!’
and locally unpopular as obstacles in the path of economic
progress. The expenditure of Federal funds to buy eastern
forest lands was regarded askance, as a proposal to embark
on a new and dangerous policy involving both the use of public
funds for local and uncertain benefits and the extension of
government into a field of activity which it should not enter.
Political orthodoxy was shocked at the thought of what might
happen if national ownership and management of this form
of property were to begin.

Year after year the legislation was brought forward only
to be defeated. It was soon combined, however, with the
proposal for similar legislation in the southern Appalachians
which had arisen independently still earlier. As the movement
for Federal action gained strength, opposition was based largely
on the ground that the bills were unconstitutional. But in the
end the rising tide of public sentiment carried the law through
—the so-called Weeks Law. By limiting the purchases to
lands necessary to the regulation of the flow of navigable
streams and providing for a determination of the fact that
national control of the lands to be purchased would promote
or protect navigation, the question of constitutionality was
successfully met.

LAKE GLORIETTE

It was the interstate importance of the White Mountain
region which from the outset furnished the main reason for
Federal ownership. While the interstate character of the
benefits aimed at was conspicuously in evidence in the matter
of stream protection, it was by no means confined to this
form of public benefit.

As a recreational region, the White Monntiac it was
pointed out, have a large value for all the Northeastern and
many of the Central States, forming as they do a resort for
great numbers of visitors from Boston, New York, Pittsburgh,
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago, and other cities and towns of
the populous territory east of the Mississippi. Similarly, the
forests of the White Mountains are industrially important
as sources of timber supply for manufacturing establishments
in the States surrounding New Hampshire, whose products
go into all parts of the country. But of outstanding signifi-
cance was the influence of the White Mountain region upon
the industrial and economic life of the New England States
through its peculiar relation to their rivers, which are both
arteries of commerce and sources of energy through water-
power development.

Back from the ocean, for myriads of years, the streams have
been cutting, in their age-long task of remaking the face of the
earth, towards this central elevation from which the waters
drain east, west, north, and south. Upon the mountain flanks
their tentacles rest like a network of shining threads, deepening
their channels and bearing slowly seaward what short-visioned
man sometimes calls the everlasting hills. The White Moun-
tain uplift is a central citadel into which the drainage system
of northern New England is pressing from all sides. Maine,
Massachusetts, and Connecticut use the waters which New
- Hampshire feeds into the Androscoggin, the Saco, the Merri-
mac, and the Connecticut. All four have their principal im-
portance and use beyond the borders of New Hampshire. Pro-
tection of these streams against irregular flows and silting
through erosion was manifestly a matter of interstate con-
ecrin.

NOLONIHSVM LNNOW WOYsd —SxHVAd NYAHLYON AGNV ATNS LVAYDS

These reasons for national action were reinforced by cer-
tain special considerations. New Hampshire, a State without
great cities or extensive manufacturing districts, lacked the
wealth which would have permittted it to assume without
heavy sacrifice the burden involved in acquiring promptly
and protecting adequately the White Mountain lands. Con-
ditions had, however, reached a point which made it plain
that if the forests were to be saved immediate action was
necessary. The lumbering of the higher and steeper slopes
was beginning, with spectacularly ruinous results. On these
slopes, which were generally covered by pure stands of spruce,
the almost inevitable fires after lumbering left little in their
wake but bare rock; for the slash was both heavy and inflam-
mable, and the soil itself so largely made up of vegetable mat-
ter that neither living trees nor seed on or in the ground nor
anything in which trees could grow was likely to be left behind.

The beginning of the remedial action was delayed for a
time after the enactment of the Weeks Law by the careful
safeguards embodied in the Law itself, to prevent ill-con-
sidered purchases. Under these safeguards the Government
has proved a good buyer, and it is believed that the lands
could undoubtedly be sold again for more than they cost, were
it desired to dispose of them. Thus the fears formerly ex-
pressed in some quarters that a purchase law would permit
private owners to unload on the Government on terms more
advantageous to themselves than to the public have proved
unfounded. The first purchases in the White Mountains
were made in 1913. As soon as the Government began to
take title, plans for administration became necessary. ‘Thus
public ownership entered upon its final stage —that of or-
ganization and development on constructive lines.

The first requisite was fire protection. Organization of
the territory into districts, each in charge of a forest officer,
provides the necessary leadership. Fire fighting 1n the woods
is a matter in which the men of the Forest Service have become
proficient through long experience. It was a simple matter
to adapt to local conditions the methods which had been

19

ALLAAVAVT “LN WOYA HOLON VINOONVAYSA

worked out in the National Forests of the West. An elastic
protective force is expanded to its maximum in the danger
season, when a vigilant watch is kept by lookouts and patrol-
men. The protective force of the State forester assists in the
work. Trails and telephone lines have been built where
existing means of communication were most inadequate to
the need; in the White Mountains, however, there is less
urgent necessity for the Government to equip the Forest with
such improvements than there is in the National Forests of
the West and South. Sales of timber are being made for the
primary purpose of cleaning up the forest and securing a better
growth of timber. Incidentally, the returns from such sales
are already reimbursing a large part of the cost of administra-
tion and protection, and are likely soon to equal the entire
operating cost.

All in all, though the work is so lately begun it is already
effecting a very considerable change in the conditions. Not
only has the progress of the forces of destruction been halted;
there is in evidence a marked gain. The protection given for
the past four years has prevented any considerable damage
from fire, and some of the slopes which five years ago showed
bald rock are now green with on-coming forest growth.

Perhaps even more important in the long run than these
tangible and material benefits of public ownership has been the
stimulus to a larger and clearer realization of the value of the
region which Government leadership in its protection and
development is bringing about. The mere fact that a per-
manent public enterprise has been entered upon through the
creation of the White Mountain National Forest has increased
the number of visitors, and has reacted upon local sentiment
regarding the responsibility of private landowners to the
public for a certain measure of co-operation as a part of good
citizenship. Fire protection is now general and heartily aided
by all classes of local residents. It is easier to secure lands
needed by the Government on terms not dictated solely by a
spirit of narrow self-interest. The organizations which are
actively working for improved conditions and better facilities

21

for enjoyment of the recreational and esthetic values of the
region, of which the chief are the Appalachian Club and the
society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, have
been greatly heartened and strengthened by the creation and
administration of the National Forest. In short, community
participation in the project is a growing reality, and promises
much for the welfare of the region.

The influence of the enterprise is felt far afield. Late in
1916 the various trail-building organizations of New England
met in conference and decided to correlate their efforts with a
view to developing a trail system under a general plan of wide
scope. It is proposed to link up in this way the lake region
of Maine, the White Mountains, the Green Mountains, and
even the Adirondacks and the Palisade Park and New York
City. Thus the pedestrian, whose simple pleasure in explor-
ing the shady by-ways of rural New England has been largely
taken away by the march of progress in the form of road 1m-
provement and whirring automobiles, may once again come
into his own.

The fish and game resources of the White Mountains will
under national management undoubtedly be markedly aug-
mented. The streams are already stocked to some extent with
trout, and deer and grouse are fairly abundant in certain
localities. But the control of hunting and fishing is at present
inadequate, governed as it is solely by the general game laws
of the State. Development of the wild life of the Forest as an
integral part of its value to the public calls for carefully planned
and close co-operation between the State and the Federal
Government, to the end that the woods and streams may
again abound in their natural denizens.

The history of what has taken place in the forests of the
White Mountains epitomizes in a broad way the history of
the movement for forest presérvation in the United States.
Beginning with the first appearance of white men and the
contact of civilization with the primeval wilderness, there
was begun a struggle for subjugation of the forest in order
to make room for settlement and community life.

22

At first the timber was an incumbrance, valueless because
of its abundance, and blocking development. Fires were started
to aid in clearing the land, and even when they swept far away
and laid waste the mountain slopes, the destruction which was
wrought was lightly regarded. With advance in economic
development and the knitting together of the country through
a network of railroads came a period in which exploitation of
the virgin forest became vigorous, extensive, and of a pro-
gressively devastating character. Then a few far-sighted per-
sons, at first regarded as impractical visionaries, began to
urge the need for conservation of the forest resource for the
sake of future timber supplies, for its influence upon water
supplies, and for its value to the public in connection with
recreation and scenic protection.

Gradually public sentiment groped to a realization of the
fact that private ownership of mountainous forest lands 1s 1n-
compatible with the best public interest. With hesitancy and
in the face of many misgivings as to the possibility of efficient
management of public property through public officials, re-
quiring, if it is to be successful, a high degree of intelligence,
probity, and stability of policy, public ownership was under-
taken. What the full measure of its results will be it is as yet
too soon to say. That depends on the ability of the American
people to maintain permanently, as a Government activity,
administration of a public resource, of increasing money value,
without allowing it to be infected by politics or placed in the
hands of men lacking in competence and foresight. Neverthe-
less, it is scarcely possible that national ownership and man-
agement of forests like those in the White Mountains can ever
fail to do better for the protection of the public welfare than
private ownership and management, without public regulation.
The strength of the situation lies in the fact that there now
exists, and is certain to continue, an alert and powerful public
sentiment which will not tolerate the handling of the resource
in ways that are seen to threaten the impairment of its
value and its beauty.

23

HOLON GCHYOAMVHYSD. AO LYVAH AHL

a:

NS

NCCE OF THE WHITE MOUNTAINS,
VISITED IN 1797.

TIMOTHY DWIGHT, PRESIDENT OF YALE COLLEGE.

On the morning of Tuesday, October 3, we pursued our
journey. For some time before we set out, the wind blew
with great strength from the northwest, in this region the or-
dinary harbinger of rain. The clouds, rapidly descending,
embosomed the mountains almost to their base. The sky
suddenly became dark; the clouds were tossed in wild and
fantastical forms, and poured down the deep channels between
the mountains with a torrent-like violence; and the whole
heavens were overspread with a more gloomy and forbidding
aspect than I had ever before seen. The scenery in the
Notch of the White Mountains, commencing at the distance
of five miles from Rosebrook’s, was one of the principal objects
which had allured us into this region. A gentleman from
Lancaster, perfectly acquainted with this part of the country,
had joined us at Rosebrook’s, and proposed to be our com-
panion and guide through this day’s journey, and to give us all
the necessary information concerning the objects of which we
were in quest. If we stayed in Rosebrook’s, we should lose
his company and information. If we proceeded on our
journey, as the weather was, we should lose our prospects;
many of the objects being at such a season invisible, and
others seen with the greatest disadvantage. Happily for us,
our storm vanished as suddenly as it came on; the wind
ceased almost in a moment; the clouds began to rise and
separate; and we commenced our journey in the best spirits.

From Rosebrook’s our road lay for about two miles along
the Ammonoosuc, onaninterval. Wethen began to ascend an
easy slope, which is the base of these mountains. After pro-
ceeding along the slope two miles farther, we crossed a small
brook, one of the head waters of the Ammonoosuc; and within

25

“HOLON ATIHAXIC

the distance of a furlong we crossed another, which is the
head water of the Saco. The latter stream, turning to the
east, speedily enters a pond, about thirty rods in diameter,
lying at a small distance on the northern side of the road; and
thence, crossing the road again and winding along the margin
of a meadow formed by a beaver dam, enters the Notch.
The northeastern cluster of mountains begins to ascend from
the pond. The diameter of the meadow is about a furlong.
The beaver dam was erected just below the Notch, in a place
happily selected for this purpose. The mountains were
scarcely visible at all until we came upon them.

The weather had now become perfectly fine. The clouds,
assuming a fleecy aspect, rose to a great height, and floated in
a thin dispersion. The wind wasamere zephyr; and the sky
exhibited the clear and beautiful blue of autumn.

The Notch of the White Mountains is a phrase appro-
priated to a very narrow defile extending two miles in length
between two huge cliffs, apparently rent asunder by some vast
convulsion of nature. This convulsion was, in my own
view, unquestionably that of the Deluge. There are here, and
throughout New England, no eminent proofs of volcanic
violence; nor any strong exhibitions of the power of earth-
quakes. Nor has history recorded any earthquake or vol-
cano in other countries of sufficient efficacy to produce the
phenomena of this place. The objects rent asunder are too
great, the ruin is too vast and too complete, to have been ac-
- complished by these agents. The change appears to have
been effectuated when the surface of the earth extensively sub-
sided; when countries and continents assumed a new face and
a general commotion of the elements produced the disruption
of some mountains, and merged others beneath the common
level of desolation. Nothing less than this will account for
the sundering of a long range of great rocks, or rather of vast
mountains; or for the existing evidences of the immense force
by which the rupture was effected.

The entrance of the chasm is formed by two rocks, stand-
ing perpendicularly at the distance of twenty-two feet from

27

YSAlY LSO]

each other: one about twenty feet in height, the other about
twelve. Half of the space is occupied by the brook men-
tioned'as the head stream of the Saco; the other half by the
road. The stream is lost and invisible beneath a mass of
fragments, partly blown out of the road and partly thrown
down by some great convulsion.

When we entered the Notch, we were struck with the
wild and solemn appearance of everything before us. The
scale on which all the objects in view were formed was the
scale of grandeur only. The rocks, rude and ragged in a
manner rarely paralleled, were fashioned and piled on each
other by a hand operating only in the boldest and most ir-
regular manner. As we advanced, these appearances in-
creased rapidly. Huge masses of granite, of every abrupt
form and hoary with a moss which seemed the product of
ages, recalling to the mind the “Saxum vetustum”’ of Virgil,
speedily rose to a mountainous height. Before us the view
closed almost instantaneously and presented nothing to the
eye but an impassable barrier of mountains.

About half a mile from the entrance of the chasm we saw
in full view the most beautiful cascade, perhaps, in the world.
It issued from a mountain on the right, about eight hundred
feet above the subjacent valley, and at the distance of about
two miles from us. The stream ran over a series of rocks,
almost perpendicular, with a course so little broken as to pre-
serve the appearance of an uniform current, and yet so far
disturbed as to be perfectly white. The sun shone with the
clearest splendour from a station in the heavens the most
advantageous to our prospect; and the cascade glittered
down the vast steep, like a stream of burnished silver.

At the distance of three-quarters of a mile from the en-
trance, we passed a brook, known in this region by the name
of the Flume from the strong resemblance to that object
exhibited by the channel which it has worn for a considerable
length in a bed of rocks, the sides being perpendicular to the
bottom. This elegant piece of water we determined to ex-
amine further, and, alighting from our horses, walked up the

29

pes
ape oe

ie, dee

GLEN ELLIS CASCADE

acclivity, perhaps a furlong. The stream fell from a height
of 240 or 250 feet over three precipices: the second receding
a small distance from the front of the first, and the third from
that of the second. Down the first and second, it fell in
a single current; and down the third in three, which united
their streams at the bottom in a fine basin, formed by the hand
of nature in the rocks immediately beneath us. It is impos-
sible for a brook of this size to be modelled into more diversi-
fied or more delightful forms; or for a cascade to descend over
precipices more happily fitted to finish its beauty. The cliffs,
together with a level at their foot, furnished a considerable
opening, surrounded by the forest. The sunbeams, pene-
trating through the trees, painted here a great variety of fine
images of light, and edged an equally numerous and diversified
collection of shadows; both dancing on the waters, and alter-
nately silvering and obscuring their course. Purer water
was never seen. Exclusively of its murmurs, the world around
us was solemn and silent. Everything assumed the character
of enchantment; and had I been educated in the Grecian
mythology, I should scarcely have been surprised to find an
assemblage of Dryads, Naiads, and Oreads sporting on the
little plain below our feet. The purity of this water was
discernible, not only by its limpid appearance, and its taste,
but from several other circumstances. Its course is wholly
over hard granite; and the rocks and the stones 1n its bed, and
at its side, instead of being covered with adventitious sub-
stances, were washed perfectly clean; and by their neat ap-
pearance added not a little to the beauty of the scenery.
From this spot the mountains speedily began to open with
increased majesty; and in several instances rose to a per-
pendicular height, a little less than a mile. The bosom of
both ranges was overspread, in all the inferior regions, by a
mixture of evergreens with trees whose leaves are deciduous.
The annual foliage had been already changed by the frost. Of
the effects of this change it is, perhaps, impossible for an in-
habitant of Great Britain, as I have been assured by several
foreigners, to form an adequate conception, without visiting

31

CHERRY MOUNTAIN

an American forest. When I was a youth, I remarked that
Thomson had entirely omitted, in his Seasons, this fine part
of autumnal imagery. Upon inquiring of an English gentle-
man the probable cause of the omission, he informed me, that
no such scenery existed in Great Britain. In this country
it is often among the most splendid beauties of nature. All
the leaves of trees, which are not evergreens, are by the first
severe frost changed from their verdure towards the perfec-
tion of that colour which they are capable of ultimately assum-
ing, through yellow, orange, and red, to a pretty deep brown.
As the frost affects different trees, and the different leaves of
the same tree, in very different degrees, a vast multitude of
tinctures are commonly found on those of a single tree, and
always on those of a grove or forest. These colours, also, in
all their varieties are generally full; and in many instances are
among the most exquisite which are found in the regions of
nature. Different sorts of trees are susceptible of different
degrees of this beauty. Among them the maple is pre-eminently
distinguishd by the prodigious varieties, the finished beauty,
and the intense lustre of its hues; varying through all the
dyes, between a rich green and the most perfect crimson, or,
more definitely, the red of the prismatic image.

I have remarked that the annual foliage on these mountains
had been already changed by the frost. Of course, the dark-
ness of the evergreens was finely illumined by the brilliant
yellow of the birch, the beech, and the cherry, and the more
brilliant orange and crimson of the maple. The effect of this
universal diffusion of gay and splendid light was to render the
preponderating deep green more solemn. ‘The dark was the
gloom of evening, approximating to night. Over the whole,
the azure of the sky cast a deep, misty blue, blending toward
the summits every other hue, and predominating over all.

As the eye ascended these steeps, the light decayed, and
gradually ceased. On the inferior summits rose crowns of
conical firs and spruces. On the superior eminences, the
trees, growing less and less, yielded to the chilling atmosphere,
and marked the limit of forest vegetation. Above, the sur-

33

face was covered with a mass of shrubs, terminating at a still
higher elevation in a shroud of dark-coloured moss.

As we passed onward through this singular valley, occasion-
al torrents, formed by the rains and dissolving snows at the
close of winter, had left behind them, in many places, perpet-
ual monuments of their progress, in perpendicular, narrow,
and irregular paths, of immense length, where they had washed
the precipices naked and white from the summit of the moun-
tain to the base.

Wide and deep chasms, also, at times met the eye, both on
the summits and the sides, and strongly impressed the imagi-
nation with the thought, that a hand, of immeasurable power,
had rent asunder the solid rocks, and tumbled them into
the subjacent valley. Over all, hoary cliffs, rising with
proud supremacy, frowned awfully on the world below, and
finished the landscape. |

By our side the Saco was alternately visible and lost, and
increased, almost at every step, by the junction of tributary
streams. Its course was a perpetual cascade, and with its
sprightly murmurs furnished the only contrast to the majestic
scenery around us.

2 ais na wily uy AS NY ty Heavens ye Wy yi At) Lr AS Re, EWA
SA OBE SN Mh Hy j ened les HANG Gh MRE LN shi paved sscellaat ‘eal
aes AN) MAE IN Sat ae EM RMR KC: A VRE ate A
ML MEE TIA oat aE aN Tn Me tA ATO Ae AUER, Woke
; Me TORN Sa ahs ANE A ONAN Ea ay A } q , }
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Vet ‘ i if! h BIG
Sieur de M Publicati
pieur onts ublications
‘BR ‘ an ’ j i Y f
ia i! ae Patt i tat) ‘ i { 1

_ Announcement by the Government of the cre-
ation of the Sieur de Monts National Monu-
ment by Presidential Proclamation on July 8,

1916.

Addresses at Meeting held at Bar Harbor on
August 22,1916, to commemorate the estab-
lishment of the Sieur de Monts National
- Monument. Ai

The Sieur de Monts National Monument as a
Bird Sanctuary.

The Coastal Setting, Rocks and Woods of the
Sieur de Monts National Monument.

An Acadian Plant Sanctuary.

Wild Life and Nature Conservation in the East-
ern States. |

Man and Nature. Our Duty to the Future.

The Acadian Forest. /

The Sieur de Monts National Monument as
commemorating Acadia and early French
influences of Race and Settlement in the
United States.

Acadia: the Closing.Scene.

Purchas translation of de Monts’ Commission.
De Monts: an Appreciation.

: The de Monts Ancestry i in France.

The District of Maine and the Character of the
| People of Boston at end of the 18th century.

Two National Monuments: the Desert and the

Ocean Front.

Natural Bird Gardens on Mount Desert Island.
The Blueberry and other characteristic plants
: of the Acadian Region.

_ The Sieur de Monts National Monument and its
us Historical Associations. Garden Approaches

to the National Monument.

The White Mountain National Forest.
Crawford Notch in 1797.

‘An Old Account of Mt. Washington. A Word
upon its Insect Life.

A Word on Mt. Katahdin.
* we National Parks and Monuments.

: Early Cod and vieareat ee Fishery in Acadian
Waters.

“xx The Birds of Oldfarm: an intimate study of an
Acadian Bird Sanctuary.

“THE CUSTODIAN,
has Sieur de Monts National Monument,
Bar Harbor, Maine,

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3 9088 01698