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The largest and most beautiful Maine island, however, is Mount Desert, the fame of which is worldwide. It is about fourteen miles long and seven broad. The mainland is close at hand, and the island is separated from it only by narrow winding waterways. There are thirteen mountains on the island, and an equal number of lakes nestle in the hollows and wild ravines. The loftiest height can be seen sixty miles out at sea.

When the white men came to the island it was a favorite resort of the Indians. The waters abounded with fish, and game birds and animals were plentiful on the land. It was discovered by Champlain, the great French explorer, in 1604. His description of it says that the summits of the mountains were all bare and rocky. Therefore, he called it "The Isle of Desert Mountains."

The French started a settlement at Mount Desert seven years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. They built a little fort and a number of houses, and laid out their gardens, and their priests set to work to convert the Indians. But presently an armed English ship from Virginia appeared one summer day and saluted them with a broadside of guns. The settlement was destroyed, and the Frenchmen were seized as intruders in the territory of the king of England.

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The first white man to establish a permanent home on the island was Abraham Somes of Gloucester. came to Mount Desert in his fishing boat in 1761, and

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cut a load of barrel staves which he carried back. next year he voyaged to the island with his wife and four children, and built a log-house up at the head of the sound which bears his name. Another Gloucester family came the same year and settled close by. The population gradually increased, but for a full century

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the dwellers got practically all their livelihood from farming and fishing.

About 1860 the island began to win the favor of wandering artists and parties of college students on a vacation. Bar Harbor was then a primitive village of farmers and fishermen. The land was thin and poor, and the point on which the town afterward grew was bushclad and desolate. Yet in twenty years Bar Harbor became one of the most popular resorts on the New England coast.

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Maine Places, Industries, and Famous People

ORTLAND is by far the largest place in the state. The hilly peninsula on which the city is located is about three miles long and has an average width of less than a mile. It is so compactly settled that almost every available building spot is occupied.

The first cabins were erected on the spot in 1632. For about a quarter of a century it was known as Casco Neck, and after that as Falmouth. Not until 1785 did it become Portland.

In 1676 and again in 1690 it was completely destroyed by the Indians. On the latter occasion no one was left to bury the slain. More than two years later a ship that was voyaging along the coast stopped there, and the crew gathered the bleached bones and buried them.

At the beginning of the Revolution the place consisted of about five hundred dwellings and stores, with many barns and stables. One October day in 1775 the inhabitants were alarmed by the sight of four British vessels entering their harbor. The next day they received a letter from the commander of the fleet stating that in two hours he would bombard the town. A committee at once went to the commander to protest, and a day's respite was secured by delivering to him eight stands of small arms. He offered a further delay if they would bring him four cannon and such other arms and ammunition as they possessed.

The town was completely at his mercy, but at dawn the following morning the citizens held a meeting and resolved to sacrifice their homes rather than to surrender the rest of their precious guns and ammunition. The committee informed the captain of this decision and besought him for a longer respite, but he said, “I will give you thirty minutes and no more."

There were few teams in the place, and nearly all the household goods still remained in the dwellings or piled up before the doors when the vessels' batteries. opened on the town. Cannon balls, bombs, and grape-shot were showered on the defenceless village, and most of the people fled for their lives. Many of them saved only what they bore away on their backs. Armed parties from the ships came on shore and applied torches to the buildings. One of the few persons who did not leave was the landlady of the fashionable tavern of the place. She extinguished the fires on her premises with buckets of water as fast as they were kindled. Toward night, when the bombardment ceased and the fleet sailed away, the greater part of the town had been destroyed.

After the second war with England trade with the West Indies rapidly developed. Lumber and fish were the chief exports. The return cargoes were sugar and molasses. For many years Portland's imports in these lines exceeded those of New York and Boston. The molasses was distilled into rum in large quantities until temperance reform, under the lead of the Portland philanthopist, Neal Dow, closed the distilleries.

The first steamboat used on the coast was made by a Portland captain in 1822. He placed an old engine on a flat-bottomed boat, and rigged up some paddle-wheels so that he was able to run the craft to the islands of Casco Bay and some of the adjacent mainland towns. He called his vessel the Kennebec,

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