Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  The most beautiful effects of fog at Bar Harbor are to be seen from Newport Mountain, which is about a thousand feet high, and is a mile or two out of the village. At first the path leads upward among thick woods, through which the sunlight falls in yellow patches, and where the squirrels chatter angrily from the spruce boughs. This part of the way is very pretty, though it is apt to be warm, and in early summer the black flies make succulent meals on the nape of the pilgrim’s neck. A little farther on, the path leads out over broad open stretches of granite rock, scratched and furrowed by a primeval glacier, with scrubby tufts of mountain laurel growing in the stony hollows, and blueberry bushes holding on for dear life everywhere. Oddly enough, it is the easiest thing in the world to lose the path, although it has been considerately marked with a line of small cairns, which, however, are set at varying distances apart, often as far as a couple of hundred feet each from the next, and are built up of fragments of the rock itself, so that they are hard to distinguish in a failing light. To miss the path means wandering aimlessly over the slippery rock-slopes, or striking down the hill-side through the almost impenetrable underbrush, with the further penalty, especially if one happen to have a companion of the other sex, of being unmercifully jeered at; for to have lost one’s way on Newport Mountain is as well-worn an excuse at Bar Harbor as it is, in town, to say that one’s cab did not come.

  Once fairly at the top, and having conscientiously looked at the view all round, there is no lack of sheltered corners for smoke and contemplation. On the one hand the open sea stretches out, a sheet of gray steel, with great patches of speckled froth and foam here and there, near the shore, like white leopard skins, flung off by the grim puritan rocks that will have none of such heathenish adorning. On the other hand the mainland stretches its cruel, jagged line beyond Schoodie, and the lighthouse on Egg Rock stands up straight as a sentinel to guard the bay. Two or three big men-of-war lying in the harbor might be taken for neat models, of themselves, and the little craft moving about them are like water-beetles or flitting white moths. But the sea has changed suddenly, and it shivers all over as though the cold water could feel yet colder, and all at once the fog-bank that has been lying so innocently outside begins to unfold itself and steal forward over the surface. There does not seem to be much air above, and the trees on the Porcupines are still free. But on the right all is very different. Through the deep gorge or cleft between Newport and Dry Mountain, into which the sun has been beating all day, the chilly fog-wind now draws hard, and the fleecy cloud pours after it. Nothing, perhaps, could be less like the stern side of Dry Mountain than the gracious sweep of Mount Ida, and yet, as one looks, the lines of Tennyson’s “Œnone” rise to the memory:

  “The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen, Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, And loiters, slowly drawn.”

  But you will do well not to loiter too long yourself, for gray cairns are ill to find in a gray mist, and you had better gain the woods by the time the top of Newport is swathed in cloud as though it were a real grown-up mountain.

  Mount Desert is lucky in its proper names of places, having been discovered as a summer resort late enough to escape the semi-classical namings of “Baths” and “Mirrors” and “Bowers,” which have sentimentalized the rocks and pools of the White Mountains. A few French words still linger as a reminder of the time when Louis XIV. gave the original grant to the Sieur de la Motte Cadillac; but most of them, like Hull’s Cove and Town Hill, have, an honest colonial American ring, while about Pretty Marsh Harbor there is a certain echo of romance, and “Junk o’

  Pork” and “Rum Key,” two little islands, or rather rocks, in the bay, have a very nautical, and even piratical, suggestiveness.

  At the first glance the island, on a map, reminds one somewhat of the dejected lamb which hangs by his middle in the order of the Golden Fleece. The deep indentation is Somes’s Sound, running far inland, with Somesville at its head, a quiet New England village, with a white meeting-house, and many other houses, most of them also white, and standing among gnarled apple-trees, in a gentle, dozing tranquillity from which the place is roused when parties drive over from Bar Harbor to eat broiled chickens and “pop-overs” at the local hotel, and to drive back by moonlight — expeditions which are considered to have sufficient local color to entitle them to notice, without omission of the pop-overs, in Baedeker’s recent “Guide to the United States.”

  In the neighborhood of Somesville the characteristics of the native population are much more noticeable than at Bar Harbor, only eight miles away, where a watering-place has been grafted on a fishing village. At some time or other in his life almost every islander seems to have followed the sea; the man who drives your buckboard may have been more than once to China, and it is extremely likely that the farmer who brings you your green peas has been tossed for many a week of hours in a crazy dory off the deadly Banks, which cost us every year so many lives. In nearly every home there is some keepsake from far away lands, some tribute from arctic or tropic seas, and when at last an old captain makes up his mind to stay ashore it is certain that there will be something about his house to show his former calling — a pair of huge whale-ribs on either side of the front door, flowers growing in shells that have held the murmur of the Indian Ocean, and, instead of a cock or banner, a model of some sort of boat perched on the barn for a weather-vane. That a sailor-man is a handy man is true the world over, but the Maine man seems to have an especial knack with wood, from the lumber-camp to the cabinetmaker’s bench, and many a carpenter working by the day will turn out a well-finished sideboard or an odd piece of artistic furniture from the roughest sort of pencil sketch. They are good smiths, too, and the best of their wrought-iron recalls the breadth and freedom of the early German and Italian work.

  Society at Bar Harbor does not now differ in any particularly salient manner from good society anywhere else, except that it is rather more cosmopolitan. When the guests at a small dinner or luncheon may have come from New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, and Chicago, it is impossible that the conversation should fall into that jargon of a clique which often makes the talk of the most centralized society, like that of Paris or London, seem narrow and provincial to the unfortunate outsider.

  One amusing survival of the simpler early days is the habit of going out in the evening in uncovered traps. There are a few private broughams, but if you are dining out, and happen to reach the house as a lady drives up, the chances are that you will help her to alight from an open buckboard, her smart French frock shrouded in a long cloak, and her head more or less muffled and protected. One or two of the livery-stables have hacks which must have been very old when they were brought from Bangor, and which now hold together almost by a miracle. A year or two ago one of them could never be sent out without two men on the box, not indeed for the sake of lending the turnout any fictitious splendor, but because one of them had to “mind the door,” which was broken, and could neither be shut nor opened by any one inside. If two or three entertainments take place on the same night there is telephoning loud and long for these antediluvian vehicles, as the only other alternative is to take a sort of carry-all with leather side-curtains which have a treacherous way of blowing open and dropping small waterspouts down the back of one’s neck.

  It would be out of place for a mere visitor to launch into predictions regarding the social future of Bar Harbor. But one thing at least seems certain — it can never be in any sense a rival to Newport. The conditions which make the summer life of the latter more brilliant than that of any other watering-place in the world, mark it also as the playground of a great commercial metropolis, and a large proportion of its pleasure-seekers would not dare to be eighteen hours distant from New York, as they must be at Bar Harbor, until our means of getting about shall be singularly improved.

  Then there are not the opportunities for display of riches and for social competition which already exist at Newport. The villas and cottages are scattered and
isolated; there is no convenient central point of general meeting, and the roads are too hilly for any but light American carriages. Some victorias manage to trundle about, but the horses which draw them, or hold back their weight, look far from comfortable, and although occasional coaches have made a brief appearance they have not been a success, as on most of the thickly wooded roads their passengers are in danger of the fate of Absalom. There is an Ocean Drive which is fine in parts, and another road runs above the upper bay, seeming in some places to overhang the water, and affording a charming view of the Gouldsboro’ hills on the mainland; but on the whole there are few roads. There is no turf on which to ride, and the pleasure of keeping horses, except as a convenient means of getting from one place to another, is limited.

  But there is always the sea, and to that one comes back with a love that is ever new. Men who know what they are talking about say that Frenchman’s Bay is apt to be dangerous for small craft, on account of the sudden squalls which come over the hills and drop on the water like the slap of a tiger’s paw, and it would certainly be hard to find a place in which there can be at the same time such an amiable diversity of winds. It is not at all uncommon to see two schooners within a couple of miles of each other, both running close-hauled or both before the wind, but on the same tack and in opposite directions.

  Another experience, familiar but always trying, consists in starting with a light but steady southeast breeze which feels as if it would hold through the morning, but which drops out suddenly and completely within half an hour, leaving one bobbing and broiling in a flat calm, until, without warning, it begins to blow hard from some point of the west. Sometimes there is a good sailing breeze at night when the moon is near the full, and to be on the water then is an enchantment. The glistening wake has here and here a shining point of phosphorescence; the familiar lines of the islands are softened with a silver haze; and the whole scene has a certain poetic quality which the positive beauty of daylight cannot lend to ft. One is reminded of a woman of the world whom one has known as always sure of herself and almost hard, until in a moment of weariness, of weakness, or of sadness, of fatigue or despondency, the gentler nature glimmers under the mask.

  Entirely apart from the question of exercise nothing perhaps affords such lasting amusement at Bar Harbor as rowing, for it rarely blows so hard that one cannot get out, and one is independent of calms and master of one’s own time. All along the shore the granite rocks come down to the edge of the water, which in many places lies deep under sheer cliffs. The tide rises and falls about a dozen feet, and one may do duller things on a hot morning than pull slowly, very slowly, along in the shade at half-tide, watching the starfish that hold on to the face of the rock with their red hands, and the brown weed rising and falling as the water swings slowly back and forth. If the tide is not too high one may explore the moderately thrilling recesses of the caves which abound on some of the islands, and if the hour is not too late one may have agreeable converse with some old gentleman who has been visiting his lobster pots, and who has probably sailed every known sea in his time. Of late years several of our ships of war have been at Bar Harbor every summer, and more than once a whole squadron; and the yachts of the New York and Eastern Clubs put in either separately or in little parties. While they are in port the harbor is gay with bunting and laughter and music, and as one sits on the deck of a yacht in the evening the lights of the village, as they go straggling up the hill and along the shore, have a very foreign look, and the cardboard masses of its wooden hotels loom up as if they were really substantial habitations.

  After being a few days at Bar Harbor one begins to feel some curiosity about the phases through which it must have passed. There are now a number of cottages, most of them simple, with here and there a few that are more elaborate, and about a dozen hotels, three or four of which seem to be always full and prosperous, while some others find it at least worth their while to keep open; but there are still others which have frankly given up the game, and are permanently closed and for sale, though no one seems anxious to buy them. Yet they must have been needed when they were built in the by-gone days, which were not long ago, and after exhausting a friend or two with questions one learns that Bar Harbor already has a past which does not seem likely to repeat itself.

  It was discovered nearly thirty years ago by a few artists and students roaming, like Dr. Syntax, in search of the picturesque, and most of them, if they survive, can be moved to rage like the heathen, even at the present day, by reminding them that they could then have bought land for a song by the acre where it now sells by the foot. A few comfort themselves with the reflection that they were only rich in youth and strength in those days, and had no money wherewith to buy land anywhere. Year by year the fame of Bar Harbor spread far and wide, and as one hotel became too crowded another sprang up beside it, until about twelve years ago the place was in the full height of popularity. The few private houses were extremely simple, and nearly everybody lived either in the hotels or in little wooden cottages with no kitchens. The cottagers had to go to one of the hotels for their food, and were known as “mealers” if they were near enough to walk, and “hauled mealers” if they had to be collected with a cart. The little houses are very uncomfortable, and the things to eat at the hotels very bad. Biscuits and preserves formed an appreciable part of the visitor’s luggage, and the member of a table who could and would make good salad-dressing became a person of importance, for fresh lobsters and stringy chickens could be bought cheap, and a judicious regular subsidy to the hotel cook was an excellent investment. If one was asked to dine at a private house it was thought better taste not to boast of it beforehand, nor to talk of it overmuch afterward, and the host on his part always expected to provide enough food to satisfy a crew of famished sailors. For several seasons men rarely wore evening dress, and such unusual occasions required previous consultation and discussion, lest one man should seem to be more formal or ostentatious than the rest. This was among the quieter “cottage colony,” but at the large hotels, of which Rodick’s was the most popular, there was little question of sumptuary laws, and at the occasional “hops” young fellows in flannels and knickerbockers were the partners of pretty girls gay in the fresh finery which a woman seems able always to carry in the most restricted luggage.

  The principal characteristic of the place was an air of youth — it did not seem as if any one could ever be more than twenty-five years old. Parties of half a dozen girls were often under the nominal care of one chaperon, generally chosen because she was good natured and not too strict, but as a matter of fact the young people protected themselves and one another. Large picnic parties frequently went off for the day in buckboards, and there is a lonely sheet of water among the hills, called Eagle Lake, which used to be a favorite goal for afternoon expeditions. There were canoes and row-boats to be had, and in the evening supper was obtainable, and better than in the Bar Harbor hotels, at a little tavern where the prohibition laws of the State were defied. The usual result followed, and very bad things to drink were sold at very high prices, after paying which the party came home, making the wood-roads ring with laughter and singing.

  That is all changed now. The tavern is burnt down, a great wooden box in the lake marks the sluice which takes the village water-supply, people only cross it on the way to Jordan’s Pond, and on moonlight nights it hears but the occasional splash of a fish, or now and then the wild laughter of the loon. Although parties were popular enough, the pairs who happened to have a temporary affinity were generally in each other’s company all day long, wandering over the hills, rowing or paddling on the bay, or sitting on the rocks and islands, each pair out of earshot of the next. On any one of the “Porcupines” there were always sure to be two or three row-boats or canoes drawn up on the little beach; and, as many of their navigators were not used to so high a tide-rise, the skiffs frequently floated off, and it was part of the boatmen’s regular business to pick them up and rescue the helpless couples to whom t
hey belonged.

  In the evenings when there was moonlight the sight on the bay was really charming. The meal called tea at the hotels tempted no one to linger over it, and as soon as it was over the board-walk was alive with boys and girls hurrying down to the landing-stages, the young man in light flannels, sunburnt and strong, with his companion’s bright shawl flung over one shoulder, while the maiden pattered along beside him, her white frock drawn up over a gay striped petticoat, after the fashion of those days, and often her own special paddle in her hand, perhaps with her initials carved carefully thereon and filled in with sealing-wax, rubbed smooth. Then there was a scramble at the floats, and a few minutes later the harbor was covered with boats and canoes, while those who were crowded out consoled themselves by sitting on the rocks along the shore. Slowly each little craft drew away from its neighbor on the quiet water, the young man pulling lazily or wielding the paddle silently with sweeping strokes of his bare brown arm — the girl sitting luxuriously in the stern-sheets, or on a deer-skin in the bottom of the canoe. The sun went down toward Hull’s Cove; and as the red glow faded on the upper bay and the moon rose behind Schoodie, twilight merging into moonlight, the rippling note of a girl’s laughter or the twang of a banjo rang softly over the water, a white speck showed where a boat was beached on the shingle of an island, while another floated like a black bar into the silver wake of the moon.