on THE NATIONAL PARK AT MOUNT DESERT Island- by Beatrix Farrand. More than three centuries ago Champlain wrote: "The same day we passed also near to an island about four or five leagues long, in the neighborhood of which we just escaped being lost on a little rock on a level with the water, which made an opening in our barque near the keel / It is very high and notched in places, so that there is the appearance to one at sea, as of seven or eight mountains extending along near each other. The summit of the most of them is destitute of trees / I named it Isle des Monts Deserts." This description of the bold and grandly outlined mountains of the new reservation was written after Champlain's voyage of ex- ploration down our eastern coast in 1604, under the orders of his friend and patron the Sieur de Monts, whose charter and grant had been given him by that picturesque and gallant gentleman, King Henry of Navarre. He was told to sail down the coast of Acadia, since in those early days the name of "Acadie" was given to the whole eastern coast of Maine, a vast tract of land compared with the little Nova Scotia district of Evangeline's day. Champlain first saw the Island after the fog had lifted on a morning in early September, and he refers more than once to its high mountains, then, as now, landmarks to every coastwise traveller by sea or land. He headed his boat up the broad sheet 01 water now called Frenchman's Bay and landed in a little cove near where the town of Bar Harbor now stands, and after talking to the friendly - 2 - Indians, whom he found cooking their dinner, he fared farther west- ward under their guidance through the Islands into Penobscot Bay After some years the Jesuits, those courageous frontiers- men of the Faith, followed Champlain and started a settlement at the mouth of Somes Sound, and today the deep, cool Spring bearing which still their name still flows down the grassy southern slope near where the huts of their short-lived colony are said to have stood. A chain of round-topped mountains crosses the island from east to west and the new national park includes the whole eastern part of the range. These high granite hills are the ice-worn sur- vivors of a giant mountain which was thrust through the sea-laid rocks beginning among of the geology. They are the oldest rocks of the world and they still survive in places here and there along the shore; the strata hear are either twisted or level, and witness to a time so infinitely remote that our minds are bewildered and we fail to realize how many millions of years have passed since this grey-fissured stone was soft clayey mud. Glacial fiords, deep cut into the granite mountain ranges, are the finest we have outside Alaska, and, unlike as the two places really are in almost every particular, there are points of view on the island which flash an instantaneous picture to one's memory of certain deep-sea and forest-grown inlets of our north- western territory. It may be a certain mystery of clear water, deep forests and remoteness, a virginal freshness of the northern landscape in the silvery sunlight of the brief summer. The ten Park mountains on the reservation are the highest land on our Atlantic - 3 - coast line, and known to everyone who sails our Eastern waters, as they were long ago to Champlain. Their ice-modelling has been on such noble lines that they seem larger than their actual height, and the cliffs and rock formations are also on a big scale. The lakes in the heart of the park are deep and clear, and in one or two instances their beds have been gouged out lower than the present sea level by the tearing and grinding of the ice. Those who have had the good fortune to be familiar with the hills year after year and who have clambered over their desert tops, know their charm. They have looked southward over the end- his whe Southmensities less ocean and westward ever an intricate glistening design of sea meeting shore, with shining lakes and far away blue mountains fading into a pale golden haze on the horizon 9 In this fortunate place of mountains, sea and forest, plant lovers know of unequalled chances for study. On the wind-swept heights, clefts of the bare granite rocks give just the scanty soil needed for some of the species of far northern plants. These settlers from the Arctic come to their most southerly colonies on the Mount Desert hills and on a few of the higher tops of the White Mountains. The pale flowers of the Greenland $tarwort are found in the glacial scores and cracks of the granite summits, waving agitatedly on their thin wiry stems, which bend and twist in a wind that makes one shiver even at mid- summer. Mats of the black crowberry grow on the hillsides and along the shore within reach of the spray, and this small plant seems as much at home in Maine under conditions that would blast most green things as it doeg in Siberia, Alaska or Hudson's Bay. - 4 - l.C The mountain tarns are surrounded by thickets of Leather- Leaf, and here and there a plant of Labrador Tea shows its soft white cannot help flowers among woolly-backed leaves and one wonders if the tea which them the early colonists are supposed to have brewed from its leaves was not somewhat outlandish in flavour. The island is a meeting ground for the Black Spruces from the northern-muskeg swamps and the Pitch C1 pines from the sand barrens to the south, while the scrub Oaks reach their northern limit in the States mingled with a flora that the , 0 of the folamistic botanists jargan calls sub-arctic. The forests on the island are unusually varied in their leafage; they are really only comparable to the forests of Japan in complexity of texture, but a certain radiance and beauty of coloring is all their own. They have not neither the majesty of the great forests of the Pacific slope, where great columnar branchless boles spring a hundred feet skyward before the first limb breaks the upsoaring lines, nor have they the quiet charm Thous M and beech of the English beech and oak groves, but those northern woods with ? h their brilliant patches dark spruce and wind-driven pine, are flashes of birch 9 learning against and are carpeted with a ground cover of greatest beauty. Patches of the the lustrous and pervasively flavoured Wintergreen yield to tangled mats of Linnaeus's favorite twin-flower and long pale runners of Partridge-berry with symmetrically paired and accurately spaced Bunch- leaves, make prim sylvan processions toward sheets of scarlet Beech berries. The harsh leathery leaves of Mayflower huddle in tight clusters under the shelter of rocks, and in the aromatic depths Enchanters hight-shade and Gold Thread, cover the ground at the - 5 - roots of tropically robust clumps of (innamon fern. There are acres of rhodora growing in the deep peaty soil of the low-lying moist meadows which now fill some of the glacial lake basins Qana pine In the earliest spring sheets of the pale reddish flowers, mingled with spraylike tufts of are framed in rims of blackish Shad-bush evergreens, and although the much praised flowers are dull in ed color in comparison with other azaleas, the very masses of them give the austere wintry landscape a flush of color as welcome as the song of the first robin. - 6 - The new government land will serve one of its most useful purposes as a refuge for birds. It is already known to be most as favorably placed for a. breeding place for many of the arctic anmat species which come to the island in their southwest flights, and in the coming years the sanctuary of the reservation will shelter more and more birds as they learn they are safe within its limite. Sea and lake shores, high cliffs, deep forests, wide marshes and already meadows give a variety of neeting places which draw more than a t forty hundred different species to the island. Ornithologists have long known it as one of the best places in the eastern states in which to study both sea and land birds, and es one of the favorite resting n places on the migrations. Many shy and rare species are found fre- often quently and in the near neighborhood of houses, while in most gar- dens the humming birds dart and chatter and play all through the Fina long time an eyrie has been summer, An abrie has long been known perched high above a cliff overlooking the sea, and not infrequently the great birds are seen sweeping over the valley hundreds of feet below. used to be Game was plentiful on the island and is again increasing deer are multiplying and becoming quite tame, and the terrifying standing as he rice whirhof the ruffled grouse rising is again heard on many an autumn walk. Mink were found until quite recently, and now and again a In Champlain's day time fine fox pelt was brought in by a trapper. The Indians came to the island to hunt beaver, and although the original Indians and the beaver some have both disappeared, here and there of their leaver ponds still remain and it is hoped before long to start a colony - 7 - of them in one of the wild life and plant sanctuaries which are to be established. should hadla It is not surprising that the island has been known and the loved for many years by hundreds and / thousanis of people who have find come and found refreshment in its quickening air blended from sea and forest. After winters spent in cities men and women go to Mount Desert to play and work and roam in its forests or sail its waters, and live in its beauty till it becomes a part of their another Dr. lives. One of its most sympathetic admirers was Dootor Weir Mitchell who loved it both wisely and well. He was often seen walking on the mountain trails, with springing step and eyes 700 ed alert, keenly interested in all he saw and delighting in the discov far away recesses of the forests and hills He eagerly spoke of possibilities for new paths which would give the canon of a access either to an- unknown ferny brook canon or a bluff head- land from which a new point of view might be seen. His unfail- ing enthusiasm and wise counsel were of incalculable use in helping the development of the system of paths which begun and carried on with unflagging energy by Waldron Bates. For many years Mr. Bates devoted a large part of his summers to indefatigable ex- ploration of the hills and valleys. A tireless walker and fearless climber, he enjoyed nothing as much as working out a good path up an some incredibly steep crag, or finding a way between rock ledges quiet to some deep grove hidden in a fold of the mountain. His boyish excitement over a new trail swept his fellow workers along with - 8 - him, and day after day he would go back to some particularly baffling cliff till he had found a way around or over or through it. He started the path system which has made the hills ac- cessible to many a walker who would otherwise have found the dense forest growth a hopeless barrier. He gave much of his valleys too-short life to studying the hills and finding now places. of the island known and linking together mountains, shore and hitherto undiscovered districts spots, in a continuous series of trails which make it possible tramp either to walk from one side of the island to the other on ways level tracker's Havid or choice or steep, according to the mood of the moment In 1901 at the suggestion of President Eliot, whose architect son Charles Eliot, the distinguished landscaper E had conceived Dorry a like scheme for Massachusetts, Mr. George B. Dow assembled a group of people who saw clearly and acted wisely in organizing themselve the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations. Two years later the Legislature of Maineconfirmed the incorporation of the organization. Its purposes were "to receive, hold and improve for public use the lands in Hancook County, which by reason of historic interest, scenic beauty or any other cause were suitable for such an object." Seven years later the Trus- tees received their first gift of land, a tract on Newport Moun- tain including the Bowl and the Beehive, from Mrs. Charles D. Homans of Boston, one of the earliest of the summer settlers on the island. Later in the same year Mr. John Stewart Kennedy of New York bought the top of Green Mountain, the highest summit - -9 - on our Atlantic coast, and gave it to the Trustees to hold for the use of the nation. As the years passed Dry Mountain, the whole of (the only one shell hearing Newport, Pemetic Mountain with its Indian name, Sargent, Jordan and the Bubbles were given to the Trustees and they held an un- divided tract including all the highest land and the high-lying lakes of the eastern part of the island. Mr. George B. Do#/had given nearly twenty years of unswerving and farsighted devotion to the ultimate usefulness of the island and he therefore re- alized that in order really to keep it for the use of the people at large it should become one of the National parks under Federal control. He accordingly went to Washington to consult Mr. Franklin K. Lane, the Secretary of the Interior, with regard to the acceptance of the tract by the Government, under the Monuments Act which allows the Administration to set aside by presidential proclamation lands of "historic, pre-historic or scientific interest, as National parks, either when pre- viously owned by the Government or when freely given it from some private source. Two more years work on Mr.Dorris part were spent in enlarging the boundaries of the Park still further, and in searching and perfecting the land titles of the Reservation according to the high standard which the Government requires. Mr. Dorrthen returned to Washington in June 1916, with the deeds of the property prepared for acceptance by the Government and with Mr. Lane's effective help and co-operation he was successful in obtaining the President's signature to the proclamation on the eighth of July. - 10 - The new Federal land was named the Sieur de Monts National Monument in memory of Champlain's friend and companion hope for whose courage and confidence in the future made the voyage pos- sible. Though the French expedition to Acadia failed after a gallant struggle, the names of the Sieur de Monts and his associates will be kept in remembrance for all time in the name of the first National park on the Atlantic coast. Although Mr. Dorr has given years of patient work to the creation of the new reservation, he feels that the future holds confidents many chances for its further development. He looks forward not the maintainence of Loining only to maintaining the present system of paths, but to the making by funker cations of further conmunications between distant points. There are giant ocean which rock slides and wide views, bold cliffs and quiet meadows that can only now only be seen after a painful struggle with matted underbrush. uniqualled Roads should be built in the Park which will be second to none combined in their beauty of sea and mountain horizons, and while its wild leaved charm should in no way be destroyed it is possible to make the different parts of the Government land more accessible. The approaches to the Siett de Monts Park and its surroundings are being studied under the wise guidance of Mr. Dorr, who is its first custodian. At his instance a corporation has been latelytical carpination formed, called the Wild Gardens of Acadia, and an off-shoot from has recently been formed and named luid guiden acadia yan the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations. Under its lie. direction plans are being made to establish wild gardens and bird sanctuaries on lands adjacent to the Reservation In one place a - 11 - brook valley will be used to show the various forest and water- loving plants which thrive under such conditions; in another posi- tion a collection of rock plants will be started where the exposure will give them just the sun and shade which they require, or in a third place the edge of a pond will be used to naturalize masses of aquatic speciee and those which like boggy ground. Everyone interested in gardening in any one of its Brotean forme knows the extraordinary delight$ in the co-operation of the island climate. The cool nights followed by clear, sunny days give a brilliance of color and vigor of growth to horbreeous plante which cannot be found in equalled from the high Alpine meadows. As the Wild Garden idea is developed everybody who wishes to see and study the northern plant and bird life at its best will come to study on the island. Already a fund for one wild garden has been given a member of a family who cared much for Mount Desert and paths have been made and named after others who spent many happy summers there. The Sieur de Monts Park is the first to be set aside in the crowded East, and it should be the forerunner of others which will preserve forever for the public use, such different types of natural scenery as our varied and interesting eastern states possess. Those who love Mount Desert, call it affectionately "The Island" and they are happy in the certainty that in the years to come the beauty of its hills and valleys will be safe- guarded They know that the forests will be protected against mutilation or destruction by fire, that its waters will always - 12 - remain fresh and pure and they are glad that in the coming years people will come to it and will find peace and refreshment in its cool bracing air and sweet scented woods. And everyone who now or in the years to come finds rest and new strength in the beauty of the Reservation will owe the largest share of this enjoyment to the clear vision, the wise development and the self-sacrificing enthusiams of the first Custodian of the Park.