Campobello --- Today and Yesterday

          For the facts which go to the making of this history of quaint, curious Campobello, I owe acknowledgment to Mrs. Kate Gannett Wells, without whose history I could not have written mine; to William Henry Kirby, without whose “Eastport and Passamaquoddy” I must have lived longer to learn much; and to the Man on the Beach, the Man in the Woods, and my friend, Merriman, I render that which is Caesar’s.
                                                                                                                         STEPHEN CHALMERS

CHAPTER I - THE REASON WHY

          The very nature of the island of Campobello, its past and present conditions and peoples, compel this history to be different from other histories.  Things have happened here which are worthy of a place in any history, especially that of the United States and Great Britain; but the purpose of this little review is to treat, not so much of external affairs touching the island, as the internal story of Campobello itself.  And that internal story is a vague thing, an atmosphere which delights the artistic sense of those who have seen, heard and understood.  To those who also love the material fact, the story of Campobello Island reads -- or should read -- like some old tale told by an open fire and heard through the ticking of a grandfather’s clock.

          A solitary little outpost of the British Empire, Campobello is yet of that soil over which the Anglo-Saxon brothers fought so bitterly in the eighteenth century.  The line of demarcation between the two soils is marked by white buoys in the narrow channel of Passamaquoddy Bay.  From the flagstaff at Campobello waves the Union Jack and a little way over the waters, Old Glory, every star and every stripe visible in the clear air, rises over Moose Island (Eastport, Me.).  The same tune is heard on either side, although the words differ.  “My Country ‘tis of thee” steals over the British ears and “God save our gracious King” echoes into the United States, while the friendly waters at the line of demarcation laugh as they mingle around the white buoys.  This is Today.

          But the ghost of Yesterday is here to the dreamer’s eye.  The flag over Moose Island still waves, but there is a British fleet in the lee of Campobello and the flag is given five minutes to fall.  Moose Island surrenders and Eastport is again British.  Four years of martial law and again it changes hands, to remain American for all time.  Campobello, too, might have become American for a time, but there was a choleric gentleman with one eye who held the island by a grant from George III and he and his descendants defied all power to wrest it from them.  If you study the line of demarcation today, you will observe that the international boundary goes out of its way to avoid the snorting of the indignant Admiral, Admiral Owen.

          Yes, that is Yesterday, the ghost of Yesterday which will not be laid.  Sometimes the fog comes of yore and hangs like a pall between the two shores.  Ships pass in the night, only their mastheads peeping above the mist, gliding without sails under modern motor power, so that the imagination slips back to Yesterday and sees smugglers, privateers and war vessels coming and going like so many gliding Flying Dutchmen captained by keen-eyed, sea-furrowed Vanderdeckens.

          And on Campobello, where Today white dresses, parasols and golf clubs flash in the sunlight, the ghost of Yesterday brings back the seafaring gentlemen with one arm and one eye, who spent his days damning the French and the enemies of King George, bless him, and it brings, also, the next Owen with his pale face and his gloomy temperament, the scholar, David Owen, who seeming to be obsessed with great ideas, grew to look upon his little “kingdom” of Campobello as a mighty charge and troubled the powers that be with lengthy, scholarly, but ridiculously unproportioned, petitions, protests, reports and demands.  And then comes the stout old Admiral, the last of the Owens, the last of the Admirals, garrulous, pompous, humorous, kindly, stately, pathetic, a human paradox.  And through the whole panorama moves a host of quaint and curious people, Indians, English moose-hunters, French adventurers, pirates, smugglers, titled men and plain folk.  For here was the border and here was the inevitable motley, where the line of demarcation in honesty and nobility was less in question than the boundary of nations.

          The reader, then, will begin to perceive that while the history of Campobello of Today and Yesterday may be replete with incident, the more interesting part of the tale is the old-world atmosphere and color.

          And the tale is written for those who have never seen of heard of quaint, curious Campobello more than those who have.

          Just as Northern Maine is a part of that great forest which spreads from west to east over the Adirondack region, Vermont and New Hampshire, so Campobello and the numerous islands surrounding it are detached bits of the great Maine woods.  Some of the islands rise abruptly out of the sea, the peaks of submerged mountains in whose valleys the deer and moose used to roam.  Campobello is typical of woods and until the newcomer reflects, it is startingly curious to find, two hundred yards from the sea-wall, primeval forest, breathing, not of the sea, but of inland forest odors.  Only the dirge of the surf in the distance dispels the illusion that one is in the heart of the wilderness.
 

          Naturally such a spot; a watered, wooded island, surrounded by waters stocked with the fruits of the Atlantic ocean, attracted the Indians.  The aversion to modern innovation of the Anglo-Saxon settlers has preserved the Indian here in the far east contrary to all precedent.  The Openangoes, a sept of the Etechemins who were a division of the Lenni Lenape (the original people of New England) still don their paint and feathers on feast days and perform aboriginal dances, and on ordinary days they still fish, hunt seal, make grass-bound pipes, moccasins and baskets and sell them to the whites.

          In the old days, Campobello was a great hunting ground.  The deer and moose leisurely swam from the mainland and from isle to isle in due feeding season, and the braves knew their habits as they knew the blossoming of certain leaves in certain places.

         It is not difficult to picture the Indian camp in the grassy glade at sunset, which was then as resplendent as now.  The day’s hunt is done.  The white and his troubles are as yet far down in the eastern horizon.  The braves are quartering a moose for the evening meal.  The smell of the burning wood permeates the air as the black shadows steal around the circle of light.  Painted faces move around the fire.  Apart from them all, some old Nokomis is telling some infant Hiawatha the story of Skedapsis, the Stone Manikin (now called the Friar) how the Indian girl was turned to stone while waiting for her lover; or N’pow-o-lin (the medicine man) is droning a chant.  Peter John Gabriel, an Indian alive today sings a song that may have been the medicine man’s that evening before the white man came:

          The song gives the keynote to the character of the Openangoes, Children of the sun, of the still forests and the quiet waters.  Their only care was to eat, sleep and enjoy the gifts of Skedap (God.)  Whoever first made that song, and one is moved to disbelieve that it was Peter John Gabriel, he was no mean poet.

          They were a quiet people, “cunning hunters,” as their name implies; but lazy, from the Anglo-Saxon view point.  Still, they had their own ideas and were lawless.  They had their Sagamores and their Sachems of wise men.  If they lived according to the good spirit, Sagoos, they surely went to the Happy Hunting Grounds, and if they yielded to the temptations of Majahondo, the Evil One, surely they went to a land where there were no deer, or moose, or fish or seal, that awful place where great warriors became senile old men or contemptible women.
          But the sail coming up out of the east.  DeMonts and Champlain were even then, in 1604, dropping anchor off the Southern Head of the great island of Grand Manan, to the east.  It was a bad anchorage and presently they made sail and came upon an island with wooded hills and quiet deep coves.  The Indian inhabitants called it A-bah-guiet, meaning the land lying along the mainland.  From the old French maps it is apparent that Champlain and DeMonts came to the northern end of the island, into the beautiful harbor which they called Port aux Coquilles (the Harbor of Shells - now Head Harbor.)  But the Indians seem to have remained sole owners for half a century before a French settlement grew at Havre de l’Otre (the Harbor of the Otter - now called Harbor de Leute) a commodious and lengthy arm of the sea running up into the middle of the island on the western side.
          Thus came the white man, for from that day Harbor de Leute has been the central point of the island’s colonization, it being here that the first English town of New Warrington sprang up, and the first of the island Admiral’s began his semi-royal and curious reign.

          In the year 1770, the name A-bah-guiet had been changed to Passamaquoddy Islands, the New Englanders applying the name from the surrounding waters, which were called “Passamaquoddy Bay”, the word “Passamaquoddy” being Openango Indian for “pollack fish,” shoals of which appear periodically in these waters.

          Beside the French settlement on the Harbor de l’Otre, there were also New England families, and it would appear, that the little village was a flourishing trade-mart in beaver, otter, deer and moose skins, besides being a centre of the fishing business, which was then it its genesis.

          The inhabitants of the little settlement were probably quite unaware of the fact that, three years previously, Passamaquoddy Island had been granted by King George III to Capt. William Owen, R.N., who had entered into negotiations with certain English friends relatives in the formation of a company to develop the island.

          It was therefore in the nature of a sensation in this little island when, on the 4th of June, 1770, a Snow, a kind of brig, called the Owen, dropped anchor in the North East Cove of Havre de l’Otre with a thunder of guns, for Captain Owen, her owner and commander, was a naval martinet fond of the little pomps and vanities.

         Presently, an odd-looking man came ashore in a longboat.  He had only one arm and only one eye, but he looked like a fighter, and he was. He immediately announced that the King had given him this land and the sooner people understood this the sooner there would be peace in the land. Incidentally, being a naval martinet, and the day of landing being the King’s birthday, there can be little doubt that he exacted all honors for the King, which would naturally be an acknowledgment of his own authority by right of the same King’s grant.

         This Captain William Owen, R.N. was an interesting character.  He was about 30 years old when he landed on Campobello (as Passamaquoddy Island was presently renamed) but, despite his comparative youth, he had lived a strenuous life.  He was a midshipman in 1760 and had been in many engagements.

          John Wilkinson, Esq., was agent if the island for the Owen family during the next seven years.  By this time, 1835, Campobello was a well-established colony; otherwise it is not improbable that the indifference of the rightful owner at this period might have resulted in the island lapsing back into a sad state.  But the victory of the Wilson’s in proving that a portion of the island was theirs, served to prove that the rest of the island undoubtedly was the property of the Owens.  During the seven years of Owen absence, therefore, affairs moved along as quietly as upon some English estate when the young heir is still in the colonies sowing wild oats.

          In this case, the heir was rendering his country service.  Sir Edward William Campbell Rich Owen was an Admiral of the British Navy, a son of the one-armed Admiral who was killed at Madras in 1778.  He seems never to have thought much about his inheritance.  Perhaps the accounts he received of David’s life there was a damper upon his enthusiasm.  In any event he readily sold his legacy to his natural brother, William Fitz-William Owen, who was also an Admiral in the British Navy and, as far as we can gather, the more remarkable man of the two.  Circumstances connected with the birth of this second son made the purchase necessary.  The sum paid by Admiral William to his titled brother was Two Thousand Pounds.

          When the Admiral arrived to take possession of Campobello about the year 1835, it was not his first sight of the island.  During the early years of David Owen’s administration, young William Fitz-William Owen was a midshipman on a British warship stationed in the Bay of Fundy, and many a shore-leave did he and his middies spend on Campobello, courting the island maids and exploring the woods which he came back to in his old age as a man to his first love.  Among other things the middies did on Campobello was to cultivate a flower garden at Harbor de Leute.  It was called Man-o’-War garden and was glorious in summer with dahlias and marigolds.  The flower garden seems to have been a necessary adjunct of the courting of the island girls, who, in return for floral favors, attended balls aboard the warship when it was anchored at Campobello during the troublesome times between the American revolution and the final was of 1812.

          There is a tragic story about this garden. (It blooms no more at Harbor de Leute.)  One night two midshipmen undertook, on a wager, to walk along some icy cliffs.  They fell over the headland and were killed.  They were buried in the Man-o’-War garden and covered over with dahlias and marigolds and left for the Campobello girls to mourn over, while the saddened midshipmen were glad to receive sailing orders.  A less romantic sequel to the story is that one, Butler, kept a grocery store near the tragic spot, to which a superstition was promptly attached.  Butler’s trade fell off so rapidly that he finally put up the shutters.  They were never taken down again and the grocery store is now a memory.

          This Admiral William Fitz-William Owen, who is presently to make his entrance as King of Campobello, was a chip off the old block, the one-armed Captain, and the last of the Admirals carried the chip on his shoulder.  But he was a man whose memory commands respect, for despite many handicaps, he made himself what he was, master of Campobello Island, revered by his people and an Admiral in the greatest navy in the world.

          He was born in Manchester between that time when the one-eyed sea-dog went to England and his being killed in Madras.  He seems to have been something of a waif during his child-years.  We read of his having lived in barracks, having been boarded in “homes,” and his precocity as a boy is a pathetic story in itself.  Even more pathetic is the fact that, during these waif years, he wore an old cocked and scarlet coat made out of an old one of his fathers.  In later years the Admiral, with that remarkable candor of his, wrote that this scarlet coat was the first sensible mark of the earthly pre-existence of someone who claimed to be his father.

          But he seems to have had a friend - a friend of his fathers, who took an interest in him.  At fourteen he was sent to a mathematical school.  He was apt in all subjects and his after-writings show that he had several languages at his tongue’s end, and a genius for figures and mathematics at his finger-end.  He was acquainted with the classics and delved deeply into the religious question.  He was very fond of the fair sex always.  In his later years he tells us how he used to talk with his fingers to the girls in the adjoining church pew.  He was a stout believer in One God, but seemed to have been in doubt about the divine origin of Jesus Christ, of whom he says that he never had any distinct idea, “save that he was a good man.”

          He was over sixty years of age when he came to the island which he had learned to love as a lad.  He was now an Admiral of the fleet, in which he had served since 1788.  He seems to have risen in rank through his ability as a mathematician, coast surveyor and astronomical observer.  His “Narrative Journal,” covering his survey of the African coast in 1822, is worth reading, conveying as it does a vast amount of information touching naval conditions at that time and primitive affairs upon the African coast; it also reveals in detail the personality of the man himself - his painstaking thoroughness, bluff kindness, generosity of view point and devotion to duty.  He was a friend of Admiral Lord Nelson and of Nelson’s other Horatio, Sir Thomas Hardy.  For the rest, he describes himself in his journal with the same simplicity with which he set down his views on Jesus Christ: “My character, if I may be allowed to draw it myself, contained much of good and bad.  The latter, perhaps, I contrive to veil sufficiently not to mar my reputation.  I thought myself a tolerably religious man, but knew myself to be as Reuben, as unstable as water.  At fifty-seven my worldly ambitions were barred by corruption in high places.”

          Observe the terseness.  That was the Admiral.  He never minced matters.  Often in his diary he criticizes others - even  the Lord of Admiralty with the same quick directness.  In appearance he was the prototype of the cartoonist’s John Bull, thick-necked, heavy-jawed, rubicund, kindly, yet sternly aggressive.  When attired in his cocked hat and Admiral’s uniform, his shoulders had a suggestion of Napoleon.  One imagines an indignant snort from the Campobello churchyard where he lies?  Napoleon, Sir, was a damned scoundrel!  We know that, old Admiral, in Rest!

          At forty-five he married a Welsh lady, a Miss Evans, whom he brought to Campobello.  His first duty was to build a manor house for his lady.  New Warrington was all but a memory now and Welsh Pool was flourishing.  The Admiral built his house near Welsh Pool, on Deer Point, at the northern end of Friar’s Bay.  The house still stands and only the other day the British Ambassador paused on the stairway of the Inn which has sprung up around it and gazed curiously and reverently at the old brass-dialed grandfather’s clock, which stands there.  Across the dial is engraved, “Richard Evans, Welsh Pool.”  The gift of a father to an Admiral’s bride.

          Right on the point facing the American shore and commanding the whole bay to the Narrows, the old Admiral built a quarter-deck, utilizing the stern-post of a wreck to make the thing seem real.  Around the lawns he planted seeds, and great oaks from little acorns grew.  At dawn and dusk the Union Jack soared and fell on the flagstaff with naval precision, and in accordance with naval custom it was not noon until the Admiral reported “eight bells”!

          A couple of guns which the Admiral once captured from a Spanish pirate he mounted, one on each side of his quarter-deck.  They were fired on special occasions.  Once they were stolen, but later they were brought back.  After the Admiral’s death one was given to General Cleaves, who place it in Portland harbor.  Fired by strange hands, the gun burst.  The other was bought and preserved by an old resident of Campobello.

          As has already been remarked, Campobello was by this time a settled place, although never flourishing or prosperous.  It was a manorial estate; the people were as yeoman and Admiral William Fitz-William was lord.  If anyone had any doubt of it, the Admiral made the fact clear without delay.  From his people he exacted yeoman service and the respect due him.  He played king even more than his father did, but he was a king beloved by his subjects.  He was a democratic king, believing that true democracy is the greatest kingly grace.  For example.

          He called one afternoon at one of the fishermen’s cottages.  The good man was toiling on the deep, but his wife and a few feminine acquaintances were gossiping over the teacups.  The party arose as one at the entrance of the Admiral, for a visit from him was an honor.  It was explained that the good man was out.   “Well, what of it?” said the Admiral, testily.
 “We were just having a cup of tea,” said the good wife, trembling before the august portly presence in the cocked hat and uniform.   “So I see,” said the Admiral, standing in the middle of the room with a stern countenance but an amused eye, the cocked hat under one arm and the brass telescope under the other.   “Of course, I wouldn’t think of offering your lordship a cup,” said the good wife, confused.   “Why wouldn’t you?” snorted the Admiral.   “I don’t, I don’t suppose you would have it,” stammered the good wife, all flustered.   “Why don’t you suppose?  The trouble is you’re supposing what you don’t know anything about.  Why don’t you ask me!”   “Will, will your lordship have a, a cup of t-tea?”   “Certainly!” thundered the Admiral.   And the Admiral, having laid aside the cocked hat and the brass telescope, took the carefully dusted best chair with the crazy work thing on the back, and proceeded, while he stirred his tea, to recall the times when he drank his tea with the Spanish ladies at Madeira, “that was in the year 22, by gad!, time Lieutenant Reitz, of the Barracouta, broke his leg, No, not at tea, my dear ladies, shooting, shooting on the rocks in Madeira Bay.  (Thank you, I will.  No sugar, Madam, you make excellent tea)  Speaking of His Majesty’s Ship, Barracouta, reminds me,” etc.

          They say that truth is stronger than fiction.  If this is so, and in dealing with Campobello one is lead to believe that it is, then the old Admiral, as a character, belongs to the tale.

          But to return - The trouble about the Admiral is that he is the history of Campobello - the island only needed polish, and the Admiral was going to polish it.  Of course, it would always be a sea-faring place, but there was no reason why roads should not be good, farming good, and why the social life should not be, in a small way, just like England.  Presently the oaks would be having little acorns of their own and presently the Admiral would build a church, a real church; and to make things just right he (the Admiral) would drive to church with his lady and family in the Owen coach with the Owen coat of arms and the motto “Flecti non Frangi” painted on it.  And when he drove through Welshpool, the tenants must observe etiquette and precedence; the men must take off their hats and the women courtesy.

          And it was even so.  Presently Campobello was the most refined place in the Bay of Fundy.  The Admiral got out of the coach of state.  His wife was the lady of the manor, and she conducted Dorcas Societies, home mission and mothers’ meeting; and she dispensed advice on all domestic matters, from how to get and treat a husband to the proper recipe for making raspberry jam.

          And the Admiral daily appeared among his people, cocked hat, brass telescope and all, returned salutes with the lordliness of a monarch, chaffed the matrons, chucked the pretty girls’ chins and gave pennies to the babies.  And woe to the ill-bred wight who forgot to remove his hat.  A snort! a glare! and the unhappy one was on the Admiral’s black list.  And that spelled ostracism on Campobello.

          Still, the conditions were primitive in other ways.  The only doctor, besides the Admiral and his wife (who was spiritual physician) was a young girl whose “giniral price” was $3, but if folk were poor she asked nothing for helping in the hour of travail.  And money was scarce, too, although the Admiral never asked more than his pound of flesh and was always willing to forego that if the cause were shown.

          Besides the social reorganization, the Admiral turned his attention to raising the dignity of his little “kingdom”.  A town clerk was appointed and all records of affairs were carefully made and preserved.  Also, through his aggressive influence, officers were chosen to represent Campobello in the General Sessions of the Peace of Charlotte County, of which Campobello was a parish.  Presently there were inspectors of the poor, fisheries, schools and exports and each and every official reported himself to the Admiral, who held his court of inquiry in his house on Deer Point.

          They must have been amusing, these sessions.  A pauper has been discovered in Campobello.  He must be fed and housed.  It is the duty of the Campobello government.  One hundred dollars is apportioned, and the unfortunate becomes the most sought after guest on the island, for money was scarce.  A ferry is needed, and a ferryman is appointed, and laws and by-laws are made regardless of his rights and the rights of passengers.  Pigs are becoming troublesome, rooting up gardens and doing other mischief.  Therefore a debate and a law declaring that all pigs at large, unless on a ring and a string, will mean a fine of five shillings against their owners.  Sheep are jumping fences, too.  The Admiral waves his hand and orders that all sheep and cattle be at home by eight o’clock in the evening.  All sheep must be branded, too, with the owner’s private brand.  Presently sheep are adorned with fancy private which promise to become family coat-of-arms.  But there are more complications over the similarity of family crests and the Admiral takes the matter into his own hands and builds a cattle pound.  This done we can hear him chuckle and say: “That settled it, by gad!”

          During the Admiral’s time there was a money panic, as such things are called nowadays.  The Admiral entered into a retrenchment scheme and cut the pauper rates, and lo! the spoiled beggar began to find that being a pauper was not what it used to be.  Also, the Admiral, with the confidence in himself and his name which was characteristic, issued bank notes bearing his promise to pay and with his coat of arms engraved above.  He was a remarkable man in many ways, but he had strange ideas as to banking.  He was not a financial genius, as the growing cares of state testify.

          Still undaunted, he pursued his course of semi-royal administration, always believing that God had a special interest in him and that things would be set to come out right, and that his toil for Campobello was utterly unselfish - save in the matter of the simple honors exacted - is evident in what he did.  Like his father, in all emergencies he was ready, if less rough.  He built the church, and preached in it until a resident missionary came from London - a missionary very unlike that first one.  The Admiral caused schools to be built and his lady and her daughters held Sunday School.  In the matter of the Episcopal church which he built, it is indicative of the love of the Campobello people for the old Admiral, that they almost unanimously forsook the Baptist sect when he called them to the Anglican fold.  Only the Wilsons stuck to the Baptist chapel but, then, as the Admiral probably remarked, it was what one would expect of “encroachers.”  Perhaps the Admiral hoped to make the Wilsons sorry for granting for three years certain lands for grazing purposes for cattle belonging to those who were members of the Episcopal church!

          It will be observed of the Owens that they were people of large ideas.  They never seemed to realize quite that their presence in Campobello Island did not make Campobello any larger or greater in the affairs of nations.  Forever we are hearing of great schemes begun in crescendo and failing in diminuendo.  Even the level headed Admiral thought to make the island a lumber center, a fishing center, an El Dorado of copper.  The trouble was that the Admiral destroyed the “Campobello enthusiasm,” which is a local disease due to the air, and may, in some measure, be responsible for this impressionist history.

          However, in 1839 we hear of a “Campobello Mill and Manufacturing Company,” being incorporated with a capital of $400,000 for the purpose of developing the lumber and fishing industries and working the ores which were supposed to be in the rocks.

          It was only a dream, or at least the stuff that dreams are made of.  There is a hole in the rock below the Admiral’s house where excavations for copper seem to have begun and ended.  There are saw mills in ruin.  Only that has survived which was from the beginning when the Indians called the bay “Passamaquoddy” - pollock fish.  It was too early in the country’s history for men to realize that a beauty spot like a Campobello was its own treasure and that every tree they cut, every rock they disfigured, was looting their own pockets, and destroying their own joy of living.

          In later days a company of Americana half realized this, but their part in the history of Campobello will be treated of in due course.  At present the Admiral is still king.  He married his couple and kisses the bride.  Attired in his Admiral’s uniform, with his lady on one arm and the old cocked hat nestling in the other, close to his medals, he leads the dance in the annual ball at the great house, when the lads and lassies of Campobello do their bows and curtsies, and prance and make merry under the old man’s benign smile, and grown-ups gather around the mahogany in the Admiral’s study and drink his favorite tipple, “Kallibogus” rum and spruce beer.

          But there is a line of demarcation closer, if less visible, than the white buoys in the channel, the line that skirts every human shore.  The Admiral’s wife crosses it, and the Admiral is never himself again.

          He becomes absent minded, and his blue-grey eyes grow dim.  He fancies the ship is not in safe hands and that the French are stealing a wind.  He is also nervous about the Americans over the line.  Day after day he comes from the house and he surveys the waters with his telescope.  His people see him and tears fill their eyes as the old veteran tramps up and down on the “quarter deck.”  The old cocked hat is shabby and one side of it has fallen.  The uniform is growing faded, for he wears it every day now.  But the French do not come, and the Americans fail to invade.  He goes on a mysterious trip to St. John and then his people hear that in his eightieth year he has had the temerity to marry again!

          Then Campobello sees him no more alive.  The waif of the barracks has drifted back to the gates of life.  The news comes in 1857 that he is dead at St. John, and then do the people of Campobello realize what he was to them and how much they loved him.

          They bring him back to Campobello.  Down Passamaquoddy sails a little vessel, in the cockpit of which lies the quaint, old Admiral in full uniform, with his cocked hat and his brass telescope laid reverently by his side.

          In the darkness the little ship runs aground.  Again the Admiral waits for the tide, as on that day in the Thames when he commanded the Leven, flagship of his squadron.  Presently the great Fundy tide swells.  The Admiral is lifted on a wave and borne to the port.

          Lights move among the trees-candles, lanterns, torches.  There is silence broken only by the sobbing of women.  The Admiral is borne shoulder high up the beach, along the single little street of the village and up the wooded bluff to the churchyard among the pines.  Someone reads.  Then come the sound of falling sod.  Presently the lights disperse and go out among the village cottages.  The night closes in and the wind whispers among the pines.

          The last of the Admirals has passed, and it can never again be eight bells on Campobello, because he is not present to confirm it.

          After the Admiral’s death, Campobello fell to his daughter, Mrs. Robinson-Owen, who remained with her family on the island for some time, so that, although the strength of the house of Owen lay in the churchyard, the name still figured at the head of affairs and was still revered by the islanders.  Mrs. Robinson-Owen, too, carefully followed the Admiral’s policies and carried on the good work which he had set a-rolling with so much impetus.

          But in 1881 the Owen heirs left the island, selling the entire property to a party of Americans, who organized a company which seems to have had for its aim the making of Campobello into a summer residential spot of the highest order.

          Presently Campobello underwent an unexpected metamorphosis.  Two great hotels sprang up on the slopes overlooking Friar’s Bay.  At the same time summer cottages began to peep from the trees and were tenanted by families whose names figure in social dictionaries.  Also there appeared a public library in Welshpool and a recreation room and a ballroom as an annex.

          Despite the fact that Campobello is a beauty spot of the sea, being, as has already been written, like a piece of the Adirondacks or the Maine woods dropped in the sea, the scheme did not wholly succeed.  Possibly that mysterious disease “Campobello enthusiasm,” exhilarated the chief movers of affairs to begin, like the Owens, in crescendo.  It would seem that the progress was in diminuendo.

          The island was finally sold by the first company to an equally ambitious but more slow-going party of Americans, who are now engaged in the work of developing the place.  Its policy has been to preserve the island, its timber and its natural beauties.  The hotel business is not of primary importance, but for the visitors every comfort is provided for at an inn which stands around the Admiral’s house on Deer Point.  It is a quiet, simple place, a delight to the imaginative mind and the old-fashioned home instinct; for the Admiral’s quarter deck is still out under the trees, the old brass dialed clock ticks on the stairway, the pollack fish still school in the bay and the Indians come to the front door with their seal skins, grass-bound pipes and baskets.  To hear the musical twittering of the flag coming down at sunset is to conjure the ghost of the dead Admiral.  One sees him plainly in the dusk, gravely saluting the flag which he always saluted, even when it was but a shot-torn ribbon at the peak.

          History is no place for dreams, but as was remarked at the beginning, the history of Campobello is a thing of atmosphere.  One may be pardoned perhaps, for saying that even today those who are dead move in the shadows of the dusk.  The writer has spent many a quiet hour watching two men, one on each horn of the Friar’s Bay.  Here is one stamping up and down with a cocked hat on his head and a telescope under his arm, full of years and honor.  On the opposite head another man walks up and down, his arms folded, his head bent young in years, but deprived of his honors and broken with the disgrace that he brought upon himself when he betrayed his country.  Were ever two men so alike and so unlike?

          But it was no dream that a few years ago, July 10, 1890, it was, a lad came to Campobello.  He was a midshipman aboard H.M.S. Bellerophon but he was of the blood of the Admirals, Fitz-William’s great grandson.  He had come to tread the soil of Campobello and to stand in the church yard among the pines.  Flags were hoisted and the old cannon that had been silent many a year roared hail to the chief.  Services were held in the Admiral’s church and a venerable Archbishop raised his hand in blessing.  And the population crowded around the lad, half-curiously, half-reverently.  It was no dream.  It was fulfillment.

          When one watches the fishermen in their dories that pitch recklessly on the Fundy waters; when one sees the little boats slipping homeward out of the winter mists, or becomes fascinated with the thousands of great fish that come up in the net as the toilers of the deep seine the fish-weirs, it is to see the same things through the centuries and to realize how hard was the task of the pioneers and what a story the old stone Friar has locked away in his rocky breast.

      There he is, “standing alone in his suit of stone” watching the panorama of life in the Bay of Fundy, thoughtfully regarding the fisherfolk just as he looked through the mist at the smugglers and the privateers and upon the patriots who stole a march upon the moody exile on the bluff.  He has been there and seen all since Champlain’s sail appeared to the startled Indian; he has seen the rise of the great nation across the channel; he has seen change and decay, and still he is standing in sombre cowl and jowl, the embodiment of all that is immutable.  We wonder what he thinks about.  We press close to his side and place an ear to his body and seem to hear a voice - like the voice of the seas of time in a hallow shell: