Below Augusta is the quiet town of Hallowell, and then Gardiner, and beyond, the Kennebec spreads out in the broad expanse of Merry Meeting Bay, where it receives the Androscoggin coming up from the southwest. Along here are seen to perfection the two great crops of these rivers--the lumber and the ice. The largest icehouses in existence line the banks, and the prolific ice-crop of these pure waters, thus gathered by the millions of tons, is shipped by sea from Gardiner and Bath throughout the coast and over to Europe. The people seem to saw logs all summer and cut ice all winter. The river next passes Bath, formerly a great ship-building port, and still doing much work in the construction of steel vessels, though the population has rather decreased of late years. The town, with its front of shipyards and kindred industries, fringes the western river-bank for two or three miles, and on either hand the rocky shores slope steeply down to the water. A clergyman from Salem bought this domain in 1660 from Damarine, the old sachem of Sagadahoc, whom the whites called Robin Hood, but the place did not grow much until after the Revolution, when extensive shipbuilding began. It is about thirteen miles from the sea, the Kennebec entering the Atlantic through Sheepscott Bay, an irregular indentation of the coast studded with many attractive islands. At Bath, more than anywhere else in New England, has been practically realized Longfellow's invocation:
"Build me straight, O worthy master! Staunch and strong, a goodly vessel, That shall laugh at all disaster, And with wave and whirlwind wrestle!"
Eastward from the Kennebec the long peninsula of Pemaquid Point stretches to the sea, between John's Bay and Muscongus Bay, and far out beyond it, off the western entrance to Penobscot Bay, is Monhegan, the most famous island on the New England coast. It is twelve miles off the Point, and the surface rises into highlands. Monhegan appears upon the earliest charts made by the first navigators, Champlain naming it in 1604 and Weymouth coming there the next year to trade with the Indians of Pemaquid before he ascended the great river, which he said was called Norumbega, and about which there was long so much mystery and wonder in Europe. Smith was there in 1614, it was colonized in 1618, in 1621 it sent succor to the starving Pilgrims at Plymouth, and in 1626 two proprietors bought the island for £50. It had a stirring colonial history, and on account of its location its grand flashing beacon-light is a landmark for the mariners coasting along Maine or entering the Penobscot. Yet it has barely a hundred people to-day, mostly fishermen, though its isolation has manifest advantages, for it is said to have no public officials, and to be the one place where there are no taxes. In fair sight of each other, over the blue sea, are the highlands of Monhegan and the rocks and coves of Pemaquid Point, the great stronghold of early British colonial power in Maine. Rival French and English grants covered the whole of Maine, and at the outstart the English took possession of the Kennebec, and the French of the Penobscot. The colonists were in almost constant enmity, as also were the Indians upon the two rivers, the warfare continuing a hundred and fifty years, until after the Revolution. The English made Pemaquid Point their fortified outpost, while the French established old Fort Pentagoet, afterwards Castine, as their stronghold on the Penobscot. The earliest settlement at the mouth of the Kennebec was made in 1607 by Chief Justice George Popham, who came there with one hundred and twenty colonists in two ships, named the "Mary and John" and the "Gift of God." They founded Fort St. George, and built the first vessel on the Kennebec, the "Virginia" of thirty tons, but Popham dying the next year, they became discouraged and abandoned the colony.