Historic Towns of New England. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ his services in the Revolutionary War, Massachusetts gave General Wadsworth a large tract of land in Oxford County, to improve which he removed to Hiram, and the family of his son-in-law, Stephen Longfellow, thereafter occupied his residence in Portland. To the end of his life, the poet made this house his home whenever he visited the scenes of his youth, and many of his best poems were written there. The central part of the hotel adjoining was the mansion of Commodore Edward Preble, built just before his death in 1807, and some of the best rooms in this hotel have still the wood-carving and other ornamentation given them by the hero of Tripoli. A grandson of the Commodore was one of the officers of the Kearsarge when that ship sunk the rebel cruiser Alabama, in the most picturesque naval engagement of modern times.

      We have seen that Portland has a history connecting it with the French and Indian Wars, the Revolution, and the War of 1812. It was also the scene of a curious episode in the late Civil War – the cutting out of the United States revenue cutter Caleb Cushing, in June, 1863. The cutter had been preparing for an encounter with the rebel privateer Tacony, which had been capturing and burning many vessels on the coast of New England. A delay in fitting her out had been occasioned by the illness and death of her captain. In the meantime, the Tacony had captured the schooner Archer, and transferred her armament to the prize, which, after burning the Tacony, boldly sailed into Portland harbor in the guise of an innocent fisherman, with Lieutenant Reade in command. His purpose was to burn two gunboats then being fitted out in the harbor, but he found them too well guarded. He then turned his attention to the cutter, which was preparing for a fight with him with no suspicion that he was lying almost alongside. Captain Clarke had died the day before Reade’s arrival, and Lieutenant Davenport, a Georgian by birth, was in command of the cutter. At night, when only one watchman was on deck, a surprise was quietly effected, and the crew put in irons. With a good wind the cutter might easily have gotten away from the sleeping town and slipped by the unsuspicious forts; but she was becalmed just after passing the forts, and in the morning three steamers were armed and sent in pursuit. At the time it was supposed that the Southern lieutenant had turned traitor, but the event proved his loyalty; for he refused to inform his captors where the ammunition was kept, and they had only a dozen balls for the guns, which were all spent without injury to the pursuers. The affair was watched by thousands on the hills and house-tops, and on yachts which in the dead calm were rowed to the scene. At length the town was startled by the blowing up and utter demolition of the cutter; the Confederates had set fire to the vessel and tried to escape in the boats, but were at once captured by the steamers which had been circling around them. The Archer was also captured, with all the chronometers and other valuables of the vessels bonded or destroyed by the Tacony. It proved an important check to the operations of the Confederacy on the sea, and it came just one week before the battle of Gettysburg and the capture of Vicksburg.

      The first British squadron to enter the harbor of Portland after the bombardment by Mowatt in 1775, came just eighty-five years afterward to a day. It was sent to give dignity to the embarkation of the Prince of Wales in 1860. It was in Portland, at what are now called the Victoria wharves, that the Prince, then a young man of nineteen, took his last step on American soil. His embarkation on a bright October day was one of the finest pageants ever witnessed in this country. Five of the most powerful men-of-war in the British navy, in gala trim, with yards manned, saluted the royal standard, gorgeous in crimson and gold, then for the first and only time displayed in this country. The deafening broadsides when the Prince reached the deck of the Hero were answered from the American forts and men-of-war.

      Another pageant, this time grand and solemn, was enacted in this harbor, in February, 1870. A British squadron, convoyed by American battle-ships, brought the remains of the philanthropist, George Peabody, in the most powerful ironclad the world had then seen. The funeral procession of boats from the English and American ships was an impressive spectacle.

      It was a bright winter day, immediately succeeding a remarkable ice-storm, and the trees of the islands, the cape, and the city sparkled in the sun as if every bough were encrusted with diamonds – a wonderful frame for a memorable picture. Nature had put on her choicest finery to relieve the sombre effect of the draped flags, the muffled oars, the long, slow lines of boats, and the minute guns from ships and forts.

      The great fire of July 4, 1866, which burned fifteen hundred buildings in the centre of the city, also destroyed an immense number of shade trees, mostly large elms, the abundance of which had given to Portland the title of “Forest City.” In a few years the buildings were replaced by greatly improved structures; but the trees could not be improvised so readily, and the scar of the fire is still noticeable from the absence of aged trees in the district swept by it. Advantage was taken of the clearing of the ground in the most thickly settled part of the city, to lay out Lincoln Park in the centre of the ruins. This is now a charming spot, with its fountain and flowers, its lawns and shaded walks.

      The city is fortunate in the abundance and purity of its water supply, which is drawn from Lake Sebago, sixteen miles distant. The natural outlet of this lake is the Presumpscot River, which has several valuable water-powers along its short course to its mouth in Casco Bay, near Portland harbor.

      It will be remembered that Nathaniel Hawthorne received his collegiate education, in the same class with Longfellow, at Brunswick, which is in the same county with Portland, but it is not so generally known that during his teens his home was at Raymond, on the shore of Sebago Lake, and in the same county. Part of each year he spent in school at Salem; but his mother’s home was in the little hamlet in the picturesque wilderness a few miles from Portland, and here he spent the happiest months of his youth, as he has testified in many letters. His biographers have generally failed to take account of this, and, indeed, have asserted that he was at Raymond only a part of one year. A little volume recently published, entitled Hawthorne’s First Diary, brings out the facts in this neglected but important episode in the career of this great master in our literature. While fitting for college, Hawthorne became, for a single term, the pupil of the Reverend Caleb Bradley, of Stroudwater, a suburb of Portland. The building in which he studied is still to be seen at Stroudwater. The house of his mother at Raymond is converted into a church, but as to exterior remains very much as when his boy life was spent in it. It was in this same county of Cumberland that Mrs. Stowe wrote the whole of Uncle Toms Cabin, while her husband was a professor in Bowdoin College. Thus, three of the greatest names in American literature are linked to Portland and its immediate vicinity.

      Portland can count to her credit many jurists, lawyers, and orators of national repute, among them Theophilus Parsons, Simon Greenleaf, Ashur Ware, Sargent S. Prentiss, Nathan Clifford, and George Evans. William Pitt Fessenden lived and died in the house on State Street now occupied by Judge W. L. Putnam. Like Fessenden eminent as Senator and Secretary of the Treasury, Lot M. Morrill spent the last years of his life in Portland. Still another great Senator and Secretary of the Treasury, who was also Chief-Justice, honored this city by bearing its name – Salmon Portland Chase. He was actually named for the town, his uncle, Salmon Chase, being a Portland lawyer, and his parents were determined that there should be no mistake as to the person for whom he was named!

      At an early period in his career, James G. Blaine edited the Portland Daily Advertiser. Among writers of celebrity, we may name N. P. Willis and his sister, “Fanny Fern”; John Neal, poet and novelist; Henry W. and Samuel Longfellow; J. H. Ingraham, whose many novels had a great sale fifty or sixty years ago; Elijah Kellogg; Mrs. Ann S. Stephens; Seba Smith, author of the Jack Downing Letters, and his more famous wife, Elizabeth Oakes Smith; Thomas Hill, for a time President of Harvard University; and the divines, Edward Payson and Cyrus Bartol. The home of Charles Farrar Brown, “Artemus Ward,” was in an adjoining county, but like the Chief-Justice just mentioned, he came to Portland for his baptismal name, his uncle, Charles Farrar, being a Portland physician. Two sculptors of national fame have gone out from Portland – Paul Akers and Franklin Simmons, and some of the best works of both these artists adorn public places in the city. The Dead Pearl Diver, by Akers, may be found in the reading-room of the Public Library; and Simmons has two bronze statues in the city, СКАЧАТЬ