Title: The Coastal setting, rocks and woods of the Sieur de Monts National Monument
Identifier: coastalsettingro00unit (find matches)
Year: 1917 (1910s)
Authors: United States. National Park Service
Subjects:
Publisher: Washington : Dept. of the Interior, National Park Service : G. P. O.
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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SIEUR DE MONTS NATIONAL MONUMENT. 5 islands, is the first of a succession of bays, thoroughfares, and reaches which line the coast almost unceasingly to Quoddy. The mainland becomes lost behind a maze of rock-bound islands; the salt water pene- trates by deep and narrow channels into the very w^oods, ebbs and flows in and out of hundreds of lonely, unfrequented harbors, discovers count- less hidden nooks and coves. Sand beaches become rare, and great and small "Sea Walls" of rounded stones or pebbles take their place. Except at Mount Desert, great cliffs occur but seldom until Grand Manan is reached, while mountains come down only to the open sea at Mount Desert; but the variety of lesser topographic forms is great. The general aspect of the coast is wild and untamable, an effect due partly to its own rocky character and storm-swept ledges, but yet more to the changed character of the coastal vegetation. Beyond Cape Eliza- beth capes and islands are wooded, if at all, with the dark, stiff cresting of spruce and fir, interspersed perhaps with pine and fringed by birch and
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Copyright by National Geographic Society. View of Frenchmans Bay and the Gouldsborough Hills from a mountain trail in the National Monument. mountain ash. One by one familiar species disappear as the coast is traversed eastward, and northern forms replace them. The red pine first appears on Massachusetts Bay, the gray pine at Mount Desert; the Arbor-vitae is first met with near Kennebec; the balsam fir and the black and white spruces show themselves nowhere to the south of Cape Ann, nor do they abound until Cape Elizabeth is passed. It is these somber coniferous woods crowding to the water's edge along the rugged shore which give the traveler his strong impression of a wild sub-arctic land v/here strange Indian names—Pemaquid, Megunticook, Eggemoggin, or Schoodic—are altogether fitting. The human story of the coast of Maine is almost as picturesque and varied as its scenery. This coast was first explored by Samuel de Cham- plain, whose narrative of his adventure is still delightful reading. Fruit- 81507°—17 2

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