As
big as the
other five New England states combined, MAINE
has barely the population of Rhode Island.
In principle, therefore, there’s plenty of
room for its massive summer influx of
visitors; in practice, the majority of these
make for the southern stretches of the
extravagantly corrugated coast. You
only really begin to appreciate the size and
space of the state further north, or inland,
where vast tracts of mountainous forest are
dotted with lakes, and barely pierced by
roads – more like the Alaskan interior
than the RV-clustered roads of the Vermont
and New Hampshire mountains, and ideal
territory for hiking and canoeing (and
spotting moose).
Although Maine is in many ways
inhospitable – the Algonquin called
it “Land of the Frozen Ground” – it
has been in contact with Europe ever since
the Vikings, around 1000 AD. For the
navigator Verrazano, in 1524, the “crudity
and evil manners” of the Indians made this
the “Land of Bad People,” but before
long European fishermen were setting up
camps each summer to dry their catch.
Francis Bacon in turn said that the English
were “worse than the very Savages,
impudently lying with their Women, teaching
their men to drink drunke, and … to fall
together by the eares.”
North America’s first agricultural colonies
were in Maine: de Champlain’s French
Protestants near Mount Desert Island in
1604, and an English group that
survived one winter at the mouth of the
Kennebec three years later. In the face of
the unwillingness of subsequent English
settlers to let them farm in peace, the
local Indians formed a long-term alliance
with the French, and until as late as 1700
regularly drove out streams of impoverished
English refugees. By 1764, however, the
official census could claim that even
Maine’s black population was more numerous
than its Native Americans.
At first considered part of
Massachusetts, Maine became a separate
entity only in 1820, when the Missouri
Compromise made Maine a Free and Missouri a
Slave state. In the nineteenth century, its
people had a reputation for conservatism and
resistance to immigration, manifested in
anti-Irish riots. Today, the economy
remains heavily based on the sea, although
many of those who fish also farm, and long
expeditions are rare. Recently they have
been selling their catch direct to Russian
factory ships anchored just offshore.
Lobster fishing in particular has defied
gloomy predictions and has boomed again, as
evidenced by the many thriving lobster
pounds.
In winter, most of Maine is under ice;
summer is short and usually heralded in
early June by an infestation of tiny black
flies. Fall colors begin to spread
from the north in late September – when,
unlike elsewhere in New England, off-season
prices apply – but temperatures drop
sharply, becoming quite frosty by
mid-October.
Click here to go to Maine State
web site |
