We left Portland early in the afternoon, on board the steamer Huntress, and swept out of the harbor, among the numerous green islands which here break the swell of the Atlantic, and keep the water almost as smooth as that of the Hudson.  “It is said,” remarked a passenger, “that there are as many of these islands as there are days in the year, but I do not know that any body has ever counted them.”  Two of the loftiest, rock-bound, with verdant summits, and standing out beyond the rest, overlooking the main ocean, bore light-houses, and near these we entered the mouth of the Kennebeck, which here comes into the sea between banks of massive rock.

At the mouth of the river were forests of stakes, for the support of the nets in which salmon, shad, and alewives are taken.  The shad fishery, they told me, was not yet over, though the month of August was already come.  We passed some small villages where we saw the keels of large unfinished vessels lying high upon the stocks; at Bath, one of the most considerable of these places, but a small village still, were five or six, on which the ship-builders were busy.  These, I was told, when once launched would never be seen again in the place where they were built, but would convey merchandise between the great ports of the world.

“The activity of ship-building in the state of Maine,” said a gentleman whom I afterward met, “is at this moment far greater than you can form any idea of, without travelling along our coast.  In solitary places where a stream or creek large enough to float a ship is found, our builders lay the keels of their vessels.  It is not necessary that the channel should be wide enough for the ship to turn round; it is enough if it will contain her lengthwise.  They choose a bend in the river from which they can launch her with her head down stream, and, aided by the tide, float her out to sea, after which she proceeds to Boston or New York, or some other of our large seaports to do her part in carrying on the commerce of the world.”

I learned that the ship-builders of Maine purchase large tracts of forest in Virginia and other states of the south, for their supply of timber.  They obtain their oaks from the Virginia shore, their hard pine from North Carolina; the coverings of the deck and the smaller timbers of the large vessels are furnished by Maine.  They take to the south cargoes of lime and other products of Maine, and bring back the huge trunks produced in that region.  The larger trees on the banks of the navigable rivers of Maine were long ago wrought into the keels of vessels.

It was not far from Bath, and a considerable distance from the open sea, that we saw a large seal on a rock in the river.  He turned his head slowly from side to side as we passed, without allowing himself to be disturbed by the noise we made, and kept his place as long as the eye could distinguish him.  The presence of an animal always associated in the imagination with uninhabited coasts of the ocean, made us feel that we were advancing into a thinly or at least a newly peopled country.