MOUNT DESERT. This island was discovered on the fifth day of September, 1604. Champlain having been comissioned by Sieur De Monts, the Patentee of La Cadie, to make discoveries on the coast southwest of the Saint Croix, left the mouth of that river in a small barque of seventeen or eighteen tons, with twelve sailors and two savages as guides, and anchored the same evening, apparently near Bar Harbor. While here, they explored Frenchman's Bay as far on the north as the Narrows, where Champlain says the distance across to the mainland is not more than a hundred paces. The next day, on the sixth of the month, they sailed two leagues, and came to Otter Creek Cove, which extends up into the island a mile or more, nestling between the spurs of Newport Mountain on the east and Green Mountain on the west. Champlain says this cove is "at the foot of the mountains," which clearly identifies it, as it is the only one in the neighborhood answering to this description. In this cove they discovered several savages, who had come there to hunt beavers and to fish. On a visit to Otter Cove Cliffs in June, 1880, we were told by an old fisherman ninety years of age, living on the borders of this cove, and the statement was confirmed by several others, that on the creek at the head of the cove, there was, within his memory, a well-known beaver dam. The Indians whose acquaintance Champlain made at this place conducted him among the islands, to the mouth of the Penobscot, and finally up the river, to the site of the present city of Bangor. It was on this visit, on the fifth of September, 1604, that Champlain gave the island the name of _Monts-déserts_. The French generally gave to places names that were significant. In this instance they did not depart from their usual custom. The summits of most of the mountains on this island, then as now, were only rocks, being destitute of trees, and this led Champlain to give its significant name, which, in plain English, means the island of the desert, waste, or uncultivatable mountains. If we follow the analogy of the language, either French or English, it should be pronounced with the accent on the penult, Mount Désert, and not on the last syllable, as we sometimes hear it. This principle cannot be violated without giving to the word a meaning which, in this connection, would be obviously inappropriate and absurd.