its eastern end, the coast trends for some distance to the northwest,
whence a continuation of this course strikes the coast of Maine near
West Quoddy Head at a distance of rather more than 110 miles. From West
Quoddy head to Cape Elizabeth (in a direct line about 160 miles) the
coast, in general rough, rocky, and with many lofty headlands is
extremely irregular and deeply indented and follows a general course of
WSW. Thence, the coast, lower and becoming more and more sandy, begins
to trend more decidedly south-west until it reaches Boston, when it
turns to the southeast, and to the east toward Cape Cod.

But this is not the entire story. There remain outside of these stated
limits the Bay of Fundy in the north, with a possible area of 3,000
square miles; and at the south Cape Cod Bay, whose area, with that of
the waters west of a perpendicular drawn from the western end of the
base line that strikes the land in the vicinity of Portsmouth, N. H.
makes an additional section containing close to 1,500 square miles.
Within the limits thus inclosed there are, roughly, 30,000 square miles
of most productive ground most intensively fished through all the year.

The Bay of Fundy is divided at its head by Cape Chignecto, making two
branches to north and to east--Chignecto Bay and Minas Basin. With
these smaller areas, lying as they do entirely within the territorial
limits of Canada, American fishermen have little to do, although both
are valuable and productive fishing grounds.


[Footnote 6: William Strachey (1609), speaking particularly of Casco Bay,
but the words equally applicable to almost any stretch of the Maine
coast, says "A very great bay in which there lyeth soe many islands and
soe thick and neere together, that can hardly be discerned the number,