The city of Bangor began to be populated in

1769, when Jacob Buswell and his family first lo-
cated tliemselves on the bank of the Penobscot, in
what is now the first ward of the city, a short dis-
tance above the mouth of the Kenduskeag. The
whole region was then a dense wilderness, wild and
uncultivated, on which the hand of government,
as well as of civilization, had never been laid. It
remained, as God had created it, free from admin-
isteriat dictation, the abode of the wild beasts of
the forest and equally wild aborigines, a part of
that great mythical " Norumbega " which the men
and poets of an earlier generation had signalized
in history and song. Its governmental right had
been nominally in dispute, for though, upon the
first settlement of the country by the colonists of
Plymouth, England was tacitly the undisputed
owner of the whole region, and, by its extensive
grant to the Plymouth Company, had embraced it
within its limits, yet Prance had at times been
quietly recognized as having the right of suprem-
acy and control After the successful battles of



V Google



224 TERRITORIAL HISTORY OF BANGOR.
Louisburg and Quebec, howeverj England became
the undisputed possessor of the whole country, free
from all opposing claims.
