Rambles in Mount Desert: with sketches of travel on the New-England coast, from Isles of Shoals to Grand Menan. [Cover Title: Mount Desert, New England coast.]

New York: A. D. F. Randolph & Co.; Boston: A. Williams & Co., 1871. 16mo (6.5” x 5”) decorative green cloth, gilt lettering to spine and front over, ornaments stamped in black on spine and covers. Frontis. photograph (albumen print), [7], 280 pp., numerous head and tail pieces. Laid-in postcard from De Costa to Professor George Little of Bowdoin College.

First edition of DeCosta’s second book on Mount Desert Island, illustrated with an original frontispiece photograph of Eagle Cliff and Eagle Lake. Includes fifteen chapters with such titles as “Bird’s-Eye Views,” “Mount Desert,” “Somes’ Sound,” “Among the Mountains,” “Beach Rambles,” “Frenchman’s Bay,” etc. Copies of this book have been noted in green, brown, red and purple cloth.

Born in Charleston, Mass., Benjamin Franklin De Costa (1831–1904) was a minister, writer, and traveler who crossed the Atlantic ocean twenty-two times. Of his thirty-five historical works, he is best remembered for his Discovery of America by the Northmen and his books on the Isle of Shoals and Maine’s Mount Desert Island. De Costa graduated from the Biblical Institute of Concord, New Hampshire in 1856 and after entering the Episcopal ministry served in Massachusetts and New York City. In 1881 De Costa become rector of the Church of St. John the Evangelist. Near the end of his life, he withdrew from the ministry and turned to the Roman Catholic Church.

REFERENCES: Williamson 2774; Thompson, Important Maine Maps, Books, Prints and Ephemera (Orono, 2003), p. 364.

CONDITION: Very good, light wear at extremities; a lovely copy.