History of Lisbon francophile compatriots for the brutality and depredations of the French. Meanwhile, to control access to the capital, Wellington's chief engineer, Richard Fletcher, built the defensive lines known as the Lines of Torres Vedras across the peninsula on which Lisbon sits, using Portuguese workmen. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Tagus on the other, the city was reachable only by a narrow stretch of land blocked by a range of hills stretching from Sintra to Torre Vedras, which since Roman times had marked the bounds of Lisbon's territory. Conceived by Fletcher and a Portuguese major, Neves Costa,
Androscoggin River passes the community of Lisbon Falls and reaches tidewater just below the final falls in the town of Brunswick. Merrymeeting Bay is a freshwater estuary where the Androscoggin meets the Kennebec River nearly inland from the Atlantic Ocean. The Androscoggin was once heavily polluted by a variety of textile mills, paper mills, and other industries located along its banks, and helped inspire the Clean Water Act. Although the river has benefited greatly from environmental work and the departure of certain types of industry from the region, recent EPA test results indicate unacceptably high levels of mercury-contaminated wastewater are still being