CHAPTER XIV.

Some natural history notes—Our feathered pets—“The poor Canada bird”—The Canadian mocking-bird—The black squirrel—The red squirrel—The katydid and cricket—A rural graveyard—The whip-poor-will—The golden plover—The large Canada owl—The crows’ congress—The heron—The water-hen.

Ifone would see our feathered pets in all their abundant numbers and luxuriant beauty nowadays in Ontario, he must get away from the towns and villages and centres of dense population. At various times I have explored portions of our province that lie far back from the Great Lakes and the more densely populated areas, and have then enjoyed some good opportunities of observing our summer visitants. The “poor Canada bird,” as the song-sparrow is locally called, is one that we cannot but value, seeing that his notes really lengthen and become more charming as the season advances and the weather becomes more boisterous. Even when the nights have become quite chilly, though the days are warm and sunshiny, one gets his varied song-notes if he will only listen. Especially will the song-sparrow pipe up of an evening, just as the sun is setting, and all nature is about to be hushed to rest. He leaves us with the light, after giving us a pleasant chantfrom his brown throat. The triplet of notes that he gives us, and which we interpret as “Can-a-da, Can-a-da,” is in some localities interpreted as “Van-i-ty, Van-i-ty,” and of course any suitable word of three syllables may be associated with the well-known song of this small bird.

As for the common sparrow, so prevalent in our towns and cities, there is no doubt he has robbed us of a large part of the pleasures of our summer life, for where he is the song-bird is not. The change has so gradually stolen over us that we do not realize that we have lost our most charming birds through the advent of the pugnacious sparrow. Go once away from where he is and the change is so very apparent that one cannot fail to notice it. In the forests away from sparrows there are at least ten times as many birds, and it is plainly the duty of every one, especially of lovers of nature, to aid in exterminating the sparrow in every way possible.

The Canadian mocking-bird is, of course, a catbird, and although he cannot, perhaps, copy as many notes or voices as his American brother can, yet he’s our mocking-bird, and a charmer as well. He is about done with us for this season (fall), and his imitations are not now heard as frequently as they were, but yet he is with us and one can hear him occasionally. Stand near a thicket, a copse, or a “spinney,” as, perhaps, they would say in England, and let there be some water near, and you’ll get the calls from him. Sometimes he is pleasant, and in turn descends to the disagreeable, coming back again to the pleasant and enchanting, and so one may listen by the hour, andevery few minutes get something entirely new from him.

The Canadian black squirrel, so exceedingly plentiful when most of us were boys, just able to be the proud possessor of a poor gun, is now nearly extinct in Ontario. Speaking of gunning in our boyhood days reminds me of the off Saturdays from school, when every other Saturday was a holiday, and of the day’s trudge with the old gun for the alert black squirrel, safely ensconced among the tallest tree-tops during the sunny hours of the short fall days. And one had to get up a little, too, at marksmanship, for he was ever on the move, and you seldom got a good shot at him while quietly at ease. The boy’s heart that would not thrill at a day’s black squirrel shooting must indeed be more obdurate than most Ontario boys’ hearts are, as one followed him, always looking up, as he jumped from tree to tree, almost falling to the ground when he made some exceedingly long jumps, but quite recovering himself and never by any possibility falling. Most exceedingly do I regret the gradual extinction of this squirrel—the real squirrel of Canada—and, besides, he’s such an intelligent fellow and so easily tamed and becomes such a pet. The days were when, in his tin revolving cage, he was one of the means of diversion at many a household; and for a stew he had no superior, feeding as he always did upon the choicest nuts to be found in the forests, and he was so scrupulously clean in his habits.

The common red squirrel is still very common, as he chatters away, half way up some forest tree,perched upon a limb. He’s a very valiant fellow, indeed, as he saucily chit-chats, with a guttural noise; but drive him up the tree once, and keep him there you can’t. His first care will be to get down to the ground again and scamper away; and get down he will, unless one be specially alert and active. He will rest upon the tree trunk, head downwards, with his great eyes watching your every motion, and should the least chance present itself for escape he’s down along the opposite side of the trunk of the tree where one is standing, if it be a considerable one, and is away in a twinkling.

Birds gather in flocks at about this time of the year, affording to us who watch a sure admonition that summer is nearly past, and fall close upon us. I saw the first flock of blackbirds on the 4th of September, and my recollection is, from past seasons, that many others are quickly seen after the first flock of any kind of birds is about.

Another sure sign that fall approaches is evidenced by the call of the cricket and other kindred insect life in our midst as the sun sinks behind the heavens. The noises of the evenings just now are particularly observable, and almost rival—or perhaps, if not rival, measurably approach—the choruses of Nature during a tropical night. Those of us who recall our first impression of our stay in the tropics can, at this season in Ontario, get quite a simile at home, and it’s charming too; and our air is so delightful that mere physical existence becomes dreamy and a positive luxury.

The katydid is now at his best, and delivers himselfof his “crackling sing” as he descends on the wing, bat-like, among the tree branches, to the ground. Our katydid is never heard during the early part of the summer, and just now, since he is our guest for a short time, it would richly repay our boys to catch him and examine him at leisure. One cannot help admiring him, for he’s a fine fellow; but the great trouble with him is that he’s so plainly a member of the locust family that we fear his congeners might come and devour our beautiful Ontario for us. We are assured, however, by those naturalists supposed to be able to know, that there can possibly be no danger of a locust pest in our humid, cool, Ontario climate, and so we bless our stars that our lines have fallen in such pleasant places. Ontario to-day, the golden grain-burdened, with its hill and dale and copses interspersed, is beautiful beyond compare.

Walk out any one of the fine evenings in July, grandest of all months, just when the sun is leaving us, far away in the north-west, amidst an amber sky, with not a vestige of cloud above, and just as he finally dips, the strong probability is that you will be startled at first, and then delighted, with the quick cry of the “whip-poor-will.”

Stand in your tracks and back again and again will come to you in quick succession for eight or ten times the distinct words, “whip-poor-will,” and then as quickly the cry will cease.

Right away from an exactly opposite side of the landscape, from about a coppice of thick bushes, with some large trees growing in it and protruding farabove them, will come the answer to the challenge, “whip-poor-will,” and so the words will be bandied back and forth until the shades of night have fallen in real earnest, giving you, perhaps, the most enjoyable and natural concert one can be treated to in our own country.

As to the bird itself, it is very seldom seen, its color being so nearly like that of brown leaves, or the ordinary color of the carpeted bases of trees in the forest, that he is scarcely distinguishable. Once in a while you will come on him, however, in your rambles, when he spreads his brown wings, of a foot’s distension at least, and alights a few rods on, as before, upon some fallen tree trunk, or as likely as not upon the ground. He stays with us as long as our summer really lasts, and of all the birds that sing, his call is the clearest and most distinctive. The “whip-poor-will” has been celebrated by one of the best of our Canadian poets, Charles Sangster. He says:

“Last night I heard the plaintive whip-poor-will,And straightway sorrow shot his swiftest dart;I know not why, but it has chilled my heartLike some dread thing of evil. All night longMy nerves were shaken, and my pulse stood stillAnd waited for a terror yet to come,To strike harsh discords through my life’s sweet song.Sleep came—an incubus that filled the sumOf wretchedness with dreams so wild and chillThe sweat oozed out from me like drops of gall;An evil spirit kept my mind in thrall,And rolled my body up like a poor scroll,On which is written curses that the soulShrinks back from when it sees some hellish carnival.”

To us who are not so sensitive the mournful cry of the nightly whip-poor-will is not so depressing, but I am sure we are all glad to get this gleaning of a poet’s feelings when he hears the uncanny bird.

The golden plover in July is nesting and watching along by the margin of our streams. By chance I happened at one time upon the nest of one situated about half-way under the end of an old log. The nest had been built without any preparation at all as to nest building. During the previous season grass had grown rank and tall about this old log, and the parent bird had simply trodden down the dry and sere grass, and formed an almost level space for the nest. There was but little attempt to hollow the nest even in a concave, as one would naturally suppose, to hold the eggs. Four little ploverets rewarded my gaze, and such ridiculous things they were, too. Scarcely any feathers yet, but just down, as it were, and great long legs, which appeared to be so far out of proportion to their wants that their appearance was absurd, indeed. They essayed to walk away, but it would seem that a plover must learn to balance himself, like a rope-walker. At this stage they grotesquely tipped forward mostly every time. They arose upon their feet, sometimes, but not so often, backwards.

The large Canada owl will be found hatching or sitting in July. This is the owl which is so very white during the winter months, but, like the rabbit, changes his coat during the summer, when he becomes somewhat gray or brown. Of all our birds of prey,the owl is perhaps the most predatory in his persistence in waylaying about a farmer’s poultry yard, and it is no trouble at all for him nor any tax upon his powers to carry off an ordinary hen. Recently I happened to walk along the bank of a stream partly wooded, and in the top of a cedar stump, about ten feet from the ground, I found this great bird’s nest. Three owlets were there, with their great staring eyes nearly as large as those of the parent bird’s, while their bodies were covered with down so thick and so long that it seemed almost like a coat of wool. Perhaps the best way to describe them would be to say they were just fuzzy. Around the sides of their nest, which was made of small sticks, were some small bones, apparently those of mice and rats, but not of fowls, so far as I could see. Even if the owl does destroy some fowls, I could not find it in my heart to hurt the fuzzy little owlets, and I let them remain, fully believing that their parent entirely squares the account by the great quantity of mice and rats which he is daily securing from our fields. Before leaving the owl’s nest I want to say that one day, just as winter set in, an immense number of crows—I should say 3,000 at least—were congregated about the tops of some pine trees not far from my residence—trees about forty feet high. Furiously and persistently did those crows caw, and fly, and hop about, producing such a din as to attract persons a mile away during a still day. The cawing kept up so long that I seized my breech-loader and resolved to investigate the cause of the crows’ congress, as suchgatherings are usually called. Cautiously I approached the feathered multitude, wondering what could possibly be up, but no such caution was at all needed, for they heeded me not. Backwards and forwards the more adventurous ones apparently darted into the top of one particular pine, giving at the, same time a tremendous yell. Following with my eye their line of flight, I discovered an enormous white owl perched upon a limb, the object of attack of the more desperate of the whole 3,000 or so crows thus assembled. For many minutes I quietly witnessed this unequal contest, in my curiosity actually forgetting to fire, and found that the old owl was a match, as he sat upon the limb, for them all. Sometimes the crows will gather just the same in congress about a black squirrel, in the top of some high forest tree, but I have yet to learn that they ever succeed in inflicting any punishment upon either owl or squirrel.

The blue heron nests and hatches with us, although many persons think that he goes far away from the haunts of man for the purpose of nesting. I do not know if he be really the blue heron of the naturalist, but he is a heron to all intents and purposes, and his color is mainly correctly described in his name. He is crested, too, and is withal a most magnificent bird. Not infrequently he stands five feet high, and the spread of his wings is six or seven feet. Any one who will quietly watch beside any of our marshes can easily, this time of the year, find his nest, as he alights unerringly in the same spot. His nest isonly the marsh grass pressed down beside some hillock in the bogs, where it is dry. As yet I do not know for a certainty how many young the hen bird produces at a sitting, but I have never seen any more than two in any nest. Speaking of the plover with his long legs being awkward and absurd reminds me to say that perhaps the young heron is the most ridiculous of all birds which frequent our province. His legs are so very abnormally long that they seem almost a malformation, but when one comes to consider the use he makes of them afterwards, as he wades for food, one can see that he is properly formed. But at the same time he is the most absurd, awkward, homely and ill-looking, when young, of all the feathered tribe incubating in Ontario. You must pardon me, reader, for daring to presume to differ from great naturalists when they tell us that he never alights upon trees, for I have seen him alight. Not very far from my residence stands a very large towering water elm. So tall, indeed, is this elm that at night it far overshadows all other trees of the forests about, and among the branches of this elm, being an obstruction, as it would appear, is the herons’ line of flight. I have myself frequently seen them alight, and have tried to get a shot at them when upon the perch. So far as my observation goes, however, they do not long remain upon the perch.

Since the law now protects ducks from being food for the guns of boys, they now, generally on Saturdays and holidays, walk in groups, guns in hand, along our streams and marshes, always ready to take a potshot at anything. The water-hen—generally called hell-diver—gets most of the shots which the boys can spare. This fowl can generally accommodate the boys to all the fun they want, in the shooting line, and with but little danger to itself. Its anatomical form is so peculiar and its sense of sight and hearing so acute that it can, nine times out of ten, dodge the shots from the boys’ guns from the time of explosion of the charge to the driving of it home. Outwardly it is formed very much like the duck, and is about the size of our ordinary wood duck. Its feet, however, are placed far back in its body, like the great auk. From this fact it is a most expert swimmer, and is also enabled to dive as quickly as powder and shot explode. It is not at all uncommon for this fowl to dive to avoid the shot from a gun and swim under water, wholly out of sight, ten rods from the place where it went down.

In reality it is a species of duck, but since it feeds mostly upon small fishes, its flesh is rank, oily, and not palatable for the table. When August comes around it is no uncommon sight to see the mother water-hen swimming around followed by her brood of six to ten young water-hens about as big as cricket-balls. Wonderfully tame, too, they get when they are not daily molested, and one can spend a very pleasant half hour or so in watching the brood as they float along with the mother, every few minutes diving for food.

Lake Ontario—Weather observations with regard to it—Area and depth—No underground passage for its waters—Daily horizon of the author—A sunrise described—Telegraph poles an eye-sore—The pleasing exceeds the ugly.

Realizingthe fact that the greater part of beautiful Lake Ontario belongs to us, and, likewise, that the most densely populated portion of our province is about its borders, a few facts and observations will, I think, be acceptable to most Canadians. My remarks are founded mainly upon my own observations, from a lifetime residence upon its shores, and also in a measure from Dr. Smith’s report to the United States Government on the fisheries on the lake. First, the lake is a perfect barometer, in this wise: It will foretell the weather to come to us for twenty-four to forty-eight hours in advance, to all who will closely observe it. For instance, suppose we have our coldest winter days, when everything about is held in the tight embrace of Jack Frost, and there is no sign of milder weather, or any relief from the intense cold. Look abroad upon the lake just as the sun is setting, and a light yellow band hangs above the surface of the water. Then in a few hoursJack Frost leaves us, and a thaw is at hand. Or, perchance, during the winter days, when we wish for sleighing, and yet the ground is bare, and it will not come; no sign of snow, nor the feeling of it (as you well know, one can feel it before it really comes). But before that time look abroad upon the surface of the lake, and see a black band extending as far as the eye can reach. Now it is only a few hours, ordinarily about eighteen, before the feeling of snow comes, and then down comes the “fleecy cloud.” It is summer now, and we would know if it will be windy to-morrow. Are there red rays and yellow skies at sunrise? Yes. It will be windy on the morrow. But when the cumulous clouds move easily, and as if not driven above the waters, fine weather old Ontario now gives us—and he always tells the truth. Not to use many words, in the glorious midsummer days, when his surface is just like molten glass, and objects in a depth of sixty feet are clear and distinct, its entrancing beauty comes. Molten glass; but watch, and a mile away you see a streak of ruffled water coming towards you, for just there a puff of wind has caught it. But it dies away and leaves the polished mirror once more to me. Then he rises in his might and tosses our ships about just like old ocean, and sends his spray far upon the shore, and his huge-capped waves advance and recede.

“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods;There is a rapture on the lonely shore;There is society where none intrudesBy the deep sea, and music in its roar.”

But it never freezes so hard close by the shores as away from its breath. Curious, also, to relate, in the fall it does not “freeze up,” as we say in Canada, as soon as away from it, by two weeks usually. In the spring, again, the frost is gone from the soil quite two weeks before it is gone back from its influence, so I feel safe in asserting that winters upon its shores are one month shorter than they are away from its meteorological influences. And yet leaves do not appear quite close to its waters just as soon as they do a few miles away, anomalous as it may seem, for it does not get warm so quickly as localities more remote. It is never so warm in the summer about it, as it is never so cold in the winter. Dwellers upon its shores rarely, if ever, suffer from extreme heat during the periodical torrid waves which sometimes visit this land. Ontario is the smallest of the Great Lakes—being about 185 miles long, and of an average width of 40 miles, being widest opposite Irondequoit Bay, where it is 55 miles in width. It is some 6,500 square miles in area, of which Ontario owns 3,800. It is 232 feet above the sea, and usually fluctuates but little in height, though in 1891 it was three feet lower than ever before observed. Persons living at Niagara, it is said, remarked on the unusually small amount of water that year passing over Niagara Falls. I am unable in any way to account for that small flow. We are told it is because the tributary streams and the waters of the Falls were less. Granted, but why they were less is far to seek. In most parts the depth of Lake Ontario is about 350 feet, but off

SCENE NEAR BOBCAYGEON.

A CANADIAN VIEW—LOOKING SOUTH-EAST FROM EAGLE MOUNTAIN, STONEY LAKE.

Charlotte, N.Y., it is 600 feet deep, and in some places opposite Jefferson County, N.Y., it is quite 700 feet deep. The eastern portion is the shallowest, being only about 100 feet about South Bay. At the bottom are, in many places, vegetable organisms, furnishing food for those fishes which feed at the bottom. Our sturgeon is a bottom-feeder, and some others. About Stony Point is a rough, rocky and sandy bottom, and the other parts are muddy and clayey. An underground passage to the ocean has been mooted many years by persons who have thought the St. Lawrence could not take away all the flow; that is to say, the waters passing over Niagara Falls and those falling into Lake Ontario by contributory streams, which add much to the flow from the Falls. It is a fallacy; there is no such underground passage, and the St. Lawrence easily takes all the waters from the lake. No current is perceptible in the lake. Pieces of wood upon its surface do not flow as with a current down Kingston way, but invariably come ashore with the first wind. In perfect preservation to-day are many ships which have gone down and now rest upon its bottom. Very probably too, the bodies of passengers upon those ships, confined within the hulls so as to prevent their rising to the surface, and thus getting the air, are there yet, and in perfect preservation, for the waters in the depths are always cool and preservative. Were some expert diver yet to go ghost-like among these cabins, his nerves must be upset with the evidences of human tragedies there so vividly to be seen before him. Mainly, the watersare melted snow, and are manifestly pure, and blessed are those whose homes are about this life-giving lake, as well as about all our other great fresh-water oceans. About the shores of the Mediterranean have been for ages the choicest spots for man’s life; that is to say, the regions where the human family could develop most perfectly, and life there passed was rounded and full. Our old Roman bards, you know, were forever singing about the beauties of Mediterranean shores, their “golden apples of Hesperides,” and sumptuous residences built partly upon the land and partly over the sea. Living on the shores of our Great Lakes is generally conceded now to be most conducive to human development; we have left the Mediterranean shores in the background, and now want only the population, for we have a better condition for human life-development and happiness right here, and far more enjoyable, for the great heat of the ancients’ country is absent here in our new land.

The earth all light and loveliness, in summer’s golden hours,Smiles, in her bridal vesture clad, and crown’d with festal flowers;So radiantly beautiful, so like to heaven above,We scarce can deem more fair that world of perfect bliss and love.

Turn the eye southward, from the town, with its noise, bustle and smoke, and look with me over my daily horizon, which indeed bounds a landscape which my eyes have feasted upon all my days, for the past half-century, save and except the years at college and years of foreign travel. Manifestly at the first,the very first, in fact, the eye catches the more conspicuous objects. And it is, in this instance, a great dead but standing hemlock tree, denuded, it is true, of its foliage, but yet bearing its limbs quite in detail. Like great men, it has died at the top, and its impression upon my retina is always associated with the crows’ congress which I saw in its foliage-less branches last fall. The crow, you know, only partially leaves us hereabout for the winter. Many of them do migrate, it is true, but here along the Lake Ontario shore dead fish are always thrown up by the waves, and he can feed at any time; consequently, he does not leave us. So, upon this elevated, dead tree-top, I saw thousands of them gather, and heard one after another deliver his speech in regular order. Oratory they must have, for their voices were plaintive, defiant and grave, in turn, and I dare not deny them intelligent utterance. Close beside this site of the crows’ congress are a few great, large, sweeping elms, whose branches alone would each make very respectable trees. Always their greenness is visible to me, and the quiet contentment of pose of their branches and leaves is always a pleasure. Great blue-crested herons find convenient resting-places on their highest limbs. Stork-like, these great, gaunt birds stand upon one foot, and turn their heads side-wise, and so wise-like, that one feels so near nature when beholding them that it is uncanny to disturb them. I let the eye wander beyond the high elm limbs, and Ontario’s ultra-marine blue waters are before me, upon the far horizon, beyond my extremerange of vision. And when Old Sol rose this morning from out of Ontario’s waters, he heralded his appearance by throwing up into the sky shafts of light of various colors. Some, indeed, were pure violet for a few moments, and others red, and yellow, and blue, but not the blue of Ontario, so that the contrast may be marked for us. He is coming up swiftly, and in a few moments the colors have all changed, and almost before I can turn my head yellow has suffused the whole in the immediate locality of old submerged Sol. Again, the top of a wheel of fire we see upon the water, and now it is all red about. Old Sol has risen, and a globe of fire is sailing upon the waters’ surface. Could any facile brush only put upon canvas for us these phantasmagorial colors, no one would believe the artist, but accuse him of outdoing nature. And now he shines between me and a high hill upon the lake’s bank, surmounted by trees, green at the top and golden yellow along its sides with ripening grain. Our-red men discovered the very striking beauty of this eminence before Cartier ever sailed up the St. Lawrence, and even before the Indian population moved backward and northward upon those backwater chains, and away from Lake Ontario. To establish this fact most indisputably, we have only to look at the many skulls, and larger human bones, generally, which the ploughshare turns out. Then the red man enjoyed his pagan rites without the intermeddling of the expectant Jesuit missionary, who only came ages and ages after; for, among the bones, we find his flints, skinning stones, and stone tomahawks, but no articles of iron, because the Frenchman, who first came here, had not then given him tomahawks of iron and old flint guns. Imitative whites, whose eyes travelled about the horizon, as did the Indians’, drank in the beauty of the scene inceptively, and they in their turn made it their place of sepulture, and to-day it is the white man’s burial ground, embosomed among the evergreen trees, which Old Sol’s rays are penetrating for me. While I stand and worship at Nature’s shrine in the early summer morn, with the sun’s advent a gentle breeze has risen. God has been specially good to us in giving this sublimely beautiful vision:

“The south wind was like a gentle friend,Parting the hair so softly on my brow,It had come o’er gardens, and the flowersThat kissed it were betrayed; for as it partedWith its invisible fingers my loose hair,I knew it had been trifling with the rose,And stooping to the violet. There is joyFor all God’s creatures in it.”

Down the long, meandering highway my eye rests, and my soul is pained by most irregular, unsightly, great bare poles on either side of it. A beneficent Government has given some grasping fellows the power to put these up and stretch wires upon them, and wrench my soul daily by their ugliness. Europe would not for a moment tolerate such hideous marring of the landscape, but long-suffering Canadians, most law-abiding and complaisant, suffer the nuisance to remain. Not content with the great warty poles,there are huge braces or props leaning to them at every bend in the highway, and I, as the individual, must suffer the sacrilege in silence. A long-suffering people may yet arise in their might and tear these gaunt, denuded forest trees from the face of the earth. There is a forest-covered hill, mainly of second-growth timber, before my eye, and it gloriously crowns what would otherwise be a most unsightly, bald, round eminence. But it is beautiful, dense, green and grand, and a wealthy man, viewing daily this hill upon his horizon, bought the land and keeps the forest that it may please him, and others as well, for their entire lives. Five per cents, or any given per cents, are not to be mentioned in comparison with this good citizen duly honoring his Maker and helping his fellows by his generous act. A forest primeval is before my eye as I turn my glance to the opposite side of the horizon, and it stands high and strong before me. Our native maple has never yet been surpassed for beauty and cleanliness, and here it is our emblem and our pride. Mainly this forest has always been in my mind as the spot where countless myriads of pigeons used to alight in the days gone by. Another forest farther away, and almost out from my horizon, but not entirely gone from it, formed the next nearest roosting-place for this extinct migratory bird, strings of which would fall to my boyhood gun, but now, alas! gone to South America, where food is more abundant and more easily obtained by them. Lesser objects on the horizon do not strike me so forcibly, but as I look more remotely and awayover the busy town and its forges, looms and benches, the ridges are clearly marked upon the sky. Geologists have told us these hills were once the shores of a broader Lake Ontario. Evidences of the rocks and pebbles go far to establish that fact, but to us moderns they are very palpable and valuable by keeping off the cold of the north during the inclement season, that we may grow the succulent peach beneath their shelter. “Companies are bodies, indeed, without souls,” for here, with us, the railway company, which exacts its three and a half cents per mile in contravention to its charter, has erected great, unsightly sheds, and stained them a dull red, that their ugliness may be unparalleled. No eye for the beautiful and harmonious can ever be reconciled to the gaunt poles along our highways, wire-bestridden, or to the red architectural sheds of our railway. Summing up, however, the pleasing and unpleasing which I have touched upon, we see that the pleasing and beautiful exceeds the unsightly and ugly. I am indulging the hope that some day, in the near future, a way will be found by which we may enjoy all the best facilities of communication and transportation without having the landscape marred by unsightly poles or ugly railroad sheds. The sensibilities of many of our citizens have been wounded by the act of some individual or company, who, vandal-like, has removed a time-honored familiar forest, or erected a most surpassingly ugly house, barn or warehouse. These marrings of our horizon make life for all more circumscribed, as well as grieve the souls of the cultured. As we love our glorious country, let us beautify and preserve it.

Getting hold of an Ontario farm—How a man without a capital may succeed—Superiority of farming to a mechanical trade—A man with $10,000 can have more enjoyment in Ontario than anywhere else—Comparison with other countries—Small amount of waste land in Ontario—The help of the farmer’s wife—“Where are your peasants?”—Independence of the Ontario farmer—Complaints of emigrants unfounded—An example of success.

Itwas far more difficult for our early settlers in Ontario to pay for their lands by their own exertions, even at the low prices then prevailing, than it is to-day at their greatly increased values. When Ontario lands could be purchased for $4.00 or $5.00 per acre, there was no market for their produce to any extent, and money was extremely difficult to get. Not only the absence of markets was against our settlers, but though they owned a farm it was wholly unproductive and useless until cleared of timber. So it was harder to pay the $4.00 per acre then than it is to pay $80 per acre to-day. A man without capital to-day in Ontario can start on a 100-acre farm, and pay for it off the farm in a series of years, by his own and his wife’s exertions. Of course, he will need a little more to start with in the first instance than his forefathers did, for he must needsmake a small payment down in order that he may mortgage the farm to get the balance of the purchase money. Since money is now being loaned on farm security at five and six per cent., he can yearly more than pay his interest and reduce his principal, so that his burdens are daily becoming lighter. His wife and himself pulling together and practising economy invariably succeed on productive farms, and pay for them. We sometimes wonder at our forefathers that they did not take up more land when it was so cheap, but forget that even its cheapness, as it seems to us to-day, was no guide to them as to its being cheap. Grain in early times did not bring money, when these prices prevailed, nor would timber. Furs and potash were the only commodities commanding cash. Hence it was almost an impossibility for an ordinary man to pay for more than 100 acres from his own exertions. To-day, even at $80 per acre on a mortgaged farm, everything he can grow will sell for money, and with his family’s help, and with the growth and increase of his stock, he is bound to succeed.

Even if he must needs practise economy it does not follow that he may not enjoy himself, as the time goes on, while he is paying for his farm. The press will, for a few dollars yearly, give him amusement and pleasure at home. If his means are particularly straitened, even $5.00 per year for weeklies will furnish him the cheapest and best contemporary readings possibly obtainable for the money. Then if he or his wife be at all musicallyinclined, the evening of relaxation, after the hard day’s work be done, can be pleasantly put in by a song or two, accompanied on an organ, if he has got so far along as to afford one; and he rises with the sun next morning, rested, invigorated, and ready for the next day’s work. And as every harvest comes in its turn he feels gladly thankful that the mortgage is being gradually lifted. Living as he does, and putting forth these efforts to save, he must have good habits. Good habits will invariably give him good health, and life is a pleasure to him, even under the cloud of a mortgage. Slavery some people will term this life, while under the mortgage. If one would get money one must save, and if one be well cared for, housed, clad and fed while saving, he can surely put up with the hard work, for always ahead is the goal of having a 100-acre farm paid for, which will make him independent for life. The mechanic emigrant who comes to us from Britain is not sufficiently versatile to change his mode of life to go on a farm and succeed until he has been here a few years. Having been in our midst a few years he gets his eyes opened, and learns in a measure “to be a jack-of all trades,” and then many of such former mechanics do succeed on farms and pay for them. Our native-born Canadian, who follows some mechanical trade when the mechanical labor market is over-supplied, is making a serious mistake. Very naturally many of our young men drift into this life, for their work is over at six o’clock, and they can wash, dress and walk the streets when their farmer brother at homeis yet in the fields. While the mechanic goes through life with tolerable ease upon his day’s wages, as a rule he is not saving much for his declining days; but his farmer brother invariably is. His farmer brother will have soiled hands, and wear his working clothes the whole day through, and cannot go about the streets in the evenings, nor attend so many places of amusement, but he enjoys himself just as well at home, and he is saving for a rainy day. If trade be dull and shops shut down in the middle of winter, he is quite indifferent, for his cellar is well supplied, and his fields are ploughed ready for next spring’s sowing. Prices for his grain may be low, but still he has his living, and no one to call master, and is as free and independent as any king upon a throne. Writers on political economy tell us that all true wealth must be produced from the soil. Now, if this be true, then the nearer we get to the soil at first hand the better off we must be. I have already endeavored to show that those on the soil lead the most independent, free and healthy lives, and since Ontario has lots more of lands yet for the farmer, let those out of work and with no very bright or sure prospects before them, go on those lands. Many workmen could remedy the scarcity of employment in the winter, and their having not much to live upon, following strikes of trades-unions, if they would cultivate the soil. If the mechanical labor market be overstocked, the common-sense remedy would be to lessen the supply. Here with us the proper way to lessen the supply is for our smart mechanics, who know ourcountry and its conditions, to get away from the towns upon farms; and if in the course of time such persons, succeeding in their new calling (which I have tried to prove is not a life of slavery, but of hard toil and self-denial, and wealth and independence), as succeed they must if they put forth the necessary effort, and pay for their first 100 acres, there is no law or moral obstacle to their buying 200 or 400 more if they can. Should they not be able to work so much land, surely they are at perfect liberty to rent it to others, and enjoy the rents and profits from it as the result of their labors. Very few farmers fail in Ontario; so very few, in fact, that our former bankruptcy law did not provide for the farmers’ failure at all. They invariably succeed, and the instances of old decrepit farmers, with nothing to support them in their declining years, are so very few that any reader hereof cannot call to mind very many examples. Reader, you will have to think twice before you can point to an old, infirm farmer with nothing to support him in Ontario. I only wish I could say as much for the mechanic. Even with the good wages they get, it is almost a superhuman task to save a competency for that period of life which must come to all of us surviving, when our limbs become too stiff to obey our will, and too weak to maintain the strain of toil. But I did not set out to write of the mechanical trades or kindred subjects; I am only trying to induce more mechanics to go upon farms and be independent of bosses, strikes or trades-unions.

My observation of travel in continental Europe, Britain and the United States gives me the ground to fearlessly state that in Ontario a man with a capital of $10,000 can enjoy more and be more independent than he can in those countries.

Say his farm costs $8,000, or $80 per acre; but from my intimate knowledge of lands in Ontario, I would not limit myself to that price. Good land is always the cheapest, and I would not hesitate in paying $100 per acre, and more, if the productiveness of the farm will warrant it. But assuming $80 per acre to be the average for a good farm; now add to this $2,000 upon the 100-acre farm for stock, implements, etc., so that the entire $10,000 is fully invested. Upon this 100-acre farm, paid for, the farmer can enjoy as good a living as can be got in any other calling in life. It can’t be done in Britain, but it can be done here. If I would settle on such a priced farm in Germany, in the first place it would not begin to be as productive as the Ontario farm, and besides, my growing sons would have to be soldiers for three years upon reaching manhood, or leave the country. The best lands to be found in Austria are in Hungary, which is a wheat country, and not one whit better than ours, of a like fertility, and at least two and a half or three times the price. In France I have noticed that by the most rigid and grinding economy the small peasant will lay up a competency. But the economy practised by the French peasant is something our people cannot and will not use. The usual conveniences and amenitiesof life the French peasant knows not of; a cloth is never laid upon the table, and the bread for the mid-day meal is usually cut from the loaf in advance for each person, and laid beside the plate. A full spread, with meat and other dishes, literally filling the table, so that there is plenty left after the meal is partaken of, they know not of; still they live, and secure a competency in a small way.

Rural life in Ontario is far preferable to anything these countries can produce. We are not forced to be soldiers, and we can buy and own absolutely the land which we cultivate. But there is another point, not usually thought of in regard to Ontario farming. That is its certainty. We never get a failure of crops, for although our crops may be more plentiful some years than others, we never fail really. We never get any serious drouths nor floods, and our cattle are never diseased, as they are in several States of the Union. Our taxes are so small a matter that we do not generally give them a second thought. Nor are our winters so severe that our stock will be injured by the cold; nor will our children coming from or going to school be caught in blizzards. But the farmer who prepares his land properly, and puts forth an effort in downright earnest, is bound to succeed.

He is eligible to any office within the gift of the people, if he be that way inclined, and he does not take off his hat to any lord or duke in the land. Literally he is master of his own situation; an honest, fearless, loyal, independent yeoman, with himselfand his family absolutely provided for, and above all want. Pulling up and moving away he never thinks of. He has his home, and knows what a home is and should be. The temptation to go upon some cheap lands out west, where grasshoppers are possible to destroy his year’s crop, he does not even think of. The western American’s ease and little regret in pulling up and leaving for a little farther west he cannot understand.

He sticks to his home, and yearly improves it and adds to its value, and is ready to fight for it if need be. Ontario runs away south into the best States—agriculturally—of the Union. Even some American writers honestly assert that it is better situated (north of the lakes) than their own lands in the same latitude, south of the lakes. For a fact, we know Ontario gets less snow than northern New York or Ohio does, and the seasons are not nearly so trying in Toronto as they are in Buffalo. Granted, first, that the reader knows of the richness of Ontario’s lands and its little waste places, and also of the downright hard work of its people and their love of home, if you will then take up the map and note how Ontario is situated—surrounded by water and having a summer nearly as long as that of the north half of France—you can come to no other conclusion but that, with a capital of $10,000 in a farm and appurtenances, in Ontario one can enjoy most and be the surest of success.

One great fact which distinguishes Ontario is its little waste land. Draw a line from Lake Simcoe toBelleville, and all that portion of old Ontario west of that line possesses less waste land than any tract of country of equal size known in the world. There are no mountain wastes nor extensive marshes within this space, but nicely undulating lands with frequent streams, and almost naturally drained. Farms in Ontario are 100 acres each, ordinarily, and the 100-acre farmer is a man generally to be respected. He brings his family up respectably, and educates them at the common school so that they are capable of filling almost any position in after life in which they may be placed. Such farmers are intelligent and more or less travelled. Last summer I recollect being the guest of a Yorkshire farmer who farmed 560 acres of Yorkshire lands. He was a man of sixty-five, wealthy, and had been on the farm all his lifetime. During this time he had been to London only twice, at some horse shows. The River Tweed, dividing England from Scotland, was only two hours distant from him by rail, and yet he had never crossed it. As to going over to Ireland, he had never even thought of it. Our Ontario farmer comes to our provincial shows, and jostles among city people now and again in our different cities, and thus gets his rough corners rubbed off. And he is far more than the equal in intelligence of any yeoman in the Old World of anything like his means.

The 100-acre farmer will ordinarily have 60 acres in crop yearly, which will average him $20 per acre. The balance of his farm is in hay, pasture, and forest.

Now, from this 60 acres of crop he nicely supports his family, and yearly puts by a nice little sum to buy lands for his growing boys when they shall need them; of course, he cannot save the whole $1,200 obtained for his crops, as his family must be maintained out of this as well as pay for repairs and improvements. However, most Canadian farmers’ wives supplement this grain product by the butter and cheese from the cows running upon the pastures.

Indeed, the wife’s help is a very great element to the farmer’s success, as regards saving money; and she deserves her place of importance beside her husband. Our Ontario farmer drives a good team upon the roads, encased in first-class harness, and a smart light spring buggy behind them. Rope traces and straw collars, which one sees in the South, would be beneath his dignity, and one must search Ontario over and over to find an example of such. And he is well clad in clothes, the product of the factory loom. Only a few years back he wore clothes made from home-grown wool spun by his good wife and woven upon some loom near at home. But latterly the factories have produced tweeds and fullcloths at so small a price that it has not paid him to work up his own wool. His table is well supplied with not only an abundance of food, but in great variety, fruit in various forms forming a feature at almost every meal. The universal meat diet of England is not acceptable to his palate nor suitable for our climate, for our systems require a laxative in this climate, which fruit gives him. His wife is more than theequal in cooking of her friends in Old England. She can compound more dishes out of the same material, make more tasteful and toothsome pastry than one can buy in a pastrycook’s shop in Europe. She does not consider it beneath her dignity assisting in milking the cows, teaching calves which are to be reared to drink milk, or possibly feeding the pigs if the men be busy.

As a transformation she can, after a wash, quickly don garments fit for the parlor, and entertain company at her board with an ease and heartiness truly surprising to European travellers who visit us. Even if not able to converse in half Frenchy English, many of them can dash off a number of tunes upon an organ or piano in a manner acceptable to most persons not musical critics. An organ is in most good farm-houses, and sometimes a piano, and the daughters are daily becoming proficient on them, practising after the evening milking is done.

Well might the European ask, “Where are your peasants?” These are our peasants, and the reason you do not recognize them is because they are on a higher plane in cultivation, taste and education than yours are; and even if they do appear as ladies and gentlemen, they are not above engaging in the arduous toil of the farm.

Ontario farms are worth so much in dollars, because, for the reason I have already given, of the little waste land, and also because of the industriousness of its people. Look across the border at our American cousins and you do not find the genuine Americandoing the downright hard work. The European emigrant performs that duty for him, while the American fills the offices to be filled, and does the scheming.

But the Ontario farmer will do downright hard work after the manner of his sires in the British Isles, and he has not yet learned to shirk it. It is this industry which makes our province, makes our lands sell so high, and gives his home an abundance, and puts yearly a nice sum at his credit in some savings bank. One great difference between the Canadian and the American is in this particular—the American does not lay up for his children as the Canadian tries to do. My observation leads me to think that the American does not put forth an especial effort to set his sons up in the farming or other business, but lets them commence at the foot of the ladder to work their own way up. On the contrary, the Canadian farmer, almost without exception, is yearly trying to lay aside a sum to buy, or help to buy, farms for his growing sons. Thus the Ontario farmer never gets satisfied, as it were, or never gives up work as long as he is able to perform it. Americans, on the other hand, will rest upon their laurels, and live without any exertion, on small incomes. Indeed, from my own knowledge, I know that many American farmers in Michigan have rented their small farms and moved into the villages to live on an income of $300 per year. Our farmers have the true British greed, and would not think of giving out on a $300 income. Now, I argue that our state of affairs is the best for the prosperity of our country. Never becoming satisfied, they never ceaseto work, and thus they have produced the most smiling and prosperous country in the world. This picture of Ontario farm life is true to-day, and I ask the reader if it is not as desirable a life as is obtainable anywhere. Our Ontario farmer owns his own soil, is well fed, housed, and clad, ever striving to do for his family, loyal to his government, and at peace with his God and with man. I have yet to find his equal, as a class, for the general well-being or common weal.

Until a few years past nearly all Ontario people did their year’s business with their town merchant on the credit basis. Goods for family use would be freely purchased on credit the whole year through, until fall came and the annual grain selling time, when large bills would be rendered by the merchant. Large enough they generally would be, for, buying goods without restraint and paying no money for them, the farmers would hardly realize that such seemingly small purchases from time to time would amount to so much in the fall. But little credit is now given, and goods and supplies are generally paid for as purchased. This very beneficial change is no doubt owing to the fact that now the farmer has a greater variety of products of the farm to sell than formerly, which come in in their turn in different seasons, and thus give him a steady supply of funds. Paying as he goes, he is not nearly so apt to buy things he does not really need, and his sum total of the cash purchases for the year will not amount to so much as his annual store bills did formerly. The merchant likewise can sell his goods closer for cash than he could if he had to waita whole year. The fact that the credit business is being largely superseded by the cash system is one of the best arguments as to the progress of the country. All along these townships lying upon Lake Ontario the farmer delivers his barley in the early fall by waggon to the elevator at the lake. This barley money usually gives the farmer his first fall money.

Tenant farmers generally pay their fall rent with their barley money. Very many of the teams coming down with barley take coal home with them. It is an undeniable fact that the lands bordering upon the lake do not have any more wood upon them. Fifteen years ago a person who would have made the assertion that the majority of the inhabitants would be burning coal to-day would have been scouted. It shows us how much we are dependent upon our neighbors south of us for our coal supply. There undoubtedly is abundance of wood northerly from central Ontario, but for fuel purposes it is almost useless to us. Our railways won’t carry the wood to us if they can get anything else to carry, and even having carried it, when the price is considered, wood becomes almost a luxury. We may as well look the future squarely in the face and realize that in a few years a great part of Ontario along the lakes must depend for fuel wholly upon United States coal. Formerly a few farmers of push and great physical strength would attend to their farms during the summer and follow lumbering and the timber business during the winter. That class of men possessed any amount of push, and performed more manual labor than any man can be found willingto do now, even for money. Numbers of such men became wealthy, for they had double profits coming to them all the time. Rudely as they farmed, they got a profit out of the virgin soil, and the winter’s limited business paid them as much more, hence those who would endure the severe physical strain necessary to carry on this mixed business made money rapidly. Such men got along faster than the ordinary farmer. But that is all changed now. Farming is now a matter of skill, and not brute force and strength as formerly. There is no longer any lumbering or timbering to be followed in the winter, and the Ontario farmer hereabout will get no more profit from that source. Then he must rely to-day only upon his farm and what he can make it do during the summer. When he used to swing his cradle among stumpy fields, then it was a question of physical endurance and strength. But all that is changed now, for his work is nearly all done by machinery, and he must learn to manage the machinery. To make money and succeed well at farming to-day requires as much skill as it does to succeed in any other calling. When the soil was new he could draw upon it unfairly, and still with all the abuse it smiled upon him. Seventeen successive crops of wheat upon the same land has not been uncommon in the past. And yet with all this abuse the last crop was nearly as good as the foregoing ones. This will give one an idea of the extraordinary richness of our soil, and without a doubt a good deal of our soil could be so abused now and it would continue to produce and pay. But the husbandman has learned to husband his resources, and refuses to draw so heavily upon his soil, and hence to-day he practises a succession of crops, roots, manuring, and ploughing in clover, roots, etc. This he has commenced to do lest he might exhaust his lands, not particularly because he had to do so, but simply through fear of the future. The day may come, when our lands have been cultivated as long as they have been in England, that we shall have to buy outside manures and pay ten dollars per acre for them, as the British farmer has to do; but since we do not, the lot of our farmers is ten dollars per acre better than that of the English farmer.

The most independent person in Canada to-day is the person who can do most things within himself. If a man were to emigrate to Canada who knew nothing but the art of cutting diamonds, his chances of success among us would be slim indeed. For general versatility the Ontario farmer is the equal of any people in any country. He can cultivate his lands, do an odd job of carpentry, build a log-house with his axe, and some can even shoe a horse or relay a plough coulter at their rude forges at their homes. Not long since I had occasion to call on a farmer and found him repairing the family clock, which obstinately refused to run in obedience to its pendulum. It was an ordinary brass affair, and not being a practical watchmaker, the farmer had taken the works out of their case and was vigorously boiling them in a pot of water on the stove. Rude as such clock repairing was, he succeeded in freeing it from superfluoushardened oil and grease, and got it in running order once more.

The Ontario farmer’s success is not anomalous when we come to consider him physically, capable as he is of performing an almost unlimited quantity of manual labor, and of so many kinds.

An American friend happened to be visiting me while a gathering was taking place not long ago here, and on viewing the farmers and their sons, made the significant remark, “What material for an army!”

Dean Stanley, who paid us a visit a few years before his death, said that “the people who could conquer this climate could achieve anything sought.” As to conquering the climate this we have done, and to-day there is no more law-abiding, peaceful, intelligent, and industrious class in any country than among the rural sections of Ontario.

The emigrant who comes to us complains that our farmers work him too hard, or, in other words, that he becomes a slave. During the pressing season of seeding and harvesting there are no people anywhere who work harder than our Ontario farmers do, and with our short seasons it must necessarily be so. As yet very few farmers ask their hired help to perform more work than they do themselves. The farmer generally works side by side with his hired man, and what the farmer can stand it would appear his hired man can. No farmer asks his hired man to plough in the drizzle and rain, which he had to do in England, and come in at night wet to the skin. He does not get his beer as he did in England, it is true, becausein our climate of extremes of heat and cold we do not need the beer, and were the hired man to partake of it as freely as he used to in England he could not perform his necessary work for a long time. He sits at the same table with his master generally, and gets just the same fare, and has a bed and room to himself, same as if quartered in an hotel. Meat three times a day he can usually have if he wants it, which he certainly did not get in his Old Country home. And he is paid for eight months’ work, with his board and washing included, $160, or for a year with the same perquisites, $200. Now, the emigrant who comes over here and expects us to feed and lodge him for nothing must certainly think this country a second garden of Eden. As to farm hands flocking into the cities during the winter, I have only to say that I do not see what possible business they can have there. If a man refuses to engage for a whole year he gets his $160 for eight months, and very many remain with some farmer during the winter, doing chores at a low pittance, or perhaps even for their board. Well, he has got his $160 for the eight months of the year, and during the winter he need not spend it, and by the winter’s rest he is recuperating his physical powers even if the farmer did work him very hard during the summer. Those who grumble at the life I have pictured of a farmer’s hired man had better go back to England; but, for a fact, we do not see them ever going back. But the thrifty emigrant, who works away and saves, soon gets enough money together to become a tenant farmer, and becomes himself boss inturn. Usually such men are far harder on their hired help than those whom they themselves worked for. As a tenant farmer he pays about $5.00 per acre per year rent for his farm and the taxes, and if he has a growing family and a saving helpmate, in a few years he has saved money enough to quite or nearly pay for a farm of his own. Could he have accomplished that in the Old World? And still they grumble at our country, call it rural slavery, and write home to Old Country journals letters calculated to do us harm. So many young men leaving their fathers’ farms and flocking to the cities and towns might lead some to infer that the farmers’ sons were sick of life upon the farm. I do not so interpret it. Take, for instance, a farmer owning 150 acres of land and having four sons. Now, to divide his land equally among his sons would give each thirty-seven and a half acres, which is too small for a farm to be profitable as a farm. Then the farmer educates a couple of his sons, who leave the family farm and pursue other callings. With the industrious habits they learned at home, and with good sound physical bodies, they are quite able to succeed in their new callings. One instance of signal success in Ontario farm lands comes to my mind, and I will mention it. A Canadian, the oldest son, whose father died, leaving the mother without means, went to work among the farmers at twelve years of age. For the first three years he only got $40 per year. Notwithstanding this low wage he saved a little out of it. As he grew older he began to get a little more wages, and thusworked seven years to save his first $400. At this time in his life he turned sharp around and went to school, and soon became a school-teacher. With his first year’s salary as teacher, and a few dollars he already possessed from his former earnings, he bought his fifty acres of land and paid about half down for it. Then he hired a man and started to cultivate the fifty acres, by the help of a yoke of oxen. Night and morning he worked faithfully upon his land, chopping and logging, and attending to his school duties during the day. Soon he had his first fifty acres paid for, and then bought another farm of the same size, adjoining it, which he paid for in the same manner that he paid for the first fifty acres, only sooner, for he had the proceeds of the first farm to help him. At this turn in his life he studied for one of the learned professions, and attained a degree, and also educated his other brothers and sisters as well. To-day this gentleman owns 500 acres of land, very nearly all paid for, and farms it himself. His land cannot be worth less than $50,000, and yet he is not over fifty years of age at this time. Another very important feature in this gentleman’s career is that his family have all been taught to labor, and have been brought up to industrious habits, and the individual members cannot fail to make their mark in our midst. Ye city dwellers, do not for a moment suppose that this is only a solitary instance of signal success of country life. Many more might be mentioned, but this is sufficient to show what push, determination and brains will accomplish in rural Ontario. What hehas done others can do, and are doing this day. Your examples of city dwellers’ success do not very much surpass this for the years during which the fortune was made. To “blow” about our own country is right and laudable, I maintain, especially when our country in its merits fully bears one out in the “blowing.”

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