CHAPTER I.
Backward, backward, through time’s vast chambers,
In a dreamful reverie go;
Flitting down the vanishing ages,
Fifty and two hundred years ago.
Between Lake Simcoe and Lake Huron,
In the radius of Ontario,
Waved a grand primeval forest
In the sunlight’s ebb and flow.
A great wide stretch of wooded landscape,
Interspersed by stream and rill;
With gentle swells and undulations,
And sylvan glade and shrouded hill.
And all this great wide reach was teeming
With all kind of luscious game;
The moose and red deer roamed by thousands,
In nature’s freedom went and came.
The savage bear and wild wolf haunted
This wide expanse in quest of prey;
The lynx and wildcat, too, were prowling
The dim aisles by night and day.
The crafty fox here thickly burrowed,
Mink, otter, and the festive coon;
The cunning beaver by the streamlet
Built under cover of night’s gloom.
The wild fowl covered all the streamlets—
Geese, ducks, and teal, and lonely loon;
Their ceaseless babble and their chatter
Enlivened all the forest’s gloom.
And song birds covered all the branches,
Sweet birds of every shade and hue;
And waves of melody they uttered,
As down the forest aisles they flew.
The night-bird, too, the night made vocal,
The cat-bird, owl, and whippoorwill;
They wakened up the dim recesses,
When summer nights were warm and still.
And through the awesome, stately forest,
Mysterious voices ebb and flow;
And weird, fantastic, ghostly shadows
Through faint, far distance palely go.
And Lake Simcoe and grand Lake Huron
Swarmed with fish in countless store;
All the warm bays and sunny inlets,
The streams and rivers round the shore.
And over all this wide expansion
The sweet wild winds in rapture blew,
Rustling through the dim old forest,
And o’er the lake’s wide bosom blue.
There sun and shadow alternating,
And skies of cloud or sapphire hue
Domed o’er the loveliness of nature—
The far, far past this picture knew.
Here was the home of the proud Hurons,
Fifty and two hundred years ago;
Thirty thousand happy Indians
By the bright water’s laughing flow.
Herein they dwelt for unknown ages,
By the Iroquois tribes hated so;
A fragment of some long lost nation,
Prehistoric, but who may know?
Aye, here they builded quaint, queer wigwams,
Indian towns by shore and stream,
Palisaded round and bastioned,
Double-rowed, and looped between.
Thus, to guard ’gainst outer foemen,
They builded strong, and to endure
The siege, or onslaught, or surprises,
They sought and labored to secure.
Within were store-rooms wide and ample,
With food to last at least a year,
From the Indian maize and cornfields—
Of famine they need have no fear.