He has built his house, like the eagle his eyry, on a bold high cliff overhanging the lake. On the east there is a precipitous descent into a wild, woody ravine, along the bottom of which winds a gentle stream, till it steals into the lake: this stream is in winter a raging torrent. The storms and the gradual action of the waves have detached large portions of the cliff in front of the house, and with them huge trees. Along the lake-shore I found trunks and roots of trees half buried in the sand, or half overflowed with water, which I often mistook for rocks. I remember one large tree which, in falling headlong, still remained suspended by its long and strong fibres to the cliff above. Its position was now reversed: the top hung downwards, shivered and denuded; the large spread root, upturned, formed a platform, on which new earth had accumulated, and a new vegetation sprung forth, of flowers, and bushes, and sucklings. Altogether it was a most picturesque and curious object.
Lake Erie, as the geography book says, is two hundred and eighty miles long, and here, at Port Talbot, which is near the centre, about seventy miles across. The Colonel tells me that it has been more than once frozen over from side to side; but I do not see how this fact could be ascertained, as no one has been known to cross to the opposite shore on the ice. It is true that more ice accumulates in this lake than in any other of the great lakes, by reason of its shallowness: it can be sounded through its whole extent, while the other lakes are found in some parts unfathomable.
But to return to the château. It is a long wooden building, chiefly of rough logs, with a covered porch running along the south side. Here I found suspended, among sundry implements of husbandry, one of those ferocious animals of the feline kind, called here the cat-a-mountain, and by some the American tiger, or panther, which it more resembles. This one, which had been killed in its attack on the fold or poultry-yard, was at least four feet in length, and glared on me from the rafters above ghastly and horrible. The interior of the house contains several comfortable lodging-rooms, and one really handsome one, the dining-room. There is a large kitchen with a tremendously hospitable chimney; and underground are cellars for storing wine, milk, and provisions. Around the house stands a vast variety of outbuildings of all imaginable shapes and sizes, and disposed without the slightest regard to order or symmetry. One of these is the very log hut which the Colonel erected for shelter when he first "sat down in the bush," four-and-thirty years ago, and which he is naturally unwilling to remove. Many of these outbuildings are to shelter the geese and poultry, of which he rears an innumerable quantity. Beyond these is the cliff, looking over the wide blue lake, on which I have counted six schooners at a time with their white sails. On the left is Port Stanley. Behind the house lies an open tract of land, prettily broken and varied, where large flocks of sheep and cattle are feeding, the whole enclosed by beautiful and luxuriant woods, through which runs the little creek or river above mentioned.
The farm consists of six hundred acres; but as the Colonel is not quite so active as he used to be, and does not employ a bailiff or overseer, the management is said to be slovenly, and not so productive as it might be.
He has sixteen acres of orchard-ground, in which he has planted and reared with success all the common European fruits, as apples, pears, plums, cherries, in abundance; but what delighted me beyond everything else, was a garden of more than two acres, very neatly laid out and enclosed, and in which he evidently took exceeding pride and pleasure; it was the first thing he showed me after my arrival. It abounds in roses of different kinds, the cuttings of which he had brought himself from England in the few visits he had made there. Of these he gathered the most beautiful buds, and presented them to me with such an air as might have become Dick Talbot presenting a bouquet to Miss Jennings.[14] We then sat down on a pretty seat under a tree, where he told me he often came to meditate. He described the appearance of the spot when he first came here as contrasted with its present appearance, or we discussed the exploits of some of his celebrated and gallant ancestors, with whom my acquaintance was (luckily) almost as intimate as his own. Family and aristocratic pride I found a prominent feature in the character of this remarkable man. A Talbot of Malahide, of a family representing the same barony from father to son for six hundred years, he set, not unreasonably, a high value on his noble and unstained lineage; and, in his lonely position, the simplicity of his life and manners lent to these lofty and not unreal pretensions a kind of poetical dignity.
I told him of the surmises of the people relative to his early life and his motives for emigrating, at which he laughed.
"Charlevoix," said he, "was, I believe, the true cause of my coming to this place. You know he calls this the 'Paradise of the Hurons.' Now I was resolved to get to paradise by hook or by crook, and so I came here."
He added, more seriously, "I have accomplished what I resolved to do—it is done; but I would not, if any one was to offer me the universe, go through again the horrors I have undergone in forming this settlement. But do not imagine I repent it; I like my retirement."
He then broke out against the follies, and falsehoods, and restrictions of artificial life, in bitter and scornful terms; no ascetic monk or radical philosopher could have been more eloquently indignant.
I said it was granted to few to live a life of such complete retirement, and at the same time such general utility; in flying from the world, he had benefited it: and I added, that I was glad to see him so happy.