The settlements in central Canada were at this time for the most part close to the edge of the lake. Many very worthy, hard-working, law-abiding men and women of Canada found their last resting places in places of sepulture, as they had found their homes, beside the waters of Lake Ontario. Most pathetically all such graveyards appeal to the tender side of any Canadian who loves his country and his fellows. When we stop to consider all the hardships they had gone through, with unremitting days, weeks, months and years of the hardest and most strenuous muscle-aching toil, and remember, too, that they fought and conquered the forests of Canada, it would not be human to pass by the memory of such a noble race. Their fight had not the spur of excitement to keep up their courage, as in war, but it was a fight, nevertheless—silent, monotonous, trackless, soundless and alone, in forests greater than which earth presents few examples if any.
Noble men and women, pioneers of Canada, who gave us our birthright, you merit our regard and ungrudgingly you shall have it! On earth is no greater or more glittering example of a better, more prudent, loyal, law-abiding, religious and industrious people than were those now asleep in the soil of Canada, and from whom we sprang.
Old Ontario generally is placid and beautiful, ultra-marine blue, and shimmering. But he is not always so. When rude Boreas awakes the slumbering giant, he frets, and froths, and spumes, and roars. As he is in his might he becomes awful to look upon, and doubly so if one ventures upon his bosom. And while he is spurring and warring, his waves continually come upon the shore, each time a little higher and higher, searching each nook, cranny and fissure along the bank of the water’s edge. Many such storms, you can easily understand, you who live distant from navigable and great waters, tend to undermine the foundations of the banks, which after a few more beatings fall with a plunge, a roar, and a cloud of densest dust, into the waters below. In this manner does old Ontario encroach at points upon the land. The sequel may be readily seen. Those in their graves must give them up, while their bones whiten the shingle for many a sunshiny day. This is no fanciful picture. With a fowling-piece upon his shoulder the author has passed along the foot of the bank, where a graveyard is, and seen skulls, long hair, ribs, femurs and other larger bones of the human body bestrewing the beach. And he has seen also where the bank has fallen away, only one-half the length of the grave, and where only one-half of the skeleton went down with the submerged bank, while the other half remained in the grave, and the point of severance of the bones was plainly observable on the bank above the beholder’s head. Flesh, of course, there is none. Time has long since decayed and changed that.
Noble men and women, the pioneers of Canada, you deserve better graves, and cushions to lie on of the softest and most enduring velvet!
Pursuing this subject a little further, the author may observe that he personally owns a graveyard on a large farm which has been used by whites since 1798 and by red men before that on Lake Ontario
OLD GRAVEYARD NEAR OSHAWA, THE PROPERTY OF THE AUTHOR.
Graveyard on a bluff beside Lake Ontario, at Port Oshawa, overlooking the surrounding country for a radius of ten miles. The red man, with an eye to beauty, first used this for his place of sepulture, and now my tenants plough out skulls, stone pipes, thigh bones, and iron tomahawks with a star on them, which were given to the Indians by the French before the English Conquest of Canada. The waves of Lake Ontario perform a perpetual requiem to the memory of Indians and whites here interred.
shore, where the waves produce a perpetual lullaby and a requiem to the sainted memories of the dead.