During these midwinter days in central Ontario, our school-boys are trudging through snows and amidst frosts to the Common School. Many an urchin these days declaims on the usual Friday afternoon:
“The bluebird and the swallow,
From the sweet south grove,
The robin leaves its quarters
In the deep pine grove;
I know from whence they started
On their happy homeward track;
To-night you’ll hear them answer
With their clack, clack, clack.”
Or those who are more advanced, the more ambitious, essay:
“On Linden when the sun was low,
All bloodless lay the untrodden snow.”
Glorious Common Schools! and our own quite up to any in the world. And, without a shadow of a doubt, too, these urchins who are to-day, during this midwinter, so declaiming, will become our future orators, and their voices will resound in great halls of legislation or fill pulpits in our land. Let us hope that when they grow to manhood they may never become food for powder, and, so far as their military education is concerned, let it be conspicuous by its absence; and yet no loss will be felt, for it will not be among the things needed. Happy Ontario! If we were Germans or Frenchmen, we must serve three years in the army whether we would or not. This is only one more instance named to prove to us all that our own country is the happiest and the freest in the world, and that our people are generally well-to-do and comfortable in their homes, in food and clothing.
The mornings of late autumn, as the nights get longer, begin to have a nipping air. Ponds of water are covered with a glare and safe coat of ice, and our youngsters get out their skates, so carefully laid away last season. The children trudge away to school, and their color is heightened by the morning frost and wind; but gradually the human system is getting accustomed to the change of the season, and the dry, pleasant cold is enjoyable. Immense ice hummocks form upon the banks of our large lakes. They are conical and steep, or blunt and rolling, with a flat place here and there among the convolutions. Daily, as the cold strengthens and the winds dash the billows upon the ice-banks as if they would destroy them, they gather from each wave a little more frozen from it, and so work out from the shore, solid and immovable, as if to entirely close over our inland sea’s surface; but they do not, and they never succeed in effecting any permanent lodgment more than eight or ten rods from the shore. Somehow in freezing they invariably leave holes here and there. Now, let a storm come on and the breakers be driven against the ice-banks and under them—for they do not reach the bottom in any deep water—the pent-up water under the banks, driven up with terrific force by each incoming sea, tries to find an escape. These holes, in a measure, serve for an escape. Sprays or jets of water will be forced up through these holes twenty feet into the air, only to fall upon the surrounding ice and be frozen as hard as its neighboring globules in their icy immobility. The blow-holes of a whale furnish a good analogy to the blow-holes in the ice. Indeed, the most powerful whale can scarcely expel the water from his blow-holes higher than a storm forces it up among the ice-dunes. And as they get too high or too heavy near the outer edge, they break away in great lumps and go floating upon the surface. A change in the direction of the wind sails them away, and we see upon our inland seas ice islands sometimes many miles in extent. Look again for the ice islands in a few hours, and not a trace is seen. The waters are a deep blue, in strong contrast to the white snow upon the shore or the ice upon the edge. Stand upon an eminence and look along the shores and outer edge of the ice-bank, so firmly rooted to the margin. It is jagged and furrowed, and honeycombed, and awful, and withal so still. Not a bird is wheeling over the surface of the water, not a sail is upon it. The voice of Nature is effectually hushed to rest. While you are still observing, let the sun shine upon the ice and water, and you can with difficulty take your eyes off the picture—as fine a picture of the Arctic as we can get, even if it be in miniature. What a contrast from our golden autumn! Those of us who are not particularly subject to lung troubles and who are well fed and clad, really enjoy our dry and beautiful cold and the glint of the Arctic regions which these pictures afford us. Clearly defined and unmistakable is this our winter.
CHAPTER XI.
The coming of spring—Fishing by torch-light—Sudden beauty of the springtime—Seeding—Foul weeds—Hospitality of Ontario farmers.
The reign of winter on the lake shore, with its hummocks of broken ice, seems longer than it really is. Those who observe it day by day are glad when March comes, with its lengthening days and its presage of spring. Soon we have a few days’ sunshine, and perhaps a warm pervasive rain. The change thus made is scarcely credible to those who have not seen it. In a few hours, with the sea beating upon this ice, before so unassailable, the banks shrivel the ice away. Here and there along the shores and among the sands obstinate pieces of ice still linger for a few days, half covered by the sands, which have thus far protected them. But spring, joyous spring, is near. The ubiquitous crow’s caw is once more in the air. Troops of wild ducks convene in the open spaces of our marshes and ponds. Sportsmen, before the light of day, creep up to the open water, and the first morning rays are greeted with a steady bang, bang. The sportsman has his reward. Should the lake surface be rough, so that the ducks cannot rest there, they are forced to fly back and forth, and the shooting goes on all through the day.
The fishing time arrives almost before we have expected it. You are made aware of it, perhaps, by a neighbor coming to borrow a spear. Now, nightly, pitch-pine torches will flare and blaze, casting a lurid light along our creeks. Stand at a distance and watch the fishers. See how their forms are increased in size until they look like veritable giants in the haze of the blazing light-jack. Hear their shouts as they race up and down the stream for suckers, pike, mullet and eels. “Here he goes”; “there’s another”; “plague on your jack—you missed that big fellow”; “hand me that spear, you are no good as a sportsman.” So the fun and jollity goes on far into the evening.