2
BLUFF AND SHORE
There is no playground like a sandy shore—and this was sheltered from the north by a high clay bluff that tempered all voices from below and made a sounding board for the winds. The beach, however, was not as broad then as now. To the east for a mile is a shallow sickle of shore with breakers on the point. In itself this indentation is but a squab of the main Pigeon Bay, which stretches around for twenty miles and is formed of Pelee Point, the most southern extension of Canada. The nearer and lesser point is like a bit of the Mediterranean. It takes the greys of the rain-days with a beauty and power of its own, and the mornings flash upon it. I call it the Other Shore, a structure of idealism forming upon it from much contemplation at the desk. The young people turn to it often from the classes.
The height of land from which the Other Shore is best visible had merely been seen so far from the swimming place in front of the rented cottages. It was while in the water that I determined to explore. The first thing that impressed me when I reached the eminence was the silence. It was something to be dreamed of, when the Lake was also still. There was no road; a hay field came down to the very edge of the bluff, and the shore fifty feet below was narrow and rocky. Very few people passed there. That most comfortable little town was lying against the rear horizon to the West. I used to come in the evenings and smoke as the sun went down. Sometimes the beauty of it was all I could bear—the voices of children in the distance and the Pelee light flashing every seven seconds far out in the Lake.
I first saw it in dry summer weather and did not know that a bumper crop of frogs had been harvested that Spring from the deep, grass-covered hollows formed by the removal of clay for a brick-business long ago. There was good forage on the mounds, which I did not appreciate at the time. The fact is these mounds were formed of pure dark loam, as fine a soil as anywhere in the Lake Country.
Those of the dim eyes say that once upon a time an orchard and brick-house stood on a bluff in front of the brick-yard, on a natural point, but that the Lake had nibbled and nibbled, finally digesting the property, fruit-trees, brick-house and all.
I could well believe it when the first storm came. An East wind for three days brought steady deluges of high water that wore down the shore-line almost visibly. A week later came a West wind that enfiladed, so that what remained of the little point was caught in the cross-play of the weathers. If some one did not intervene, the brick-yard site would follow the orchard—that was clear.