Meantime Jean and her father were spending their four precious hours on
Bay-quah-de-nah-shing. They drove from one point to another through the
hardwood and the clearings, now stopping to shake hands with some old
friend, now pausing to survey some pleasant prospect. At four o’clock
they reached the top of the mountain, whence both Canada and Michigan
could be seen.
At their feet lay the long southern end of the island, miles on miles of
treetops. Beyond it, under the shadows of the flying clouds, a score of
smaller islands were visible, and across them the sunlight dreamed of
violets.
At the first touch of all this beauty poor Jean felt the tears coming,
and glanced back to see if she must hide them from the driver. But he
had disappeared. She drew closer to her father’s side, and he clasped
her with one arm.
He had been there with surveyors whose only interest was to increase the
lines of division. He had been there with a historian to show him where
the British flag had floated for thirteen years after the peace of Ghent
ought to have hauled it down. He had been there with Ojeeg, who could
stand for a long time in silence to survey his ancient homeland, but who
would be sure at last to say something bitter about the trading posts
where his ancestors were deliberately made drunkards.
But the old man had ceased from bitterness. He felt it useless to lament
the passing of fox or hunter. He felt it equally useless to lament men’s
hunger for land. Here he had stood with bowed head thinking of forty
youths whom he had slain when land hunger plunged Columbia into civil
war. He had done what he thought was right, but that could not save him
from the infinite pity of it. He could no more reverse the deed than he
could whiten an unhappy mulatto or darken him again to a happy negro.
He had been there in 1879, the year when this boundary was first
endangered by the seal question. Till that time men had been content to
round up young bulls and knock them on the head, but thereafter women
were to be richly clad with skins of mothers. For a time it looked as if
this river would be run red with blood of boys disputing the right to
kill the unborn, but in 1893 the danger passed, and both sides proceeded
to exterminate the race of seals.
He had good hope that this boundary would remain unfortified, at least
until Jean’s grandchildren were past the age when they might be drafted.
He did not doubt the good intentions of either nation.
But there was no more frontier left, and no more chance for the
democracy which is possible when land is abundant and farmers are few.
Soon these islands would be taken for summer homes by money lenders.
Soon industrial uses would be found for these delicate peninsulas. Soon
the stratification of classes would set in, with Praetorian guards to
pay. This little picture of peace was a mere utopia, like the colored
perfection seen on the ground glass of a camera.
But for a moment he stood above all history. He was looking down on
beauty which is older than the human race and which will last when the
race is gone. Before him were spread the kingdoms of earth, not as they
ever were, but as he wished they might have been. Long he gazed, looking
down on perfect silence, shore on shore rimmed with the intimate sea.
The coasts of enemies were blending. Continent faded into continent, as
if all the world were one at heart. Nations sundered by mountains and by
mutual fear were hid together in the self-same cloud. All human effort
seemed united to conquer, but not to ravish, the beautiful and exacting
earth.
It was only a wish, but it had power to strengthen him. So one last
look, dear as the face of Jean’s mother. As he swept the scene with his
weak human vision he murmured some lines of Greek—the lines wherein
Menander counts him happiest who, before returning whence he came, gazes
upon the holy things, the common sun, the water, the clouds. Then
beneath the nimbus a great pure beam struggled down, whitening islands
so as no fuller on earth can whiten them.