Ontario in June--Snake fences--Road-work--Alsike clover fields--A
natural grazing country--Barley and marrowfat peas--Ontario in
July--Barley in full head--Ontario is a garden--Lake Ontario
surpasses Lake Geneva or Lake Leman--Summer delights--Fair
complexions of the people--Approach of the autumnal
season--Luxuriant orchards.
Driving through Ontario in June, the eye continually dwells upon a sea
of green, with scarcely any interlude of rock, swamp or broken land. It
is simply a succession of well-cultivated farms, mostly trim and nicely
kept and well fenced. In many respects our province resembles old
England, for, with all our vandalism, we have left a few groves of
native forest trees, which here and there dot the landscape, and present
to the view a beautiful, impenetrable, clearly-defined wall of green,
raised, of course, above the level green of the crops below at the
surface and extending up to their very bases. Our fences have, indeed,
presented a decided improvement during the past few years. Very many of
the boundary fences beside the highways are straight board fences, or
straight rail and post fences. Hedges, of course, we cannot boast of.
But our fences up to date present a clearly defined boundary of farms,
and form a bounded highway straight and clear, sixty-six feet wide.
In many of our still timbered portions of the province the old zig-zag
rail fence is in use. But we have now in most places in the province
passed by that day, and can no longer build such fences, for it is too
great a waste of timber, though in some respects it’s the best and
strongest fence we can possibly build, and will last the longest. But
its days are numbered, and the fences of the future will be wire fences,
which are now legal in our province. They have their advantages,
principally in allowing the winds of winter to pass freely through and
preventing drifts on the roads. By an Act of our Ontario Legislature,
township councils can by law allow owners who will build wire fences
before their farms to enclose six feet of the road allowance. Many
persons are already taking advantage of that Act, but at all events the
roads must be left fifty-four feet wide, taking off six feet from each
side.
Road-work is in June quite general all over the province, and when
driving along the highways one has to pass now and again over a few rods
of awfully rough, unfinished patches of road. Sometimes the turnpiking
is only half completed, or again the gravel has been left in great
heaps, which give to your carriage the motion of a vessel at sea as it
passes over the lumps. A few days, however, will remedy all that, as the
road-work gets completed. Brawny, sunburnt farmers, wearing their straw
hats, and with shirt sleeves rolled up, gather in groups under a
“pathmaster,” and perform the requisite number of days “working for the
King,” as it is termed. No doubt our fellows are quite as honest as any
one would be under like circumstances, but we have yet to learn that any
one has ever injured himself by road-work while so “working for the
King” on the roads.
Crops cover the ground completely, and thoroughly hide the soil beneath.
Many of them are, indeed, so high that they wave with the breezes. The
fields present one unbroken sea of level, green verdure, generally free
from all obstructions. Here and there, indeed, may be seen a nicely
formed pile of stone boulders, gradually picked up from the fields as
the plough exposes them to the surface, and yearly growing a little
larger by being added thereto by subsequent ploughings. The farmer can’t
afford obstructions these days in his fields, for in a few weeks reapers
will quickly cut these crops, or, in many instances, binders will both
cut and bind them at one process, and the farmer wants nothing in the
way to hinder these great labor-savers. In June haying has already
commenced, more especially clover crops. Where a crop of clover seed is
sought as a second crop in this season, the clover hay of the first crop
has been cut and garnered for some days. Alsike clover is in full bloom,
and I defy any reader to say that he ever passed any field, grove, or
flowers, in any part of the globe, which sends out a more pleasing
fragrance than this alsike clover does. To pass a field of alsike clover
when it’s in full blow is beautiful to the eye while resting on the
pinkish-white blows, and grateful to the sense of smell for its
delicate and pungent perfume. Ordinary sentences are tame, indeed, in
trying to describe the beauties of the alsike clover field in full bloom
in Ontario. It must be seen and smelled to be appreciated. Now, speaking
of all this alsike clover, and red clover as well, naturally leads one
to think, what can all this clover seed be used for? It is an accepted
fact, now, that Ontario can compete with the world in the growing of
clover seed. Germany has been our great competitor, but it is now
conceded that we can beat Germany. Driving along through the province in
June one passes in almost endless succession field after field of both
red clover and alsike, and the question naturally comes up, What is to
be done with all this seed? It would appear that Ontario can produce
enough clover seed to sow all those parts of our planet adapted to the
growing of clover. Recollect, all parts cannot grow clover. If you go
west and pass central Iowa, you leave the clover belt entirely; and if
you go south and cross the Ohio River, you will not find much more
clover. It is true that in Kentucky they boast of blue grass, which is
only our June grass allowed to grow up strong and vigorous. But our
Ontario is a natural clover country. If we leave a field uncultivated,
it somehow, naturally of itself, gets back in clover, no matter if none
were sown on the field.
Ontario is a natural grazing country; it must be, when the clover is so
indigenous to the soil. It is just as well for our farmers to thoroughly
grasp this fact, for with our innumerable springs and rills and
abounding clover, we have one of the best cattle and horse-raising
countries in the world. If the West, which cannot grow clover and such
light-colored barley as the Americans want, is content to grow wheat, we
had better by far let the West do it and confine ourselves to the
specialties in which they cannot compete with us.
In barley and marrowfat peas we have a monopoly. On account of the money
we get for the clover-seed itself we are again ahead of them, and are
more than ahead of them in raising horses and cattle, which feed upon
our clover. There is something in our climate, soil and feed which
produces horses large and strong, which are ahead of the West by far.
Hence the westerners continually buy from us to get our stock.
To prove that wheat does not pay, I will instance that the rent of land
in Ontario County is usually $5.00 per acre. No matter if one owns his
own farm, it is worth that as well. Seed, again, is worth $2.00 per acre
for wheat, and the cultivation and harvesting is worth another $7.00 per
acre, making the acre of wheat cost $14 per acre. Now, at an average
yield of twenty-five bushels per acre, and this sold at 75 cents per
bushel, it yields $18.75 per acre, or only $4.75 more than the crop
cost. It’s no pay, and there’s no other way to look at it, and hereafter
we ought to raise wheat enough only for our own use, as long as it’s
such a drug on the market, especially so when we can do much better with
peas, barley, cattle and horses. Let those interested ponder over this
point.
It might be thought that we shall raise too much clover-seed for the
market. It is used as a dye in Great Britain for certain cloths, we are
told, and all of our seed is not sown. Hence it is hardly probable we
shall produce too much. In the matter of peas, we have never yet
produced more marrowfat peas than Europe will take from us. Recollect,
but few other countries can produce marrowfat peas. Some places have the
bug and mildew, and can’t grow the peas at all, and we have this crop
almost to ourselves. Barley, it seems, the Americans will buy from us as
long as we grow it, for it’s the best. And in fruit we all know we can
produce the best keepers in the world, so that our outlook in Ontario is
bright for the future.
When July comes some portions of our province sometimes suffer slightly
from drouth. Seldom, however, has the drouth been severe enough to cause
anything like a failure in crops, although late sown crops here and
there have been occasionally light. This, however, is not so general as
to apply to the whole province, for in some sections you may see that
our fields never smile more sweetly upon us than they do at this season.
In July fall wheat is just turning and beginning to look like fields of
gold. In spots in the fields the wheat has been winter-killed, and many
pieces are ploughed up entirely. Looking over those fields which were
ploughed up and sowed with some spring crop, they present a rather odd
appearance, for the vitality of the fall wheat is so great that in many
places the ploughing did not kill it, and consequently we see tufts of
great tall heads of fall wheat now ripening among the still green and
much shorter crop of spring grain. Those who are not familiar with fall
wheat could scarcely get an idea how it occurs that fall wheat can be
ripening in and among a spring crop, quite green as yet.
Barley in July is in full head and just commencing to turn yellow.
Fields upon fields of this grain are passed as one drives on our
highways. Those who have not driven much upon our roads, and closely
observed, can scarcely believe how general the barley crop is in Ontario
at this season. Almost invariably it is looking well, and if it be not
as a whole an extremely heavy crop, yet it will be a paying one, and one
we must grow. Laying aside all matters of temperance and Scott Act, ours
is a barley country, and barley we must grow. Peas are now mostly in
full blow, and are rank and of the deepest green. A more luxuriant
growth than our pea crop in most seasons cannot be found in any country.
If you would judge of the unsurpassed fertility of our soils, just go
and see our pea crops. Ontario alone can furnish the soup basis for all
the navies of the world.
Our spring wheat is just now putting forth its ear. Oats are just
beginning to head. The drouth seems to have affected oats more than any
other crop so far. They may, however, if we get some rains, head up
heavy, but in any event the straw will be rather short.
We live in a garden here in Ontario. No one who drives about our roads
can come to any other conclusion. There are no blanks, and but little
broken land; but few swamps, and scarcely a break. Only a few days ago I
drove twelve miles without passing a hill higher than forty feet, or
seeing an acre of broken land; just one mass of green in the fields.
There was positively not one foot of broken land for the whole twelve
miles, and I feel that I have a right to say that we live in a garden.
Those who are at home most of the time do not realize that they are
living under the most favorable conditions in the world. During a lot of
travel in every State of the American Union, I have never yet seen
anything over there to approach our own country. Of course, out West one
can traverse miles upon miles of corn fields, but it’s all corn; but
here it’s a general variety, which is so pleasant to the eye, and which
also brings in our great returns. And our fruits are upon every hand,
from the grape to the strawberry, to the apple and pear, and all
succeeding. The only parallel that I ever saw to Ontario is in the
plains of Hungary, say, about Buda-Pesth. There is a country very much
resembling Ontario, but, of course, not anything like it in size. It was
from this locality that we got our present roller process of making
flour. I am only making this comparison with Hungary to let our
Ontarians know that we have, in truth, the finest country in this world,
that we may all be spurred on to cultivate our lands better, for we are
only yet in our infancy. Let us all realize that our lands never refuse,
when properly cultivated, to produce anything which will grow in the
north temperate zone. Famed Geneva or Leman cannot surpass our
beautiful Lake Ontario; and then as to size and extent, there’s no
comparison to be made. And yet it is beautiful around Lake Leman, and
locations along its shores are much sought by all Europe, and command
unheard-of prices. Our shore is just as beautiful, and our waters just
as limpid and just as cool. About Constantinople is the only other place
I can name as being at all worthy of comparison with our Lakes Ontario
and Erie shore for residences. Now, it is beautiful about the Bosphorus,
and charming beyond measure, and Constantinople must always be a great
city, no matter who possesses it. Yet, somehow, just a little
digressing, we would all like to see Britain owning it, but Russia
never. Then, I say, about Lake Leman and the Bosphorus are the only
parallels to our places and resorts along these north shores of our
Great Lakes. On the whole, the north shore of Lake Ontario has the
preference, for it’s never so hot here at any time as it is about Geneva
or Constantinople. We have in Ontario great inland, fresh-water seas,
having pure, limpid waters, and a soil which will discount any in the
world beside them, and an equable climate. If it does get warm for a day
or two, it never remains too uncomfortably so for long, and our evenings
are generally cool and pleasant from the lake breezes. Going down into a
cellar like the Dakotans to escape hot breezes, which there become
insufferable, we never think of. Already along the north shore of Lake
Ontario, from Niagara to Kingston, our people gather during the summer
months by thousands. Between Hamilton and Toronto, and down as far as
Belleville, there are hundreds of summering camps. As one passes along
the roads near the lake one sees thousands upon thousands of ladies
dressed in white, and gentlemen in shirt-sleeves sporting in the groves,
on the green along the shores, or boating about bays and inlets.
People dot the landscape for a couple of hundred miles, and flit to and
fro among the leafy bowers. It would, indeed, be hard to find a prettier
sight than that of our people summering along the lake banks these July
days. While other persons south of us, over in Uncle Sam’s dominions,
are sweltering with the thermometer at 104° in the shade, our people are
pleasantly cool along our northern lake shores. The consequence is that
summer heats do not deplete us. Saffron yellow faces, with high
protruding cheek bones, accompanied by dark circles under the eyes, such
as are found in hot districts where the thermometer will persist in
getting up to 104° and staying there, we know not of at all. Ontarians
are a plump, well-developed people, and have, as a rule, fair
complexions and good skins. Our ladies are just stout enough to be
attractive under these conditions, and developing their physique as they
do along our lakes, by picnicking and rowing and games, are the peers of
any in the world. Yea! to make a quick and perhaps unseemly comparison,
I wish to say that the same causes and the same equable cool temperature
which cause our ladies’ cheeks to burnish red and brown, produce for us
in our fields the finest barley in the world and the best peas. So
Nature has been prodigal to us in her gifts. About Toronto, of course,
the greater population centres, and within a radius of thirty miles or
so, along the lake on either side, the greater number of summer
saunterers are to be seen. As Toronto gets on up to a quarter of a
million of inhabitants, as it must, all available points upon the lake
shores will be seized upon for outing for its citizens. The day,
moreover, must be far distant when we shall be much crowded for space
along the lake banks. But it does not need a very far-seeing prophet to
see that a dense population must centre in Ontario along our lakes.
Think what it was, and you will conclude that rapid as our progress has
been, for the next twenty-five or thirty years our progress and increase
in population will be five-fold what it was in the past twenty-five or
thirty years. Ontarians need not go to Cacouna, or Murray Bay, or
anywhere else for a summering. We can do better at home along our own
waters. As time goes on we must get more and more of our American
cousins from the region of 104° in the shade to come and summer with us.
Ontario, in fact, must ultimately be the great summer resort of this
continent. Take the readings of the thermometer in Toronto alone, and
you will find that it possesses the most equable climate of any city in
America east of the Rocky Mountains; and beautiful, and clear, and
healthy as it is, it must be, as it now is, and far more so, the great
metropolitan city of our country. Ontarians, let us cherish our homes
and our birthrights.
As the fall season comes to us in Ontario the result of the last
summer’s bountifulness is visibly apparent. On every side the steady,
unremitting drone or hum of the threshing-machines daily falls upon the
ear, and well we know that for every hour the thresher runs, bushels
upon bushels of grain are being gathered into the farmers’ granaries.
Dust-begrimed, sweaty men, with forks in hand, are all the time
endeavoring to stop its spacious maw, but never succeeding, for its
capacity of digestion is inexorable, and after each forkful it is quite
as ready again for another, and so the work goes on by the hour (and the
hum comes to the listener two miles away, on the wind), giving the
husbandman an abundance for the season. There is scarcely a cessation
until the noon hour arrives, when the shrill, ambitious scream of the
piping engine which furnishes the motive power gives the welcome warning
that dinner is ready. The noon hour past, again a scream from the
ambitious engine, as if it would try to be entered among the fellowship
of its greater brother engines in our manufactories and upon our
railways. With their shirts half dry the farmers again tend to the
machine’s voracious maw, knowing full well that it’s only a question of
a few minutes, when the increased perspiration will wet them as fully as
before.
The golden apples of Hesperides were never more beautiful or pleasing to
the eye than those of our orchards, laden with their golden fruit. It is
presumed these golden apples were oranges, and even so, it is just a
question if they ever were prettier than many of our colored apples. The
“King” with its red cheeks, or the “Fameuse,” and many other kinds will
rival the famed oranges for beauty any day. Manifestly one of the
prettiest sights in nature is to see an orchard of considerable size in
Ontario, heavily laden with fruit, and its limbs bending to the ground
with their burdens. Let the breeze just gently stir the leaves, and sway
the branches, and the dancing sunbeams glinting upon the sheen of the
apples’ sides, and then as you walk through and among the trees, nature
smiles at you, and you realize that ours is indeed a beauteous and
kindly land.
And this is our autumn, clearly defined, and in a few days to be
rendered doubly beautiful as the first frosts touch the foliage upon the
maples, the birches, and the beeches, and transform their leaves into a
broad gallery of the brightest and most variegated colors. Tropical
dwellers, who have never seen the transformation, know not of the beauty
this world in our north temperate zone affords. It is supposed to be
ever green in the tropics, but the winter green down there is not
beautiful, but a dull, dusty, dark russet. This decided change, which
our fall season produces, they can have no conception of, and we would
not trade our season with them if we could. Man loves variety. Universal
green one tires of, but our recurring seasons always awaken in us a
zest, and we love them in their turn.
Indian summer is soon upon us, with its delicious dreamy haze, when life
out-of-doors is appreciated to its fullest extent. You can never quite
make up your mind, when this season is with us, whether it be too warm
or too cold. Physical existence becomes a perfect luxury, and a feeling
of sensuousness gradually steals over one. During all the travels I
have made to other lands, in different climates, I have yet to find the
equal of our Indian summer. Gradually the frost of the nights gets more
intense and the leaves fall, and are blown in windrows by the winds.
Trees overhanging streams completely cover the still pools with their
leaves; the bark of the birch, by way of contrast, is whiter if possible
than before, and the few remaining leaves upon the almost nude branches
have not yet lost their gay colors. Now let the mid-day sun shine upon
valley and grotto, and glimmer and dance upon the thin film of last
night’s ice, and you have a picture that even the most obtuse cannot
fail to love at sight.
Day by day nature becomes stiller. The earthworm has gone deeper into
the soil, the birds have left us for the south, and only the shrill pipe
of the blue jay remains of the birds’ summer campaign. Solitary crows,
indeed, are almost ever ubiquitous, and their parting caw! caw! will
soon announce the order of their going. The fox has prepared his hole by
the side of some upturned tree, and the chipmunk has laid away his store
of beechnuts for a winter supply. Nature is preparing for winter. This
is the interregnum, as it were, and it is neither autumn nor winter. The
farmer daily follows his plough, if the previous night’s frost has not
been too severe. If it has, he must need wait until nine or ten o’clock,
to let the previous night’s freeze soften in the sun’s rays. About the
middle of December he has to lay his plough aside, for at last, after
repeated warnings, gentle enough at first, the frost is really upon
him.