CHAPTER XII.

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.