Longman’s Magazine/Summering in Canadian Backwoods

by Algernon Blackwood

With the word Muskoka there rises before my mind a picture of ideal summer loveliness. Three lakes I see, each about twenty miles by four, hidden cosily away in the heart of an immense stretch of Canadian forest. They are dotted with miniature archipelagos of pine-clad islands of every shape and size, that seem to float half on the blue waters and half in the haze of the soft Indian summer. The smoke of forest fires is in the air, with its strange fragrance and its mystery. Down the glades that everywhere pierce the huge mainland pinewoods flash the crimson and golden fires of dying maples and basswood trees. It is September. A pleasant west wind has been blowing all day, and is now going to rest with the sun. On its last breath come the resinous odours from miles and miles of trees basking all day long in the delicious heat⁠—thousands and thousands of hemlock, pine, cedar, spruce and balsam. There are shadows in the sky and upon the lake. Already the eastern shores of the islands are growing dark, and night is settling down upon the woods⁠—woods carpeted with moss a foot thick and knee-high with troops of graceful ferns.

There is a growing stillness in the air. Every moment the waves pass and lessen, weary of their long dance to the ceaseless music of the west wind; the streaks of foam melt away into the gathering darkness; the tumbling of the surf upon the shore sinks into a confused murmur, and the wind in the crests of the hemlocks sighs forth its gentle welcome to the stars. The lake is composing itself for sleep⁠—its long, dreamless sleep beneath the moon that soon now will rise over the distant ridge of pines. Soon there will be no sound but the splash and drip round the grey Laurentian rocks that fringe every island and run out here and there into dangerous jagged reefs. But, perhaps, if your ears are trained to the necessary degree, you may catch that faint indescribable murmur of the forest life coming down to drink, the bestirring of countless slender legs, the shaking of furry bodies, and the tread of small feet and hoofs on the moss and pine needles. For with the setting of the sun the forest life rises and moves. It travels by night and rests by day. The evening drink is the beginning and not the end of the activity. The glades are alive and moving, and the moon peeping through the tangle of branches sees graceful shifting forms where a few hours before the sunlight found only ferns and moss and eddies of fallen leaves.

And when the sun is quite down, and the stars are out, perhaps the Northern Lights will dance and flash in weird splendour round the polestar for half the night, winning wonderful reflections from the still waters and warning the watchful hunters of the approach of cold and stormy weather.

The Muskoka Lakes have a charm peculiarly their own, and the summers I have spent in that invigorating atmosphere of pine forests, 800 feet above the sea, sometimes with tent and canoe, sometimes in the greater luxury of the hospitable island-homes, are certainly among the pleasantest memories of many years spent in Canada. Yet this fascinating nook in the Ontario backwoods is unknown to the ordinary traveller. Having “done” Niagara and Quebec, he forsakes Eastern Canada and rushes on with feverish haste to see the great lakes, the prairies and the giant Rockies. No one in a hurry would think much of Muskoka; no mind filled with terrifying pictures of the ocean-lakes of Huron and Superior or the vast precipices and glaciers of the Selkirks could find rest and enjoyment among those secluded little pools of blue waters. And so it is that this region of fairy loveliness, so deftly mosaiced into the endless network of lakes and streams that lie east of Huron and 150 miles north of Toronto, is neglected by the globetrotter and unvisited by the average tourist, greedy of wonder and eager for the exaggerated scenery of the Far West. For which neglect, however, there is nothing to be felt but the most devout thankfulness and relief.

Fifty years ago, and less, the Muskoka region was unadulterated backwoods. The fat black bears enjoyed the countless blueberries all to themselves, and no one disturbed the deer as they swam from island to island or sharpened their horns on the rough bark of the great hemlock stems. In the summer mosquitoes held sway over all, and in the winter both lakes and trees were covered with a carpet of snow six feet thick, that could not melt much before the end of March, because the temperature was never above zero and sometimes 40 below it. Now, however, Muskoka is only comparatively backwoods⁠—with all their charm and few of their hardships. A railway skirts its eastern border, tapping the lakes at Gravenhurst on its way from Toronto to North Bay (Canadian Pacific Railway), and there are Scotch and English settlers on the shores of its picturesque lakes. After the settlers, who got their land for nothing and get nothing out of their land, came the hunters and the fishermen, and these soon found out that the delightful little islands, where they had fired their black bass and cooked their venison, would be ideal spots for summer homes. And so, one by one, the hunters brought up their families, and cottages were built on the prettiest islands. At the juncture of the three main lakes, Port Carling grew rapidly from a sawmill and a sluice to a village with a general store and a church; the Indian posts became hamlets; schools were built to which the settlers’ children went many miles round the shores of the lakes; a line of steamers was organised in connection with the railway; the larger stores sent puffing little provision boats from island to island, and in a few years Muskoka stepped forth from the untrodden wilderness, and was introduced to Montreal and Toronto folk as a full-blown Canadian watering-place with the most charming face and manners in the world.

The three lakes form a capital Y, of which Lake Muskoka is the stem, Lake Rosseau the right, and Lake Joseph the left branch. Two steamers leave the railway at the foot of Lake Muskoka, and together enter the lock at Port Carling, whence however they take opposite courses⁠—the one sailing through the lovely reaches of Lake Rosseau till it reaches the old Indian post of that name at the far head; the other steering among the wild and tortuous channels of Lake Joseph, past the cliffs of the Crow’s Nest and the grandest scenery of the whole region, till it anchors in the wee harbour of Port Cockburn and gathers strength for the return journey on the following day to Gravenhurst. These steamers stop at any or all of the islands to disembark or take up passengers. Only a signal is necessary, and, weather permitting, they sidle up to the primitive wharves and bring additions to these free and easy summer camps in the shape of provisions or new arrivals. In rough weather there is often a safety wharf on the other side, away from the sharp rocks and sheltered from the sweep of the open water. The “wharf” is of the simplest possible description. In the winter huge hollow frameworks are built on the ice and filled with stones; then the ice is sawn through and the great things sink down to their proper places on the bottom of the lake; a platform is nailed across them, and the wharf is complete. Every island today has its wharf and house, the latter being sometimes a mere camping shanty of pine-boards, and sometimes a more pretentious wooden cottage with wide encircling verandah, two storeys, boathouse, icehouse, and even brick chimneys. The heat of the Muskoka summer is always tempered with plenty of ice⁠—ice to make cooling drinks and to keep sweet the fish and perishables in the larder; for in the winter the nearest settler is glad enough to earn a few dollars by sawing several hundred blocks of ice fourteen inches thick from the surface of the frozen lake, and pack them deep in sawdust in the shed built for that purpose.

But the first-comers to Muskoka had neither ice, nor wharves, nor boathouses. They pitched their tents beneath the singing pine trees and paddled their graceful canoes wherever they pleased, sharing the fishing and hunting with the Chippewa Indians, and careless quite of the passage of time so long as they escaped back to civilisation before the lake became ice, and those fearful freezing winds whistled down from the north. To a long, slender island, shaped like a snake, in Lake Joseph, came the first group of Muskoka pioneers. They were five in number, and they bought the island from the government for a mere song and divided it into fifths. It was christened Yohocucaba, after the first syllable of each of their names, and today it is known as Yoho for short: there is a little post-office on it, and the sole remaining owner and occupier is Professor Campbell, of Montreal⁠—the fourth syllable of that extraordinary baptism. Yoho is nearly a mile long, and nowhere more than a few hundred yards wide. It is a ridge of pine-covered rock in the far corners of Lake Josephy. On its lower end, in the rustling shade of a grove of magnificent hemlocks, a church service is held for the benefit of the islanders in the months of July and August. No bell announces the fact, but towards eleven o’clock on one of those hot Sundays I can see the canoes coming over the blue waves from every point of the great lake. Every island sends its contribution⁠—skiffs, boats, sailboats, sedate family boats with three pairs of oars, mackinawa with white sails light in the fresh breeze⁠—all sorts and kinds speeding across the lake and converging to the point of Yoho, where the wharf makes landing easy, What a picture they make in the brilliant sunshine, and what a singular charm the fleet of graceful, slender-nosed canoes lends to it all. Of every colour imaginable, from the dirty blue-white of the old stager, the dull grey of the much-worn birch-bark, to the fanciful crimsons, white with gold edges, and the pale yellow cedars that always tell of feminine owners. Silently and swiftly they come over the waves, gliding if it is smooth, leaping and dancing if the wind is fresh enough to make a little sea, just like things of life, the playful, gaily dressed spirits of these endless Canadian lakes. In one I see two men paddling with strong, sweeping strokes, men in white duck with faces brown as the Indians. In another a boy brings two girls in light summer frocks, with faces radiant as the sunshine. A third holds three girls all paddling at once; while a fourth, perilously close to the water, holds four young people⁠—one in the stern, one in the bows, and two sardine-wise between the centre thwarts. The simple service, with the singing of our old English hymns and the eloquent address from Professor Campbell, standing bareheaded under the pines among the reclining audience⁠—what a picture it all makes in the memory⁠—the treetops bending and sighing overhead, and the water perpetually murmuring among the rocks and past the sides of the canoes at our feet. There is a subtle fascination in the Muskoka air that makes each summer seem sweeter than the last. Life there is ever delightful. It appeals to the dreamer as well as to the man of action. In those vast solitudes of wood and water one is conscious of a spirit that curiously combines a careless eastern languor with the immense potential energies of the west. In Muskoka you may dream, yet not be ashamed. It is only that the realities of life have sunk away out of sight below that far blue horizon of forest, and that the magical moonlight of those August nights brings an influence so soothing and restful that your too active spirit enters into the sweet sleep of the trees and waves, and you gather and store up, without expending it, strength for the duties that must come later. You may dream without enervating effect, for the working of the Muskoka divinity is first quieting, afterwards uplifting.

The enterprise of the pioneering quintet was quickly followed by others. The islands in each lake were bought up in turn. Well-wooded islands, some mere little rocks of an acre, others small continents of twenty to thirty acres, that were purchased in those days for a few pounds apiece, are now worth⁠—though not intrinsically⁠—ten times as much; and with the subsequent coming of the railway and the steamers the uttermost ends of Lake Rosseau and Lake “Jo” (as it is familiarly called) are within twelve hours of Toronto, and at a cost that need terrify no one.

Those early days in Muskoka before all the islands were inhabited and built upon, and before the settlers had erected their huge, unsightly caravanseries of yellow-painted wood, must have been exceptionally charming: the picnics, the exploration trips, the nightly campfires, and the paddling homewards under the stars; when the provision boats were not known, and it was important to catch fish for the table; and when letters were a weekly event, and not, as now, a daily certainty with the evening steamer. The edge of the wildness of those days has perhaps been taken off; but, even so, Muskoka is still the genuine backwoods, and you have only to carry your canoe over a few “portages,” and paddle it across a few lakes and streams to the west and north, to find yourself in the trackless and awful solitudes of a wilderness that at first frightens, that it may forever after completely fascinate you.

The settlers in the pioneer days must have had truly a lonely time of it. The soil is thinly scattered upon the surface of those ancient rocks. Only in the little valleys of this undulating territory, which never rises to the grandeur of real hills, is there any shelter or depth of earth. Poor oats, potatoes, and a few other vegetables, represent the Muskoka crops; but, on the other hand, “Muskoka mutton” is famous all over Eastern Ontario, and a most delicate and delicious dish it is, too. The farmers who have cleared enough land to furnish grazing for a flock of sheep have made both ends meet, and put by a little into the bargain. In the last ten years most of these savings have gone into the caravanseries mentioned above, and, though the season is short (June to September) and the prices moderate, some of the hotel-keepers are reported to have done very well for themselves, and certainly these houses are well patronised and always full.

The Muskoka hotels, perched here and there on promontories or hidden in quiet, sheltered bays, are very excellent in their way. They give comfortable accommodation at reasonable prices. There is always plenty of fresh fish, and the milk and butter are extra good. The jam, too, is worthy of mention. It is made from the wild raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries that grow in the woods in such profusion that you can fill pail after pail in a single afternoon. Every farmer’s wife knows how to make good jam, and these Muskoka jams⁠—especially the strawberry⁠—are the best I ever tasted. The Stratton Hotel at Port Carling, kept by an excellent Scotch host, who has wandered over half the world, and came to these solitudes last from an indigo plantation in Ceylon, was especially noted for its delicious jams and its savoury messes of black bass or venison.

But the stayer in hotels knows nothing of the real Muskoka life; generally speaking, he is not even a candidate for admission into the charmed circle. The “islanders” and the hotel visitors are, of course, the regulars and the transients respectively; and even in the genial, unconventional atmosphere of Canada these two classes do not readily amalgamate. Besides which, there has naturally grown up among the Muskoka regulars a select order of aristocrats, whose islands are their castles, and who, consciously or unconsciously, give their tone to the entire community.

The life is, first of all, free and easy. It is an open-air life. The days are made up of picnics on land or water, camping trips into the surrounding wilderness, expeditions into the forest, visits to neighbouring islanders, fishing excursions. The men chop down trees for the immense campfires at night; the girls go out sailing, canoeing, gathering the abundance of wild fruits; or lying with favourite books, guitars, and banjos in hammocks under the trees. Everybody bathes together, and the children learn to swim and dive like fish. Rafts are made of drifting logs, and perilous journeys are made thus in bathing suits from one island to another. The young men practise all sorts of tricks in their canoes: paddling while standing upright, or purposely upsetting and climbing in again after the canoe has been shaken empty⁠—a most difficult feat. All locomotion is of course by water, and every Muskoka boy and girl is a good canoeist (or soon becomes one), from the expert who can shake his canoe empty in deep water and climb in again in fourteen seconds, to the ordinary man who can paddle three girls to Yoho P.O. for the letters in rough weather and not ship a drop.

Whatever the occupations of the day have been, everybody in the house-party meets at night round the campfire. And the campfire is a feature of the Muskoka life. Generally in the morning, soon after breakfast, half-a-dozen men of the party, with boats and axes and ropes, have collected the floating logs or cut down the dead monsters on the mainland, and chopped them into the necessary lengths. Four big logs placed in a square form the foundations, and upon this there is built up a huge, hollow framework, tapering to a height of twelve feet, and filled with brushwood and dead branches. When all the party is assembled, someone lights the pile at the top, and it burns slowly downwards, throwing out a fierce heat and crackling, gigantic flames. Long boards propped up against boulders form comfortable backs for most of the audience, who lie with rugs and cushions, singing songs and telling stories far into the night. Others, two and two, in canoes, float in the circle of light upon the lake. The sound of the guitars and voices travels far across the water, and often attracts visitors from other islands and campfires, who hover about in their canoes and enjoy the fun and music as it were from the gallery, until the party breaks up and they turn their silent craft homewards. A safe rock has to be selected for the conflagration, lest the sparks set on fire the dry wood and destroy the beauty of the island forever. The second growth, after a forest fire, is invariably scrub-oak and small hardwood trees, which afford no shade and are not beautiful in themselves. Thus the value as well as the charm of the islands depends upon their hemlocks and pines, and a true Muskokite is always noted for his extreme caution in lighting and extinguishing his campfires. And, in point of entertainment, the campfire is the theatre of Muskoka, just as the canoe is its hansom and omnibus. Perhaps some of our experiences on one of the smaller islands in Lake Joseph would be of interest to the English reader. We were a party of four. We rented the island from its owner in Montreal for the season May-October for 65 dollars, or £13. That included a shed packed full of ice and a stack of wood for the stove chopped into the right lengths by the settler during the winter. The island, whose pretty Indian name I am not at liberty to disclose, was about two acres in extent. It was circular. It rose to a point in the centre and was covered with pine-trees that crowded to the water’s edge, and carpeted with moss and blueberry bushes. From its little wharf the lake stretched away for four miles to the opposite shore. From the other side you paddled out into a sheltered channel half a mile in width to the mainland. A little wooden shanty, with a wide, covered verandah, stood among the trees on the highest point. The pine boughs brushed its roof; the waves almost lapped the walls. The house held nothing but a stove in the tiny kitchen and a rough wooden table in the front room, which was dining-room, drawing-room, library, and smoking-room combined. Two wee bedrooms opened off it, each with a window, and a narrow staircase led to a sort of loft overhead. The two men of the party slept in a tent outside near the canoes, and the two ladies had the house to themselves at night. They were not always sure they liked this, for the loneliness and remoteness and utter silence of the night on that little island were often weird in the extreme. The ladies washed in one little bay, the men in another. At 7 o’clock every morning the men jumped from the tent into the canoe and paddled two miles over to the farm of a Scotch settler on the mainland, where they obtained milk at 2½d. a quart, bread, eggs, vegetables, and Muskoka lamb at 5d. a pound. He rendered his little bill weekly. By the time we reached the island again coffee and porridge were ready. The ladies did the cooking and the men the washing up. At 11 o’clock we bathed for an hour, and the rest of the day was spent exploring, canoeing, sailing, and writing. At 8 o’clock in the evening we usually paddled down the three miles to Yoho for the mail which the steamer had left on its way north. Then the campfire was lighted, visitors were entertained, and plans were discussed for the morrow. Often we lay out half the night watching the glories of the Northern Lights, listening to the weird laughter of the loons out in the lake, or simply enjoying the beauty of the brilliant stars and the indescribable, calm wonder of the Muskoka night. When the moon was bright we would sometimes steal out in the canoes and pass silently along the shores of the mainland, peering into the blackness of the great forests, or coasting along from island to island past the glimmering ashes of other campfires and the rows of little white tents shining in the moonlight.

Twice a week the provision boats came. With a snort and a whistle they drew up alongside our little wharf, and sold us, from their miniature shop, whatever we wanted to buy. Meat, vegetables, milk, bread, and eggs were their staples, but they also sold sweets, fishing-tackle, cartridges, cheap novels, canoe-paddles, and flannel shirts. Sometimes the deck of the little cabin carried a number of people from the hotels, who, at two shillings a head, chose this way of seeing the lakes and calling without being asked at the different islands.

But nothing comes amiss in Muskoka, for the spirit of reasonableness reigns supreme, and everybody enjoys health and consequent good spirits.

The fishing in these lakes is not so good as it formerly was. There are still bass, whitefish, pickerel, and salmon trout to be caught in plenty, but probably not in such numbers as when the Yo-ho-cu-ca-ba gentlemen first cast rod over the waters. The expeditions into the surrounding wilds are of course legion, and can only be indicated generally. Due west lies Georgian Bay. It is an arm of Lake Huron, studded with thousands of unoccupied islands. For the expert canoeist there is direct water communication with it⁠—from Lake Joseph by way of lovely lakes and secret winding streams, and across stretches of beautiful primeval forest. The distance is about fifty miles, and a halfway point is Blackstone Lake, whose name is derived from the black igneous boulders along the shore, and whose deep green waters are alive with bass up to five pounds and immense maskinonge lying in the mud of the bottom. These latter monsters can be caught by patient trolling, with a pound and a half of lead to carry the spoon deep enough. I have seen their savage heads nailed by other fishermen to the trees along the shores of Blackstone Lake, with fierce, pointed teeth and ugly grin. Their name of devilfish is well earned. And when you first catch them you think they are going to pull you out of the boat.

In another direction, along a route of perpetual wildness and beauty, you can shoot the rapids of the Moon River⁠—if you know how, mark well⁠—and enter the Georgian Bay at a more southerly point. And due north, on the way to Huntsville and Smith’s Falls, before you come to the French River, the home of the wild duck, you will find, after passing through a series of five exquisite lakes, a charming little wooden hotel, kept by an English gentleman named Waterfield, who, at very moderate prices, will serve you up black bass and cucumbers while he discourses to you on literature and music and the latest discoveries of science in the “Old Country.”

In conclusion, it may be mentioned that the name Muskoka belonged originally to an Indian chief of the Chippewas. This region was his own particular hunting ground. He fished these waters and tracked the deer and bear through these dense forests. Even today, the settlers say, his spirit haunts the more remote bays of Lake Joseph and Lake Rosseau, and the solitary hunter may see along shadow fall athwart his tent, when the branches are motionless in the windless night and there are no lost seagulls wandering beneath the moon. A spectral canoe has been seen by more than one backwoodsman in the lonely reaches of the Joseph River; and on wild nights, when the Northern Lights are flashing in the sky and the trees are tossing strangely, it has been said that a tall shadowy form lands silently from a phantom craft, and, passing along an ancient deer-run, disappears into the heart of the forest.