The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book Part 21

A hurried cry from overhead may unexpectedly reveal the presence of a pair of loons in another element, and it is always fascinating to watch their steady, strained, energetic flight above the tops of the pines, generally to curve down to some more attractive expanse in the cedar-girt lake. For the water is the loon's natural element. There is an amusing deliberateness in his graceful, silent dive. He does not make the hurried dip of his smaller cousin, the grebe, but more calmly curves both neck and body, disappearing under the surface in a graceful arch.

Settling down and swimming with only head and neck exposed is an evidence of suspicion, and is generally followed by a long dive, with a belated reappearance in some remote part of the lake.

When the mother loon takes her two offspring out for a swim, it is a big event in the domestic circle. The outing is announced by prolonged and unusual repet.i.tions of the laughing call. For half an hour the echoes of the lake are kept alive with sounds portentous of new departures in the loon world. Then a peculiar object is seen to emerge from the marshy bay and cross under the shadowy cedars toward the open water. A field-gla.s.s shows it to be the mother loon and her two offspring, the three huddled so closely together that they are almost indistinguishable. The mother is unceasing in her care and attention. She strokes the backs of the young birds with her bill, playing and fussing around and close to them, as if they could not exist without her constant attention. Now and then she leans over and lifts a broad, black, webbed foot out of the water, holding it up distended, as if to endorse the modern theory that the parent loon teaches her young to swim. They cling to each other and cling to her, as if afraid of being lost in the great expanse of water to which they have been so recently introduced.

A short distance away the father swims about in lordly indifference, diving occasionally and regaling himself on the unsuspecting fish. A boat comes out from the sh.o.r.e, rowed by an industrious guide, with an angler, picturesquely protected by mosquito net, sitting in the stern.

The mother loon pushes and urges her indolent pair in the direction of safety. How slow they must seem as she hurries and encourages them! The trio moves at a snail's pace compared with her ordinary speed, but the young ones show no inclination to dive out of harm's way. Their clinging, crowding tendency serves but to incommode and obstruct her.

And where is the male protector? Alas for the romance of chivalry! When the boat comes near, he deliberately dives, and, after the usual protracted wait, reappears in another part of the lake, away from the danger that alarms and threatens the defenceless trio. But the mother remains and urges the enc.u.mbering young things to speed. They do make some headway, though slowly, toward the marshy bay from which they recently emerged with so much loud, wild laughter. The indifference of the fisherman and the guide does not rea.s.sure them, and they never cease their entangled struggle till lost to sight in the winding lagoon.

S. T. Wood

TO THE CUCKOO

O blithe New-comer! I have heard, I hear thee and rejoice.

O Cuckoo! shall I call thee Bird, Or but a wandering Voice?

While I am lying on the gra.s.s Thy twofold shout I hear; From hill to hill it seems to pa.s.s, At once far off, and near.

Though babbling only to the Vale, Of sunshine and of flowers, Thou bringest unto me a tale Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!

Even yet thou art to me No bird, but an invisible thing, A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my school-boy days I listened to; that Cry Which made me look a thousand ways In bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove Through woods and on the green; And thou wert still a hope, a love; Still longed for, never seen.

And I can listen to thee yet; Can lie upon the plain And listen, till I do beget That golden time again.

O blessed Bird! the earth we pace Again appears to be An unsubstantial faery place, That is fit home for Thee!

Wordsworth

ON THE GRa.s.sHOPPER AND CRICKET

The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the Gra.s.shopper's--he takes the lead In summer luxury--he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with fun

He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed.

The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half-lost, The Gra.s.shopper's among some gra.s.sy hills.

Keats

THE GREAT NORTHWEST

And now let us turn our glance to this great Northwest, whither my wandering steps are about to lead me. Fully nine hundred miles as bird would fly, and one thousand two hundred as horse can travel, west of Red River, an immense range of mountains eternally capped with snow rises in rugged ma.s.ses from a vast stream-scarred plain. They who first beheld these grand guardians of the central prairies named them the Montagnes des Rochers (Rocky Mountains),--a fitting t.i.tle for such vast acc.u.mulations of rugged magnificence. From the glaciers and ice-valleys of this great range of mountains, innumerable streams descend into the plains. For a time they wander, as if heedless of direction, through groves and glades and green-spreading declivities; then, a.s.suming greater fixity of purpose, they gather up many a wandering rill and start eastward upon a long journey. At length the many detached streams resolve themselves into two great water systems. Through hundreds of miles these two rivers pursue their parallel courses, now approaching, now opening out from each other. Suddenly the southern river bends towards the north, and, at a point some six hundred miles from the mountains, pours its volume of water into the northern channel. Then the united river rolls, in vast, majestic curves, steadily towards the north-east, turns once more towards the south, opens out into a great reed-covered marsh, sweeps on into a large cedar-lined lake, and finally, rolling over a rocky ledge, casts its waters into the northern end of the great Lake Winnipeg, fully one thousand three hundred miles from the glacier cradle where it took its birth. This river, which has along it every diversity of hill and vale, meadow-land and forest, treeless plain and fertile hillside, is called by the wild tribes who dwell along its glorious sh.o.r.es, the Saskatchewan or "rapid-flowing river." But this Saskatchewan is not the only river which drains the great central region between Red River and the Rocky Mountains. The a.s.siniboine or "stony river" drains the rolling prairie-lands five hundred miles west from Red River; and many a smaller stream, and rushing, bubbling brook, carries into its devious channel the waters of that vast country which lies between the American boundary line and the pine woods of the Lower Saskatchewan.

So much for the rivers; and now for the land through which they flow.

How shall we picture it? how shall we tell the story of that great, boundless, solitary waste of verdure? The old, old maps, which the navigators of the sixteenth century formed from the discoveries of Cabot and Cartier, of Verrazanno and Hudson, played strange pranks with the geography of the New World. The coast-line, with the estuaries of large rivers, was tolerably accurate; but the centre of America was represented as a vast inland sea, whose sh.o.r.es stretched far into the Polar North--a sea through which lay the much-coveted pa.s.sage to the long-sought treasures of the old realms of Cathay. Well, the geographers of that period erred only in the description of ocean which they placed in the centre of the continent; for an ocean there is--an ocean through which men seek the treasures of Cathay even in our own times. But the ocean is one of gra.s.s, and the sh.o.r.es are the crests of mountain ranges and the dark pine forests of sub-Arctic regions. The great ocean itself does not present such infinite variety as does this prairie-ocean of which we speak:--in winter, a dazzling surface of purest snow; in early summer, a vast expanse of gra.s.s and pale pink roses; in autumn, too often a wild sea of raging fire! No ocean of water in the world can vie with its gorgeous sunsets; no solitude can equal the loneliness of a night-shadowed prairie: one feels the stillness, and hears the silence: the wail of the prowling wolf makes the voice of solitude audible; the stars look down through infinite silence upon a silence almost as intense. This ocean has no past;--time has been nought to it, and men have come and gone, leaving behind them no track, no vestige of their presence. Some French writer, speaking of these prairies, has said that the sense of this utter negation of life, this complete absence of history, has struck him with a loneliness, oppressive and sometimes terrible in its intensity. Perhaps so, but, for my part, the prairies had nothing terrible in their aspect, nothing oppressive in their loneliness. One saw here the world, as it had taken shape and form from the hands of the Creator. Nor did the scene look less beautiful because nature alone tilled the earth, and the unaided sun brought forth the flowers.

October had reached its latest week; the wild geese and swans had taken their long flight to the south, and their wailing cry no more descended through the darkness; ice had settled upon the quiet pools and was settling upon the quick-running streams; the horizon glowed at night with the red light of moving prairie fires. It was the close of the Indian Summer, and Winter was coming quickly down, from his far northern home.

Major W. F. Butler: "The Great Lone Land."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PIONEERS]

RULE, BRITANNIA

When Britain first, at Heaven's command, Arose from out the azure main, This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: Rule, Britannia, rule the waves!

Britons never will be slaves!

The nations, not so blest as thee, Must in their turns to tyrants fall, While thou shalt flourish great and free-- The dread and envy of them all.

Still more majestic shalt thou rise, More dreadful from each foreign stroke; As the loud blast that tears the skies Serves but to root thy native oak.

Thee haughty tyrants ne'er shall tame; All their attempts to bend thee down Will but arouse thy generous flame, But work their woe and thy renown.

To thee belongs the rural reign; Thy cities shall with commerce shine; All thine shall be the subject main, And every sh.o.r.e it circles thine.

The Muses, still with Freedom found, Shall to thy happy coast repair; Blest Isle, with matchless beauty crowned, And manly hearts to guard the fair:-- Rule, Britannia, rule the waves!

Britons never will be slaves!

James Thomson

THE COMMANDMENT AND THE REWARD

My son, forget not my law; But let thine heart keep my commandments: For length of days, and years of life, And peace, shall they add to thee.

Let not mercy and truth forsake thee: Bind them about thy neck; Write them upon the table of thine heart: So shalt thou find favour, And good repute in the sight of G.o.d and man.

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart, And lean not upon thine own understanding: In all thy ways acknowledge him, And he shall direct thy paths.