Canada -- Description and travel; Canadian poetry -- History and criticism
Between the Highland Inn and the Nominigan and Minnesing camps there
is daily stage connection, {114} and it is thus easy to unite both
the comfortable living in a well-ordered hotel, in touch with daily
papers and several daily mails, with constant excursions into the
wild territory, with canoeing, fishing, or walks and tramps through
the interminable forests. Of all the Canadian parks, Algonquin Park
is the most accessible from the United States and Eastern Canada. At
the Algonquin Park station one may take a train in the morning for
Rock Lake, a distance of twelve miles, where there is a famous
fishing region for black bass, and where boats and canoes and all
necessary outfit may be obtained. In Cache Lake the black bass also
abound. At White Lake are salmon trout, and a canoe trip over one or
two other of the smaller lakes brings the angler to Little Island
Lake, noted for its speckled trout. But there are some two thousand
lakes in the Park, so your choice of fishing grounds is unlimited.
Not the least among the interests of a sojourn in Algonquin Park is a
visit to the home of Mr. G. W. Bartlett, the Superintendent of the
Park, whose house is within a stone's throw of the Highland Inn.
Among his treasures is a remarkably fine collection of wild animals
and birds, prepared by the art of the taxidermist, and the government
of Ontario has also inaugurated a "Zoo," which has already a small
collection and which will be constantly increased.
The amateur photographer finds great interest {115} in this Park as
the animals, accustomed only to kindness, are easily approached, and
the "bits" of forest scenes, of silver-shining waters, of giant rocks
jutting out from the hillside, offer unlimited material for the
artist to compose. Landscapes for the asking surprise the eye; and
if Algonquin Park is the more obviously and more familiarly known as
the sportsman's paradise, it is none the less the happy
hunting-ground of the artist. The colour effects are something with
which to conjure. The scarlet glow of the sunsets suddenly make a
towering rock seem to leap into the air to a height undreamed of;
while over the still, solemn pine trees the sky turns to flame; rocks
and jutting hillsides take on the effect of colossal sculptures; the
clouds resolve themselves into spectral angels watching over the
world, and the forests take on a grace of line that holds the gazer
with its wonderful spell of beauty.
From June until into September the days are long in the Algonquin
Park country; they dawn in rose and wane in gold. The air is all
vitality with its filtering through millions of acres of pine and
balsam and spruce; the sunshine of the days is radiant; the moonlit
nights are cool. Wandering through Algonquin woodlands one seems to
hear borne on the air the poet's haunting lines:
"Along the sky, in wavy lines,
O'er isle and reach and bay.
Green-belted with eternal pines,
The mountains stretch away.
{116}
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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