Very engaging is all this country of the Highlands of Ontario made so easy of access. Allandale (always associated with its alluring lunch-room), Barrie, the pretty town on a crescent of Kempenfeldt Bay, busy Orillia, with its numerous beautiful residences, on to Gravenhurst at the foot of Lake Muskoka, the journey is one of perpetual delight. Muskoka {118} wharf is but a mile from Gravenhurst, and the trains run directly to the steamer. The Canadian lakes are a marvel in themselves. The entire country is literally and lavishly strewn with them. Their abundance modifies the climate perceptibly. They range from lakes 300 miles long and 600 feet deep to the small lakelets hidden away in the trackless forests. There are at least nine lakes more than 100 miles long, and there are more than thirty-five over fifty miles long. Many of these are still further elongated by the bays that indent their shores, and they are so connected by rivers that almost continuous canoeing for scores of miles is sometimes practicable, with only occasionally a mile or two of portage. In connection with such a multitude of lakes there are some very interesting geological facts. In the Muskoka region there are more than one hundred hotels, from the Royal Muskoka, accommodating three hundred guests, to those of the simplest, yet entirely comfortable order that can receive only fifteen or twenty guests with prices often as low as six dollars a week. The month of September in the Muskoka Lakes is particularly delightful. It is estimated that there is an annual transient summer population of not less than thirty thousand every year of people from both the States and the Dominion. Many of the romantic islands in the lakes are owned by wealthy people who have built charming summer villas upon them. There are {119} between four and five hundred of these islands, the largest of which consists of over eleven hundred acres, and on many of which any one is at liberty to build. The generous attitude of the Ontario Government is always a fact with which to reckon. There are very beautiful places in this Muskoka district: the "River of Shadows" (apparently a subterranean forest, so perfectly is every leaf and branch mirrored in the water), the Moon River, and the Falls of Bala. It is of the strange, wild beauty of Muskoka that Lampman wrote: "When silent shadows darken from the shores, And all thy swaying fairies over floors Of luminous water lying strange and bright Are spinning mists of silver in the moon; When, out of magic bays, The yells and demon laughter of the loon Startle the hills and raise The solitary echoes far away;