Within A Few Days After My Resolution Never Again To Trust Myself On Lake
Ontario, I Sailed Down It, On A Very Beautiful Morning, To Toronto.
The
royal mail steamer Arabian raced with us for the narrow entrance to the
canal which connects Burlington Bay with the main lake, and both captains
"piled on" to their utmost ability, but the Arabian passed us in
triumph.
The morning was so very fine, that I half forgot my dislike to
Lake Ontario. On the land side there was a succession of slightly elevated
promontories, covered with forests abounding in recent clearings, their
sombre colouring being relieved by the brilliant blue of the lake. I saw,
for the only time, that beautiful phenomenon called the "water-mirage," by
which trees, ships, and houses are placed in the most extraordinary and
sometimes inverted positions. Yet still these endless promontories
stretched away, till their distant outlines were lost in the soft blue
haze of the Indian summer. Yet there was an oppressiveness about the
tideless water and pestilential shore, and the white-hulled ships looked
like deserted punished things, whose doom for ages was to be ceaseless
sailing over these gloomy waters.
At Toronto my kind friend Mr. Forrest met me. He and his wife had invited
me some months before to visit them in their distant home in the Canadian
bush; therefore I was not a little surprised at the equipage which
awaited me at the hotel, as I had expected to jolt for twenty-two miles,
over corduroy roads, in a lumber-waggon.
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