D 



ecember. 



1918] 



The Ottawa Naturalist 



107 



river, in 1853, mentions Mr. Egan's farm at Egans- 

 ville as growmg excellent crops of wheat, oats, hay, 

 potatoes, and other rooU, besides having raised a 

 large stock of horses and cattle. The country gen- 

 erally, however, throughout the whole region was 

 essentially a lumbering rather than an agricultural 

 district. Mr. Murray states, that "although the 

 greatest part of the timber on the main river has long 

 since disappeared a large portion having been 

 swept away by fire, independent of that removed by 

 trade there are still vast quantities brought down 

 the river annually and made to descend to Ottawa 

 by the course of the Bonnechere. On our way up 

 the stream, we repeatedly found it almost entirely 

 blocked up with squared timber, sometimes for miles 

 together." 



Eganville depends to a very small extent now on 

 the lumber industry, being mainly a trading centre 

 for the surrounding farming communities. 



A large mass of boulder clay blocks the valley of 

 the Bonnechere at this point, and the river has cut 

 down through it to a depth of 40 feet. Good sections 

 of this stony glacial clay are seen on the north side of 

 the river just behind the post office. The business 

 portion of the village is situated alongside the river 

 in the bottom of the cutting and the residential section 

 is on the terraces. Wooden stairs are used as short 

 cuts by the residents when passing from one level 

 to the other. 



The soils derived from the boulder clay in the 

 vicinity of the village are very productive, but fur- 

 ther south the soils become more sandy in texture 

 being derived mostly from fluvio-glacial sands and 

 gravels. The presence of numerous rock ridges 

 further curtail the agricultural possibility in this 

 direction. 



A curious condition due to glaciation on the 

 slopes and top of the high southern escarpment is 

 worth considering in more or less detail, as it con- 

 cerns the geography of the district. The contin- 

 ental ice sheet moved nearly from north to south in 

 this region so that it crossed the broad trough of the 

 Bonnechere nearly at right angles. There was 

 probably a considerable extent of the comparatively 

 soft, flat lying paleozoic rocks consisting of lime- 

 stones and shales, eroded from the valley bottom. 

 The wet ground products of these made by the 

 weight and movement of ice were carried along and 

 plastered over the southern slope of the escarpment. 

 This material contained a good percentage of clay 

 substance and subsequently made good soils which 

 were tilled wherever the slopes were not too steep. 

 On the steeper slopes a magnificent crop of hard- 

 wood has grown up whose broad expanses of flaming 

 color is one of the many atractions of the region 

 every autumn. 



The flat lying limestones and shales extended up 

 the valley only a short distance beyond Eganville 

 in pre-glacial times, so there was very little clay 

 making material gathered up by the ice when passing 

 this portion of the valley, consequently where the 

 clay making materials cease in the valley the clay 

 soils cease in the escarpments to the southward and 

 are replaced by those of sandy texture. 



Fifty years ago or thereabouts many people from 

 middle Europe emigrated and settled in this and 

 other parts of Ontario. A number of Germans and 

 Poles were settled on the lands south of Eganville. 

 It was the irony of fate that the people of that dis- 

 tressed country Poland were settled on the sandy 

 portion of the escarpment and valley while the 

 Germans were placed on the lands with clay soils. 



The area lying between Wilno, Rockingham, 

 and Barry Bay in Hagerty and Radcliffe townships 

 is included in the Polish settlement. A great portion 

 of this land is made up of porous gravel and sand 

 heaps, mostly glacial moraine features (fig. 4) the 

 remainder being rock ridges with thin sandy soils. 



This district is mostly absolute forest land, un- 

 fitted for the cultivation of crops. The employ- 

 ment afforded by the lumber companies, however, 

 enabled the Poles to maintain their existence in the 

 face of great natural disadvantages. 



Although the lands of the German settlement in 

 Sebastopol township had a great deal of clay soils, 

 the glaciation also brought along numerous boulders, 

 which were strewn over the surface. With unre- 

 mitting industry the men, women, and children of 

 the community have cleared the fields from stones 

 so that crops can be sown and harvested by 

 machinery. 



In recent years Eganville has become an im- 

 portant shipping point for live stock. 



Owing to the uneven character of the surface and 

 the spotted occurrence of land fit for cultivation, the 

 farmers in this part of the Bonnechere valley fre- 

 quently have considerable areas of wild land at 

 their disposal. These lands are a source of fuel, 

 pulpwood or cedar timber for posts, or grazing lands 

 for cattle and sheep. 



In some instances several adjacent farms have 

 been entirely withdrawn from cultivation and the 

 whole fenced in and used as a cattle ranch. The 

 hay cut from beaver meadows and swamps in the 

 vicinity is largely used for winter feeding for these 

 cattle. This kind of farming is particularly well 

 suited to the upland region remote from the railways 

 as it is easier to have the crop walk down to the 

 shipping points than it is to haul other produce over 

 the hilly and poorly maintained roads of the region. 



Kilns for the burning of limestone are located on 

 the bank of the Bonnechere river a short distance 



