838 



THOUSAND ISLANDS. 



TRELAWNEY, EDWARD J. 



provements on the prison at Huntsville and 

 building the new prison at Rusk is $182,- 

 076.37. 



In the Deaf and Dumb Asylum there aro 

 80 pupils in attendance, 60 boys and 30 girls, 

 while the capacity of the institution is 100. It 

 requires an expense of $220 per capita to sup- 

 port the pupils. 



THOUSAND ISLANDS, OB ISLES, a group 

 of rocky and wooded isles and islets in the 

 river St. Lawrence, beginning at the point 

 where the river emerges from Lake Ontario, 

 above Kingston, and extending to Brockville, 

 where it first narrows and begins to follow a 

 regular stream-bed. The expanse which is 

 studded with these isles is called the Lake ot 

 the Thousand Islands. It is about sixty miles 

 long, and in places nine miles broad. The 

 isles, great and small, are between 1,600 and 

 1,800 in number. In the Treaty of Ghent the 

 number is stated to be 1,692. Several of them 

 are of considerable size, and contain valuable 

 farming-lands. The boundary-line of 1818 

 does not follow the middle of the river, but is 

 deflected so as to leave Wolfe and Howe Islands 

 in the British dominion, giving Oarleton, Grind- 

 stone, and Wells Islands to the United States. 

 Wolfe Island, the largest of the archipelago, 

 forms a fertile agricultural district containing 

 9,000 acres. It is thickly peopled, and is con- 

 nected by a steam ferry with Kingston. The 

 most westerly island of the group, Amherst 

 Island, lies well out in the lake. It contains 

 5,000 acres of cultivated land. Carleton Island, 

 on which in the time of the Revolutionary 

 War the British erected a strong fortress on the 

 site of former French fortifications, contains 

 1,274 acres. The fortress, which was called 

 the King's Garden, was taken by the Americans 

 in the War of 1812, and destroyed. Grenadier 

 Island has a dairy farm, and on several of the 

 larger islands co-operative dairying is carried 

 on with success. 



The Thousand Islands are visited by large 

 numbers of persons in the warmer months ot 

 the year, attracted by the picturesque scenery, 

 the cool air which is always stirring, and the 

 opportunities for sport. The fishing and fowl- 

 ing facilities of this region are celebrated. 

 The largest muskallonge, pike, black bass, and 

 pickerel are caught among these islands. Alex- 

 andria Bay, a village on Wells Island, is the 

 chief resort. It contains large hotels and the 

 Church of the Thousand Islands, a handsome 

 structure, with detached belfry in the Italian 

 style. On many of the islets in this vicinity 

 are private cottages and villas, some of them 

 of considerable architectural pretensions. Vis- 

 itors also stop at Clayton, on the American, 

 and Gananoque, on the Canadian side, and 

 many pitch tents on the islets. The .last of the 

 larger islands is Bathurst Island. The current 

 of the river is swift and tortuous among these 

 islands. The Thousand Islands are reached 

 from Kingston on the Canadian side, and from 

 Cape Vincent on the American side. 



TRELAWNEY, EDWARD JOHN, the friend 

 and biographer of Byron and Shelley, was 

 born in the south of England, March 10, 1792 ; 

 died at Sompting, a small village near Worth- 

 ing, in Sussex, England, August 13, 1881. He 

 was a younger son of a well-known Cornish 

 family, and from his earliest years lived a life 

 of strange adventure and reckless daring, which 

 he describes in that most exciting narrative, 

 "The Adventures of a Younger Son," his lirst 

 literary work, published in 1830. Before that 

 time, Captain Trelawney had roamed over the 

 wide world. Soon after leaving college he 

 met with Shelley's "Queen Mab," and from 

 that time Shelley was his deity. In the win- 

 ter of 1821-'22 he made the personal acquaint- 

 ance of Byron and Shelley, at Pisa and Spez- 

 zia. Swimming he had previously learned 

 from the natives of tlje South Seas, and both 

 in swimming and shooting he surpassed Lord 

 Byron himself. It was Trelawney who di- 

 rected the burning of Shelley's remains on the 

 sea-shore, and it was Trelawney who distrib- 

 uted small portions of his ashes to Byron, Leigh 

 Hunt, and others, and who bought a resting- 

 place for the poet's remains in the Protestant 

 burial-ground at Rome. After these events 

 he went with Byron to Greece, and shared in 

 its efforts for independence, carrying a musket- 

 ball in his body for fifty-six years as a me- 

 mento of that struggle. Some of the most 

 stirring events in his volume published in 1858, 

 entitled "Records of Shelley, Byron, and the 

 Author," relate to Trelawney's life in the caves 

 on Parnassus, and to his curious escapes from 

 friend and foe. On taking the field, Odysseus, 

 the Greek leader, deposited his family in his 

 retreat on Mount Parnassus, which he confided 

 to the care of Captain Trelawney, who had re- 

 cently married his daughter. Half a century 

 ago he drifted to the New World, spending 

 some six months in traveling through the Unit- 

 ed States and Canada. Among his American 

 friends were Fitz-Greene Halleck, and General 

 Patterson, of Pennsylvania, who was fond of 

 relating that on visiting the eccentric Trelaw- 

 ney at Jones's Hotel, in Philadelphia, he found 

 him sitting up in bed, eating apple-sauce out 

 of a huge bowl and drinking quarts of milk, 

 that comprising his twelve-o'clock breakfast. 

 Like his beloved Shelley, he preferred a diet 

 consisting of fruit and vegetables, and he never 

 made use of any description of hot food or 

 drink. Trelawney was a singularly abstemi- 

 ous person, indulging in but one solid meal 

 a day, and rarely drank anything but milk and 

 water. In " The Adventures of a Younger 

 Son " he describes certain wild episodes of his 

 own strange career, when a wanderer in the 

 far East. He was on terms of intimacy with 

 Baron Kirkup, "the last of the alchemists," 

 who lived so long in and near Florence, Italy. 

 In youth Captain Trelawney was remarkable 

 for his manly beauty, and at eighty-three, when 

 the writer last met him in London, he was still 

 of a striking and commanding presence, with 



