Ontonagan 1 1 7 



morning found us at Ontonagan, and glad enough 

 we were to get there. 



' Ontonagan is a name which the Indian translated 

 for me in two different ways: firstly, "the-place-where- 

 a-young-girl-cried-because-she-dropped-her-panniken- 

 into-the-water " ; secondly, " the-place-where-a-man- 

 shot-a-man - through-a-place- without - seeing- him," — I 

 suppose he meant that one gentleman had fired 

 through the bush in the direction in which he 

 supposed another gentleman to be, and had bagged 

 him. Yes ! sir. The black desolation of the spot 

 is not to be described. It was only after a long 

 search that a spark of life could be discovered, but 

 then it was bright enough. A scientific watchmaker 

 from Brighton, who sells specimens which are never 

 bought, publishes a monthly gazette, and drinks lager 

 beer, a young lady who teaches music but has no 

 pupils, and rears canary birds, and a German gentle- 

 man who sells lager beer, and everything else, in the 

 neatest and tidiest wooden cottages, and reads a 

 monthly gazette, are the most prominent, if not the 

 only inhabitants. A vast wooden hotel, the whitened 

 sepulchre of many thousands of dollars, looms high 

 above the surrounding level, its flagstaff blown down, 

 its halls deserted. On Sunday, a few settlers in fur 

 caps, and with Wellington boots, with red and blue 

 patches in front, pulled up over their trousers, lounge 

 under its verandahs, and Mr. and Mrs. Cow are 

 there, well dressed and apathetic, and Miss Cow, with 

 blood, I fancy, not unmixed. All is desolation ; stores 



