2 A SPORTING PARADISE 



The water-surface of these lakes on a map 

 looks as if one had upset a bottle of green ink 

 over the paper, and the fluid had run about the 

 sheet in the most fantastic and self-willed fashion, 

 circling round innumerable islands of all forms 

 and sizes, leaving here a jutting-out point, and 

 there making a deep and promiscuously formed 

 indentation. I know of no lake-system which 

 Nature has so capriciously formed. Geologically 

 speaking, she seems to have scooped out first a 

 hollow basin ; then to have stirred the volcanic 

 fires underneath, which shot up an eruptive 

 array of elevated points and dots, of every con- 

 ceivable size and shape ; and, finally, to have 

 poured a flood of water in and round about 

 the whole, leaving only the tops of the irregular 

 and detached masses unsubmerged. How clear, 

 deep, and cool are these delicious fresh-water 

 lakes! Swarms of brook-trout, Hake-trout, black 

 bass, pickerel, and perch swim about, visible even 

 from the shore ; while the covers and reed-beds 

 abound with feathered game. 



The lakes of Muskoka, described by me as 

 "A Sporting Paradise," comprise a territory 

 equal in size to that of the kingdom of Belgium. 

 Rocks abound everywhere indeed, four-tenths 



