THE MUSKOKA LAKES 5 



this locality is universally acknowledged. The 

 Indian chief Yellow Head lived to be one 

 hundred and six years of age. He was an 

 <c honest Indian," much respected, and he con- 

 tinued to frequent his hunting-grounds until a 

 few days before his death.* 



The Muskoka lakes vary in size from forty 

 miles in length to small ponds covering an acre. 

 I have resided a year and a half in this locality, 

 journeying through the virgin forest alone 



stroke. A birch-bark canoe weighs about 60 Ibs., and can 

 carry four men with ease and safety. 



* Muskoka Indians. Situated between the wild, unculti- 

 vated lands of forest and rock, between Lake Muskoka and 

 Lake Huron, there are still to be found (1903) the remnant 

 of the once powerful Seneca tribe of Indians. They have 

 a large reserve here, and though their small clearings and 

 feeble attempts to cultivate the soil could hardly rank them 

 among successful Canadian farmers, yet with Government 

 assistance and hunting parties they live very well. The 

 Indian tribes (so often mentioned by Fenimore Cooper) are 

 rapidly decreasing : they hasten, by natural instinct, away 

 from the advance of so-called civilisation. There is a strange 

 intuition that tells them "pale face gifts" mean death and 

 degeneration. Those who stifle this warning voice and remain 

 are generally found in disease, always undermined in physique, 

 and lacking in the spirit of manly independence and courage. 

 The white man and redskin people cannot amalgamate. 

 Once upon a time the Hurons were the most dreaded nation 

 on the American Continent, and the Iroquois, Mohican, 

 Seneca, and Mohawk contested fiercely their supremacy over 

 the Muskoka region, 



