Hear the cattle with their bells—
Tinkling bells,
What a tale of terror oft their jingle jangle tells.
In the middle of the night,
When the moon is shining bright,
How we start up in our beds
Thinking of our cabbage heads ;
Of the open garden gate, left last night by careless Kate.
And the ear it fully knows,
By the twanging and the clanging,
How the danger ebbs and flows.
Yes, the ear distinctly tells In the jangling and the wrangling
How the danger ebbs and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling In the tinkling of the bells—
Of the bells! bells! bells!
— With apologies to the shade of Edgar A. Poe.

THE settlers in Muskoka would be badly off with out their cows. In the early days, when my father first came here, cows were few and far between ; happy the man who was the lucky possessor of one. Nowadays, though still valuable, they are by no means so scarce. But as “there is no rose without a thorn,” so there is no cow without a fault, and the particular fault of the Muskoka cows (for they are all tarred with the same brush, though some of deeper dye than others) is a dogged determination to break down every fence, enter every enclosure, and devour all vegetation found therein.

Wherever the unlucky settler has spent time and labor in beautifying and enriching some special corner, and has solemnly made up his mind that no cow shall ever enter there—enforcing his prohibition by enclosing his precious piece of property with high fences, barbed wire and strong gates—no sooner does he turn his back than his own cows, or his neighbors’ cows, or both together, hold a consultation, find out the weakest spot in his fortifications, then charge, and as the old song says, “Locks, bolts and bars soon fly asunder,” and a nice scene of devastation awaits the poor owner on his return. Perhaps the Muskoka cows owe their peculiar agility and dare-devil nature to what we might call their continued hand -to-mouth struggle for a bare existence in the bush, for seven months in the year the Muskoka cow has to hustle for her own living. In May and June, of course, everything is green, lender and luxuriant; but wait till the hot sun of July and August has dried up the scanty herbage along the country roads, and the tender twigs and shoots are no longer to be found in the bush. Is it any wonder that a cow of common-sense (and nowhere are there more sensible cows than in Muskoka will cast a longing eye over the fence at those succulent cabbages, that sweet green corn, those ripe tomatoes.

Then comes the tug of war. The owners of those favored spots must be ever on the watch. It behoves them to sleep with one eye open and both ears, for the onslaught most frequently occurs in the night. If you arc possessed of a good dog you are lucky, for instead of careering wildly round your garden and cleaning yourself, in scanty night attire, you can send the dog to perform that part of the programme in your stead. Of course the cows make a stampede in every direction but the right one. Of course they trample down your most precious treasures in their flight; but you arc only too thankful to see them outside once more and to close the gate after them and get back to your warm bed, leaving the light of morn to reveal the extent of then depredations. Winnie could relate some cow stories in this line, how many a time Mr. Roberts has risen in his wrath, and snatching his gun (which generally happens to he unloaded, luckily for the cows) has gone out, breathing threats of vengeance, death and murder in his heart.

Bet has an old roan cow who is the ringleader of all the cows in the neighborhood. I think she plans all their escapades. She is what you might call commander-in-chief, like her mistress. Now Winnie and her family are death on this cow. They were even so wicked last fall as to propose that she should be killed, quartered, and divided up amongst the lot of us. They consider, with their ringleader gone, the one of her cows would be more amenable to reason. They have not the duplicity and far-sightedness of Bet's old roan—due, no doubt, to her long years of experience in foraging. Her life, you may say, for some lime trembled in the balance. I myself was not greatly in favor of dividing and eating her, as I have arrived at an age when my teeth are none of the best, and I fear she would prove but a tough morsel. But, anyway, her absence from these scenes so familiar would cause no regret on anybody's part. It was not to be, though; “justice was tempered with mercy” and her life spared for one more year, much to the disgust of the Roberts’ family.

Another failing of the Muskoka cow, to which she is very prone, is to absent herself at the milking hour. The cows seem to be always playing truant. If their bells cannot be heard it is a matter of mere conjecture whether to start north, south, east or west in pursuit of them. Of course, it goes without saying the route chosen is always the wrong one, and many a mile has the unlucky wight in charge of them often to travel before he hears the welcome “tinkle tinkle of their bells.”

When I took possession of “Old Maid’s Lodge” I soon made up my mind that a cow of my very own I must have. I thought of the thick cream in my tea, the butter just fresh from the churn, the foaming new milk; and so my brother-in-law was instructed to be on the lookout and get me one as soon as possible. I wanted her to be young, so that I could train her in the way she should go. So he bought me a pretty little red and white heifer.

A friend of mine, whom I was taking proudly to see my new possession, said. “First of all, give her a name, then keep calling her by it until she knows it and comes to your call; then reward her with some little dainty, and you’ll never have any trouble at milking time.”

I proceeded to act on his advice. As to the name, we decided on Belle, because I had a baby Belle staying here with her mother at the time, and she was to have the honor of naming the new cow. We coaxed her up in front of the house and then placed the baby on her back. The two made such a pretty picture that Tom ran off for his camera to take a photo of them; but it proved no easy task. Both of the Belles were continually on the move. Though nearly a loaf of bread and a bowl of sugar were consumed in the attempt to obtain a moment’s repose, the results were far from satisfactory. In one negative the cow had two heads; in another baby Belle had four hands; in still another the two Belles were so inextricably mixed up that it was impossible to tell which was which. So we had to abandon the idea of the photograph, much to our regret.

Belle soon learned to know her name. She is only too eager to answer my call; indeed, she comes without any call, and the disadvantage is that her nose is always poking in at the back door looking for more bread and sugar. In the fall, when the cold weather came, I had the shed we were using for the poultry converted into a cow-house, and a warmer place put up for my poultry. This led to an amusing scene. At the bottom of the shed door a small square hole had been cut so the hens could pass in and out. The morning after Belle had been put in possession I happened to go out early, and looking in that direction, saw a cow’s head and horns apparently mounted on the lower part of the door, in the same way as the head of a stag is mounted on a board. I approached nearer, rubbing my eyes, for I thought surely my sight deceived me. Yes, to my horror, there was Belle’s head—fixed, immovable—through the hole in the door. How she got it there will ever remain a miracle ; but there it was, sure enough. I found it impossible to open the door; and as the hole fitted closely on each side of her neck, it was just as impossible to move the cow. I ran for the axe to try and chop the hole bigger, but this scared the cow so much that she began to struggle, and I feared she would strangle herself.

I then raced off to Winnie’s for Letto and Tom, and what did that rascal Tom do when he arrived on the scene but sit on a log and roar with laughter, telling Letto not to do anything till he had fetched his camera to make a picture for the Strand Magazine. He bet that cow would stand still now. I had to get really angry before he would stop fooling. We found nothing could be done but take the door off its hinges and lift it straight up from the cow’s neck. Then I took some time, for the screws were rusted; but at last we released her, and very thankful I was to find she was not much hurt.

And now, if I ask some of my readers who live in the City, What is the proper feed for a cow? they will no doubt reply, “Grass in summer, hay in winter, or, perhaps, roots, mangels or turnips.” “Oh, that’s what you think, is it? Well, you don’t know the peculiar tastes of the Muskoka cows nor the powers of their digestive apparatus. You would never suppose soap to be reckoned amongst their chief dainties, and yet Winnie declares they helped themselves to six bars, one after another, from the shed she used as laundry, and that if the children take a piece of soap down to the lake when they bathe, and leave it on the .Shore, they never find it again—but the cow does. Last winter my brother Ben drove to Port darling one very cold day to get some groceries. On his return, after putting the horse in the stable, he went into the house to get warmed up, leaving the parcels in the sleigh near the verandah. It appears his man had let out the cows to water them, and Bet’s old roan at once proceeded to investigate into the contents of the sleigh. About half an hour after, when my brother went out, he saw the parcels had disappeared, but concluded the children had taken them indoors. But no such luck. On enquiry the culprits were discovered. Everything in the sleigh had vanished, except a few dirty scraps of paper. I expect they found the tea rather dry eating, but they moistened it with three pounds of butter, and then smacked their lips over ten pounds of sugar, finishing off with a pound of starch and a packet of blue.. Their owner had to drive to the store again next day, and this time he did not leave the parcels in t he sleigh.

People when they first come to Muskoka often complain that the sound of the cow-bells in the night keeps them awake. I remember a clergyman who was staying in Port Carling several years ago telling me, when I remarked on his tired look, he had been kept awake two or three nights in succession by a regular “cow convention” in front of the house where he slept. He often, in sheer desperation, got up and drove them off, but they soon returned again.

Well, after all, this is not so bad as country folks experience when they visit the city and are kept awake all night by the noise of the street-cars, etc. Once an old Presbyterian lady from the country was visiting my employer on Yonge Street. As it happened, the first night she was there the students of the University made one of their midnight “vocal marches” up the street. When the old lady arrived down stairs to breakfast, it was fun to hear her describe the experiences of that night. Not one wink had she slept, and she looked worn out. She said, too, that just as she was dozing off in the morning she heard the boys yelling in the streets, “Awful world! awful world!” and she thought, “You are right, my boys, and the sooner I get back to my peaceful home in the country the better.” What she had heard was the newsboys shouting “Morning World!” “Morning World!”