"Weird monarchs of the forest! ye who keep
Your solemn watch betwixt the earth and sky,
I hear sad murmurs through your branches creep,
I hear the night wind’s soft and whispering sigh,
Warning you that the spoiler’s hand is nigh.”

Anon.

IT is sometimes said that the name of this “Lake District” of Ontario is derived from that of an Indian chief, or medicine-man, which meant “Clear Sky.” Another suggestion is that the name comes from that of the valiant chief of the Chippewas—Misquuckkey—whose name, with that of two brother chiefs, appears on treaties signed in November 1815, by which, for the consideration of £4000, they resigned their claims on 250,000 acres between Lakes Simcoe and Huron. But for long years to come Muskoka and the surrounding districts continued to be Indian hunting-grounds, and in the early fifties the region on the north of the Severn was to the inhabitant of the neighbouring county of Simcoe a wilderness of rocks and lakes, which never could be settled.  There is no land/ the inquirer was told. "Nothing but rocks and lakes." A peculiarity, it is said, of Muskoka rocks, whether showing themselves from land or water, is that they rise up sharply and suddenly, so that there may be depths of good soil or fathoms of clear water close beside and around the miniature peaks. Flat rocks are rare, and so are land-stones.

Angus Morrison, a Scot, who had been brought to Canada by his parents at the age of twelve, and had become a barrister and a member of Parliament, did much for the opening of the Muskoka District. His name is deservedly recalled by that of the township of Morrison, which is the very gateway into the region now so widely famous as one of the great "playgrounds” of our country. Before any modern means of travel was introduced into the district, Morrison, with a party of friends and Indian guides, in canoes, penetrated into the beautiful wilderness, by way of the Severn River, Sparrow, Morrison, and Leg Lakes, to the spot where Gravenhurst now stands on Muskoka Bay. Soon afterwards, in 1858, the history of Muskoka as “a white man’s country” may be said to begin with the construction of the Government road from Washago to the South Falls on the Muskoka River. At that time Bracebridge did not exist, and the only bridge over the river was a great pine-tree. To cross this required a steady head, and on one occasion a man who had been drinking slipped off the log into the stream. He narrowly escaped drowning, but it chanced that he had, tied to him, a great “demijohn”—originally, no doubt, the occasion of his unsteadiness—which went down on the opposite side of the trunk from himself. Thus balanced, he hung beside the log till some witnesses of the accident could pull him out.

Before it was decided to open up the Muskoka and Parry Sound Districts to settlers, the idea was discussed of turning the whole region into a vast Indian reserve. This plan fell to the ground, and, in October 1859, the first party of settlers was met at Severn Bridge by the Government agent, Oliver, and received seventeen location tickets for free grants adjoining the road. By 1861, when there was but one house on Muskoka River, the townships of Morrison, Muskoka, Draper, and Macaulay were opened to settlers.

Then began a repetition of the same tale of pioneei hardships, adventures, fortitude, and resourcefulness as belonged to the earlier Loyalist days. Muskoka District, in 1861, had a population of 300 souls. By 1882 this had multiplied a hundredfold, but the first settlers in the roadless “bush’’ were terribly isolated. Some of them lost count of time, and one man, with little to mark the days, for many months kept Tuesday instead of Sunday as the “Lord's Day.” Again it was the old story of long journeys on foot to the mill or the post-office. On one occasion some settlers, having walked forty miles to Orillia for flour, found the supply exhausted, so had to trudge on to Barrie, twenty miles farther, whence they carried home their hard-won flour sixty miles on their backs. Worse still, there were times when the poorer settlers could not obtain flour by any means, and so had to strip the birch trees of their buds, or dig up again the seed-potatoes they had planted in hope of more plentiful fart later in the year.

Of course, until the coming of the railways, the easiest means of communication in that country of lakes and rivers was by water, Birch canoes were the passenger vessels of early days, whilst heavier “dug-outs” were used for freight. Then were introduced sail-boats, and scows for lumber-men’s supplies, while the lumber rafts themselves, with their floating shanties, sometimes took a passenger or two. On Lake Muskoka a man named Holditch experimented with a large flat boat, worked by a horse, but it proved intolerably slow. Soon afterwards, Coekburn, an enterprising merchant, and reeve of Victoria County, put the steamer Wenonah on Lake Muskoka. She made her first trip in 1866, when there were only twenty people at the village, now Bracebridge. The first settler, by the way, going in there in a birch bark canoe had spent five days trying to Pnd the mouth of the river, by which to go to “North Falls,” as it was then called. The Wenonah was a boon to the settlers, but at first proved a loss to her owner, who, however, after five years was able to put a second steamer on the lake. By that time stages were running weekly to Parry Sound, Huntsville, and Orillia, but goods were still brought in summer from the latter town in a “one-horse sled.”

The pioneers were of many nationalities, and many of them had no idea how best to meet the conditions of the new life. They were unused to the severities of the climate, and were not experts at chopping and clearing. A droll story is told of one unfortunate who, having cut his foot severely with his axe, endeavoured for some time afterwards to prevent a repetition of the disaster by standing in a wash-tub to chop his firewood!

Not the least to be pitied were the few gently-brought-up people who, burdened with habits and prejudices which made the rough life almost unendurable, attempted to redeem previous failures by taking up “free grants” in the bush. Such a one, according to her own account, was the writer of the “Sonnet to Muskoka Pines” quoted above. After living for years in France, and being driven from that country by the Franco-German War, this unfortunate lady settled in Muskoka, during the seventies, six miles from Utterson. She was a widow, but had a family of sons and daughters, some of them married, who also came to Muskoka.

From the first, the poor thing seemed to be the special butt of misfortune. In fact the children of this literary “Mrs. Gummidge” began to feai that her perpetual tears and lamentations would end in “softening of the brain." Some of the family came to the country in advance of their mother, who arrived with one or two daughters at a season when bush fires “were raging,” a fact that added to the discomfort of their long ride in a wagon to the log-cabin which was to be their winter’s home, The road was full of slumps, and dust and smoke and heat from the smouldering embers where the fire had passed through added to their troubles. Too late to build a house of their own, the new-comers had to crowd for the winter into a daughter’s cabin, which w as already overfull, and when at last the widow got into her own house the roof, put on by inexperienced hands, was so leaky that on a rainy night a big umbrella had to be fixed over the head of the bed. The family fared ill as to food, and there are records of Christmas festivities when the chief part of the feast was a single “scarecrow” chicken, with a pudding made mainly of flour, or a couple of herrings and a big vegetable marrow. In this case time only made matters worse, and at last the family gave up the hopeless struggle; but the widow wrote of neighbours, of a humbler class, who were kind, hard-working, contented, and full of hope.

By this time, at least in that part of the district so well known to summer visitors, the number of settlers was increasing fast, and the conditions of life were certainly improving. Here and there schoolhouses were springing up, and little churches, where occasional services were held by wandering missionaries of different denominations. New townships were being surveyed, and older ones were being organised, with reeves and councils. In 1872 the first election for a member of Parliament was held in Muskoka, and in 1874 the Governor-General, Lord Dufferin, arrived, on a July evening, at Bracebridge, to find the little village bedecked with no less than eight triumphal arches. Of course an address was presented and replied to with all possible ceremony, but the Governor talked freely to the settlers with whom he came in contact, and appeared particularly interested in a man from Iceland, perhaps because of happy reminiscences of his own sojourn in that island in “high latitudes.”

Bracebridge, incorporated in 1875, was surely remarkable for the number of its associations, ranging from a temperance society to a chess club, which used annually to play a rival club at Huntsville by telegraph. Towards the close of 1877 a teachers’ association for Muskoka was formed. In that same year Gravenhurst was thrown into excitement by the discovery, during the digging of a well, of some small nuggets of gold. But no expert was called in, and all the “delving and washing” that went on failed of the desired result, while the people who rushed in from outside wee unkind enough to suggest that “the Muskoka folk were frauds."