1883 - Albion Falls and Red Hill Valley

My Country Excursion: A Jaunt to Albion Falls: The Beauties of Scenery Around Hamilton – A Look at a Natural Gas Reservoir – The Lover’s Fearful Leap

I guess my friend Timmy and I broke the sanctity of the Sabbath all up yesterday if we are judged by the good Calvinistic standard; but I don’t believe the recording angel had made a black mark across his book opposite our names, because we were wise enough – or foolish enough – to take a trip on foot into the country yesterday morning to see nature in all her primeval loveliness and drink in heavenly inspiration with every breath of the glorious fresh air.

Tommy felt real good and religious when he stood under the shadow of a big oak tree and listened to the songs of the birds that flitted around us from twig to twig, and heard the plaintive chip of the “Bob White,” gazing the while with a sort of awe at the broad sheet of water as it dashed over the edge of the rock 200 feet above us and fell with a noise like ceaseless thunder upon the table rock at our feet, throwing up a million films of spray, glistening like strings of diamonds in the sun.

“Good,” said I gazing at him in ecstasy. “I feel as though I’d just been asked to say the Lord’s prayer backwards, and accomplished the feat without skipping a word.” It seemed to Tommy and I that the preacher we met driving along the road, his buggy wheels throwing up a dust which almost coated our shoes, was doing a great deal more than we to break the sanctity of the Sabbath.

Talk about beautiful scenery! Why, Tommy and I, when we started from the city hall at ten o’clock in the morning for Albion Mills, had no idea how gloriously beautiful the fields and woods and great rugged mountain would look on that bright June morning. We trudged along Main street east at a good swinging pace, the ozone filling me with such exhilaration that I could restrain my steps. But Tommy was an older tramp – I beg his pardon – tourist than I, and only the Sunday before he had walked out to Lake Medad, and he warned me that I had some miles to walk yet and was setting the pace too fast.

We turned off to the right after reaching the Bartonville tollgate, striking right toward the mountain, which at this point juts out in bold promontory. Tommy had an idea that the stream we were looking for wound through a ravine just the other side of this projecting rock, and so we trudged along the hard road, up hill, gaining new strength and better spirits all along the way. Tommy’s olfactory nerves were in good working order, and he is somewhat enthusiastic on the subject of the sweet briar, and every rod or two, he would stop and sniff in the air as though he were hungry for oxygen, and asked me if I didn’t smell sweetbriar, and if I didn’t think every farmer should be compelled by law to plant sweetbriar at intervals of fifteen feet along his fences. So, to oblige Tommy, and not to dampen his spirits any way, I would reply in a sort of evasive way, that there did not seem to be a pleasant perfume in the air, but that really I wasn’t well enough acquainted with farming to pass an opinion on the desirability of planting sweet briar as a food crop. Presently we came to what appeared to be the end of our journey in that direction, for a five-barred gate stood across the road, but Tommy scaled it, shouting to me to come on, and to my great joy, we stood before a farm house, the door of which was invitingly open. For by this time I was very warm and thirsty, and was inclined to welcome any reasonable excuse to rest. I wouldn’t have Tommy think for the world that I had tired already. So we halted a few minutes and asked for a drink of water. I at the same time devoutly hoping that the good farmer would think that the water with city chaps meant milk. But he didn’t, which led me to conclude in my own mind that the poor farmer had never had any opportunities, and that his education had been sadly neglected. Tommy said, placing his hand affectionately on his stomach, that there was an agreeable odour of fried ham about the place; but I got him away before he had time to commit himself. As we stalked across the field, taking advantage of the kind farmer’s permission to take the nearest cut to the stream, we tried to avoid, as much as possible, treading down the fall wheat, which was growing vigorously. Our path led down hill into the ravine now, and we skirted the fence for a while. The breeze played around our ears with a delicious coolness, and overhead the great branches of maple and oak stretched out, their luxuriant foliage giving a grateful shade, for it was now high noon. But we would have reached the stream much sooner had we not skirted that fence, for Tommy has another hobby - geology – and every yard or two, he would whip out a pocket microscope he always carries, pick up a rock from one of the heaps that lined the fence, and discourse to me learnedly as to the Niagara, Clinton and limestone formations. It was really wonderful to see how excited he would get over a bit of rock no larger than a man’s hand, but which he declared was full of fossils. After he had lent me his glass and I had looked through it at what appeared to be a lump of stone full of queer shaped indentations I ceased to wonder at his exclamations of delight, for I saw before me as plainly as though made in soft earth but yesterday, the beds of minute shells, with every line and hollow as sharply defined in that hard rock as though cut in wood with the finest engraving tool.

I wanted to see that Albion Mills creek principally because Tommy had aroused my curiosity by telling me that that water was of such a peculiar nature that he could light it with a match and it would burn. I could hardly believe this, but he had borrowed a few matches from the keeper of the hotel at the Delta, and as we went hopping along from stone to stone, sometimes clinging to an overhanging branch to make our chances of getting over the slippery stones more sure, often getting one foot in the water, he would stop for a moment at a place where the stream rushed by over a shallow and little side currents wandered off through the interstices of the rock, and form little pools eddying around some larger rock, which, he obligingly informed me, had been placed there during the glacial period (whatever that was), and gaze intently into the water. He was engaged thus when, just as I sprang on the bank behind him, Tommy exclaimed, “Now I’ll show you,” and stooping down, he lit a match and seemed to apply it to the surface of a little pool of water on which there were a few bubbles. “There’s your water on fire!” he shouted, and sure enough a little jet of flame did leap up from that stream two or three times and then die away in a second. The explanation of the phenomenon was simple enough. Tommy told me that all around the bed of that stream there were little gas wells, and then when we got to the falls, I should see more gas coming out of the solid rock than I ever saw burning in a Hamilton gas lamp on a dark, rainy night. Oh! But that was a beautiful place, that ravine. We had a hard time of it, jumping across logs, and from rock to rock, but we enjoyed it. Peeping out between two rocks embedded in the bank, their base washed by the stream, was a modest blue flower, the sight of which made my heart beat faster. “Why there’s a violet,” cried I, and Tommy answered, “Of course, there’s lots of them along here.” That flower brought to me memories of a dear old home in England, a massive stone house with the tender clinging ivy creeping up its walls and gables, the orchard in which the children loved to play, and, best of all, Annie’s little garden by the south wall – all her very own – which, from a little girl, she had tended so carefully, and where she grew the loveliest violets to be found in all the country side. We boys never went away to school in springtime but Annie pinned a little bunch of violets to our jackets, and which I am bound to say we carefully preserved till the flowers faded in the heat and dust of the road, and we flung them away looking for others on the morrow.

          Tommy still kept up his search for fossils, so that we were a long time getting to the falls, but when I saw the glorious beauty of the spot I felt amply repaid for my long walk. Imagine if you can, an immense amphitheatre, the slopes of which are covered with verdure and trees just leafing out in all the glory of springtime. One segment of the circle shall be solid rock towering up 200 feet, and broken once or twice into tables of stone on which the water, rushing over the top, falls, dashes into spray, and gathering new force again pours down into the bottom of the creek bed, amid immense boulders that are worn as smooth as ivory by the action of the water. Then the stream goes flashing along through the one opening in the amphitheatre’s slopes, through sylvan glades to refresh weary cattle in the fields below.

          And here again the hand of man has interfered to mar the perfect beauty of the scene, for a most prosaic flour mill has been built right on the edge of the ravine, and at of the water which should go over the falls is diverted from its course into a mill race, and made to do plebeian duty in turning a turbine wheel to grind flour. “Now,” said Tommy, climbing up the steep rock beside the fall, “come up here and I’ll show you the place where a jet of gas has been burning for twenty years.” So I climbed away after him, and there in a great fissure in the rock, I beheld a very matter of fact gas pipe, one end of which was inserted in the rock and the other was to be found somewhere in the mill. “Oh,” said Tommy somewhat disappointed, “things have changed since I was here last, But, come I’ll show you the gas yet,” and inside the mill we found four very large gas jets burning away at mid-day, the gas coming through the pipe from the rock below. While we were gazing at this curiosity, a roughly dressed man passed us, and without even passing the time of day went on down the cliff. He looked like a plowboy, and after he had gone, and I had wondered whether he could have anything to do with the mill, I thought no more about him. Soon after, Tommy and I had gone a short distance around the fall and on the road, we ere looking down into the gorge at the spot made famous by the Lover’s Leap, when an exclamation from my companion rather startled me. “Why there’s that man we saw at the mill at the foot of the fall – he’s sketching.” So my plowboy turned out to be an artist, and that he was an artist was proven by the position he took to make a sketch of the falls. He placed his sketching material on a big rock at the side of the stream, which served him as an easel, and faced the fall, a large tree shading him from the sun. We left him there, looking like a veritable pygmy at that depth, working away, and Tommy began to show me just where the unfortunate girl had taken her fatal leap. It happened 60 years ago. The young lady had fallen desperately in love with a young farmer in the neighbourhood, who did not requite her affection, but actually married another girl. The poor Jane couldn’t endure, and walking out with a young lady companion one morning, without saying a word, she jumped over the precipice and disappeared from view. Some men who were working in the ravine saw her fall, and said that as the unfortunate girl went down, her clothes formed a parachute and were letting her down slowly, when she clasped her dress about her and went down on the rocks like a shot. She lived but an hour afterwards and never spoke again. It was said that the son of the man she loved was once a detective in this city. Tommy and I called on Mr. Cook, who lives near the falls, and after partaking of his hospitality so generously tendered, we wended our homeward way, paying a flying visit to Stoney Creek, and arrived home about five o’clock p.m., mind the better every way for our jaunt, though I don’t mind saying now, though I hope Tommy won’t hear of it, that I was so tired that I just sat down and wrote this little sketch to rest myself. Reader, I hope you didn’t feel as tired as I did.

Jake.