The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Fences

THESE are the stump fences of yesterday, heirlooms from the era of oxen and pioneer. Their sharp silhouette against the sky made a fantastic, antler-like pattern, often beautiful to behold. After the stumping bee they were hauled to the edge of the clearing by the teams of oxen, then turned sidewise and lined up so that the ungainly, tangled roots formed an impenetrable barrier.

The upper picture shows a high stump fence in winter, near Eldorado Park, Peel County, Ontario, Canada.

The lower picture was also made in the same County and at the same season. It is possible that these fences still exist.

HERE we see the fantastic black and white silhouette of a venerable stump fence. It is an amazing tribute to the artist to have made it so vitally realistic, so sharp and so clear. Evidently it bordered a ploughed field, as three of the furrows show in the foreground. At a glance one can appreciate how impossible it was for livestock to penetrate such a barrier.

The lower drawing shows a magnificent specimen of a pine root in all its complicated detail. To establish its size and majesty the artist has included the figure of a man for comparison. This indeed must have been a giant relic of the virgin stands of timber.

IT WOULD be difficult to find a more impressive and permanent barrier than this, made from mammoth boulders and rough field stones. These, in the days of the settlers of long ago, must have been cleared from the newly won forest land, stone by slow, hazardous stone, and hauled by stolid stone-boat, or rolled heavingly inch by inch to the boundary, with the aid of the straining oxen teams. This splendid drawing depicts accurately an example of this type of fencing which the artist found in Peel County, and includes, to give it proper proportion, a good likeness of Mrs Hilary Glynn, who presently resides in England. It would seem only fair to add that such a fence would rarely be found in Canada.