The human shape on Ottawa's shore!
Chief of the "shiners," it was said,
Cæsar or nothing--never led--
But always foremost in the fray,
Was ever Peter Aylen's way.
A heavy lumberer Peter was,
When lumbering was like pitch and toss,
To-day success, to-morrow loss.
But let him rest, he sleeps beside
The Ottawa's majestic tide!
Perhaps I'd better mention here
Who and what the "shiners" were,
Who gave of yore such sturdy thumps,
And brought forth phrenologic bumps
Unknown to scan of craniology,
With bludgeons or aid of geology.
A band of Irish raftsmen, who
Were to each other always true,
Combined together, war they made,
To banish from the lumber trade
All French-Canadian competition
By dooming it to abolition;
They made the wild attempt, at least,
To extirpate poor Jean Baptiste.
Among their victims they enrol'd him,
And made the place too hot to hold him,
Yet were the tales that rumor told,
Worse than the shiners' acts of old,
Though memory's charged with many a fray
That happened in the early day,