Saint John's, Newfoundland

“ No English Homer has yet risen to tell the tale of Newfoundland, shrouded in mystery and romance, the daring invasion and vicissitudes of those exhaustless fisheries, the battle of life in that seething cauldron of the North Atlantic, where the swelling billows never rest, and the hurricane only slumbers to bring forth the worse dangers of the fog-bank and the iceberg. Fierce as has been during the four centuries the fight for the fisheries by European rivals, their petty racial quarrels sink into insignificance before the general struggle for the harvest. ”

“ John's, Newfoundland, the ultimate destination of the Stephano and Florizel, where a stay of two to three days is made. Returning to New York, another day is spent in the Nova Scotia capital.
The Red Cross steamers are exceptional in their cleanliness, attractive furnishings, and cuisine. They are designed to battle in winter with the ice of northern seas and are therefore very staunchly constructed. The voyage from New York through Long Island Sound and thence northward to Halifax is very little longer and far less arduous than one made overland by way of Boston or Montreal. ”

“ Nearly every cove of Newfoundland's 6000 miles of coast line shows a straggling group of huts and drying stages on the restricted beaches or clinging to the shelves of grim cliffs.
The first week of March sees the departure from St. John harbour of the seal-killers, nowadays on strong steam vessels. Their goal is the moving field of ice which jams about the northern shores of Newfoundland and carries on its surface herds of harp and hood hair-seals. The hood is a savage and unsociable native of Greenland. The male when attacked blows an inflated skin over his head. ”

“ John's as far as the Straits of Hudson, were placed under the jurisdiction of Newfoundland. The islands of Cape Breton and St. John, now Prince Edward, became subject to the Government of Nova Scotia, which then included the present province of New Brunswick. The northern limit of the province did not extend beyond the territory known as Rupert's Land under the charter given to the Hudson's Bay Company in 1670, while the western boundary was drawn obliquely from Lake Nipissing as far as Lake St. Francis on the St. Lawrence ”

“ The United States Naval authorities promised to forward one from Washington; but unfortunately, owing to transport difficulties, it reached St. John's after our departure. Nevertheless I am deeply grateful to the United States Navy Department for its courtesy and its offer of help in an enterprise that was foreign to them and non-official.
Newfoundland is a hospitable place, but its best friends cannot claim that it is ideal for aviation. The whole of the island has no ground that might be made into a first-class aërodrome. The district around St. John's is especially difficult. ”

“ We find, in after times, the captains of the king’s ships used to oblige every New England master of a ship to give such bond, in a penalty of five hundred pounds, with two sureties in two hundred and fifty pounds each, not to carry any persons out of the island.
As to the fishery, he did not hear of more than one New England vessel fishing on the coast. Indeed it appears, that their fishery was all carried on upon their own coast, where they had better fish, and that they looked to Newfoundland for nothing but the sort of traffic above-mentioned. ”

“ This has been done by a great many, but especially by one Ford, who had a power left him by a commander of one of his majesty’s ships to be governor of Petty Harbour. I have seen, and heard so very much of this, that I faithfully believe, and I have done myself the honour in two letters to my lords of trade, to acquaint them, as I here do, that no man living in the country of Newfoundland is fit to govern. For the set of people that live here, are those that cannot live in Great Britain, or any where else, but in a place without government ”

“ For one hundred and forty-five years England had been master of the island, and not a single road had been built suitable for wheeled carriages. Is it conceivable that the French would so completely have neglected the colony if they had been its masters?
In 1832, when the Reform Bill put an end to the malign influence of Tory ascendency in England, Newfoundland also gained the boon of representative government; but it was only a merchants' government. The people who elected the House of Assembly did not dare to vote against the will of the merchants for fear of losing employment ”

“ The French bounties do not hurt the Massachusetts fishermen, because we have a home market which the Frenchmen cannot touch, and seek only a foreign market for the very small quantity that our own people do not consume. And to share in this American home market alone would be more profitable to Newfoundland than all its connection with England can ever be. ”

“ A good many ships also went out from La Rochelle on the west coast of France, and took part in the fishing off the coast of Newfoundland: together with the ships of Brittany and Dieppe there may have been a French fishing fleet of seventy to eighty ships plying every summer season between France, Newfoundland, and Cape Breton. So that when "John from Verrazano" offered his services to Francis I to make discoveries across the ocean, which should become possessions of the French Crown, he was quickly provided with the requisite funds and ships. ”

“ John (39) , embracing the adjacent town of Portland, chief commercial city of New Brunswick, on the estuary of St. John River, 277 m. NW. of Halifax; has an excellent harbour; shipbuilding, fishing, and timber exporting are the chief industries; has a great variety of prosperous manufactures, such as machine and iron works, cotton and woollen factories, &c.; does a good trade with the West Indies.
St. Johns (26) , capital of Newfoundland, situated on a splendid harbour on the peninsula or Avalon, in the E. of the island: is the nearest port of America to the continent of Europe ”

“ I happen to know another side of the question; and it does not become the Englishmen interested in that railway matter to talk of "Yankee swindlers."
When Sir Robert Thorburn became Premier of Newfoundland, he took the first step necessary to make this line of some value to the tax-payers by extending it twenty-seven miles to Placentia, the old French "La Plaisance." This line was of immense value to St. John's, because it gave the people of that city a convenient winter harbor which is [46] always open, by which they have an easy communication with Canada and the United States ”

“ John's, Newfoundland, is resumed. The arrival is scheduled for Thursday morning. Summer excursionists are entitled to remain on board the steamer at Halifax and at St. John's. The return voyage is begun on Saturday ”

“ John's, Newfoundland. The idea struck him that if a line were laid to Ireland, lasting benefit would result to the world. So he called together some of his intimate friends, including Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor, Chandler White, and Marshall O. Roberts, and they joined him in organizing the "New York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company," which was the pioneer in the movement to connect the two continents by a telegraph cable, and without whose aid its consummation would have been indefinitely delayed. ”

“ Then came the proposal that it should run from St. John's to Hall's Bay, with branches to Brigus and Harbour Grace, covering in all a distance of about 340 miles. A joint committee of both Houses prepared a report, which became the basis of the Bill (1880) . One sentence is worth quoting, because it states very clearly the difficulties which have played so large a part in the history of Newfoundland:
"The question of the future of our growing population has for some time enjoyed the earnest attention of all thoughtful men in this country, and has been the subject of serious solicitude. ”

“ The Newfoundland Government prides itself on all the rivers being open to every one. For the first time, in 1910, a fishing licence of $10 was imposed on the visitor, and this gave him the right to fish any river in the island. ”

“ By passing a law to the effect that, so long as the French gave a bounty on the export of salt fish, the English government would give their own fishermen exactly the same amount of protection, the French would soon have been brought to terms; and, by opening up Newfoundland to [36] settlement by roads and railways, many of the starving Irish would have been provided with homes under the British flag far more comfortable than any that they could find in their native land. So a more prosperous Ireland would have risen on this side of the Atlantic, and England would have gained thereby. ”

“ Poor Newfoundland has had no Ireland in America to help her. She has been among the most loyal of England's colonies, and because of her loyalty she has been the most shamefully treated.
It might be expected that Irish Catholics would emigrate in large numbers to Newfoundland to escape the infamous penal laws by which King George oppressed them in Ireland, and that sailors from all parts of Great Britain would seek there a shelter from the press-gangs at home. Dr. O'Donnell, the first regularly authorized Catholic priest on the island, applied in 1790 for leave to build a chapel in an outport ”

“ This is a common practice in Newfoundland. They never acquaint the admirals with this proceeding before they do it; [78] neither do the admirals trouble themselves with it afterwards. But the consequence lies here; the planters’ men will catch no more fish, because they have no hopes of getting any wages; the planter is ruined, and all the rest of the creditors unpaid; who, if they had given him the liberty to make his fishing-voyage, might have paid them all. ”

“ They insulted France by imposing upon her the rule of a Bourbon, and to this Bourbon they guaranteed those rights over Newfoundland on which the French republic bases its claims to-day.
Let us now turn to Newfoundland itself. While the nations were fighting, its merchants had enjoyed the monopoly of the cod-fisheries. Some of the capitalists had secured profits between £20,000 and £40,000 a year each, but they made the poor fishermen pay eight pounds a barrel for flour and twelve pounds a barrel for pork. They took their fortunes to England. ”

“ The best interests of those 200,000 inhabitants can be served without touching the French shore at all. Even if France concedes all that Newfoundland demands, the bounty question is in the way; and Newfoundland cannot compete with that.
France gives this bounty—and quite rightly—as a protection to her sailors. A similar protection to England's fishermen would not be permitted by the Manchester men.
The other way is to build a railroad connecting the mining and agricultural districts along the French shore with Port aux Basques. Of course I do not mean such railroads as are built in England. ”

“ But what I would more particularly represent to their lordships, is the clandestine and illegal commerce carried on between the New England men, and several of the British masters, especially the fishing admirals; who after they have, according to the act, qualified themselves in England for fishing ships, depart for France, Spain, or Portugal, where they freight with wines and brandies; which early in the year they carry directly to Newfoundland; and either dispose of to the planters, or barter with the New England-men for the produce of the plantations. ”

“ Surely, the country that made so much profit out of the slave-trade is bound to compensate Newfoundland for the losses caused by its weakness in the French shore question rather than that France which in 1713 abandoned the infamous traffic to the British Tories. ”

“ Whereas the trade of and fishing at Newfoundland is a beneficial trade to this kingdom, not only in the imploying great numbers of seamen and ships, and exporting and consuming great quantities of provisions and manufactures of this realm, whereby many tradesmen and poor artificers are kept at work, but also in bringing into this nation, by returns of the effects of the said fishery from other countries, great quantities of wine, oil, plate, iron, wool, and sundry other useful commodities, to the increase of his Majesty’s revenue, and the encouragement of trade and navigation ”

“ They pray, that none should retail liquors to fishermen, or persons concerned in the fishery, but only to their own servants; that goods, the produce or manufacture of Great Britain, might be exported duty free, for the benefit of the fishery; that all oil, blubber, furs, and fish, taken or made in Newfoundland by British subjects, might be imported duty free, and that Mediterranean passes for the ships carrying fish might be given gratis. ”

“ But to us Americans the words have their lessons also. Newfoundland not only belongs to our Continental system, [10] but it can never be really prosperous until it becomes a State in our Union. What it is to-day, New England might have been, had it not been delivered by the Continental forces, and by the French navy, from the rule of British Tories. ”

“ Nothing material appears respecting the civil government of Newfoundland, till the year 1737, when the board of trade listened to the representation that had frequently been made by the governor, of the inconvenience of sending over to England for trial, persons who had committed capital felonies. ”