The Story of Newfoundland | Page 3

form a brown, bleak and rugged barrier round the coasts of Newfoundland, varying in height from 300 to 400 feet, must have seemed grim enough to the first discoverers; in fact, they give little indication of the charming natural beauties which lie behind them. The island is exuberantly rich in woodland, and its long penetrating bays, running in some cases eighty to ninety miles inland, and fringed to the water's edge, vividly recall the more familiar attractiveness of Norwegian scenery. Nor has any custom staled its infinite variety, for as a place of resort it has been singularly free from vogue. This is a little hard to understand, for the summer climate is by common consent delightful, and the interior still retains much of the glamour of the imperfectly explored. The cascades of Rocky River, of the Exploits River, and, in particular, the Grand Falls, might in themselves be considered a sufficient excuse for a voyage which barely exceeds a week.
Newfoundland is rich in mineral promise. Its history in this respect goes back only about sixty years: in 1857 a copper deposit was discovered at Tilt Cove, a small fishing village in Notre Dame Bay, where seven years later the Union Mine was opened. It is now clear that copper ore is to be found in quantities almost as inexhaustible as the supply of codfish. There are few better known copper mines in the world than Bett's Cove Mine and Little Bay Mine; and there are copper deposits also at Hare Bay and Tilt Cove. In 1905-6 the copper ore exported from these mines was valued at more than 375,000 dollars, in 1910-11 at over 445,000 dollars. The value of the iron ore produced in the latter period was 3,768,000 dollars. It is claimed that the iron deposits--red hematite ore--are among the richest in the world. In Newfoundland, as elsewhere, geology taught capital where to strike, and when the interior is more perfectly explored it is likely that fresh discoveries will be made. In the meantime gold, lead, zinc, silver, talc, antimony, and coal have also been worked at various places.
A more particular account must be given of the great fish industry, on which Newfoundland so largely depends, and which forms about 80 per cent. of the total exports. For centuries a homely variant of Lord Rosebery's Egyptian epigram would have been substantially true: Newfoundland is the codfish and the codfish is Newfoundland. Many, indeed, are the uses to which this versatile fish may be put. Enormous quantities of dried cod are exported each year for the human larder, a hygienic but disagreeable oil is extracted from the liver to try the endurance of invalids; while the refuse of the carcase is in repute as a stimulating manure. The cod fisheries of Newfoundland are much larger than those of any other country in the world; and the average annual export has been equal to that of Canada and Norway put together. The predominance of the fishing industry, and its ubiquitous influence in the colony are vividly emphasised by Mr Rogers[2] in the following passage, though his first sentence involves an exaggerated restriction so far as modern conditions are concerned:
"Newfoundlanders are men of one idea, and that idea is fish. Their lives are devoted to the sea and its produce, and their language mirrors their lives; thus the chief streets in their chief towns are named Water Street, guides are called pilots, and visits cruises. Conversely, land words have sea meanings, and a 'planter,' which meant in the eighteenth century a fishing settler as opposed to a fishing visitor, meant in the nineteenth century--when fishing visitors ceased to come from England--a shipowner or skipper. The very animals catch the infection, and dogs, cows, and bears eat fish. Fish manures the fields. Fish, too, is the main-spring of the history of Newfoundland, and split and dried fish, or what was called in the fifteenth century stock-fish, has always been its staple, and in Newfoundland fish means cod."
The principal home of the cod is the Grand Newfoundland Bank, an immense submarine island 600 miles in length and 200 in breadth, which in earlier history probably formed part of North America. Year by year the demand for codfish grows greater, and the supply--unaffected by centuries of exaction--continues to satisfy the demand. This happy result is produced by the marvellous fertility of the cod, for naturalists tell us that the roe of a single female--accounting, perhaps, for half the whole weight of the fish--commonly contains as many as five millions of ova. In the year 1912-13 the value of the exported dried codfish alone was 7,987,389 dollars, and in 1917 the total output of the bank and shore cod fishery was valued at 13,680,000 dollars; and at a time when it was incomparably less, Pitt