The Story of Newfoundland | Page 6

destiny of
England had already been definitely asserted, and the American
loyalists were able to resume the allegiance of their birth by merely
crossing the Canadian frontier. When Raleigh wrote, Newfoundland

was the one outward and visible sign of that Greater England in whose
future he was a passionate believer. Therefore, inasmuch as
Newfoundland, being the oldest of all the English colonies, stood for
the Empire which was to be, the moral effects of its loss in infancy
would have been irretrievably grave. How nearly it was lost will appear
in the following pages.
Newfoundland, as was fitting for one of the largest islands in the world,
and an island, too, drawing strategic importance from its position, was
often conspicuous in that titanic struggle between England and France
for sea power, and therefore for the mastery of the world, which dwarfs
every other feature of the eighteenth century. Nor did she come out of
the struggle quite unscathed. Ill-informed or indifferent politicians in
the Mother Country neglected to push home the fruits of victory on
behalf of the colony which the struggle had convulsed, and the direct
consequence of this neglect may be seen in the French fishery claims,
which long distracted the occasional leisure of the Colonial Office.
Newfoundland has indeed been hardened by centuries of trial. For years
its growth was arrested by the interested jealousy of English merchants;
and its maturity was vexed by French exactions, against which Canada
or Australia would long ago have procured redress. Newfoundland has
been the patient Griselda of the Empire, and the story of her triumph
over moral and material difficulties--over famine, sword, fire, and
internal dissension--fills a striking chapter in the history of British
expansion.
That keen zest for geographical discovery, which was one of the most
brilliant products of the Renaissance, was slow in making its
appearance in England. Nor are the explanations far to seek. The bull
(1494) of a notorious Pope (Alexander VI.)--lavish, as befits one who
bestows a thing which he cannot enjoy himself, and of which he has no
right to dispose--had allocated the shadowy world over the sea to Spain
and Portugal, upon a fine bold principle of division; and immediately
afterwards these two Powers readjusted their boundaries in the
unknown world by the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which could not,
however, be considered as binding third parties. The line of longitude
herein adopted was commonly held to have assigned Newfoundland to

Portugal, but the view was incorrect. England was still a Catholic
country, and for all its independence of the Pope in matters temporal,
the effects of such a bull must have been very considerable. Nor did the
personal character of Henry VII. incline him to the path of adventure;
and on the few occasions when he was goaded to enterprise, almost in
spite of himself, we are able to admire the prudence of a prince who
was careful to insert two clauses in his charter of adventure: the first
protecting himself against liability for the cost, the second stipulating
for a share of the profits. It is to the robust insight of Henry VIII. into
the conditions of our national existence that the beginnings of the
English Navy are to be ascribed, and it was under this stubborn prince
that English trade began to depend upon English bottoms. But the real
explanation of Anglo-Saxon backwardness lies somewhat deeper.
Foreign adventure and the planting of settlements must proceed, if they
are to be successful, from an exuberant State; neither in resources, nor
in population, nor, perhaps it must be added, in the spirit of adventure,
was the England of King Henry VII. sufficiently equipped. Hence it
happened that foreign vessels sailed up the Thames, or anchored by the
quays of Bideford in the service of English trade, at a time when the
spirit of Prince Henry the Navigator had breathed into the Portuguese
service, when Diaz was discovering the Cape, and the tiny vessels of
Da Gama were adventuring the immense voyage to Cathay.
It is now clearly established that the earliest adventurers in America
were men of Norse stock. More than a thousand years ago Greenland
was explored by Vikings from Iceland, and a hundred years later Leif
Ericsson discovered a land--Markland, the land of woods--which is
plausibly identified with Newfoundland. Still keeping a southern
course, the adventurer came to a country where grew vines, and where
the climate was strangely mild; it is likely enough that this landfall was
in Massachusetts or Virginia. The name Vinland was given to the
newly-discovered country. The later voyages of Thorwald Ericsson, of
Thorlstein Ericsson--both brothers of Leif--and of Thorfinn Karlsefne,
are recounted in the Sagas. The story of these early colonists or
"builders," as they called themselves, is weakened by an infusion of
fable, such as