The ruggedness of the coast of Newfoundland, and the occasional inclemency of the climate in winter, led to unfavourable reports, against which at least one early traveller raised his voice in protest. Captain Hayes, who accompanied Gilbert to Newfoundland in 1583, wrote on his return:
"The common opinion that is had of intemperation and extreme cold that should be in this country, as of some part it may be verified, namely the north, where I grant it is more colde than in countries of Europe, which are under the same elevation; even so it cannot stand with reason, and nature of the clime, that the south parts should be so intemperate as the bruit has gone."
Notwithstanding the chill seas in which it lies, Newfoundland is not in fact a cold country. The Arctic current lowers the temperature of the east coast, but the Gulf Stream, whilst producing fogs, moderates the cold. The thermometer seldom or never sinks below zero in winter, and in summer extreme heat is unknown. Nor is its northerly detachment without compensation, for at times the Aurora borealis illumines the sky with a brilliancy unknown further south. A misconception appears to prevail that the island is in summer wrapped in fog, and its shores in winter engirt by ice. In the interior the climate is very much like that of Canada, but is not so severe as that of western Canada or even of Ontario and Quebec. The sky is bright and the weather clear, and the salubrity is shown by the healthy appearance of the population.
The natural advantages of the country are very great, though for centuries many of them were strangely overlooked. Whitbourne, it is true, wrote with quaint enthusiasm, in the early sixteenth century: "I am loth to weary thee (good reader) in acquainting thee thus to those famous, faire, and profitable rivers, and likewise to those delightful large and inestimable woods, and also with those fruitful and enticing lulls and delightful vallies." In fact, in the interior the valleys are almost as numerous as Whitbourne's adjectives, and their fertility promises a great future for agriculture when the railway has done its work.
The rivers, though "famous, faire, and profitable," are not overpoweringly majestic. The largest are the Exploits River, 200 miles long and navigable for some 30 miles, and the Gander, 100 miles long, which—owing to the contour of the island—flows to the eastern bays. The deficiency, however, if it amounts to one, is little felt, for Newfoundland excels other lands in the splendour of its bays, which not uncommonly pierce the land as far as sixty miles. The length of the coast-line has been calculated at about 6000 miles—one of the longest of all countries of the world relatively to the area. Another noteworthy physical feature is the great number of lakes and ponds; more than a third of the area is occupied by water. The largest lake is Grand Lake, 56 miles long, 5 broad, with an area of nearly 200 square miles. The longest mountain range in the island is about the same length as the longest river, 200 miles; and the highest peaks do not very greatly exceed 2000 feet.
The cliffs, which 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 had thundered in his best style that he would not surrender the Newfoundland fisheries though the enemy were masters of the Tower of London. So the great Bacon, at a time when the wealth of the Incas was being revealed to the dazzled eyes of the Old World, declared, with an admirable sense of proportion, that the fishing banks of Newfoundland were richer far than the mines of Mexico and Peru.