The majority of the houses in the capital are fitted up with the telephone, and a good deal of the shopping is done by its aid. And here it may be well to tell the English boys and girls that the British method of calculating in pounds, shillings, and pence is not in vogue in Newfoundland. All buying is transacted in dollars and cents, the dollar being about equal to four shillings. There are copper coins for 1 cent and 2 cents, and silver coins for 5, 10, 20, and 50 cents. The paper money is in denominations of 1, 2, 5, 10, or more dollars. This system may appear strange at first, but it is much more simple than calculating in British currency.
Life in the summer-time is one round of pleasure. When the vacation is announced the boys and girls scamper from the schools and colleges, singing:
“No more French! no more French!
No more sitting on a hard board bench!”
All books are laid aside, and picnics in the country are the favourite holiday pastime. Many of the city families erect tents by the side of a large river or lake, and stay there during the summer vacation. Rowing-boats are on the most popular waters, and the boys and girls can row together across the magnificent lakes; for every Newfoundland boy and almost every girl knows how to manage a pair of oars. Every boy knows how to use a fishing-rod, too, and as many as fifty trout have been drawn out of the water in a single day by one boy, and these trout weigh from one to five pounds.
When they are tired of rowing and fishing, they scamper away to the woods, where raspberries, strawberries, partridge-berries, and blue-berries grow abundantly in luscious clusters. While father and mother are preparing tea around the camp-fire, the children are gathering raspberries and bringing cream from the farm; and then all settle down on their camp-stools or on the ground to do justice to a meal for which the invigorating air has given them such a keen appetite.
There is not the same enthusiasm exhibited with regard to football as is shown by the English boy. Moreover, football is played in the summer, and not in the winter. Matches are played weekly between the various college teams; but as they are so few, the same teams have to oppose each other very frequently. The league tables are in operation, and there are certain trophies offered that excite a good deal of interest among both players and spectators.
There is an impression prevailing in the old world that if European boys and girls came to the homes of the boys and girls in Newfoundland, they would find that they were all Eskimos. That is a very erroneous impression, and unfair to Newfoundland. As a matter of fact, they are just like British or American children in appearance and manner, and it may be that a larger proportion of bigger and braver boys would be found amongst them. English papers and magazines are to be found in all their homes, and all the British school games and pranks are quite familiar to them.
CHAPTER V
THE FISHERIES OF NEWFOUNDLAND
Since the days when Cabot left Bristol to roam across the Atlantic in search of new lands and new peoples, the fishing-grounds of the Grand Banks have become known all over the world. Indeed, their riches have been coveted by many countries, and more than one battle has been fought between nation and nation to gain possession of the famous “gold-mine of the Newfoundland fishery, richer than the famous treasures of Golconda and Peru.”