A Visit to Newfoundland

by Mary Lydia Branch

It is said that Newfoundland resembles Norway. Its deep bays, guarded by lofty cliffs, are like the Norwegian fiords. Some of these bays run inland eighty or ninety miles, with the wildest and grandest of scenery. In the interior of the island are boundless forests of pine, fir, spruce and birch. They are almost entirely untraversed, though the railroad passes through them, and hunters camp by the lakes. Many of the interior stations set down on the railroad map consist, we were told, only of a platform and a pine tree or a telegraph pole.

On the western side are mountain ranges clothed with evergreens and maples, and between those and the Gulf are fertile farm lands.

There are copper and iron mines on the island, which are being developed, so that fishing is not now the only industry, though it is the most absorbing and the most prominent. It holds the attention at every point of the coast. Often there are hamlets only a mile apart, yet it may be impossible to go from one to the other except by a boat. When we found that Rose Blanche, a very picturesque village, was only four miles “as the crow flies” from Channel, where we were staying, we proposed to walk there, but were met by looks and exclamations of utter amazement from the fishermen, and we were soon convinced that we could never cross the precipices and ravines that lay between.

Channel has but a few hundred inhabitants, its roads are hard and narrow, untraveled by so much as an ox-cart, and horses and carriages are unknown. Sheep meet the wanderer on these paths and turn aside for him with a gentle start of surprise. The roads are laid out something like a bow-knot with several ends, and on one of the loops looking down sheer upon wave-beaten boulders, we found a house where we could stay, kept by a widow who had not much more than a measure of meal and a cruse of oil among her supplies, but who did her best. She sent her son to the “Bruce” with a wheelbarrow, to get our extension bag, but there was absolutely no way of transporting our trunk, so that as long as we remained in Channel, if we wanted anything from the trunk, we had to walk two miles to get it.

Dropping our wraps in our landlady’s neat spare room, we started gaily out, enjoying the sound of our own steps on the hard road bed, and bracing ourselves against the strong clean wind. Everything was strange to us, and we found our first common interest in a bed of red poppies by a slanting fence. There we stopped, and were glad when we saw a woman stepping out from her door to see who we were. It was Mrs. Pike, and on her invitation we entered her tidy kitchen and rested by the fire while she related to us the story of her son’s voyages.

Next we made the acquaintance of the postmaster, who invited us to call on his wife at “Willow House,” so named from the row of light green willows planted along his fence.

On leaving him and returning along the ledge-like path we met the stipendiary magistrate, who greeted us because we were strangers, and introduced us to a great telegraph magnate, Mr. A. M. Mackay, who was stopping over a few hours to catch a coast steamer. He told us he had three times, before the completion of the railroad, crossed the island from Port-au-Basques to St. John’s on foot (which was really the only way he could go), a distance of 548 miles, living upon what game he could secure as he went along. His object in this arduous trip was to locate the Anglo-American Telegraph Company’s line.

In conversation with Mr. Mackay and the stipendiary magistrate, we gained some knowledge of the politics and government of Newfoundland.

Newfoundland is a country by itself, owning allegiance to King Edward VII., it is true, but having its own government and making its own laws. It is so distinct from Canada that it is regarded as a foreign country, and goods passing between the two are as strictly examined as if between England and France. Government has not been indulgent to the fishermen, who form so large a part of the population. They have not been allowed to take up or occupy the more fertile and productive parts of the country, but have been compelled to seek their shelter among the rocks, like the conies, and no way is open to them to gain a living except by the catching and salting of codfish, herring and salmon nine months in the year, and by perilous sealing trips in the winter among the ice floes.

Formerly they took their own fish to other places to sell, making trips to Halifax, Boston or New York, and some adventurous sailors even carried ship loads annually to Italy, just before Lent, bringing back good pay and cargoes of oil and salt. In those days they could bring their own supplies from the ports they visited, and a very simple shop or two in each village was enough. But the keen eye of the speculator was upon them. The merchant, a new factor, made his appearance. The merchant came into the village, with means at command, and built warehouses and a wharf, and had his own vessels. He brought in staple articles of all kinds, groceries, cloth, shoes, coal--and then he took pay for these in codfish. This saved the fishermen all trouble in marketing their catches; they had only to fish and take what they caught and cured to the convenient merchant, instead of across the seas to Italy or down to the States. If they had a bad season, the merchant trusted them, and they could pay when they had better luck. Of course he paid something less than they could get by going farther, but they saved time and stayed nearer home. So they fell easily into the new way, and dropped the habit of going abroad, having this ready purchaser at their door.