CSS NEWFOUNDLAND AS A TIMBER COUNTin'. [Fed. 



policy of most of the Governors, with the exception of the late Sir 

 John Hawley Cllover, was to discourage every enterprise but the 

 fisheries. The result of this narrow policy was the locating of the 

 population, which is still under two hundred thousand, on the bays 

 and creeks with -which the east and west coasts are deeply indented. 

 How anxious those who enjoy privilege are to keep it, notwith- 

 standing the wrong that may be done to others ! For years it was 

 thought that the ISTorth-West Territories of Canada were barren and 

 uninhabitable, instead of being what they undoubtedly are, some of 

 the most fertile land on the American continent. The Hudson Bay 

 Company had a monopoly in the fur trade of those regions, and 

 they were more or less anxious to keep it by allowing the idea to 

 go forth that the country was unfit for colonization. The same 

 with the French and Englisli shipowners of Newfoundland, because 

 they circulated and fed a report that the interior was a scrubby, 

 swampy morass, and the rivers torpid and sluggish, flowing between 

 barren and cheerless banks. This is not the case, as it is now 

 beginning to be pretty well understood that there are at least two 

 million acres of splendid white pine and other timbers on the water- 

 shed of the streams discharging on the west coast, all of which flow 

 from lakes in the interior, and not from swamps or lagoons, as 

 generally believed. This fact was first made known by an 

 adventurous Scotchman named Carmack, who in 1829 crossed the 

 island with an Indian half-breed as his only companion. Carmack, 

 who would seem to have been a man of strong physique and mental 

 powers, wrote a most glowing account of the hitherto unexplored 

 interior — grassy plains, water lakes, and streams crowded with fish, 

 wild fruit of almost every kind in abundance, and vast forests of 

 white pine, spruce, birch, and tamarac, but no oak, beech, elm, or 

 cedar, those timbers being as yet nowhere found on the island. 

 The narrative set some men's teeth on edge, and an agitation was 

 got up for further exploration ; but the short-sighted policy already 

 alluded to had a stultifying effect, and nothing of importance wag 

 done until 1871, when the Government of the island appointed a 

 gentleman named Murray to make a geological survey, and almost 

 in every particular he confirmed Carmack's story. He reported that 

 the Exploits was a noble river flowing north-east, with large and 

 valuable pine forests on its banks, and draining an immense area of 

 fertile land. On the west coast there are several comparatively 

 large rivers, such as the Terranovo, the Gander, the Gambo, and the 

 Humber, all taking their rise in lakes, around the shores of which 

 there are vast primaeval forests that the saw or axe has not yet 

 touched. Tliey are unsurveyed and ungranted, but not likely to 

 long remain so, as a line of railway is now laid out from Trinity 



