212 THE LABRADOR PENINSULA. chap, xxxiv. 



Lawrence, because these animals do not approach the 

 shore in herds at tliese places. 



Seals are not only taken in nets near the shore, and on 

 the ice-fields in the middle, of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, 

 but the vast floes in the broad Atlantic, at a considerable 

 distance from Newfoundland and the Island of Cape 

 Breton, are annually visited by thousands of seal-hunters. 



The expeditions that are fitted out for this kind of 

 fishing, or rather of hunting, require to start soon after 

 the young ones are dropped, in order to find them still 

 on the ice-fields ; for, once in the water, seals, whether 

 young or old, can set the most practised fisherman at 

 defiance, and it is useless to attempt to pursue them. 



Newfoundland seahng, as it is called, is carried on on 

 a large scale. The vessels employed in it are brigs and 

 topsail schooners, sohdly built, well strengthened within 

 to enable them to resist pressure from the ice, and plated 

 with iron forward to prevent their being cut through by 

 it. They have crews of from twenty to sixty men, and 

 half a score of small boats, which the men drag after them 

 on the ice, and make use of to cross the open water 

 dividing the fields or bergs from each other. This branch 

 of industry has attained to considerable proportions in 

 that island. Nearly 400 vessels, measuring more than 

 35,000 tons, and carrying 10,000 men, leave the ports of 

 Newfoundland in the months of March and April, for the 

 purpose of hunting seals on the ice-fields wherever they 

 can be found ^ and the profits derived from these 

 dangerous and fatiguing expeditions are often very great 

 and sometimes even enormous. 



In the whole circle of human employments, few or 



