216 THE LABRADOR PENINSULA. chap. xxxv. 



Fishermen — Artificial Oyster Beds — Great Value of the Oyster 

 Trade in the United States — Oyster Beds in France — Inactivity 

 of the French Canadians with respect to the Fisheries — Canadian 

 Bounties — Suggestions for Encouragement to the Canadian 

 Fisheries. 



THE commercial and political importance of the North 

 American fisheries has been recognised for more 

 than 300 years. They have attracted, at different periods, 

 the earnest attention of the Spanish, Portuguese, French, 

 English, and American Governments, and have been made 

 the subject of special articles in treaties after the termi- 

 nation of long, expensive, and sanguinary wars. 



The navy of France was sustained during the first half 

 of the eighteenth centmy by the fisheries of North 

 America ; and without this admirable nursery for sailors, 

 France would not have been able to man the tithe of her 

 fieets at that time. We have only to glance at Louisburg, 

 and the gold lavished on that splendid harbour and once 

 splendid fortress on the Island of Cape Breton, to feel 

 sensible of the vast importance with which the North 

 American fisheries were invested by France at an early 

 period ; and in the grasping pohcy of Louis Napoleon 

 during the last five or six years, with respect to fishing 

 rights on the coast of Newfoundland, we have a proof 

 that the anxiety to retain and improve them as a nursery 

 for seamen still exists. The fortifications of Louisburg 

 cost the French 30,000,000 hvi'cs, and when taken by 

 the British forces from New England, under Sir WiUiam 

 Peperall, for the first time, in 1745, the annual value of 

 the fisheries to the French was nearly 1,000,000/. sterhng, 

 independently of their being the best nursery for seamen 

 that the world ever saw. 



