144 LETTER FROM W. T. GRENFELL, ESQ. 
officers along these shores have no reversing thermometers for deep- 
sea work. Without any doubt repeated observations made all round 
the coast would become of the highest value. 
The very life of the colony is at times imperilled by the critical 
condition of the fisheries,—lobsters failing, seals not being found, 
herring not reaching the coast, and cod vacating their normal haunts. 
Poverty, misery, and want, with great loss to merchants as well as 
fisher-folk, result, a great deal of which might apparently be avoided 
if more were known about the movements of the fish, of the bait, and 
of the Arctic and Gulf currents, which seem constantly to be varying, 
and may account often for most unexpected failures. 
The resident English fisher-folk along the coast number some 
5000, while every summer about 25,000 to 30,000 men, women, and 
children flock from Newfoundland to catch cod on the Labrador 
coast. They remain from three to four months, returning only 
when compelled by the sea freezing over. 
I must be categorical in my description of these people in order 
to convey succinctly an idea of this peculiar fishery. 
The coast is rugged and broken, the country barren and inhos- 
pitable. Hight months in the year both sea and land are completely 
ice-bound. No domestic animals but dogs exist, and no vegetables 
can be grown, except a chance potato or cabbage in the: very 
extreme south. 
The people have no legal representative whatever, though a Custom- 
house official visits the coast in the summer in a small schooner, and 
is also empowered to act as a magistrate. If a criminal wishes to 
be tried he could with some difficulty manage it. 
The schooners which bring the people form a very assorted fleet, 
and carry a mixed crew of men and women, besides more or fewer 
passengers who have no boats of their own to come in. These 
latter huddle into the main hold on the top of the salt, fishing gear, 
and stores. These boats are not surveyed before starting, and do 
not all clear from any custom house. More surveyors and _ better 
arrangements are urgently necessary. 
Once on the coast, mud huts and small stages are erected, the 
merchants’ agent or a large fish planter generally having a larger 
stage, and a store of goods near the people he has “‘ supplied.” 
A universal truck system exists, and at the end of the summer 
the dry fish are ‘‘ weighed in” in quintals (hundredweights), and go 
to pay off the outfit advanced in spring. The fish are caught on 
“jiggers,” two hooks back-to-back, or in cod traps, which are 
simply submerged rooms of nets; but squid, caplin, or launce are 
used for bait when obtainable. 
The cod is successively “ throated,” ‘‘ headed,” “split,” “ salted,” 
