foundland, and Mr. Joseph Hatton, of London, have, in 

 co-operation, bestowed a long-deferred justice upon the 

 island, and, in a clear and masterly manner, have set forth 

 its claims as to climate, soil, and general resources. Thus 

 the colony has at length been brought into rightful promi- 

 nence, and, due justice having been done its famous fisheries 

 and their exhaustless supply, it has become a public fact 

 that v^e possess in addition other stores of wealth in the 

 hitherto neglected interior, where there are sources of 

 industry and wealth which promise to reward the enter- 

 prise it must attract when opened up by the railway in 

 course of construction under the auspices of the Newfound- 

 land Government. 



The colony possesses a strange and eventful history. 

 From its discovery in 1497 it has gone through every 

 conceivable vicissitude of disputed possession and claims 

 for sovereignty. A century passed after its discovery ere 

 England concerned herself with the island, nor did she then 

 share to any extent in the fisheries, which were prosecuted 

 chiefly by Portuguese and the fishermen of the Basque 

 provinces. In 1578 some four hundred vessels were em- 

 ployed in the cod fishery. Of these seven-eighths were 

 French, Spanish, and Portuguese, England owning but fifty 

 of the total. No attempt was made at this period to 

 colonise the island. The fishermen resorted to the coast 

 at the beginning of the season, and returned to their 

 several countries on the approach of winter. This long- 

 continued indifference of the English Government to the 

 value of Newfoundland was at length brought to a close, 

 in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, by the enterprise and 

 decided action of Sir Humphry Gilbert, a knight of Devon- 

 shire. In 1583, in the presence of men of various nation- 

 alities whom he had summoned to meet him, the knight 



