v j PREFACE 



existence which Newfoundland led for so long a time ; 

 and this half-and-half existence was only the effect of 

 ideas of past centuries, into which we must think our- 

 selves back. Modern writers often allude to these ideas 

 with the condescension or contempt with which dwellers 

 in sunlight speak of those who dwell in twilight, forget- 

 ting that twilight has a beauty and a mystery of its 

 own. Moreover, the half-and-half existence of New- 

 foundland, the twilight so to speak of its history, in- 

 variably had a meaning, some reason for its being, 

 some necessity which explained and justified it. This 

 meaning seemed to change from time to time. 



In the sixteenth century twilight brooded over all 

 the civilized world and was the herald of that dawn 

 which broke elsewhere but not in Newfoundland. In 

 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the dimness 

 of the history of Newfoundland recalled that chronic 

 mist which in poetic visions environs the shadows of 

 those who have been or are about to be. In the 

 Nineteenth Century philosophers complacently classed 

 Newfoundland with obsolete and obscure survivals, and 

 pointed to Newfoundlanders as examples of the tyranny 

 of Custom. But there was a deeper and more per- 

 manent reason for the dubious existence of the colony 

 as a colony. 



Hunters and fishermen are always the boldest of 

 pioneers and often the homeliest of men, when their 

 hunting and fishing season is over. These pursuits 

 teach their votaries to annihilate space, and then cither 

 drive them back to the very villages in which they were 

 born, or make them converts or reverts to savagery. 



