84 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



gardens, busied themselves with fishing during summer, and 

 with boat-building during winter, and sometimes during a few 

 weeks in autumn stalked deer and caught seals, otters, and 

 beavers near Cape Bonavista. But the fur-trade was almost 

 entirely monopolized by Frenchmen, who plied their industries 

 far away from where Englishmen dwelt, and were aided in 

 it by Indians, with whom the Englishmen did not come into 

 contact. What the nomadic English fishermen said of the 

 inhabitants of Newfoundland was true : they were very few, 

 they were not husbandmen as in other colonies, and they 

 were fishermen through and through. Thirdly, there were 

 the nomadic English fishermen and sackmen, who came and 

 went almost as punctually as the equinoxes, and who out- 

 numbered the permanent settlers by ten to one, and the 

 ' inhabitants ' by three to one, and complained that they, the 

 hardy sailors and ideal fishermen of Tudor antiquity, were 

 being elbowed out by lazy prosperous upstarts of the Stuart 

 age who were not true sailors. Their complaint was true 

 in a sense. The ' inhabitants ' were boatmen who caught 

 one-third of the total catch, which was more than their fair 

 share, without ships or experience of the open sea. The 

 nomadic visitors were splendid ocean sailors, and owned 221 

 ships averaging 74 tons apiece, which was four tons more than 

 Hitchcock's buss, with 688 guns. Modern critics would in- 

 evitably infer that the inhabitants produced better results with 

 less expenditure than the nomads. Contemporary observers 

 as inevitably inferred that the nomads added to, and the in- 

 habitants sapped the strength and wealth of England. Con- 

 temporary and modern critics would be equally convinced that 

 it was unthinkable that a mere handful of scattered fishermen 

 should either rule or be ruled by a vast mob of nomadic but 

 united fishermen who were their rivals ; that the settlers were 

 far too deeply and widely planted to be transplanted ; and that 

 the only solution of the crux was to appoint strong indepen- 

 dent autocrats, who were not fishermen, but whom fishermen 



