96 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



thinned by the gold of summer than by the silver snows of 

 winter. Thenceforth the garrison was maintained at a strength 

 of between sixty and ninety men. 



An Act of In 1699 the first Act of Parliament for the government 

 ment re?u- ^ Newfoundland was passed. It was a re-enactment of the 

 lates New- ten commandments of 1634 in their later versions. The 

 fisheries eleventh commandment of 1661 and its accretions were 

 ^99, expunged. The twelfth commandment of 1670 was retained. 

 The quarter-of-a-mile veto of 1680 was abolished, and settlers, 

 who seized seaside coigns of vantage, which nomadic fisher- 

 men had not occupied since 1685, might retain them for ever; 

 otherwise they must await the arrival of the fishing-fleets 

 before taking post, and, as before, the first who came were 

 first served, and retained their posts for the season. Disputes 

 between settlers and nomads were reviewable on appeal from 

 the fishing admirals by the convoy captains, and felonies 

 and aliens' were triable by a judge and jury in England. Aliens' baiting 

 exclusion, anc j fi s h m g was now prohibited, not merely between Capes 

 Race and Bonavista as in 1670, but 'in Newfoundland'; 

 and the legislative prohibition, so far as it confined itself to 

 the limits prescribed in 1670, only confirmed existing facts, 

 but so far as it exceeded those limits was stage thunder, 

 except perhaps in Bonavista Bay. The invasion of Bona- 

 vista Bay by English settlers began immediately after D'lber- 

 ville's raid and was first announced in 1698. Five years 

 later the English settlers in the northern parts of Newfound- 

 land were defined as those who dwelt in ' Trinity and 

 Conception Bays, and as far northward as the north of 

 Bonavista Bay'. 1 Northward expansion was stimulated by 

 the war. In spite of the generality of the words of the Act, 

 and of actual expansion on the north of Cape Bonavista, 

 orders, which were issued from time to time to exclude aliens, 

 usually referred to the old-fashioned conventional spheres of 

 French and English activity. Thus in 1698 the Privy 



1 Petition, Jan. n, 1703. 



f 



I 



