PROGRESS BY LAND, 1818-1910 173 



that rich people had for the last ten years or more been eating 

 fresh beef and mutton all the year round. 1 Cattle-farmers 

 supplied the classes before the roads were complete. But 

 these farmers were mere forerunners, and it was after the 

 making of roads that farming seemed about to become an 

 institution. In this sense roads created agriculture. 2 Roads, 

 horses, cattle, oats, and ploughs brought wheat, but wheat 

 culture was and still is in its infancy. A skilled observer 

 wrote in 1842 of a farmer who had a water-mill, and grew 

 and ground autumn-sown wheat near St. John's, as though 

 he were one of the wonders of the world; and in 1849 Sir 

 G. Le Marchant triumphantly announced his discovery of no 

 less than three mills in Newfoundland, one of which, however, 

 was not yet in use. * Oddly enough, Sir T. Cochrane had 

 made the same discovery of the same corn-mills some sixteen 

 years earlier. Farming, if any, was usually mixed farming, 

 not only in the English sense, but in the sense that farmers 

 were only half-farmers, half- something else. Jukes dis- 

 covered ' one of the very few instances in the island ' of a 

 farmer ' entirely independent ' of that something else ; 4 but 

 this unique specimen dwelt in a unique position on an islet of 

 his own near Greenspond, which was his market, and which 

 was then and is now one of the principal settlements in 

 Bonavista Bay. People did not think it worth while to farm 

 seriously ; partly because other pursuits were more lucrative 

 and congenial, and partly because, as a rule, the soil was 

 ungrateful. But to this last rule there was an exception in 

 the neighbourhood of St. George Bay, and in the big river 

 valleys. The reasons which made for fertility were geological. 



A glance at the map of Newfoundland will show land, Geological 

 mountains, rivers, flats, bays, and everything else sloping 



1 Bonnycastle, op. cii., vol. i, p. 262 ; P. Morris, Arguments, 1828. being 



2 Bonnycastle, op. fit., vol. ii, ch. ix ; Sir J. G. Le Marchant, Report, 

 1847-8. 



3 Bonnycastle, op. cit., vol. ii, pp. 18, 19; Sir G. Le Merchant, 

 Report, 1849. * Jukes, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 113. 



