BAIT-FISH EXPANSION AND CONFLICT 213 



with forty settlements at intervals of three or four miles, con- 

 sisting for the most part of four or five families each, in some 

 instances of two or three, in a few of as many as eighteen or 

 twenty. At Gaultois and Harbour Briton, besides the fisher- 

 men's families there was a merchant's establishment ... of 

 200 men'. 1 Progress to the west of Cape La Hune was 

 similar. At the beginning of the period, there were 'three or 

 four families', and no more, between Cape La Hune and Cape 

 Ray; in 1839, there were 'several inhabitants in almost 

 every cove '. 2 The very islets were filling to the brim. On 

 Burgeo Islets there were 'two families ' in 1834, forty or fifty 

 houses and a store in 1839, and 700 inhabitants and a 

 merchant's establishment in 1848. In 1838 Burnt Islets 

 were empty, and in 1848 they had 100 inhabitants. 2 In 1840 

 and 1848 there was a merchant's establishment at La Poile 

 Bay " kept by a Jerseyman, who had arrived there from some 

 port further east; and in 1854 a new electoral district was 

 created and was called Burgeo and La Poile District, 

 because Burgeo Islets and La Poile Bay were the sites of the 

 only mercantile establishments in those parts. Elsewhere 

 men settled not in villages, townships, or homesteads, but by 

 tiny family groups in sequestered nooks and creeks upon the 

 coast or its islets. They all came to stay, and for the first 

 time in history men fished for cod all the year round. 4 

 Doubtless the north coast of Conception Bay was settled in the 

 same way in the seventeenth century, but those old settlers 

 came either from other settlements in Newfoundland, or from 

 somewhere between Bristol and Exeter, and these latter-day 

 settlers came either from Fortune Bay on their east, or else 

 from Dorsetshire in England. The progress towards Cape 

 Ray was as peaceful as it was spontaneous, and it had twq 

 effects upon the Treaty Powers. In 1840 Captain Milne 



1 Church in the Colonies, 1857, No. 35, p. n. 



2 Jukes, op, cit., vol. i, pp. 195-7 ; Captain Loch, itbi supra. 



3 Anthoine (1840) and Nicolle (1848). 



4 Captain Loch, itbi supra. 



