THE COUNTRY 9 



two former are rapidly dying out, while among the 

 latter it is only where a settler has grown-up sons 

 to work with him, and a good supply of stock in 

 boats, nets, traps and guns to help him, that he 

 can make anything approaching to what we in 

 England should consider a respectable living. Even 

 with these helps, and with steady, hard work, and 

 with sound health, he seldom can hope to lay up 

 store against times of misfortune. True in Eng- 

 land the poor often see hard times, and have to 

 face occasionally poverty and hunger. Moreover, 

 as Richard Whitbourne, that plucky British sea-dog, 

 says, 1 "It hath beene in some winters so hard 

 frozen, aboue London bridge near the court, that 

 the tenderest faire ladies and gentlewomen that are 

 in any part of the world, who have beheld it, and 

 great numbers of people, have there sported on the 

 ice many dayes, and have felt it colder there, than 

 men doe here, that live in Newfoundland." Yet we 

 must take into consideration that here absolute want 

 is the exception, there the rule. 



1 Richard Whitbourne. 



