CHAPTER VI 

 THE NEWFOUNDLAND 



AROUND the Newfoundland centres a halo of romance hardly less 

 bright than that investing the St Bernard. Both are life-savers, and, 

 strange to say, both are importations so far as this country is con- 

 cerned ; while they are two varieties of the Domestic dog that even 

 the child is from very early times taught to venerate. As to whether 

 Sebastian Cabot, when he discovered Newfoundland in 1497, found 

 dogs of a remarkably large size and noble appearance, history is 

 silent. No naturalist, sportsman, or other writer that treats of dogs 

 before the end of last century says anything about the Newfound- 

 lander, as he has sometimes been called. 



The European settlers in Newfoundland were at one time prin- 

 cipally Irish and natives of the Channel Islands. The question 

 arises, Did these settlers, or others from England or France, take 

 with them dogs of a large sort from Europe, which, being crossed 

 with the native dogs, improved the latter, and gradually formed a 

 new variety ? It is not necessary to suppose this to have occurred 

 in the earliest days of the settlement, for there has been a growing 

 intercourse ever since, and the introduction of one or more of our 

 large and superior races of dogs, from the beginning to the middle 

 of the eighteenth century, would give ample time for the formation 

 of a new breed of dog in Newfoundland, by commixture of their 

 blood with that of the native race, before imported Newfoundland 

 dogs became popular in this country. 



Writers constantly speak of the pure breed of dog indigenous 

 to Newfoundland, and lament that he is now only to be met with 

 mongrelised through crosses with inferior races. If the native 

 inhabitants the Mic Macs possessed a dog of the high intellectual 

 and moral character of the Newfoundland as now known, it would 

 indeed be an astonishing fact. Such a supposition is highly im- 

 probable, the more probable theory being that Europeans made the 

 breed now recognised as the Newfoundland. The breed seems to 

 have become popular in England during the last half of the eighteenth 

 century, Bewick and other contemporary writers referring to it as 

 being then well known. Many interesting stories of the time are 



56 



