) 12 | 
f if 
point. To these Banks the fishermen of France, of Canada, of the’ 
United States, and of Newfoundland resort during the fishing season, 
These fishing grounds are on the “high seas,” which are the common ~ 
property of all nations, or rather the property of none, subject to 
the jurisdiction of no country or nation. To this fishery, as such, © 
the Newfoundland treaties “question” has strictly and properly no _ 
relation whatever. Its connection with Newfoundland is only in ~ 
the fact that there is on the south coast of Newfoundland a group 
of islands called St. Pierre and Miquelon, forming an entire 
and separate French colony or settlement, inhabited by an almost | 
exclusively French population, from which islands the Bank fishing : 
is prosecuted by the French in vessels, of which some come to. 
St. Pierre in the spring from France, and others are owned, kept, 
and fitted out in St. Pierre. To these islands the French fisher- 
men bring their fish caught on the Banks, for the purpose of 
curing and drying it. In the port of St. Pierre, until recently, | 
the French banking fleet have been furnished with the greater 
part of their necessary supplies of bait, taken by Newfoundland 
fishermen in the bays and harbours of Newfoundland near to St. 
Pierre, and carried there in Newfoundland fishing craft, and sold — 
to the French. This trade in bait between the Newfoundland 
fisuermen and the French at St. Pierre will be more fully dealt 
with in a subsequent chapter as a distinct and an important 
matter. 
These islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon are situate at a 
distance of about 140 miles from the nearest point of the so- - 
called “French shore,” and the fishing grounds to which the 
French fishermen resort on the Banks are about 100 miles from 
the same point, so that it will be seen that, in fact, as well as by 
the terms of the treaties, the French “ rights” and “ claims ” on the 
Newfoundland coast have, strictly, no connection or relation what- 
ever with the large and important business of the French fishery on ~ 
the Banks, or with the French occupation or government of 
St. Pierre and Miquelon. The fishery upon the Banks, for which 
St. Pierre is merely a basis of operations, is, as already stated, the 
equal property—of all nations, independently of treaties or agree- 
ments,— But, as will be seen hereafter, there is a most important 
connection, or rather relation, between the French claims (not 
“rights”) on the so-called French shore and the prosecution of 
the Bank fishing from St. Pierre—a relation which, like other 
