244 CANADIAN NIGHTS 



visions mean. We may take one view, France a 

 second, Newfoundland a third, and the Govern- 

 ment of Washington a fourth. Who is to say 

 which view is correct ? The result of this con- 

 fusion is, that there is no law whatever on the 

 French shore. That country is inhabited by 

 refugees from other parts of the island, and 

 emigrants from Cape Breton or Prince Edward 

 Island, and from Nova Scotia and other portions 

 of the mainland. These people, many of whom 

 had urgent private reasons for thinking a change 

 of domicile desirable, have squatted on the land 

 and appropriated it — stolen it, in fact, from the 

 Crown. Each family or cluster of families forming 

 a little settlement, claims the land about them, 

 the valley probably of the river on the banks of 

 which they dwell, and are fully prepared to uphold 

 their claim. It is a delightfully primitive state of 

 society. No writs run in that happy land, and 

 every man does that which seems best to him in 

 his own eyes. Taxes, however, have been raised, 

 but when the Colonial Parliament passed a Bill 

 giving two members to the district, the Act was 

 at once disallowed by the Home Government, as 

 interfering with the French rights ; and the 

 curious spectacle might have been seen of a popu- 



