110 SPOET IN NORTH AMERICA. 



and it is for this reason that I wish to preface the 

 account which I have to give of an excursion which 

 I made to the fisheries of Newfoundland, with an 

 historical account of that Anglo-French possession 

 which was discovered by the celebrated Venetian, 

 Jean Cabot, in 1497. 



Properly considered, Newfoundland should be for 

 Great Britain one of the great props of its maritime 

 strength ; yet it is strange that the ignorance of the 

 English has prevented them from deriving from their 

 " new-found-land" all the advantage which the}^ 

 should have done, and that no one ever dreamt of 

 colonising the island until more than a hundred 

 years after its discovery. The traveller Hore, who 

 visited this place about 1536 (that is to say, about 

 nine-and-thirty years after the visit of Cabot), nearly 

 perished with famine, — he and his companions, 

 although the fish must have been swarming around 

 them. The island could only boast of sixty-two 

 colonists in 1613, and there M^ere probably not more 

 than fifty fishing boats there at the time. 



The French only began to fish for cod in 15-10, 

 after Francis I. had ordered the exploration of New- 



mostly built of wood, and the streets are narrow and irregularly con- 

 structed. At least one-half of the population is composed of fishermen. 

 The Newfoundlanders number 100,000 ; half are descended from the 

 French, and the rest from the English . More than half the population 

 is Catholic ; a fact which explains the large number of Irish esta- 

 blished in the island. The Established Churches of England and 

 Scotland, and the Methodists, have also zealous missionaries, and schools 

 are attached to their churches, which receive numerous children. 



