A FALL HUNTING TRIP. 81 



can foretell whether they will each make a small fortune 

 or lose one ; the hands receive no regular wages, but 

 every individual a pro raid share of the profits of the 

 venture. The case is much the same with the cod- 

 fishery. The sea is the mistress whom all serve, directly 

 or indirectly ; the financial veins of the community 

 draw when she permits it life and vigour from her 

 bounties. 



A less romantic place than the store of a grocery and 

 general dealer can hardly be imagined, yet the grocery 

 stores in St. John's are nothing if not romantic to those 

 whose eyes are open. Besides flour, bacon, and tea, they 

 sell there axes, rope, canoes, sealskin boots, all the dozen 

 necessaries for a trip up the coast or into the interior. 

 In them you will often see a group of sinewy, weather- 

 beaten, seafaring men fingering material for women's 

 gowns and consulting long and gravely on the choice to 

 be taken home for the wives, sisters, and children away 

 in the outports. As, then, the sea dominates New- 

 foundland, it is quite in the nature of things that caribou 

 and other game should be in charge of the Department 

 of Marine and Fisheries, and very well indeed that 

 department does its work. 



There certainly still hangs about this oldest of the 

 British colonies some remnant of the glamour which is 

 inseparable from the ancient maps that carry marked 

 upon their parchments such phrases as " Here be many 

 bears " and " Here be great deer." It was the fame of 

 the latter that drew me to Newfoundland, for no longer 

 can any region in the island boast of " many bears." As 

 to Polar bears, not one remains, although an occasional 

 specimen is now and then carried into the Straits of Belle 

 Isle^ on an ice-floe ; some few black bears still exist, 



