IMPERFECT COLONIZATION 39 



worship should only be solemnized according to the rites of 

 the English Church, and that treason and misprision of treason 

 should be punished according to English law. Two hundred 

 leagues would include the whole of Newfoundland, the Great 

 Bank of Newfoundland, and Cape Breton Island, besides 

 sections of Labrador and Nova Scotia. Then he taxed, or 

 in other words commandeered, supplies and services from the 

 fishermen in the neighbourhood, granting them in return 

 their drying-places on the shore in fee farm, and 'was most 

 curious in the search of metals '. The fishermen had made 

 Newfoundland into a free West-European market, and Haie 

 wrote, ' We were supplied of our wants commodiously as if 

 we had been in a country or some city, populous and 

 plentiful of all things.' Despite their sumptuous and 

 cheap fare, some of Gilbert's sailors stole a ship and sailed 

 away, others ran away into the woods, and others falling sick 

 were sent home in the Swallow, so that the overloaded and 

 undermanned Delight, Golden Hinde, and Squirrel alone re- 

 mained. The Governor, after seventeen days' rule, sailed kit it end- 

 away on August 20, bag and baggage, with all his ships and all ^ ^^'^^ ■^' 

 his men, and without leaving any one or anything behind to 

 represent him or to enforce his laws. He put his * small 

 artillery ' into the tiny Squirrel and sailed in it himself. He 

 intended to found a southern settlement, but the Delight was 

 wrecked off Sable Island, owing to his command to its pilot 

 to steer west-north-west contrary to the pilot's judgement. 

 Sir Humphrey's miners and minerals, the pirate crew which 

 had formerly been in the Swallow, and many stores went 

 down in the Delight; consequently his comrades urged Sir 

 Humphrey to go home, and he consented, declaring that they 

 would all return • royally in the Spring ', that the officers of 

 the Golden Hinde should found the southern settlement, and 

 that he would confine himself to St. John's, which ' had won 

 his heart from the south '. The weather was stormy, and he disastrous- 

 was entreated to transfer himself to the Golden Hinde, but ^y^ 



