140 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



and Eng- 

 lish felons 

 being ex- 

 cluded). 



New settle- 

 ments were 

 made by 

 Micmacs on 

 the South 

 coasty 



hailed from Europe and to Newfoundlanders. ^ Jealousy of 

 cheap labour was expressed, and a note was struck which has 

 been sounded again and again by the new-born English 

 colonies of the nineteenth century, but which was seldom 

 heard in the older group of lost colonies. The black man 

 did not reappear in Newfoundland. The felon reappeared 

 once. Shortly before the Declaration of Independence felons 

 were being transported to the American continent by a single 

 contractor at the rate of 473 per annum, and were being sold 

 to the American planters for £8 or £10 a head. When that 

 market was closed, one cargo of Irish convicts was dumped 

 down in St, John's, and, according to Richard Routh, who 

 was an officer of the custom-house, it was only the vigilance 

 of the custom-house officers which saved the town from fire 

 and rapine. ^ With these exceptions, Newfoundland remained 

 free both from the black and white plague which tainted so 

 many of our early colonies in their early days. 



Newfoundland began to be looked on as something more 

 than a golden casket full of mocking emptiness, and Captain 

 Cook traced the Humber inland while Major G. Williams 

 explored the interior of Avalon Peninsula (1768), which soon 

 became known from end to end.^ Coasts were inhabited 

 which had never been inhabited before. Micmac Indians from 

 the Continent, who used to visit the Magdalen Islands (159?)/ 

 St. Mary Bay (1662),^ Cape Ray (17 18, 1734)/ and the 

 south coast between the neighbourhood of Cape Ray and the 

 Bay D'Espoir (1763),^ now began to settle in the Bay 



^ 29 George III, c. 53 ; comp. Palliser's Act, s. 4. 



2 Third Report of the House of Commons'' Committee on Newfound- 

 land, 1793, p. 44. 



^ See e.g. Report of House of Commons'' Committee on Newfoundland, 

 1 81 7, evidence of George Kemp, junior. 



* Ante, p. 29. 



^ Ante, p. 79. 



•^ Sic Captain Taverner, ante, p. 132. 



■' Sic Captain Thompson cited by Anspach, op. cit., p. 182 ; and by 

 Richard Brown, History of Cape Breton Island, p. 356. 



