PROGRESS BY LAND, 1818-I910 177 



islet in Hall Bay (1879), ministered to the new demand. 

 Capitalism and brother colonists had arrived. The ships 

 were for the use which will be presently described, were 

 40 tons or so, and were turned out at the rate of 128 a year 

 (1876-80). It is during this decade that we first hear of 

 inland residents, and Howley wrote in 1876 that 'there is 

 scarcely a habitation anywhere situated five miles from the 

 salt water, with the exception of one small settlement 

 recently commenced by some lumberers at the head of Deer 

 Lake'.i 



In the Nineties a new use was found for lumbering, and (3) ^vorked 

 a local law authorized 99 years' timber-leases of tracts of from /and under 

 5 to 150 square miles on payment of £7 loj. per square /«^ '^^'^- 

 mile every twenty-five years, and on condition that the lessee companies 

 should spend £612 \os. per square mile on building pulp 

 or paper factories (1890).^ About the same time the 

 Exploits Lumber Company acquired 500 square miles of 

 timberland. A new day dawned for the lumberman, and the 

 land-grant railway companies of the Nineties only accelerated 

 a process which had already begun. 



In 1880 the State projected a State railway from St. John's {this new 

 northward to Hall Bay, and handed over the task of con- /^^^con- 

 structing it to an American Syndicate, to which it granted nededwith 

 5,000 acres along the line (or elsewhere) in fee-simple iox ^^velop- 

 every mile of railway which was constructed. If the land ment); 

 was selected opposite the railroad it was to be eight miles 

 deep for every mile of frontage, and to alternate with similar 

 blocks which were reserved by the State. The State under- 

 took to promote emigration and to enable aliens to hold 

 lands in fee-simple. In 1889 the Newfoundland Railway 

 Company, as the Syndicate was then called, had only con- 

 structed their main line as far as Whitbourne, with a branch 

 thence to Harbour Grace, so the State resumed possession 



^ J. P. Howley, Geography of N'eivfoundland, 1876, p, z. 

 2 53 Vict., c. I. 



vol.. V. I'T. IV V 



