l8o HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



Raihvays 

 tvere also 

 connected 

 with 

 mineral 

 develop- 

 ment : 



capital. Pulp or paper was the mask and internal develop- 

 ment was the face behind the mask. At present lumbering 

 has given over large areas to mammoth companies and has 

 created a brand-new export, of which we hear for the first 

 time in 1890. On the other hand, the age of paper has not 

 superseded the age of shipbuilding; a three-mile belt along 

 the shore is reserved where men felled trees and built 136 

 36-ton ships in 1906 as in the Seventies; and within this belt 

 timber-licences are issued without payment. 



Railroads were built for the sake of minerals and coal as 

 well as timber, but coal belongs to the future, and minerals, 

 by some freak of fate, cleave like the rest of the civilization of 

 Newfoundland to the rocks upon the coast. The mineral 

 history of Newfoundland began in 1857, ^^nd it was associated 

 at its birth with telegraphs. The first successful telegraph- 

 wire from east to west was laid by the New York, New- 

 foundland, and London Company, which was incorporated 

 in 1854, and which finally succeeded in connecting London, 

 Heart's Content, Port-aux-Basques, Cape Breton Island, and 

 New York in 1866. It was financed from New York, its 

 concession was for fifty years, and it received land-grants 

 along its line. One of its land-grants included the lead-mine of 

 La Manche at the head of Placentia Bay, which started work 

 in 1857, produced 1,000 odd tons in 1858 and 1859, ^^^ 

 became the property of the Newfoundland Colonization 

 Company in 18^9. It was in 1857, too, that Smith McKay 

 noted copper at Tilt Cove, a few miles south of Cape St. John ; 

 and it was there in 1864 that he and C. F. Bennett began 

 work. Immediately 500 people sprang up like mushrooms 

 on this desolate shore.^ In 1879 Betts Cove, a few miles 

 further south-east of Cape St. John, was the first, Little Bay, 

 which is somewhat further east, was the second, and 

 Tilt Cove the third copper centre. Like Tilt Cove, Little 



1 Governor Sir A. Musgrave, Report, 

 No. 3995. 



[867-8, vol. xlviii, p. 121. 



