PROGRESS BY LAND, 1818-19TO 181 



Bay became populous as if by magic (1878); in July it was 

 uninhabited, and in October it had a town with 500 in- 

 habitants.^ Next, Pilley's Island, which is in the same neigh- 

 bourhood (1888), and Bell Isle in Conception Bay (1896), 

 began to yield iron ; and the iron of Bell Isle, which had been 

 foreshadowed in 1819,^ was quarried by a Nova Scotian 

 Company. Other discoveries have recently been made close 

 by the sea-shore : of oil at Parson's Pond, Bonne Bay, of 

 copper in Hare Bay, of coal behind Forteau Bay in Labrador, 

 and of iron and other minerals elsewhere, which it would be 

 premature to discuss. Mining, too, has encouraged roads and 

 farms, but like lumbering its essential importance is that it 

 has created a brand-new export out of nothing. 



Dates and maps will show that the mineral development w/iuA 

 was independent of the railways which were built, but a ^ftt"j-//;;<r 

 new scheme was sanctioned in 1907, and provided i\\2iinezurail- 

 Messrs. Ochs and Dalglish, of London, should sail steamers '^^•^''''' 

 on what is alleged to be a fogless route from England to 

 Green Bay in the very heart of the copper district, and 

 should build a railway thence to Bonne Bay, and should sail 

 steamers thence to Gaspe or elsewhere, the route being 

 changed in winter. Land-grants of 1,500 acres per mile, 

 with a maximum of 195 square miles, and 25 years' subsidies, 

 were allowed. A branch railway from the first railway through 

 Petit Nord to Belle Isle Strait, and a tunnel or a service 

 of ice-breaking steamers across the Strait to Labrador, were 

 also authorized. But at present this branch railway seems 

 almost as visionary as the railway along the north coast of 

 the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the east coasts of Labrador, 

 which a London Company obtained power to construct from 

 the Government of Newfoundland in 1890, but which no one 

 has ever attempted to construct. 



Telegraphs, railroads, lumberings and mining have in- 



1 So Murray and Howly,'^/. cit., pp. 498-9. 



^ Anspach, Hist, of Newfound land^ 1819, p. "yfi^. 



