198 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



as to die or dance at the caprice of the protectionist behind 

 the stage ; and it was pointed out that the Frenchmen and 

 Americans, who almost monopolized the Banks since Waterloo, 

 sailed in ships of larger burden than those of Newfoundland, 

 and used new fishing implements called * bultows ' which often 

 contained 5,000-6,000 fathoms, or six or seven miles of line, 

 to which hooks and weights were attached at certain distances 

 in order to sink them in the sea.^ The bultow was unknown 

 in Newfoundland, and inspired a terror which is always 

 associated with the unknown. Newfoundlanders dared not 

 compete with it, and feared that if they did their hooks and 

 lines would be caught in its monstrous folds and destroyed. 

 They were deterred by the same motives as those which kept 

 aboriginal archers away from hunting-grounds frequented by 

 riflemen. Further, their skippers, though incomparable 

 coasters, were bad bankers, because they relied only on dead 

 reckonings.'* Moreover, their ships, which were not so large 

 as those used on the Grand Banks by Englishmen in the 

 eighteenth century and by Frenchmen and Americans in the 

 nineteenth century, were being used elsewhere where their 

 size was more appropriate and where no competitors intruded. 

 and for In 1793 or thereabouts colonial sealing-ships were in- 



seahng, troduced for the first time. Sealing had hitherto been 

 practised with nets and boats in winter along the shore, and 

 depended for its success on the continued prevalence of 

 north-east gales; for the bay-seal is of little account in 

 commerce, and the harp-seals, hooded seals, and square 

 flippers, which are always of great value in the markets of 

 the world, have their homes and bring forth their young upon 

 ice floes, which descend from the far north, hugging the 

 coasts of Labrador, and afterwards drifting out into the 

 open sea, unless perchance they are blown into the bays of 



1 Captain Loch, in Accounts and Papers, 1849, vol. xxxv, p. 493, 

 No. 327, p. 3. 



2 Report of Fisheries Commission of Newfoundland, 1890. 



