mtse 

 matters 



220 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



a-dozen French cruisers, seemed an exact reproduction of the 

 convoyed and convoying ships of the seventeenth century ; 

 and the idea which underlay the bounty system of France, 

 that ocean-trips made ocean-ships and ocean-sailors, where- 

 with a nation alone became great, was a mere echo of 

 voices which were hushed long ago. The lawless usurpation 

 of naval officers tempered lawlessness in a way which old 

 memories endeared. It was as though a cradle song which 

 had no merit of its own, and had not been heard since 

 infancy, were heard once more. It caused pleasure and 

 not resentment. 

 Efforts The position was illogical, but intelligible to the naval 



IV eye 9)2 ^(IC 



to comp'o- officers and the simple fisher-folk. From 1844 to 1904 almost 



continuous negotiations were in progress to substitute logic 



for instinct, and to regularize the situation. The arguments 



of sixty years produced a dozen agreements which failed. 



by the '^^^ ^^^^ conspicuous failure occurred in 1857. The 



abortive essence of the scheme of 1857 was partition. Fishing and 



French ^^^ ^^^ ^^ ^^^ Strand for fishing purposes were to be ex- 



Convention clusively French on the north and north-east coasts, and at 



^J^ 5/> ^^g reserved ports on the west coast ;^ the use of the strand 



for fishing purposes was to be exclusively French north of 



the Bay of Islands, and exclusively English at and south 



of the Bay of Islands, except at the reserved ports. The 



scheme made the home of the herring and the settlements at 



St. George Bay and the Bay of Islands wholly English ; and 



Petit Nord — in an extended sense, including Croc, St. Barbe, 



Ingornachoix, and Bonne Bays — wholly French. In addition 



to these concessions, a new concurrent fishing-right in 



Labrador, and, as a last straw, a new right to buy or catch 



bait on the south coast, was conferred on France.'^ Labou- 



chere, the then Secretary for the Colonies, wrote that ' the 



1 Port-au-Choix, Petit Port, Port-a-Port, Red Island, Codroy Island. 



2 The Anglo-French Convention is printed in Accounts and Papers, 

 1857, vol. xviii, p. 7, No. 2157. 



