222 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



were worked by Nova Scolians or Prince Edward Islanders, 

 with the assistance of nearly i,ooo Newfoundlanders as 

 employees. In 1883-4, Messrs. Guibert, Lemoine, and 

 Dameron, of St. Malo, entered the lists, and built two iron- 

 roofed or brick lobster-factories at Port-au-Choix and St. 

 John Island, between St. Barbe and Port Saunders. Bricks 

 were only less contrary to Treaty rights than stone; and 

 Sir B. Walker discovered in 1890 permanent stone buildings, 

 gardens, and cattle at Croc.^ Factory opposed factory, and 

 lobsterers confronted lobsterers. The French contended, in 

 defiance of natural history, that lobsters were fish, and that 

 the canning of lobsters was the drying of fish within the 

 meaning of the Treaties ; and contended, with more plausi- 

 bility, that the English lobster-fisheries and factories interfered 

 with their legitimate cod-fisheries and must be closed. The 

 more they complained and competed, the faster the new 

 English industry developed. Political excitement attracted 

 adventurers after adventurers; and in 1888 there were 

 twenty-nine, in 1889 forty, and in 1890 seventy British 

 factories, mostly Nova Scotian, and employing 1,230 persons 

 on the task of 'making the green one red'. At the same 

 date there were only six French factories, all of them belong- 

 ing to merchants of St. Malo, and employing 144 persons. 

 The Frenchmen were being crowded out. 



The situation was complicated by political events inside 

 the colony. In 1877 the whole of the Treaty shore was 

 carved out into two electoral districts, one of which was 

 called St. George Bay District, and the other of which 

 on the corresponded to what the French used to call Petit Nord, 

 s/wre'18^^ and included the coastline assigned to France by the abortive 

 1881; 'convention of 1857, and is now called St. Barbe District. 

 The whole machinery of government — consisting of stipen- 

 diary magistrates with the powers of district Court Judges, 



1 Dispatch of Admiralty, Jan. 15, 1890 in Accounts and Papers, 

 1890-1, vol. xcvi (c. 6256), at p. 87. 



about the 

 same time 

 Govern- 

 mental in- 

 stitutions 

 were set up 



