226 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



red lobster which, so to speak, was drawn across the 



scent. 



In Fortune The herring of the Seventies was not the herring of the 



jnghu^' Fifties. In the Seventies it employed men all the year round. 



winter Fortune Bay had succeeded Placentia as ' the home of the 

 hemjip'- 

 fishery, herring '; the best herring-fishery in Fortune Bay was between 



Newfound- November and February : and the herring, when taken, was 



landers . . , , , , , i , a • , • 



rioted and put m ice, and bought and brought by American shipowners 



injtired x.0 Gloucester, Massachusetts. Frozen herring became an 

 American .,rir. i uriirj 



property, article of trade for its own sake as well as tor the sake or cod, 



^^7^, and its purchasers were almost invariably American. The 



temporary Treaty of 1871-86 only enabled Americans to 

 catch what they had previously bought, and they now pursued 

 their industry in winter as well as in summer. Being pro- 

 tected, the Americans pursued their industry in a mysterious 

 way. The Boston Fish Bureau wrote that ' From 50 to 75 per 

 cent, of the men in the Gloucester mackerel fleet are citizens 

 of Canada. . . . Hordes of them come here every spring, man 

 our vessels for the fishing season, and return home when it is 

 over '.^ As soon as the Americans arrived in Newfoundland, 

 Newfoundlanders sold them bait, or served on their ships 

 while catching bait, and were always paid cash. Wage- 

 earning was popular, and cash was as welcome as it was 

 rare; because it meant emancipation from the merchant 

 whose dominion was based on credit in kind. Americans 

 were never at a loss for bait- sellers or bait-catchers in New- 

 foundland, and bait-fish was the only thing which they wanted. 

 The American codders caught cod on the Grand Banks, 

 despised shore fisheries, and spoke of flakes and stages as 

 cotton-spinners speak of handlooms. If they wanted herring 

 as bait they wanted it in a hurry, and if they wanted herring 

 as food, even then they relied on the man on the spot to haul 



1 Dispatch of Sir L. S. West, Oct. 10, 1885, in United States, 

 Correspondence relative to the North American Fisheries, Accounts and 

 Papers, 1887, vol. xci (c, 4937). 



