EXPEDITION UP THE GANDER RIVER 97 



In the old records of Newfoundland we read that the white 

 Polar bear was a regfular winter visitor to the coast in the seven- 

 teenth century. Since then its appearance became rarer as time 

 went on. Until 1825, a few were always found on the ice off 

 White Bay by the spring sealers, and an odd one killed on the 

 shore, but now it can only be recorded as very scarce. A 

 Newfoundland lady, who was present at the following incident, 

 has told me that twenty-five years ago the inhabitants of the 

 village of Wittlebay were coming out of church one Sunday 

 morning, when they were startled by seeing an immense 

 Polar bear strolling down the hill close to the church door. 

 There were no guns at hand, so four men bravely attacked 

 it with axes and killed it. A dispute as to the possession 

 of the hide arising, the skin was cut into four pieces, and 

 may be seen in certain houses of the village to this day. 

 A propos of this strange method of division, which has always 

 been in force in Newfoundland, I am reminded of a true 

 incident which occurred about eighty years ago in Fortune 

 Bay, when the disgraceful practice of " wrecking " was by no 

 means extinct. A barque which had been lured on to the 

 rocks by false lights, placed there by some good Christian 

 belonging to a certain village which shall be nameless, had 

 on board a cottage piano, an instrument which neither of the 

 boat's crews which claimed it had ever seen before. The 

 matter was, however, eventually settled by its being sawn in 

 two pieces, one party taking the treble and the other the bass. 



Wrecking as a profitable industry ceased to flourish in 

 Newfoundland about fifty years ago, "in the dear delightful 

 days of Arcadian simplicity, when port wine was a shilling 

 a bottle, and the colony had no debt." The Newfoundland 

 Government had much difficulty in stamping it out, owing to 

 the fact that the people of the south coast had indulged in 



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