NE WFO UNDLAND. 49 



for. The same schooners, commanded by the same 

 skippers, but with newly selected crews, were fitted out 

 on exactly the same system of credit as before, with the 

 same bustle. By the middle of June, all had sailed for 

 Labrador, where they remained, catchin^ and curing fish, 

 until October, when they brought their produce back. 

 This interval was nearly a four months' holiday for the 

 clerks, and in the most delightful part of the year. The 

 work in the office was then little more than routine — the 

 copying of letters, keeping the goods' accounts of such 

 residents as dealt at Mr. Elson's stores, despatching two 

 or three vessels to England with the seal oil of the spring 

 collection, and the business connected with what was 

 called the Shore fishery. 



In the coves round about, and especially along the 

 " North Shore " — that is, the coast of Conception Bay 

 which stretched from Carbonear to Point Baccalao, an 

 iron-bound, precipitous shore, much indented with small 

 inlets, but containing no harbours for ships — along this 

 North Shore, there resided a hardy population, mainly 

 English and Protestant, who possessed no schooners, but 

 held small sailing-boats, with which, mostly by families, 

 they pursued the cod-fishery in the bay. The fish they 

 took were commonly of larger size, were better cured, and 

 commanded a higher price than the Labrador produce, but 

 the quantity of it was strictly limited. Many of the 

 North Shore men were tall, well-made, handsome fellows, 

 singularly simple and guileless, with a marked aversion 

 and dread of the Irish population of the harbours, to whom 

 their peculiarities of idiom and manners afforded objects 

 of current ribaldry. In the spring, as they had no re- 

 sources at home, these mild giants shipped with the 

 planters for the ice, and during the noisy first fortnight of 

 March, when the crews " came to collar," as their arrival 



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