82 HUNTING CAMPS. 



whether they will each make a small fortune or lose one ; 

 the hands receive no regular wages, but every individual 

 a pro ratd share of the profits of the venture. The case is 

 much the same with the cod-fishery. The sea is the mis- 

 tress whom all serve, directly or indirectly ; the financial 

 veins of the community draw when she permits it life 

 and vigour from her bounties. 



A less romantic place than the store of a grocery and 

 general dealer can hardly be imagined, yet the grocery 

 stores in St. John's are nothing if not romantic to those 

 whose eyes are open. Besides flour, bacon, and tea, they 

 sell their axes, rope, canoes, sealskin boots, all the dozen 

 necessaries for a trip up the coast or into the interior. In 

 them you will often see a group of sinewy, weather-beaten, 

 seafaring men fingering material for women's gowns and 

 consulting long and gravely on the choice to be taken 

 home for the wives, sisters, and children away in the out- 

 ports. As, then, the sea dominates Newfoundland, it is 

 quite in the nature of things that caribou and other game 

 should be in charge of the Department of Marine and 

 Fisheries, and very well indeed that department does its 

 work. 



There certainly still hangs about this oldest of the 

 British colonies some remnant of the glamour which is 

 inseparable from the ancient maps that carry marked 

 upon their parchments such phrases as " Here be many 

 bears " and " Here be great deer." It was the fame of 

 the latter that drew me to Newfoundland, for no longer 

 can any region in the island boast of " many bears." As 

 to Polar bears, not one remains, although an occasional 

 specimen is now and then carried into the Straits of Belle 

 Isle on an ice-floe ; some few black bears still exist, however, 

 in the interior. But if the bears have dwindled in num- 

 bers, the great deer still wander there. 



The inland solitudes of forest and marsh give sane- 



