THE COD AND COD-FISHERY 325 



the following of the sea. For in the art of man-making no 

 environment can surpass it ; and sea-power means world- 

 power. 



Few landsmen have ever given a thought to the influence 

 exerted on mankind by the humble codfish. Nations have 

 jealously watched these dreary wastes of icy, fog-bound 

 waters, and spent human lives by the thousands in the 

 years that are gone in the endeavour to turn the food and 

 money that these finny hosts spell into their own treasuries, 

 and to gain also the environment involved and its evolu- 

 tionary advantages. As early as 1368 kings were granting 

 rights to fish for cod in the North Sea. Henry the Fifth 

 paid compensation to the king of Denmark for damage 

 done by the English cod-fishermen to his. The Cabots' dis- 

 covery of this north land opened up a great source of human 

 food-supply which has been, and will be, of greater value 

 than the diamonds of Golconda or the gold mines of the 

 Rand. It was landlubbers ignorant of the value of these 

 northern seas that made Canada in 1813 lightly give back to 

 Newfoundland the coast from Blanc Sablon to Cape Chidley ; 

 made England lightly give back to France the islands of Mi- 

 quelon and St. Pierre, and the rights of fishing on the Treaty 

 coast ; and permitted the American fishermen the privileges 

 of the treaty of 1818. Our debt to this small denizen of the 

 deep is far greater than those consider it who only view the 

 fishery from a gastronomical or economical standpoint. 

 Strange as it may seem, the codfish has been an invaluable 

 factor in preserving and evolving that genius of the British 

 race, which in God's providence at the time of the Invincible 

 Armada alone allowed us to persist still free among the great 

 powers. That genius, which four hundred years ago pre- 



