306 LABRADOR 
can be baled out with large dippers. In this way as many 
as one hundred quintals of fish have on many occasions 
been caught at one haul, so that a whole year’s wages can 
be easily earned if there is one fortnight’s good trapping 
in the year. Nevertheless, as fish do not go to every point 
every year, some fishermen who rely entirely on their traps 
will sometimes make an absolute blank of it. The trap 
is, moreover, exceedingly expensive, with its strong ropes, 
heavy anchors, and immense weight of twine. A good one 
costs between $300 and $400, containing three hundred and 
fifty to five hundred pounds of twine. It is about three hun- 
dred and fifty feet in circumference, eighty feet deep, and 
may need a leader from fifty to sixty fathoms long. In 
shallow waters, as in the Straits of Belle Isle, the trap may 
be only thirty feet deep. Being very heavy and unwieldy, 
it is often an impossible task to take it up in time to avoid 
bad weather, or quickly enough to save it from driving ice. 
The result is that in the sudden storms to which the coast 
is liable, great losses occur. Honest men are suddenly 
thrown into hopeless debt, as they have had to raise the 
net on credit, and perhaps their sole method of getting 
a voyage is lost in a moment. 
The old two-handed jacks, or bully boats, which, in the 
autumn months, used to venture far off from the land with 
hand-lines, now lie rotting on the rocks at all the harbours 
onthe coast. The fishery is developing into a great gamble. 
A man casts all he has and all he can borrow on a single 
issue. At times it renders him a magnificent and rapid 
return. If the fish come to his trap he obtains a sudden 
wealth, whereas if the fish do not come he goes home a 
broken man. 
