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 tc 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- 
