FISHERIES 161 



enough to give the proper scope. And there, 

 with the live ballast of two expert men, whose 

 home has always been the water, the dory will 

 thread its perilous way unharmed through 

 spume and spindrift, across the engulfing 

 valleys and over the riven hill-tops of the sea. 

 These schooners and their attendant dories 

 have a long and stirring history of their own. 

 But they are not the only craft, nor yet the 

 oldest ; and though their history would easily 

 fill a volume twice the size of this, it would 

 only tell us a very little about Canadian fisheries 

 as a whole, from first to last. Even if we went 

 back by hasty steps, of quite a century each, 

 we should never get into the wild days of the 

 early ' fishing admirals ' before our space gave 

 out. All we can do here is simply to mention 

 the steps themselves, and then pass on. First, 

 the red men, few in number, and fishing from 

 canoes. Then the early whites, dispossessing 

 the red men and steadily increasing. They 

 came from all seafaring peoples, and had no 

 other form of justice than what could be en- 

 forced by ' fishing admirals,' who won their 

 rank by the order of their arrival on the Banks 

 — admiral first, vice-admiral second, rear- 

 admiral third. Then government by men-of- 

 war began, and Newfoundland itself became, 



A.A, L 



