50 COD-FISHEKY OF NEWFOUOT)LAin). 



any rate, whatever the Dutch accomplished, we were particularly 

 industrious in fishing. Our seas were covered with busses of 

 considerable tonnage — ^the average being vessels of fifty tons, 

 with a complement of fourteen men and a master. The mode 

 of fishing then was to sail with the ship into the deep sea, and 

 then, leaving the vessel as a rendezvous, take to the small boats, 

 and fish with them, returning to the large vessel to carry on the 

 cure. The same mode of fishing, with slight modifications, is 

 still pursued at Yarmouth and some other places in England. 



Much has been written about the great cod-fishery of New- 

 foundland: it has been the subject of innumerable treatises, 

 Acts of Parliament, and other negotiations, and various travellers 

 have illustrated the natural products and industrial capabilities 

 of the North American seas. The cod-fishery of Newfoundland 

 imdoubtedly affords one of the greatest fishing industries the 

 world has ever seen, and has been more or less worked for three 

 hundred and sixty years. Occasionally there is a whisper of 

 the cod grounds of Newfoundland being exhausted, and it would 

 be no wonder if they were, considering the enormous capture of 

 that fish that has constantly been going on during the period 

 indicated, not only by means of various shore fisheries, but by 

 the active American and French crews that are always on the 

 grounds capturing and curing. Since the time when the Eed 

 Indian lay over the rocks and transfixed the codfish with his 

 spear, till now, when thousands of ships are spreading their sails 

 in the bays and surrounding seas, taking the fish with ingenious 

 instruments of capture, myriads upon myriads of valuable cod 

 have been taken from the waters, although to the ordinary eye 

 the supply seems as abundant as it was a century ago. When 

 my readers learn that the great bank firom whence is obtained 

 the chief supply of codfish is nearly six hundred miles long and 

 over two hundred miles in breadth, it wiU. afford a slight index 

 to the vast total of our sea wealth, and to the enormous numbers 

 of the finny population of this part of our seas, the population 

 of which, before it was discovered, must have been growing and 

 gathering for centuries ; but when it is further stated — and this 

 by way of index to the extent of this great food-wealth — that 

 Catholic countries alone give something like half a million 

 sterling every year for the produce of these North American 

 seas, the enormous money value of a well-regulated fishery must 

 become apparent even to the most superficial observer of facts 

 and figures. It is much to be regretted that we are not in 



