32 



take position on the banks, anchoring in seventy or eighty fathoms of 

 water. Everything in readiness the chaloupes are launched and sent 

 out at night to place the "ground-lines," to which are attached some 

 four or five thousand hooks. When hot too boisterous, these lines are 

 examined every day, and the fish attached, to the hooks spht, salted, and 

 placed in the hold of the vessel. Meanwhile, the fish caught on board 

 by the men not assigned to the boats are treated in the same way. 

 The first fare is usually secured' in June, and carried to St. Pierre to 

 be dried. The second fare is cured at the same place ; but the third— 

 if fortunately there be another — is commonly carried to France "green." 



This fishing is difiicult and dangerous. It requires expert and daring 

 men. It is prosecuted in an open, rough, and often a stormy sea, and 

 frequently involves the loss of boats and their crews. 



The third fishery, at St. Pierre and Miquelon, is similar, in some re- 

 spects, to that between Cape Ray and Cape John, on the coast of 

 Newfoundland. Boats, instead of vessels, are, however, employed in 

 it. The boats of the two islands are betweea three and four hundred 

 in number, and require two men to each. They go out in the morning 

 and return at night. Thus, as in all shore-7fishenes,the fishermen always 

 sleep at their own homes. As this is the only business of the islands 

 nearly all the men, women, and children are engaged in catching or 

 curing. The season opens in April, and closes usually in October. 



We have seen the importance attached by France to her immense 

 American domains and with what pertinacity she maintained her pre- 

 tensions to the monopoly of the fishing-grounds. It remains to speak 

 more particularly than has yet been done of the two lone, bare, and 

 rocky islands that remain to her as monuments of the vicissitudes of 

 human condition and of national humiliation. 



The situation of St. Pierre and Miquelon commands the entrance of 

 the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The growth of wood is insufiicient even 

 for fuel. They produce no food, and the inhabitants are dependent on 

 France and other countries for supplies. The population of St. Pierre 

 in 1847 was 2,030, of which about one-quarter was "floating" or 

 non-resident. The population of Miquelon at the same time was 625. 



There are several Catholic churches and schools, priests, monks, 

 and nuns. In 1848, a hospital, sufficiently commodious to receive up- 

 wards of one hundred sick persons, was erected. The dwellings ai-e 

 of wood. The government-house is of the same material, and plain and 

 old-fashioned. The streets are narrow, short, and dirty. The official 

 personages are a governor, a commissary or minister of marine, a har- 

 bor-master, and some inferior functionaries. The military, limited by 

 treaty to fifty men, consist of about thirty gens d'armes. Upon the sta- 

 tion is a single armed ship, though other armed vessels are occasional 

 visiters. The present fight-house was erected in 1845j at a cost of 

 80,000 francs, and, well built of brick, is a substantial edifice. 



Such are the two islands — two leagues in extent — which remain 

 to the power that once possessed the whole country bordering on the Mis- 

 sissippi, the limitless regions penetrated by the St. Lawrence — Acadia, 

 from Canseau, in Nova Scotia, to the Kennebeck river, in Maine; the 

 island of Cape Breton ; and the hundred other isles of the bays of the 

 northern and eastern possessions. 



