mined to cling to their monopoly as long as possible, and who maintain, in the first place, that the act of amalgamation extinguished the original privilege of pre-emption; secondly, that in equity the colony, if it exercised its privilege, would have to buy not merely the plant of the Companies, but the goodwill of the business, which the colony is not rich enough to do; and lastly, as a general election is to take place in the autumn, they hope, by the exercise of a powerful influence upon the electors, to put in a Government which may reverse the policy of its predecessor. This, however, is by no means a probable contingency. The determination to abolish the monopoly is general throughout the island, and no candidate could venture to stand upon an opposite ticket. Again, the wealth and credit of the island are sufficient, if they are forced to it, to buy out the Company as a "going concern,' to use an Americanism which our lawyers seem to have adopted; and considering the difficulties which the colonists find in investing their money in safe local security, the creation of good colonial stock would be rather an advantage to the community than otherwise. Moreover, they would be fully compensated by the wealth and importance which would indirectly accrue to them from the concentration of cables on their shores. The cost of constructing a cable direct from England to the United States amounts to some £200,000 more than one to Newfoundland, and each word is three times as long in transmission, to say nothing of the increased difficulties in laying so long a cable, and the greater risks of its breaking after it is laid; while even the French island of St Pierre, to which the French have laid their cable, is a most unfavourable spot, owing to the Newfoundland fishing banks, which have to be avoided by a long and costly detour to the southward. At the moment I am writing there is only one cable in working order across the Atlantic, while two are disabled-one hopelessly so. It is probable that before this article appears the Company will have laid another cable, but in the mean time a rupture of the remaining wire would cause dire confusion in the commercial world, which is at present charged the enormous tariff of six shillings a word. It is calculated that the improvements in telegraphy which already exist will enable any new Company laying down a cable to give its shareholders a remunerative return at one shilling and threepence a word. The Newfoundland public is at present subject to the singular indignity of not receiving the public telegrams from Europe on their arrival in the island. These have first to go to New York, and then are retelegraphed back to St John's, thus causing a delay of two days, and involving increased chances, of which the operators largely avail themselves, of making such nonsense of the messages that one has to guess at their meaning. The existing Company has managed to alienate, by its treatment of it, not merely the Newfoundland but the American press, some of the leading New York journals having lately indulged in violent philippics on the subject. All these are so many signs of the times, showing that the days of monopoly, so far as Transatlantic telegraphy is concerned, are drawing to a close, and that before long telegraphic intercourse between the two continents will be largely increased. But there is another event in prospect more remote, possibly, than the extinction of the cable monopoly, and which, in the opinion of a large number of Newfoundland politicians, is Med das - fraught with even more important desirability of re-establishing the line consequences to the prosperity of which has once before broken down the island and to the increase of its through mismanagement between resources and population. This is Ireland and Newfoundland, with the fulfilment of what appears to the view of shortening the Atlantic be its manifest destiny-confedera- passage as much as possible. It is tion with the Dominion of Canada. calculated that this may be reduced Now that the fate of Prince Ed- to a hundred hours. A railway ward's Island in this respect is across the island would carry mails sealed, the only one of the North and passengers to its western shores American colonies which remains in eight hours, from which they "out in the cold" is Newfoundland. might either be conveyed across to 1 i still di- the nearest point of Cape Breton in expediency of this six or seven hours, or to Shippigan, esent Government in New Brunswick, in sixteen. In last elections on the former case, the Gut of Canso tion ticket. The would have to be tunnelled for a railway, and until that is accomplished it is probable that the Shippigan route would be most available, as from this point railways would converge to New York and Quebec. The whole length of the journey from Ireland to New York would thus be reduced to seven days, of which only four would be spent on the Atlantic, and Newfoundland would become a highway for passengers and commerce. The effect of a railway through the centre of the island would inevitably be to attract a population to advantageous spots on the line; and although the agricultural capabilities of Newfoundland are not great, its mineral resources seem to be unbounded, and there are many regions where crops of grain and vegetables may be raised with advantage. principal objection made to this route is the difficulty of navigation at certain seasons of the year. In winter, it is true that the harbour of St John's is liable to be closed with ice; but Trepassey, a fine harbour immediately to the westward of Cape Race, is always open, and the coast at Newfoundland has this great advantage over that of Nova Scotia, that it is entirely free from those sunken rocks and hidden dangers which render the approach is to let well maintain that the island d prosperous, and that of those who control its des can be more powerfully exercised in advocating what they deem to be its best interests than if they were hampered by the central Canadian Government, who would thus share in its resources without contributing what would be an equivalent to its prosperity. This is, on the other hand, vehemently denied by those in favour of the scheme, who maintain, I think with reason, that if they were included in one Customs law, and united by a solidarity of commercial and political interest with the Dominion, they would derive immense advantages from the intercourse which must then of necessity spring up between the island and the mainland, and from the capital which would inevitably find its way to the former. This has proved to be the case with the other colonies, and there is no reason why Newfoundland should be an exception. Even now the Canadian Parliament has appointed a committee to inquire into the best means of increasing the facilities of communication with England, and its attention is to be especially directed to the The the climate is much milder than on adv.. as this colony is conce to Halifax so hazardous, while in 66 millions sterling, we were kind enough to offer their fishermen an equal right with our own to fish in British North American waters, on condition that the colonies should have the right to send fish and fish oil into the States free of duty. This the colonists deemed by no means an equivalent for the right they were ceding, but, out of compassion for the difficulty in which the mother country found herself placed in the Alabama question, they consented to agree to it. What they now think they have a right to demand in return for this compliance is, that the Home Government will take advantage of the extremely auspicious moment which the latest change of Government in France affords, to open negotiations for the settlement of the French shore difficulty. This might be done by offering to French fishermen the same rights as those recently granted to the Americans, namely, the right to fish freely in all North American waters, and to settle freely on the shores of Newfoundland-subject, of course, to our laws. They would thus have the whole of the Labrador coast, besides the southern and eastern shores of Newfoundland, open to them as new fishing-grounds, with the power of catching their own bait, instead of being, as now, dependent upon our fishermen for it, while the English market as well as their own would remain open to their fish. On the other hand, we should be able to fish without quarrelling in waters where we now fish with the constant risk of dispute; and to develop the mineral, agricultural, and commercial resources of those shores, from the utilisation of which both we and the French are at this moment de barred. Of course, a fundamental condition of any such arrangement should be, that the French Government ceases the system of bounties by which the French cod-fishery is encouraged, and which amounts annually to fourteen millions of francs. This would seem to enter into the free-trade and retrenchment policy of the present Government in France. The idea of bounties for the protection of such an industry as fishing is obsolete; while the saving of so large a sum to the French treasury at this juncture seems almost a duty which patriotism demands at the hands of a French statesman. In the event of any such arrangement being come to, it is to be hoped that the language will be more explicit than in that of the Alabama Treaty, in which, among other "understandings," it was "understood" by us that "fish-oil" included "sealoil;" but whatever during the negotiations the Americans may be supposed to have understood, they VOL. CXIV.—NO. DCXCIII. now deny that seal-oil comes under the head of fish-oil, and refuse the admission of this most important article of Newfoundland commerce to their ports. The value of the seal-fishery varies from £175,000 to £275,000 a-year, and the quantity of oil exported averages from 5000 to 6000 tuns. As the process of manufacturing this oil is as novel as everything else connected with the fishery, I was glad of the opportunity of investigating and of learning some details from those actually engaged in the capture of seals, and the method in which it is conducted. When I reached St John's the steamers were all dropping in from the north laden with oleaginous spoil, and each with a barrel lashed to the masthead as a lookout. From this station the man spies the game on the ice-floes, and gives notice in which direction to steer. Formerly the day for the departure of the sealing-fleet was the 1st of March; but by a recent Act of the Legislature it has been postponed for sailing vessels until the 5th, and for steamers till the 10th, of that month. This is in order to allow the pupping season to be a little more advanced before the work of slaughter of mothers and young commences. The steamers are built expressly for the service, and are as strong as iron and the hardest known woods can make them, so as to enable them to resist the tremendous pressure of the ice to which they are constantly subjected. Any Arctic amateurs anxious to rival the exploits of the Polaris, could not do better than come to Newfoundland to look for a steamer adapted for the work. These steamers are sometimes of considerable size, and cost from £8000 to £10,000 apiece. They carry as crew 200 and sometimes as many as 250 men each, drawn from the hardy population which E inhabits the coves and harbours all round the island. They flock in crowds to St John's during the last week of February. As 10,000 men are engaged in the fishery, the streets swarm at this period with perhaps the finest and most powerful specimens of humanity, so far as mere physique is concerned, that could be seen anywhere. Daring, hardy, inured to the severest privations, and accustomed from childhood to battle with the elements upon the iron-bound coast on which they were born and reared, they look forward to the six weeks of seal-fishing with as much eagerness as members of Parliament do to the 12th of August, not merely from the excitement of the chase which it entails, but from the chances of the large profits connected with a successful "take." Since the employment of steamers the service has become even more popular, because the chances are increased, and picked captains and crews are alone employed upon it. As may be imagined, the crowd of hands is so great that they are packed in the fore part of the ship like herrings in a barrel. It is currently reported that it is a rare thing for a man to change a single article of clothing from the moment of his departure till his return; and the aspect of the crews which I saw on their arrival fully justified this assertion. They were as black as colliers, and far more greasy than I had supposed it possible for men to become. Their clothes and faces shone like the skins of negroes on a hot day, from seal-oil; but their smell prevented me from approaching them near enough to do more than obtain a very general impression of their aspect. These men, who are as impervious to cold and privation as the icebergs they frequent, sustain their gigantic frames on scarcely anything but biscuits and tea, varied by an occasional meal of pork, until they get among the seals, when they cut out the tit-bits, such as heart, liver, and kidneys, stringing the latter on their belts, and eating them raw as a delicacy in the intervals of the tremendous exertions of their chase. The dangers of this add, no doubt, a zest to it. The first difficulty, when the seals have been spied from the masthead, is to bring the steamer in such a position as will enable the men to approach them, either by landing on the ice and jumping from pan to pan if the floe is not solid, or by punts, if they are not accessible in any other way. Each man is armed with a "gaff," or club, with a hook in it, a "scalping - knife," and a "towing-line;" while a few of the older hands and the best shots carry rifles. The work of destruction then goes on apace. The ice is covered with "white-coats"-young seals not yet six weeks old-and their mothers, whose grey furs in the case of "harps are distinguished by a large black mark in the shape of a harp; "dog-hoods"-male seals, so called from a hood which they can inflate so as to protect their heads when attacked; "bedlamers," or one-year-old males, on whom the harp has not yet appeared; "bluebacks," or young "hoods," - and other variations, each with its special appellation. The havoc which a couple of hundred men plying their clubs mercilessly in the midst of these helpless victims work in a few hours may easily be imagined. A blow on the nose is followed by a cut down the centre of the seal from the throat to the tail with the scalping knife, which detaches the carcase from the "pelt." Technically speaking, the pelt consists of the skin and about three inches of fat with which it is lined, and to which protection of nature in the way of covering, the seal owes his power of |