America in this period showed an increase of 128·5% and that with
Canada 76·1%.
Roads and Railways.—Railways play a unique part in the modern history of the island. Not until 1825 was the first road made; it was 9 m. in length, from St John’s to Portugal Cove. When representative government was established in 1832 an annual grant was voted for roads and bridges, and of late years not less than The Reid contract. $100,000 per annum has been expended on this head. There are now over 1000 m. of postal roads, and over 2000 of district roads. In 1880 after much agitation the legislature finally agreed to raise a loan of £1,000,000 for the construction of a railway from St John’s to Hall’s Bay, with branches to Brigus and Harbour Grace, the distance being estimated at 340 m. In November 1884 the line was completed for traffic as far as Harbour Grace. In the following year the construction of a line, 27 m. in length, from Whitbourne to Placentia, the old French capital, was begun and finished in 1888. Shortly afterwards it was decided to resume the line northwards from St John’s to Hall’s Bay (which, owing to the failure of the contractors, had been discontinued) with a view ultimately to a transinsular railway. The tender of a well-known contractor, Mr R.G. Reid of Montreal, was accepted, and the work was begun in October 1890. But before the contractor had proceeded far with the Hall’s Bay line a new survey was made and another route determined for the proposed transinsular railway, westwards from the valley of the Exploits, which was regarded as much more favourable than the one originally contemplated. It traversed the Exploits and Humber valleys, passing through the most fertile territory in the island, to the Bay of Islands on the west coast; hence it skirted Bay St George and the Codroy valley and terminated at Port-aux-Basques, a commodious harbour 93 m. distant from Sydney, Cape Breton. The new route was chosen, and a contract signed on the 16th of May 1893, whereby the contractor was to be paid $15,600 per mile in Newfoundland bonds, the whole line to be completed in three years. At the same time, in order to provide for the working of the line, it was agreed between the colonial government and Mr Reid that the latter should maintain and work it, as well as construct a system of telegraphs, for a period of ten years from the 1st of September 1893 at his own expense, in consideration of a “grant in fee simple to the contractor of 5000 acres of land for each one mile of mail line or branch railway to be operated.” Should the line, therefore, be 500 m. in length the land grant would be 2,500,000 acres, to be situated on each side of the railway in alternate sections of 1 or 2 m. in length with the railway, and 8 m. in depth, the colony also retaining an equal amount of land with the contractor along the route. Much hostile criticism was subsequently directed towards this arrangement. In 1898 a new proposal was made by Mr Reid, under the terms of which he undertook to work all the railways in the island for a period of fifty years, free of cost to the government, provided that, at the termination of the said period, the railways should become his own property. He was also to receive a further concession of land to the extent of 2,500,000 acres on terms similar to those contained in the former contract. Mr Reid agreed to build and run seven steamers, one in each of the large bays, and one to ply in Labrador in summer, to provide an electric street railway for St John's, and also to pave a certain portion of the capital. The colony was to part with the telegraph system to the contractor, who was to acquire at a fixed price the government dry-dock at St John's. On the other hand, to complete the bargain, $1,000,000 in cash was to be paid by the contractor to the government within a year after the signing of the contract. This remarkable covenant, which was afterwards characterized by Mr Chamberlain, secretary of state for the colonies, as a transaction “without parallel in the history of any country,” was nevertheless ratified by the legislature, and submitted to the governor, Sir Herbert Murray, for his approval. The governor declined to append his signature to the instrument, but upon its being referred to the imperial secretary of state, it was decided that the arrangement was one relating exclusively to the colony, and this being the case, that it would be “an unwarrantable interference with the rights of a self-governing colony” to disallow the measure. The Reid contract was therefore signed by Sir Herbert Murray before relinquishing his post early in 1898. Meanwhile considerable feeling had been manifested in the colony; numerous public meetings in support of the governor’s action were held; and several petitions were despatched to England; but it was not until the spring of 1900 that Sir James Winter and his colleagues were forced to resign on account of the opposition which had been engendered. The general election brought a Liberal, Mr (afterwards Sir) Robert Bond, into power; and he had hardly assumed office when the contractor approached the ministry with further proposals to convert his property into a limited liability company with a capital of £5,000,000 sterling, for which proceeding the consent of the legislature was necessary, under the terms of 1898., Mr Bond refused unless a modification of the contract was agreed to. The modifications demanded were—that the telegraphs should revert at once to the government; that the land grants, which included a large amount of private property, should be readjusted so as to conserve the rights of those whose holdings had been confiscated; also, that it should be optional for the colony to take over the railways at the end of fifty years by paying back the sum of $1,000,000 with interest, the amount paid by Mr Reid to the colony; and a sum to be arrived at by arbitration for all improvements that may have been made on the property within the fifty years. After considerable dispute these terms were substantially agreed to, and the conversion into a company took place.
History.—Newfoundland, commonly termed the “senior colony” of Great Britain, antedates in discovery (though not in continuous settlement) any other British over-sea dominion. John Cabot, sailing from Bristol in 1497, appears to have made landfall at Bonavista and claimed the whole country for Henry VII. Three years later Gaspar Discovery. Corte-Real, ranging the North American coasts, discovered and named Conception Bay and Portugal Cove, and was appointed Portuguese governor of Terra Nova. The long series of annual trans-Atlantic expeditions followed upon the voyages of Cabot and Corte-Real, and their reports in England, Portugal and France concerning the multitude of fish in Newfoundland. For a long time it was supposed that the English fishermen did not avail themselves to any extent of these advantages until the middle of the 16th century, but this is now shown to be erroneous. Mr Prowse states that the trade during the first half of the century was both “extensive and lucrative.” In 1527 the little Devonshire fishing ships were unable to carry home their large catch, so “sack ships” (large merchant vessels) were employed to carry the salt cod to Spain and Portugal. An act of 1541 classes the Newfoundland trade with the Irish, Shetland and Iceland fisheries. Hakluyt, writing in 1578, mentions that the number of vessels employed in the fishery was 400, of which only one-quarter were English, the rest being French and Spanish Basque. But in the same year, according to Anthony Parkhurst, “the English are commonly lords of the harbours where they fish and use all help in fishing if need require.” Shortly thereafter England awoke to the importance of Cabot’s great discovery, and an attempt was made to plant a colony on the shores of the island. Sir Humphry Gilbert, provided with Early colonizing. letters patent from Queen Elizabeth, landed in St John’s in August 1583, and formally took possession of the country in the queen’s name. The first attempt at colonizing was frustrated by the loss of Gilbert soon afterwards at sea. In 1610 James I. granted a patent to John Guy, an enterprising Bristol merchant, for a “plantation” in Newfoundland; but no marked success attended his efforts to found settlements. In 1615 Captain Richard Whitbourne of Exmouth in Devonshire was despatched to Newfoundland by the British admiralty to establish order and correct abuses which had grown up among the fishermen. On his return in 1622 he wrote a “Discourse and Discovery of Newfoundland Trade” which King James, by an order in council, caused to be distributed
