Government out of the rents accruing from the Ship's rooms; and the Governor should by proclamation establish the rate of passage at the end of every Season. One great impediment at present to the return of the Fishermen is the absolute want of Tonnage. They come out in the Spring when the Cargoes of the Vessels are more valuable, and less bulky; but when those Vessels return they are laden even to their Cabins with Fish, and cannot in any manner afford the Space.
    There can I think be no necessity for an alteration of the law as far as it relates to the restrictions in the mode of paying the Men. But again, with respect to the return of the Fishermen, there is yet another cause which must in some measure operate against it, and that is, the continued increase of the Seal Fishery, which can only be carried on by persons who remain during the Winter in the Island, to be ready for the breaking up of the ice, and to seize the first moment for putting to Sea. It may be perhaps to be deplored that the fishery is now constituted so as to render the continued residence of the Fishermen in a great degree necessary, but there is still the consolation that in any event of emergency a very excellent body of Men might at a moment be drafted from hence into the Navy.
    I have not suffered any new possession to be taken of Lands or Rivers or parts thereof. I have taken care that the ancient Ship's rooms should continue under the Statute 10^th and 11^th of William 3^rd but it does not appear that Ships are likely to arrive from the British

Dominions in Europe to occupy either those or the other vacant Shores of Newfoundland.
    It is true that notwithstanding whatever instructions may have been given from time to time to prevent the erection of any building except Fishing Stages, Cook rooms, Ship rooms and flakes within two hundred yards distance from high water mark, such buildings have been erected in every part of the North side of S^t John's Harbour.
    In the present altered state of S^t John's, no longer considerable for its fishery, but very particularly so as the great mercantile depot of the Island from whence all the supplies are drawn, (arising, no doubt, from a long course of War and a necessity for concentrating those supplies in a place of security) it is not necessary, and in fact it is not possible, that a regulation of this nature should be enforced.
    The Wharfs and capacious Store houses of the Merchants, for obtaining as well the provisions and various articles of Supply with which they furnish the planters, as the great quantities of fish which they receive in barter for those supplies, occupy nearly the whole extent of the strand; and as it is indispensable in the present circumstances of the fishery that such magazines should exist, they can be no where more properly placed. But there are also innumerable smaller buildings, retail shops of various descriptions, which are crowded very closely, and very perniciously together, immediately behind the great Stores of the Merchants; and form a street so unhappily narrow and confined as

greatly to endanger the health of the inhabitants, and in case of fire to leave no chance of its being extinguished. It is in my opinion an object of essential importance that these houses should be removed. They cannot be considered in any other light than as great public nuisances; but as the value of the whole is so considerable, and the interests of so many person would be affected by removing them, it could not be done suddenly, nor without an adequate compensation.
    The owners of such property might for instance be given reasonable warning that it would be necessary for them to remove, and portions of land, with the right of erecting what might be deemed sufficient buildings thereon for their respective purposes should be allotted to them in the higher part of the Town, in the Street called Gower Street. But as the mere right of building in Gower Street might not be a sufficient inducement to them to quit their present habitations without some positive remuneration for the expence of the removal, it could be made either by granting to them land of adequate extent out of the Town, or by devoting to this purpose for a certain time a portion of the rents arising from the proposed lease of the Ships-rooms. Although in my replies to this Article I have strictly confined myself to the several queries, yet they are so comprehensive as to leave little room for further observation.
    There is however one suggestion which I should desire to make; It is, that the unoccupied Ship rooms in the Out Harbours might be rendered more available if the law

respecting them were thus altered. Instead of preserving them wholly vacant for the adventurers, by whom they have not for many years been claimed, the Planters or inhabitants might be permitted to use them on condition of delivering them up on their being claimed by fishing Ships which might arrive. They should be restricted from establishing any building whatever upon them other than those indispensable for the fishery, and for whatever buildings or conveniencies they might erect of this denomination, they should be allowed such compensation by the claimant as should be deemed equitable by a certain number of Arbitrators to be named by each of the parties. In every point of view an arrangement of this sort would in my opinion be attended with advantage. In the first place many of the excellent Ships-rooms now lying useless might be turned to account, and it is not surely necessary to impede the Fishery in its present system, unless it be by means which obviously tend at the same time to its revival on the ancient system. A measure such as I propose would certainly not increase the difficulty of bringing back the ancient System; but on the contrary it would be the means of removing one very serious impediment; that to which fishing Ships arriving would be subject from the necessity of erecting their own Flakes, and Stages, and Cook rooms; in the preparation of which consideration time is necessarily lost, nor after all is it possible that sufficient pains should be bestowed to render them so commodious or in any manner so fit for the purpose as

they ought to be, when those who erect them are in the first instance greatly pressed in point of time, and in the next uncertain whether their Labours will profit them beyond the present Season.
    The advantages of curing the fish in situations which have been regularly adapted for the process are so essential, that the mode of drying it on the beach, or of using temporary conveniences only, can scarcely again be resorted to; and in the generality of the Harbours the wood has been so entirely cleared from their immediate neighbourhood that much difficulty has occasionally prevailed in finding it for the flakes. As a remarkable instance of this fact; upon observing at Carbonear (in Conception Bay) a large enclosure of young fir Trees, the common wood of the whole Country, and enquiring of the Fisherman who owned it what had been his motives for undertaking so laborious a work, he assured me that indeed he had spent on that enclosure the labour of his youth; but that it well repaid him in the end, for he found there sticks to repair his Flake when otherwise he must have lost much valuable fishing time in hunting for them.
    Constrained as I am to report my opinions on these various subjects (many of which involve considerations of the very first importance) on this my first return from Newfoundland, I have stated them with more precision than perhaps in real wisdom I ought to have done.
    It is not impossible that in many points a more familiar acquaintance with its affairs may induce me to alter in some degree my present