settlement n Cp OED ~ 15 'a small village' (1827-), DAE 2 a (1711-), DC 1 a (1769-). The houses and other buildings often clustering around a freshwater stream on a cove, bay, harbour, beach or shore along the coast; a similar small community established inland: cp OUTPORT, PLANTATION.
1708 OLDMIXON 12 But they make use still of their old [?out] Harbours also, as their small Settlements here were termed, and not Towns, a Name indeed which they did not deserve. [1749] 1755 DOUGLASS i, 289 At present there are nine or ten settlements called harbours, not towns, where they cure and ship off their dry cod-fish. [1794] 1968 THOMAS 125 Our man ... kept advancing along the shore in the hope of coming to some Settlement. 1842 BONNYCASTLE ii, 165 It is impossible in so scattered a population, with such amazing extent to fishing bank and shore, that he whose establishment is in St John's, or in one of the out-harbours or settlements, could attend to the large import and export trade upon which he subsists, and at the same time employ himself or his clerks on a fish stage in twenty different places, or in perhaps a hundred boats at sea. 1881 Nineteenth Century ix, 91 There was quite a settlement in those parts, consisting of a small saw-mill and house adjoining inhabited by the white man who ran the mill, and of two or three families of Indians, all rejoicing in the name of Joe. 1898 PROWSE 31 ... setting forth the limits or boundaries within which such area or district is comprised. and the names of the towns, harbours, or settlements included therein. 1902 HOWLEY MS Reminiscences 28 There are several houses scattered around in coves and outside near the Northern Head there is quite a large settlement in Seal Cove. 1933 Nfld Royal Commission Report 4 The remainder of the people are distributed among some 1,300 settlements, spread for the most part over the 6,000 miles of coast, with populations ranging from 50 to 5,000. [1964] 1979 Evening Telegram 27 June, p. 40 The motor vessel Catalina Trader ... is now visiting Newfoundland settlements collecting seal pelts from landsmen. 1973 SMALLWOOD 66 I was taken about the settlement by the local boys, and in a small boat about the harbour, jigging sculpins and tom-cods.
