carried on by Newfoundlanders and men whose vessels take their catch to
Newfoundland, because the only working plant is concentrated there. The
excessive spring kill greatly depletes the females and young, as it
takes place in the whelping season, when the herds are moving north
along the off-shore ice; and this depletion naturally spoils not only
the Newfoundlanders' permanent industry itself but the much smaller
inshore autumn catch by our own Canadian Labradorians, when the herds
are moving south. The Canadians along the North Shore and Labrador look
upon the invading Newfoundlanders, in this and other pursuits, very much
as a farmer looks upon a gipsy whose horse comes grazing in his
hayfield. And the analogy sometimes does hold good. When men under a
different government, men who do not own a foot of land in Canada, men
who do not pay specific taxes for Canadian rights, when these men
slaughter seals on inshore ice, use land and inlets for cleaning fish
and foul the water with their "gurry", and when they also "egg" on other
peoples' islands in defiance of the law, then the analogy is perfect. It
does not hold good, of course, in ordinary fishing, which is conducted
under Dominion licence and vigilantly watched by Commander Wakeham. But
whether Canada is not giving away too much for what she gets in licences
is quite another question.

The excessive spring kill by the Newfoundlanders does not seem to be the
only reason why the local seal hunt is not so good as it used to be. The
whites complain that the Indians along the coast kill an undue number of
seals on the one hand and of caribou on the other. But fishermen all the
world over are against the harbour seals; and generally exaggerate their
depredations, as they exaggerate the depredations of most kinds of
seabirds. Whatever the fate of the harbour seals should be, there can be
no doubt that the harps or Greenland seals, the bearded or
square-flippers, the grey or horseheads, and the gigantic and