3-078-233 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches in Newfoundland: drying stages, with cod-fish, in April: arrival of a new governor, 1890. 'The island discovered in 1497...is situate near the south-east coast of Labrador, at the entrance to the Gulf of St. Lawrence...The inhabitants have chiefly devoted their attention to the cod-fishery, which is mainly carried on in the open Atlantic, over the vast shoals called the Banks of Newfoundland...this, with the seal-hunting, the salmon and herring fisheries, also the new trade in canned lobsters from the western shore,...supplies yearly exports to the value of more than five million dollars. The whole population is...of British, Irish, and French origin, the native Indian race being extinct...The photographs by Mr. S. H. Parsons, of St. John's, and sent to us by Mr. W. C. Bourchier, of H.M.S. Lion, from which our Engravings are copied, represent some aspects of the Newfoundland shores in winter and early spring: the arrival, in April 1886, of the steamer bringing Governor Sir G. W. Des Voeux, who has latterly been succeeded by Governor Sir Terence O'Brien. In the foreground of the view is seen one of the scaffolds or stages on which the codfish are spread for drying, and which yield a very strong and disagreeable smell'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.