I will not enlarge here on what has become the Newfoundland Question, which I have naturally had to study in all its aspects.  Suffice it to recall the fact that when the Island of Newfoundland became British territory, the conquerors ceded the exclusive right of fishing on half the coast to France, with the reservation that we were only to remain temporarily, during the fishing season, and have no permanent establishments on the island.  When these fishing rights were conceded to us (and they soon became very important, employing as they did over twenty thousand sailors, and turning the Newfoundland fisheries into one of the chief training grounds for our service sailors) the island was well-nigh uninhabited.  There are no opportunities for conflict in a desert country.  But little by little the island grew populous.  On the part where we had the fishing rights, the “French Shore,” a very limited, almost insignificant, English population gathered, and, oddly enough, we ourselves brought it there, desirous as we were to leave caretakers to look after and keep in order, from one season to the other, the indispensable establishments for the curing, drying, and salting of the codfish, which we ourselves could not occupy permanently.  Everywhere, during my cruise, I found this English population, living by us, and on excellent terms with our Newfoundlanders.  To such a pitch was the excellence of these terms occasionally carried, that paying a visit one day to a worthy sea-captain from St. Malo, who had laid up his ship during the fishing season, and settled on shore, in an English house, I saw two chubby children burst in, shouting “Papa, papa!” while a young and pretty Englishwoman, sitting by, never lifted her eyes from her work.  “The little geese,” said the worthy Breton, “see me so often, they’ve got into the habit of calling me papa!”

This entente cordiale would no doubt have continued indefinitely, and nobody would have heard any mention of a Newfoundland Question, endangering the international relations between the two countries, if the southern portion of the island, entirely English as it was, and with a temperate climate, had not increased so rapidly in population as to have a constitution, liberal institutions, a Parliament, and the consequent elections.  The electioneering agents forthwith found they needed a sensational popular platform, and this platform has ended by becoming something like the “Irredenta” movement in Italy, a claim for national rights over the national soil.  “Newfoundland for the Newfoundlanders.”  There lies the whole of the Newfoundland Question.  Locally, nobody bothers their head about it, but in the press, and on the phantom-haunted ground of electoral politics, it has kindled many passions, and may very likely engender ruin and bloodshed some of these days.  These facts taken for granted, I return to my personal recollections.  Unlike most of my brother officers, I found my stay in Newfoundland (in the summer months, during which