and could cure more meat, than their families require. There is no
other part of Newfoundland like it."

Edward Wix, Six Months of a Newfoundland Missionary's Journal,
Feb.-Aug., 1835, 2nd edition, 1836, pp. 135-6.

Thus much for authority; next for a personal glimpse.
James Cook's map of Port aux Basques needs revision now. ¹
For they, to wit, Messrs. McNamara of Toronto, are blasting out a
new port, which will avoid the awkward entrance to the old one:
increase harbour and transit facilities; and make ready for the
augmented ferry service of the Trans-Canada Highway age. ² This
highway, in the rough, runs already with short gaps from Port aux
Basques to Corner Brook, and from Corner Brook, without a gap,
through Grand Falls to Gander airport. The big gap is between
Clarenville (just about where Cormack set off for the interior) and
Gander; but we are told that we shall motor in comfort from Port
aux Basques to St. John's, with no four dollar ferry tolls on the way,
before the 1950's have run their course.

From the dry fog of Port aux Basques (three hours sunshine in the
four-and-a-half days of mid-July when I was there) you pass, inside
an hour, between the round breasts of "Mae West" to the sunshine,
sparkling streams and thick foliage of the Little Codroy Valley.
Everyone has a fishing rod at the back of his car, and summer
visitors are opening their bungalows. In the winter the wind may
be high, and first landmark is the railway hut in which the watch-
man used to sit waiting for the train of the day, ready to wave it
back if the gale was so strong as to make it dangerous to proceed.
Little Codroy is one of half a dozen of river systems, essentially the
same in type--Little Codroy, Grand Codroy, Robinson's, Humber,
South and East Arms ( Bonne Bay), leading to the West Coast from
the Long Range, with estuaries of varying widths, which in places
are deep enough to admit a criss-cross of roads, east-west, as well as
the main road north-south.

In the Codroys the terrain is of two sorts, the foothills with trout
and salmon streams and wild fowl and rich inter-vale meadows,
showing already the ripple of new growth--farmed by the pioneer;
and the longer settled coastal stretches--yet not so very much
longer settled. I sat with Mr. F. McIsaac in his valley farm on

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