ng settlers. A ring
of rough, stratified hills grips the harbour water about, sheltering it
from storms and land enemies, while with the strong hills at the
water-gate to command it, and a chain drawn across its Narrows, it was
safe from incursion of water-borne foes.

It was the fitting stronghold of the reckless Devon, Irish and Scots
fishermen who followed Cabot to the old Norse _Helluland_, the "Land of
Naked Rocks," and who vied and fought with, and at length ruled with
the rough justice of the "Fishing Admirals" the races of Biscayan and
Portuguese men who made the island not a home but a centre of the great
cod fishery that supplied Europe.

St. John's has laboured under its disadvantages ever since those days.
The town has been pinched between the steep hills, and forced to
straggle back for miles along the harbour inlet. On the southern side
of the basin the slope has beaten the builder, and on the dominant
green hill, through the grass of which thrusts grey and red-brown
masses of the sharp-angled rock stratum, there are very few houses.

On the north, humanity has made a fight for it, and the white, dusty
roads struggle with an almost visible effort up the heavy grade of the
hill until they attain the summit. The effect is of a terraced and
piled-up city, straggling in haphazard fashion up to the point where
the great Roman Catholic cathedral, square-hewn and twin-towered,
crowns the mass of the town.

Plank frame houses, their paint dingy and grey, with stone and brick
buildings, jostle each other on the hill-side streets, innocent of
sidewalks. The main thoroughfare, Water Street, which runs parallel
with the harbour and the rather casual wharves, is badly laid, and
given to an excess of mud in wet weather, mud that the single-deck
electric trams on their bumpy track distribute lavishly. The black
pine masts that serve as telegraph-poles are set squarely and
frequently in the street, and overhead is the heavy mesh of cables and
wires that forms an essential part of all civic scenery in the West.
The buildings and shops along this street are not imposing, and there
seems a need for revitalization in the town, either through a keener
overseas trading and added shipping facilities, or a broader and more
encouraging local policy.

Most of the goods for sale were American, and some of them not the best
type of American articles at that. It was hard to find indications of
British trading, and it seeme