d to me that here was a field for British
enterprise, and that with the easing of shipping difficulties, which
were then tying up Newfoundland's commerce, Britain and Newfoundland
would both benefit by a vigorous trade policy. Newfoundlanders seemed
anxious to get British goods, and, as they pointed out, the rate of
exchange was all in their favour.

Through Water Street passes a medley of vehicles; the bumpy electric
trams, horse carts that look like those tent poles the Indians trail
behind them put on wheels, spidery buggies, or "rigs," solid-wheeled
country carts, and the latest makes in automobiles.

The automobiles astonish one, both in their inordinate number and their
up-to-dateness. There seemed, if anything, too many cars for the town,
but then that was only because we are new to the Western Continent,
where the automobile is as everyday a thing as the telephone. All the
cars are American, and to the Newfoundlander they are things of pride,
since they show how the modern spirit of the Colony triumphs over sea
freight and heavy import duty. Motor-cars and electric lighting in a
lavish fashion that Britain does not know, form the modern features of
St. John's.

When the two warships steamed through the Narrows into the harbour, St.
John's, within its hills, was looking its best under radiant sunlight.
The fishermen's huts clinging to the rocky crevices of the harbour
entrance on thousands of spidery legs, let crackers off to the passing
ships and fluttered a mist of flags. Flags shone with vivid splashes
of pigment from the water's edge, where a great five-masted schooner,
barques engaged in the South American trade, a liner and a score of
vessels had dressed ships, up all the tiers of houses to where strings
of flags swung between the towers of the cathedral.

From the wharves a number of gnat-like gasolene launches, gay with
flags, pushed off to flutter about both cruisers until they came to
anchor. From one of the quays signal guns were fired, and the brazen
and inordinate bangings of his Royal salute echoed and re-echoed in
uncanny fashion among the hills that hem the town, so that when the
warships joined in, the whole cup of the harbour was filled with the
hammerings of explosions overlapping explosions, until the air seemed
made of nothing else.

On the big stacks of Newfoundland lumber at the harbour-side, on the
quays, on the freight sheds and on the roofs of buildings, Newfoundland
people,