With its natural resources, and the neglect of them,
he was much surprised. "The British possessions in Labrador," he said,
"extend over a tract of country as great as the northern regions of
Russia from St. Petersburg towards the Pole, wherein the Ural Mountains
compensate that Government for the sterility of the soil. I have often
felt surprise at the indifference evinced by the Spanish Government
towards developing the resources of its possessions; but it is with
still greater astonishment I view the supineness of our own Government
in leaving this vast tract unexplored, and its probable treasures
undiscovered."

Similar complaints were suggested to him by his observations on the
eastern side of Newfoundland, to which he sailed down on the 6th of
August. "We passed several ports, wherein there were numerous French
ships and square-rigged vessels dismantled, and schooners and multitudes
of fishing-boats in full activity in the offing. These schooners and
fishing-boats are manned by the crews of the large French vessels which
are laid up in port, and constitute depots as well as the means of
transporting the produce of the fishery to France, an arrangement highly
advantageous to the French marine, and which we erroneously abandoned by
erecting Newfoundland into a Colonial Government, thus surrendering our
deep-sea fishery entirely, even without rendering the inshore fishery
available to the newly-erected colony, throughout which it languishes
from want of stimulus, or an adequate reward, even to induce the
impoverished inhabitants of the shore to avail themselves of their small
and almost costless boats to catch fish, which, by reason of the
bounties given by France and America, are unsaleable with profit in any
country in Europe. It is grievous to observe the difference in the mode
of carrying on the British fishery compared to that of the French. The
former in rudely-constructed skiffs, with a couple of destitute-looking
beings in party-coloured rags; the latter in fine, well-equipped
schooners, which may be called tenders to their larger ships, the seamen
uniformly dressed in blue, with Joinville hats, looking as men ought and
may be expected to look whose interests and those of the parent State
are understood to be in unison, and attended to as such."

At St. John's, Newfoundland, Lord Dundonald made some stay before
sailing down to Sydney, in Cape Breton. Then he returned to Halifax, to
go thence for a second vis