Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/395

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GENERAL INFORMATION
333

tions and terminals there are fairly comfortable public or private houses. The rooms are usually very clean. The bill of fare, except in late summer, is apt to be restricted to coarse vegetables with meat, salt and fresh-water fish, and plain desserts. Green vegetables are not often sown until June. In August and September the wild berries mature in great abundance, raspberries, strawberries, bake-apples, partridge and whortle berries, all of them delicious in flavour. Terms for board and room vary from $8.50 to $18 a week, or $1.25 to $3 a day. Waterford Hall, in the suburbs, is the most comfortable hotel of the capital. In comparison with houses of similar grade elsewhere than in expensive Newfoundland its charges seem excessive. Nearly all imported commodities, including food-stuffs and fruits, are heavily taxed by the insular Customs, the maintenance of the Government being almost solely dependent upon the Customs revenue. Travellers who arrive at St. John's by the Red Cross Line will find it in every way greatly to their advantage to remain on board ship as long as possible while they are touring the city and its environs. It is not a question, as a visiting journalist put it, as to which is the "best" of the hotels within the city limits, but which is the "least worst."

General Information.

Newfoundland Customs Circular Number 15 says: