split and boned preparatory to the process of salt curing. The drying flakes are made of cross-laid hemlock boughs. Every one is busy, cheerful and well-mannered. Here one will detect less the Irish brogue that marks the speech of St. John's, but may be confused to hear a gusty wind called a flaw, a stormy day, a coarse one, and a fine day, a civil. A girl is a maid; a kitchen, the house-place. Like the Highlanders of Cape Breton and the Acadians of Clare, the inhabitants of the outports have held more tenaciously to the archaic speech of their ancestors than have natives of the British Isles, or peasant French who still dwell in Normandy. The dialect and the use of obsolete English words varies in different communities according to the County from which the original settlers came. In some obscure villages the accent is almost unintelligible to ordinary ears and is not easily understood even by the inhabitants of present-day Dorset, Devon or Somersetshire. The pronunciation of certain words recalls terms used by Chaucer. In some sections the boy "runned" and the fleet "goed." On the south coast a plural subject is used with a singular verb, and vice versa, with quaint, not unpleasing effect.
The drive of 8 miles from St. John's to Torbay affords views of the surf at Logie Bay and of the fjord and headland scenery for which the island is most renowned. Even casual tourists will not miss the scenes about Torbay and Pouch Cove on the
