upper reach of Avalon peninsula, and about Portugal Cove on Conception Bay. The composition of the land and sea-scape is so characteristic of the entire coast that those who go no further afield than these short motor-runs from St. John's will gain an understanding of the overpowering grandeur of the island's ravaged, cliff-guarded, isle-studded sea-board whose uncountable harbours are cleft between bastions of stone.
A railway is promised to the lower Avalon coast which is now reached by the highway that connects St. John's with Petty Harbour, Bay Bulls (20 m.), Cape Broyle, Ferryland (44 m.) Fermeuse, Renews, Cape Race (64 m.) and Trepassey. The road is sufficiently good for comfortable motoring, but the lodging accommodation is of the plainest. The trip may also be taken by the Bowring fortnightly mail steamer which touches at the most important harbours on Avalon peninsula and proceeds from Placentia to ports on the south and west coasts.
The southeast shore was the first to be colonised by English grantees. Ferryland, according to so excellent an authority as Bishop Howley, is a corruption of forillon, a narrow peninsula whose adjoining bay has been bored out by the action of the waves. Sir George Calvert, afterwards Lord Baltimore, had a grant in the seventeenth century of the Avalon coast from Bay Bulls to Cape St.
