Page:Tourist's Maritime Provinces.djvu/432

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366
THE TOURIST'S MARITIME PROVINCES

Quite as proud is he to show the cells devoid of prisoners, but cluttered with broken chairs and paint cans and the jailer's widow's spinning-wheel.

The Glencoe's run across the bay to lovely Marystown on the eastern margin of Burin Peninsula is accomplished in six or seven hours. Great Burin is the second call on the way from Placentia to Port-aux-Basques. The force of the ocean is broken by natural breakwaters about the mouth of this matchless harbour——"the best in Newfoundland." The steamer winds among hillocky islands to the town which perches wherever it can gain a foot-hold about the sides of rough knolls. Intersecting channels are spanned by walks laid on wooden piers. One of the highest hills is named for Captain Cook who made a complete survey of this coast in 1763. On the top is the cairn he erected. The inlets and "back arms" of Burin invited the establishment by Jerseymen and West-of-England firms of important fishing-rooms whose trade with foreign countries once made this harbour one of the most active of the southern out-ports. A "room" in Newfoundland parlance is the premises of a fishing firm or individual. "A family room" descends from father to son. Originally the term was applied only to the hall where the commercial transactions were consummated. Later it came to include warehouse, docks, stores and drying-stages.

One of many likely and unlikely tales which im-