GREAT FISHING BANKS. 195

nine shillings per week, and in case of death, L5 to defray funeral expenses.

There are, except in the immediate vicinage of St John’s, no roads in Newfoundland. Whether the condition and circumstances of the colony warrant the opening of roads to all the settlements, is ques- tionable ; but I certainly think that a few roads are necessary, to open a communication between Concep- tion and Trinity Bays, and between Conception and Placentia, St Mary’s, and Fortune Bays. It would be sufficient for some years to make what are called, on the continent of America, bridle-roads, which would in winter answer for sledge-roads. Carriage— roads in summer would, at least for the present, be unnecessary. There is now a tolerable road from St John’s to Portugal Cove in Conception Bay, and a

pathvroad to a few other places. The Great Bank of Newfoundland is the most

extensive sub-marine elevation that we know to exist in any ocean. Various theories and conjectures have been hazarded, in order to account for its formation. Some believe it was formerly an immense island,which had sunk, in consequence of its pillars or founda- tion having been loosened by an earthquake. Others, that it has been created by the gradual accumula- tion of sand carried along by the gulf stream, and arrested here by meeting with the currents of the north. It 1s, in some places, five degrees, or about .2: 200 miles broad, and about 600 miles in length. The soundings on it are from twenty-five to ninety- five fathoms. The whole appears to be a mass of