Bad Times for Labrador.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 221, 24 September 1887, Page 4

Bad Times for Labrador.

News from Newfoundland received at New York, August 15th, speaks of the utter failure of the Labrador fisheries, and that 1,000 vessels are coming back clean, and the remaining 500 craft have only a few quintals of fish each. The news has produced an indescribable feeling of gloom and despair. There has been a wholesales exodus of Newfoundlanders this year. Colonies of fishermen ha\e gone to the Pacific Coast to begin life anew in the rich fisheries reported there. Those who could gather together enough money to get away have gone, and every outgoing steamer during the season has been so crowded that frequently passengers would be left behind. Sir Robert Thorburn, the Premier, publishes in the St. John's, Newfoundland, "Colonist," that the statements it and others published abroad regarding the suffering condition of Newfoundland are false and malicious. There is neither bankruptcy nor universal destitution. The Bank and Western fisheries are successful. The Labrador and Northern fisheries have hitherto been poor, but were improving at last advices. "The general outlook here," the Premier says, " is much better than it was last season at the corresponding period." At the Barae time it may be stated that there was recently in San Francisco an agent of intending emigrants from Newfoundland, looking for a suitable place to colonise on the Pacific Coast. The selection is understood to be some large islands lying off the Alaska shore. Cod and other marketable fish are found in great abundance in the surroundihg waters.