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    At the foot of the cone a row of cabins made with branches and containing but frames and hammocks served as dormitories for the fishermen. It was more than humble, it was miserable. One can hardly imagine how, in such a climate, under an always rainy or foggy sky and where the damp is often glacial, men could settle, without risk to the health, for such scant shelters. It seems, however, and born out by experience that no harm comes of it and that the fishing crews enjoy the most flourishing health. Always outdoors, always actively busy, the men have no time for boredom, their blood circulates with vigour and they are not subject to colds, the outbreak of which, contrary to what one might suppose, is very rare in the region. They are always more or less soaked through and there is nothing worse than that. Such was the nature of the life.

    The beach was covered in a manner which little delighted the sight or the sense of smell, in a layer of bloody debris, the remains of cod, heads and guts crowded the pebbles as abundantly as elsewhere did the seaweed rejected by the waves. Several feet away rose the almost perpendicular face of the cone. They have constructed of planks steep stairs, though more like a ladder and alongside to right and left wooden rails on which ascend and descend, with the aid of a capstan placed at the summit of the mountain, all the burdens one wishes to move.

    After having climbed a good number of steps, we found ourselves in the midst of storehouses, all built of planks, the dwelling of the manager, that of the doctor, finally at the centre of an intelligent and successful operation. The settlement at Red Island is one which on the western coast consistently produces best and merits the most interest. We found ourselves there in the midst of a new variety of fishermen of which the nature and lifestyle are completely different to those that we have been able to observe to date, be they inshore fishermen of St-Pierre-et-Miquelon, banks fishermen or English fishermen unlawfully established here.