[ Jukes / Excursions In and Around Newfoundland ]
Joseph Beete Jukes (1811 - 1869) was an English geologist and official geographical surveyor of Newfoundland, then a British colony, in 1839 and 1840, although his failure to discover mineral wealth led to a fairly prompt dismissal from the post. He went on to considerable success as a geographer in the South Pacific, Ireland, and England. This book was published in 1842 by John Murray (London, 2 vol.) The passages below are from volume 1.
The first passage is from Ch. 5, p. 178:
The day before we left I bought a good dog from one of the Indians for ten shillings.
Newfoundland is one of the worst places in the world for getting a good, or at least a good-looking, Newfoundland dog. In St. John's and its neighbourhood they are the most ill-looking set of mongrels that can be conceived. In the more distant ports, however, the breed has been better preserved.
From Chapter 6, pp. 191 - 192:
A thin, short-haired, black dog, belonging to George Harvey, came off to us today.
This animal was of a breed very different from what we understand by the term "Newfoundland dog," in England. He had a thin tapering snout, a long thin tail, and rather thin but powerful legs, with a lank body, the hair short and smooth. These are the most abundant dogs of the country, the long-haired curly dogs being comparatively rare. They are by no means handsome, but are generally more intelligent and useful than the others. This one caught his own fish. He sat on a projecting rock beneath a fish-flake, or stage, where the fish are laid to dry, watching the water, which had a depth of six or eight feet, and the bottom
of which was white with fish-bones. On throwing a piece of cod-fish into the water, three or four heavy clumsy-looking fish, called in Newfoundland "sculpins," with great heads and mouths, and many spines about them, and generally about a foot long, would swim in to catch it. These he would "set" attentively, and the moment one turned his broadside to him, he darted down like a fish-hawk, and seldom came up without the fish in his mouth. As he caught them, he carried them regularly to a place a few yards off, where he laid them down; and they told us that in the summer he would sometimes make a pile of fifty or sixty a day, just at that place. He never attempted to eat them, but seemed to be fishing purely for his own amusement. I watched him for about two hours; and when the fish did not come, I observed he once or twice put his right foot in the water, and paddled it about. This foot was white; and Harvey said he did it to "toll" or entice the fish; but whether it was for that specific reason, or merely a motion of impatience, I could not exactly decide. The whole proceeding struck me as remarkable, more especially as they said he had never been
taught anything of the kind.
The 3rd and final reference is to a Newfoundland dog's run-in with a captured seal:
As we stood on deck this morning before breakfast, we heard a cry down to leeward, like the cry of a gull, which some of the men said it was. It became, however, so loud and continued, that both Stuwitz and I doubted its being the cry of any bird, and one of the men took a gaff and went to look. We watched him for some distance with our glasses as he proceeded slowly through the fog till he suddenly began to run, and then struck at something, and presently returned dragging a young seal alive over the ice, and brought it on deck. It was of a dirty white colour, with short close fur, large dark expressive eyes, and it paddled and walloped about the deck fierce and bawling. A Newfoundland dog called Nestor, belonging to the Captain, approached
it, but it snapped at his nose and bit him, though its teeth were but just beginning to appear.