[ Tocque / Newfoundland: As It Was, and As It Is in 1877 ]
Philip Tocque (1814 - 1899) was a native Newfoundlander and Episcopal minister who wrote on scientific, geographic, and religious subjects.
This book was published in 1878 (Toronto: John B. Magurn); this was the only edition.
The work's first reference to Newfoundland dogs concerns the presentation of one to the visiting Prince of Wales (later King Edward VII):
In 1860, on Monday, July the 23rd, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales arrived at St. John's on his way to Canada and the other Provinces. His Royal Highness was accompanied by His Grace the Duke of Newcastle and the Earl of St. Germain. They remained at St. John's three days. His Royal Highness was treated with every demonstration of respect; and nothing was left undone to honour the distinguished visitors by the citizens of St. John's. They presented the Prince with a Newfoundland dog, to whom he gave the name of Cabot, in honour of the great Italian navigator who discovered Newfoundland. The Hon. Francis Brady, Chief Justice, was knighted in honour of the visit of His Royal Highness. (54)
(Cabot is also mentioned in Henry J. Morgan's 1860 book The Tour of H. R. H. The Prince of Wales through British America and the United States; in The Times (London) of May 30, 1864 and the June 1964 issue of Sporting Magazine, which both comment on Cabot's success in the show ring in England; in R. B. Lee's 1894 work A History and Description of the Modern Dogs of Great Britain and Ireland; and in the December 1910 issue of Dog Fancier magazine.)
The next mention of Newfs occurs in the discussion of the province's animal life.
The Newfoundland dogs, for the most part, are poor spurious descendants of the once nohle race. Those fine samples of the race to be met with in the United States, are rarely found in Newfoundland. No animal in Newfoundland is a greater sufferer from man than the dog. This animal is employed during the winter season in drawing timber from the woods, and he supplies the place of a horse in the performance of several offices. I have frequently seen one of these creatures drawing three seals (about ore hundred and thirty pounds weight), for a distance of four miles, over huge rugged masses of ice, safe to land. In drawing wood, the poor animal is frequently burdened beyond his strength, and compelled to proceed by the most barbarous treatment. My friend T. Drew, Esq., one of the editors of the Spy and Christian Citizen, published at Worcester, Mass., United States, relates the following instance of the sagacity of the Newfoundland dog, which was communicated to him by a female friend of his, who had been spending the summer of 1850, at Halifax, N. S.: —
"Tige is a splendid Newfoundland, and possesses good sense as well as good looks. He is in the habit of going every morning with a penny in his mouth, to the same butcher's shop, and purchasing his own breakfast, like a gentlemanly dog as he is. But it so happened upon one cold morning, during the past winter, the shop was closed, and the necessity seemed to be imposed upon Tige, either to wait for the butcher's return, or look for his breakfast elsewhere. Hunger probabhy constrained him to take the latter alternative, and off he started lor another butcher's shop, nearest to his favourite place of resort. Arriving there, he deposited his money upon the block, and smacked his chops for breakfast as usual ; but the butcher, instead of meeting the demand of his customer as a gentleman ought, brushed the coin into his till, and drove the dog out of the shop. Such a disgraceful proceeding on the part of a man, very naturally ruffled the temper of the brute; but as there was no other alternative, he was obliged to submit. The next morning, however, when his master furnished him with the coin for the purchase of breakfast, as usual, the dog instead of going to the shop where he had been accustomed to trade, went immediately to the shop from whence he was so unceremoniously ejected the day before —laid his penny upon the block, and with a growl, as much as to say, 'you don't play any more tricks upon travellers,' placed his paw npon the penny. The butcher, not liking to risk, under such a demonstration, the perpetration of another fraud, immediately rendered him the quid pro quo, in the shape of a slice of meat, and was about to appropriate the penny as he had done the day previous, to his own coffers; but the dog, quicker than he was, made away with the meat at one swallow, and seizing the penny again in his mouth, made off to the shop of his more honest acquaintance, and by the purchase of a double breakfast, made up for his previous fast." (476 - 477)
The final mention occurs in a brief discussion of the native dogs:
Even the inmates of the houses here are in dread of these dogs. I have not heard of their attacks being fatal on men, but an Indian dog and three others were shot in Heart's Content, only a week or two, for killing a cow. They have a bad name, and deservedly. And yet some of these dogs must have been the ancestors of the noble dogs known in England as the breed of this island. The best are jet black, and of good size; but the ordinary dogs, if not of the Indian breed, are very curs, and could be made to walk under the English Newfoundland dog.