We may truly say that liquor is the root of all evil in the north-west.

Great bawling and lamentation went on, and I was troubled most of the night for liquor to wash away grief." As a rule, the treatment of the Amerindians by the British and French settlers was good, except the thrusting of alcohol on them.

But in Newfoundland a great crime was perpetrated.

Between the middle of the seventeenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries the British fishermen and settlers on the coasts of Newfoundland had _destroyed_ the native population of Beothik Indians.
Before the English arrived on the coasts of Newfoundland the Beothiks lived an ideal life for savages.

They were well clothed with beasts' skins, and in the winter these were supplemented by heavy fur robes.
Countless herds of reindeer roamed through the interior, passing from north to south in the autumn and returning in the spring.