CABLE NEWS. [BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.-COPYRIGHT.] FRANCE AND BRITAIN IN THE WESTERN ATLANTIC.

Evening Post, Volume LVI, Issue 156, 30 December 1898, Page 5

CABLE NEWS. [BY ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.-COPYRIGHT.] FRANCE AND BRITAIN IN THE WESTERN ATLANTIC.

BOTH POWERS STRENGTHENING THEIR FLEETS. [fnteaa association.] (Received December 30, 9.10 a.m.) London, 29th December. France has sent three swift and powerful warships to Newfoundland. The British Squadron at Halifax, Nova Scotia, has also been strengthened. [If there is to be trouble between Britain and France in Newfoundland it will be in regard to the old question of the French claims to the fishery lights on the coast of that island. Newfoundland was ceded to Great Britain toy treaty, but two small islands off the coast, Miguelon and St. Pierre, -were still retained by France, also the right to French fishermen to occupy a large part of the coast of Newfoundland itself for the purpose of drying fish. They were also promised " freedom from iuterruption by the competition of the British." This promise the French construe, and urge, sojas to prevent the development of the resources of the interior adjacent to the coast over which their rights extend. Several factories for canning lobsters have been erected by the French upon the coast of Newfoundland, but the legality of this action is contested by the colonists, upon the grouud that the lobster is not a fish, but a crustacean, and that canning lobsters is not " drying fish." The colonists have several times raised the question, but no settlement "'has bo far been arrived at.j