Jukes' Excursions

Olaf Uwe Janzen is an associate professor of history at Sir Wilfred
Grenfell College, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

This is a lightly annotated edition of a book that has long been a
mainstay of historians of 19th-century Newfoundland. Joseph Beete Jukes,
as we learn in the editors’ introduction, was a student of geology in
England at a time when that discipline was in its infancy. Through the
influence of his instructor, he secured an appointment in 1838 to the
position of Geological Surveyor of Newfoundland. From May 1839 until
November 1840, he was in the colony, surveying its mineral potential and
recording in great detail his impressions of the people, their culture,
their communities, and the physical, social, political, and economic
landscape in which they lived. He observed how Newfoundlanders lived,
how they worked, and how they played; his travels took him from St.
John’s to the West Coast, and even deep into the interior; he visited
St. Pierre and participated in the spring seal hunt, giving us the
earliest detailed description of an activity that was as dangerous as it
was essential to its participants.

Jukes’ Excursions has long been one of the most important sources
available to those who seek anecdotal flesh to fill out the analytical
bones provided by official records of the 19th-century Newfoundland
experience, and Harry Cuff Publications is to be commended for making
Jukes’s book so much more accessible. It is, therefore, a shame that
the publisher did not make the extra effort to provide a few maps, the
better to see where Jukes went. The index, while adequate, could also
have been better; distinctive Newfoundland socioeconomic traits such as
winter housing, smuggling, and bait trade are described by Jukes but
ignored in the index.

The most serious lapse is the failure to direct readers to additional
readings. A secondary literature exists on Jukes, Peter Stuwitz,
Governor Prescott, and other personalities who figured in Jukes’
Excursions, as does a growing and substantial literature on the society,
economy, and politics of 19th-century Newfoundland. The failure to
direct readers to sources that might provide the book with historical
context diminishes its value in a way that cannot be altogether redeemed
by the editors introduction. Nevertheless, the reappearance of Jukes’
Excursions in an affordable paperback edition is most welcome.