This comment was made in 1776 by Lawrence CoughIan, Newfoundland's first Methodist missionary, about the people of Conception Bay North. "I have known a Man," he further wrote in his book An Account of the Work of God in Newfoundland "who could not read a Letter in a Book, go into the Wood, and cut down a Timber, bring the same out with the Help of a Servant, and build a Boat, rig it, and afterwards go to Sea with the same Boat." Bell Island's inheritance was from this "People of a very bright genius." The interplay between the Island and the outport world around it is strikingly revealed in this photograph of Lance Cove. When the pioneer geologist Joseph Jukes circumnavigated Bell Island in May, 1839, he observed "several houses and inhabitants" in the Cove. Before the opening of the mines, Lance Cove was a typical Conception Bay outport, as the style of the buildings shown in this slide readily suggests. The Cove retains much of its outport flavour to this day though its people were quickly drawn into their Island home's industrial work force. Lance Cove had been an outport in fact; Bell Island would remain an outport in spirit.
