runs
in from the Strait of Belle Isle to Natashquan, more than two hundred
miles along the north shore of the Gulf, among a perfect labyrinth of
islands.

Next, the business side. As only a single instance can be given, and
as ordinary business management in shipping circles more or less {173}
resembles what is practised in other commercial affairs, the special
factor of marine insurance will alone be taken, as being the most
typically maritime and by far the most interesting historically.
Ordinary insurance on land is a mere thing of yesterday compared with
marine insurance, which, according to some, began in the ancient world,
and which was certainly known in the Middle Ages. It is credibly
reported to have been in vogue among the Lombards in the twelfth
century, and on much the same principles as are followed by Canadians
in the twentieth. It was certainly in vogue among the English before
Jacques Cartier discovered the St Lawrence. And in 1613, the year
Champlain discovered the site of Ottawa, a policy was taken out, in the
ordinary course of business, on that famous old London merchantman, the
_Tiger_, to which Shakespeare twice alludes, once in _Macbeth_ and
again in _Twelfth Night_.

Modern practice is based on the Imperial Marine Insurance Act of 1906,
which is a development of the Act of 1795, which, in its turn, was a
codification of the rules adopted at Lloyd's in 1779. Nothing shows
more unmistakably how supreme the British are in every affair of the
sea than these striking {174} facts: that 'A1 at Lloyd's' is an
expression accepted all the world over as a guarantee of prime
efficiency, that nearly every shipping country in the world has its own
imitation of Lloyd's, nearly always including the name of Lloyd, and
that the original Lloyd's at the Royal Exchange in London is still
unassailably first. Most people know that Lloyd's originated from the
marine underwriters who used to meet for both business and
entertainment at Lloyd's coffee-house in the seventeenth century. But
comparatively few seem to know that Lloyd's, like most of its
imitators, is not a gigantic insurance company, but an association of
carefully selected members, who agree to carry on their completely
independent business affairs in daily touch with each other. Lloyd's'
method differs from that of ordinary insurance in being conducted by
'underwriters,' each one of whom can write his name under any given
risk for any reasonable p