what follows is an attempt to extract and catalogue the material on the various forest-related topics found in the records.

THE NATURE AND STATE OF THE FOREST

If we were reliant only on the written records of the French period for a description of the pre- settlement forest of Prince Edward Island we would be disappointed. The forests of the island were very much taken for granted by the recorders and what to them was obvious and ubiquitous merited little comment. There is thus very little descriptive material either of the forest in general, or of specific areas. Even so, when the small bits of information scattered in the many documents

are gathered together they provide some useful insights.

The extent of the forested area — There are no detailed comments on the extent or amount of the forests. However various phrases used in passing are indicative of the fact (obvious to all the recorders at the time) that the island's surface was totally covered by forest: i.e. couvertes de bois [covered with woods]3°; quantité de bois [a lot of woods)“; and abondantes en bois [abundant in

woodslaz.

The quality of the forests — A refrain running through many of the documents in some guise or other is the comment ’fine woods’: beaux bois”, bans bois34 or beaux arbres35 — though it is evident that the basis of the comment for most of the recorders is utilitarian, Le. a view of the forest as a source of commodities, especially of masts and building materials.

The distribution of forest-types: references to forest-types and single species stands — An indicator of forest composition is the use of terms equivalent to the ’hardwood/softwood’ categories of modern forestry, such as bois franc [hardwood] and bois mé/lé [mixed woods]. However, La Roque (1752) is the only recorder to use these

3° Charlevoix 1744; Roma 1750; Franquet 1751. 3‘ Gotteville 1720; La Ronde 1721. 32 Saint-Ovide 1719; Anon. 1730; Boulaye 1733.

33 Denys 1672; Saint-Ovide 1719; La Ronde 1721; Mézy 1726; Duchambon 1738.

3‘ Couange 1713.

35 Cartier 1534.

terms: he records bois franc at seven of the places he visited36 and bois mé/lé at two37 (see Figure 6) — though it would be unwise to take the relative frequency of these descriptives as evidence that hardwoods were more abundant in overall terms than mixed woods on the island. At other places he uses the even less informative ”couverte de toutes sorres de bois” [covered with all kinds of wood)“.

La Roque never refers to the third category used by modern foresters: ’softwoods’ (résineux in modern Canadian French”) — though in the previous year Franquet (1751) had used the term sapinage (an eighteenth century equivalent“) to describe the forest of Governors and St. Peters Islands.

Several recorders make use of a word-form that implies the dominance of a single tree species in a specific area: piniére, he‘triére, prussiére and cedriiére.41 Such words may even imply a single species stand and I have translated them for example as 'pine woods’ or ’pine stands’. For only one of these is there an attempt to describe the size of the wooded area: La Roque (1752) says that the grande cedriére between the grande anse [Egmont Bay] and the havre de Cascumpec [Cascumpec Bay] was between two and three

36 They are: riviere du ouest [West River]; riviere du nord [North

River]; ance du havre a Matieu [Rollo Bay]; havre a la souris [Colville Bay]; in the northeast, inland from the coast between pointe de 'est [East Point] and étang du noffrage [Naufrage Pond]; étang du noffrage [Naufrage Pond]; havre de petit Racico [Covehead Bay + Brackley Bay]; and isle a Monsieur Courtin [Courtin Island].

37 At havre Ia Fortune [Bay Fortune]; and between the riviere de la traverse [Cape Traverse River] and riviere des Blonds [Tryon River].

38 At isle du Govemeur [Governors Island] and havre de Tracadie .

39 Anon. 1995.

‘O Massignon (1962) (pp. 175-176, 214) cites elsewhere in New France the use in opposition to bois franc of sapiniere and sapinage — in the sense of conifers in general. Given the limitations in the French vocabulary for the naming of conifer species (see Appendix 1), it is also possible that some recorders may have used the name sapin (i.e. fir) in the sense of conifers in general.

‘1 See Figures 1-1 and 1-2 of Appendix 1 for the use and geographical location of these terms. According to Massignon (1962) (p. 164), such words, which involve adding the suffix -iére to the French name of a tree, appear to have been more widely used in the New World than in France. The literal English translation of the above words is pinery, beechery, sprucery and cedary respectively, though only pinery seems to have entered the English language: in the British Isles it can refer to a plantation. landscape planting or a natural grove made up entirely of pine trees (Oxford 1971).