map also shows a track running from Port La-Joie to Malpeque Bay”, as well as a ’chemin' from Tracadie Bay to the Hillsborough River, while Holland's map shows a road or trail linking St. Peters Bay with Bay Fortune, as well as a track running along the south side of the Hillsborough River.73 Slightly more substantial was the cart- track that connected (for at least part of the way) the top of the Hillsborough River to Saint-Pierre (Franquet 1751), and another cart-track (described by La Roque 1752) that ran between Malpeque and Bedeque Bays. All of these must have had minimal effects on the forests through which they ran.

Forest clearance for other reasons — Apart from clearance for agriculture we have evidence that the forest could be removed for other reasons: Roma (1734) says that he cleared the coast on either side of what is now the Brudenell Point for about three-quarters of a league [i.e. 4.2 km] (he does not say to what depth) in order to make ”a passageway for men and animals, as well as to destroy mosquitoes” — which he thought came from these wooded areas into his settlement. He does not say whether this early effort at mosquito control worked or not. Later, in his submission to the minister written in Martinique“, he proposed that part of the solution to the ’vole plagues’ was the removal of the forest in the areas adjacent to the settlements. However, he was never to get a chance to try out this remedy.

The methods of forest clearance — Apart from Jean-Pierre Roma (1734) no one considered it important enough to leave a description of the methods used to clear the land of trees.75 In connection with a legal dispute with his partners in the Company of the East, Roma outlined the various stages and methods used in the clearance of an area of over 21 hectares at the Trois Riviéres settlement”, which must have been pretty well

72 PARO Map 0,547 (reproduced in Figure 5) — see also Arrigrand 17305.

73 Holland, Samuel (1765) Plan of the Island of St. John. PARO: map 06170

7‘ Roma 1750.

75 This deficiency was to be rectified by several detailed descriptions in the more copious records of the British period.

"5 Roma states the cleared area had a length of 1700 feet [pieds] and a width (at its greatest) of 1200 feet. These dimensions equal 1812 and 1279 English feet respectively, giving a cleared area of at most 53.2 acres (21.5 he or 62.9 arpents). Since he says he removed from this area 6000 stumps of a demi-pied or greater in diameter, there would have been a density of 113 such trees per

the standard methods used wherever land on the island was being cleared:

[We] cut down the trees, removed their branches, burned the branches in a fire, chose the trees that could be of some use, carried them to a convenient spat along extremely cluttered tracks, chopped up and moved the rest, keeping what was good for burning in the house, or burning on the spot that which would make too much clutter with the aim also of making room. Used a pick to uncover all the roots, cut them, forced up with levers those that were not visible, and got rid of the stumps by taking them to the shore, several of which took the strength of 10, 12, to 15 men.

On the areas that were to be sown with peas and wheat further procedures were then carried out:

[We] removed not only the stumps but also cleaned up as much of the smaller branches, roots, as well as wood-chips as the removal of the stumps had created by the billions. Using a pick, level/ed the land and sowed [the crop].

The only other piece of information relevant to the methods used in land clearance is Franquet's (1751) record that two settlers on the upper Hillsborough River told him that the part of their land that had previously been burned had been easier to clear. If this were so, it is possible that it might have led some settlers to set fire to forested land in advance of clearing — however we have no evidence that this was the practice. Also, the use of fire to get rid of unwanted woody material after cutting (as in Roma's description above), might also have led to accidental forest fires — though we again have no information. Nor do we have any information on whether the cause of either of the two major fires in the north-east of the island (see below) was connected with the use of fire in land clearance, either before or after tree-felling.

THE UTILISATION OF FOREST MATERIALS

There is a great amount of evidence from the French period to substantiate the fact that the timber resources of lle Saint-Jean were viewed by the officials of the Marine, both in France and at Louisbourg, as one of the island’s chief assets.77

acre (or 279 per hectare), or one tree for each 35.8 square metres, i.e. an area of about 6 by 6 metres.

77 This is evident from quite a number of documents: Couange 1713; Saint-Ovide 1719, 1725, 1726: 18 September; Mézy 1726; (1732); Pensens 1725, 1732; Maurepas 1732; Anon. 1730; Boulaye 1733; Roma 1750; Anon. 1743. Although not explicitly stated in the grant of the Company of lle Saint-Jean, the evidence indicates that the utilisation of the island‘s timber also became an activity of the Company. The letters patent of August 1719 that