memoranda and letters emanating from the department of the Marine at Versailles, ranging from the minister himself, to the anonymous civil servants who penned memoranda on the island.”4 It is the view taken by the agents of the two seigneurial companies“, as well as that of the government officials based at Louisbourg and Port La-Joie: the commandants, governors and commissaires‘zs, down even to the military surveyors and private secretaries‘”. And if they had left a record of their views, undoubtedly it would have been the view of the resident farmers and their families. ‘28 Is there anyone who does not belong to what we might call this ‘utilitarian school’? There is in fact one: the only recorder whose writings are not coloured by a utilitarian outlook and who presents instead an aesthetic appreciation of the natural forest is a recorder from an earlier phase in the history of New France: the exploration phase. The language that Jacques Cartier uses in 1534 — unusually expresses an appreciation for the beauty of the trees: ”a land full of beautiful trees (beaux arbres) and meadows”, where the trees are ”wonderfully beautiful and very fragrant”. There is no mention at all of their potential to supply timber for building or masts for ships. This is because Cartier was an explorer visiting for the first time regions new to Europeans, describing what to him was truly a ’new world’, at a time when settlement and any resource utilisation were not part of the equation. It was only later when the 124 Maurepas 1732; Boulaye 1733; Anon. 1730; Anon. 1743; Anon. 1760s? ‘25 Gotteville 1720; La Ronde 1721; Roma 1734,1750. ”6 Saint-Ovide 1725, 1726 (18 September); Pensens 1725, 1732; Mézy 1726; Duchambon 1738. 127 Couange 1713; Franquet 1751; La Roque (1752) — in whose report the woods at Naufrage, petit Racico, grand Racico, Ie petit havre [New London Bay] and n'viére des Blonds [Tryon River] are all rated in terms of the use to which the wood they contain may be put (e.g. “hardwood suitable for the contruction of shal/ops’), as they are in La Roque's shadow, Thomas Pichon (1760 F & E). ‘28 In this respect one might raise the objection that all we ever have is the viewpoint of the colony’s governing class, the literate officials whose job it was to write reports on the state of the island (the governor and commissaire at Louisbourg, the commandant at Port La-Joie). And this is true — for except where they are cited as sources by the officials (for example ‘les personnes qui y resident' referred to by Governor Saint-Ovide, 1725), we do not have the direct views of the local inhabitants. An arguable exception is Jean-Pierre Roma who, though the director in his own company and thus the seigneur, was at the same time a man who lived himself on the island and laboured at clearing the land. For the other resident islanders, the habitants or laboureurs (i.e. farmers), we can be sure that most of them had little time to appreciate the aesthetics of the woodland. 26 settlement phase was reached and the trees came within the compass of the axe, that we get the utilitarian view. Then, when someone records ’beaux bois' they are no longer seeing the trees on account of the wood — wood in the form of ’bois de construction’ and ’méture’ [masts], either for local use or for export to France or elsewhere. The forest viewed as an obstacle to settlement — Though it must undoubtedly have been the case, I have found very little explicit evidence in the records to indicate that the forest was viewed as an obstacle to settlement. There is more than a hint in Pensens' (1732) comment that the settlers at Tracadie ”had suffered much on account of the difficulty of clearing the land which was covered with large oak trees” combined with his general comment that on lle Saint~Jean ”les Terres sont hautes et diffici/es a defricher” [the lands are high (i.e upland) and difficult to clear]. We also have Roma's (1734) description of the labours involved at Trois Riviéres [Brudenell Point] in removing stumps that took 10 to 15 men to carry the larger ones to the shore, and his comment that the Acadians had not cut down a single tree. The forest viewed as a source of pests — Oddly, there is no evidence in the records of any concerns or fears on account of any of the larger animals that lived in the forest, not even the bear‘zg. Rather, the forest dwellers that were feared and hated most were among the smallest of the forest’s natural inhabitants: the destructive plagues of field—mice (mulots) that periodically afflicted the settlements were considered by all recorders to come from the forest‘3°; and there are references to the forest also being considered the source of the mosquitoes and other insects that plagued the settlements: as already noted, Roma (1734) recorded that he cleared the forest along the shore at Brudenell Point in part to destroy the mosquitoes [maringouins] which he believed came from the woods in those areas, while Pichon (1760), reporting a similar affliction from mouches [flies], moustiques [mosquitoes], and cousins [also mosquitoes], said that it was believed that the problem would decline as the forests were cleared and the land settled. ‘29 Apart from the wolf, which appears to have disappeared from the island shortly after the beginning of settlement (see Appendix 2), the bear was the only native mammal that might have been viewed as a threat to humans or livestock — though I have not come across any written records of it being considered so during the French period. 13° See Appendix 2.