different in appearance from Thuja occidental/s and belong to an entirely different family.53

The tree lists — Cédre occurs in only three of the eight tree lists (Table 1-2): Cartier (1534), Roma (1734) and La Roque (1752). Two of these made their observations in the west of the island where cedar occurs, while Roma’s listing of cedar (which he also says was used in Indian canoes) is a witness to the completeness of his list. The absence of cedar in the other tree lists could be due to the recorders not observing it — most were working out of Port La-Joie, at some distance from the area of cedar occurrence on the island. In fact the engineer Verrier (1734), working on the buildings at Port La-Joie, stated baldly and erroneously that there was no cedar on the island. However we cannot rule out the fact that some (e.g. Denys 1672, Gotteville 1720, Duchambon 1738) may have grouped cedar with other conifers under a more general name such as sap/n or ép/nette.

Specific areas — La Roque (1752) has cédre in his list of the tree species in the area around Malpeque Bay. He also records that while he was at Malpec he had a cedar log placed aboard a vessel to be sent back to Louisbourg for 'Monsieur Pichon’ — a point of interest, given Pichon’s comments on cedar (see below), and the fact that cedar does not occur on Cape Breton Island or in most of mainland Nova Scotia).54 La Roque also reports that a ’grande cedr/ére’ — a large cedar grove or stand — lay between the havre de Cascampec and ’la grande anse' (i.e. ‘the large bay’ — the French name for Egmont Bay). The amount of detail that he gives on the size of the trees in this stand is exceptional for the records of the period. It is not clear whether his description is based on first-hand information or has been reported to him by the local inhabitants, since it would have been difficult for him to reach the stand and it is unlikely that he would have had the time, occupied as he was with a census of the whole island. He says that the grove was estimated to be two to three Iieues in circumference [2 leagues 11.1 km or 6.9 miles]55 and contained trees of commonly four

53 This modern confusion in the names of the junipers and cedars goes back to ancient times, and is, as Meiggs (1982) (p. 410) points out, due to the fact that in both classical Greek and Latin the same name (kedros/cedrus) was used for both of these very different tree genera.

5‘ Farrar 1995.

55 A circle with a circumference of 11.1 km would have had a

diameter of 3.5 km or 2.2 miles. (See Figures 1-1 and 1-2 for my

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pieds (feet) in diameter and two and a half brasses [4.1 m] in circumference.

Pichon (1760F), in a passage in his account of lle Saint-Jean in which he appears to be speaking generally rather than about trees on the island, describes the properties and uses of two kinds of cedar, which he calls ce‘dre blanc and cédre rouge. However, almost all of this material has been lifted straight from the journal of Pierre Charlevoix that had been published sixteen years before.56

Finally there survives from the French period a crudely drawn map of the whole of the island (Arrigrand 17305?) on which is written: ”pointe d9 /’ouest or) ii y a des cadres” [West Point where there are cedars].

Conclusion The French records indicate that cedar was observed precisely where we would expect to find it — in the western part of Prince Edward Island, and they provide an unusual amount of detail on the size of the trees in one particular stand.

THE BROAD-LEAVED TREES

For the early French recorders the broad-Ieaved trees of Prince Edward Island presented fewer problems in their identification and naming than did

attempt to roughly locate a circle of about this size.) The numbers La Roque records are clearly intended to be rough estimates, and in fact his estimate in the same passage of the distance between Malpeque and Cacumpec Bays (6 Iieues — 33.4 km) is an overestimate (actual distance is about 25 km), as is also his estimate of the distance between Cascumpec Bay and West Point (7 Iieues — 38.9 km) (actual distance is about 28 km). Pichon (1760F) in his description (plagiarised from La Roque) of this same grove, due to his misreading of La Roque's description of the location, places it erroneously in a different spot: between the present Cascumpec and Malpeque Bays (see Figure 7 in the sourcebook).

56 Charlevoix, P. F. X. (1744) Journal d‘un Voyage fait par ordre du Roi dans L’Amen‘que Septentn‘onale Vol. 5, p. 237. (See Charlevoix 1744.) The only part of Pichon‘s description that is not from Charlevoix is the sentence about the Acadian women chewing the 'incens‘ (incense?) of the white cedar to whiten their teeth. (I suspect that ‘Acadian' here means Mi’kmaq, as it does in some other French records.) Charlevoix's cedre blanc seems to be Thuja occidentalis: it is used for bardeau (clapboard, shingles) and clotures (fences), and grows only on very good soils. His cedre rouge is smaller and its wood has a more agreeable fragrance. There is actually a tree called the cedre rouge in Quebec (red cedar in English). It is in fact a juniper (Juniperus virginiana) and it occurs in a few areas of southern Quebec and in parts of southern New England, but not in the Maritimes (Farrar 1995). Its wood, like that of Pichon's cadre rouge, is sweet-smelling (Marie-Victorin 1964, p. 139) and is distilled to produce a fragrant oil used for scenting soap and other perfumery (Dallimore & Jackson 1966).