as a result the original copies of most of the records that they made survive in the colonial archives in London. However, from 1767 with the transfer of the ownership of the land to private individuals, virtually all of the records concerning the forests are privately written and owned documents; some are the business papers or correspondence of individual proprietors, others are privately—written accounts, sometimes intended

for publication, written by the new island residents. Henceforth, neither the imperial authority in London, nor the new island

administration at Charlottetown, had any direct control over the forests, and they thus had no reason for maintaining records on them.11 Thus, except in the period prior to 1770, the public records, both on the island itself and in London, contain very little information on the island’s forests.12

Instead, after 1770 the documents come mostly from either the proprietors and their agents, or from the new settlers and their descendants who had made the Island of St. John their home. A few of the proprietors made visits to their island estates and as a result have left very useful descriptions of the island and its forests. Well- educated, and in the habit of keeping both personal diaries and estate records, as visitors they recorded what to them was new information that would not have caught the attention of resident islanders, or at least resident islanders would not have recorded Such material in writing. The most detailed of these descriptions of the forests is that of Thomas Douglas, the Earl of Selkirk, who visited the island in 1803 and 1804, but there are accounts by three other visiting proprietors. There are also a few who employed agents, one of whose tasks was to provide descriptions of the land to its non-resident owner back in Great Britain or Ireland.

" This is in marked contrast to most of the records for the French

period which are almost all found in the government archives in France.

'2 The only government records that concern the forests are three dispatches of the first governor (Patterson 1770, 1773, 1774), the few laws passed by the island administration to regulate standards for forest products or to provide some protection from fire (House of Assembly 1773-1849), and the evidence collected by the Land Commissions of 1860 and 1875, (as well as that concerning Lot 11 - Craswell & Anderson a. 1856), when for a brief period the island government was in the process of re-acquiring ownership of the land from the proprietors so that it could be re-sold to tenant farmers,

“5

TABLE 1. The 120 recorders and 172 documents sub-divided into different groups.

K

GOVERNMENT or MILITARY OFFICIALS:

Rollo 1758; Anon. 1762; Holland 1764, 1765 (March 81 October [three documentsl); Francklin 1768; Patterson 1770,1773, 1774; Smethurst 1774; Ritter 1780.

PROPRIETORS and their AGENTS :

Resident proprietors: [Clark] 1779; MacDonald 1784; Shuttleworth 1793; Cambridge 1793; [Cambridge] 1796; [MacDonald] 1804; [Hill] 1819; Hill 1839. Absentee proprietors: Anon. 1768; DesBrisay 1770— 1772; Anon. 1789; Selkirk 1809; Proprietors 1837. Visiting proprietors: Anon. 1772; Selkirk 1803, 1805; Mann 1829, 1840; Stewart 1831; Seymour 1840. Proprietors' agents: Morris 1769; Lawson 1777; Gray 1793; Palmer 1815, 1816; Prendergast 1834.

ISLAND RESIDENTS:

Residents: Anon. 1771; Anon. 1773; House of Assembly 1773-1849; Chappell 1775-1818; Heyden et al. 1782; Stewart 1783; [Robinson] 1798; Cambridge 1811; Schurman 1819, 1824; Anon. 1826; Yeo 1834; Anon. 1836; Peake Business Papers 1836; Census 1841; Cundall 1854-1865; Craswell & Anderson 1856; Land Commission 1860; Orlebar 1862; Morris 1864 1868; Anon. 1867; Bain 1868-1884; Land Commission 1875; Questionnaire 1876; Watson post 1904.

Resident authors: Stewart 1806; Anon. 1808; MacGregor 1828, 1832; Lewellin 1832; Lawson 1851; Peters 1851; Bayfield 1860; Bagster 1861; Sutherland 1861; [Lawson] 1877-1878; [Bain] 1882, 1883; Bain 1890, 1891; McSwain & Bain 1891; Pollard 1898; Ready 1899; Burke 1902; Crosskill 1904; Mollison 1905; Macphail 1939.

VISITORS:

Visitors: Curtis 1775; Inglis 1789; Walsh 1803; Plessis 1812; Carrington 1837; Woodruff 1844.

Visiting authors: M’Robert 1776; Anon. 1818; Johnstone 1822, 1823; Marryat 1829; Sleigh 1851; Bird 1856; Rowan 1876; Anon. 1877; Ward 1887. Visiting 'scientific' authors: Gesner 1846; Perley 1847; Dawson 1868, 1871; Macoun 1894; Chalmers 1895.

'ABSENTEE' AUTHORS:

Rogers 1765; Hollingsworth 1787; Cobbett 1829; Bouchette 1832; Martin 1837; Murray 1839; Blatchford 1840; Buckingham 1843; Pope 1848; Munro 1855; Johnson 1895.