Human-associated factors. Interacting in various ways with these natural factors, and greatly complicating the picture, was a group of factors associated with the human population. Here all I will do is list what I believe to be the more important. Human-imposed geographical factors. The French per/0d clearances — From the time of the British take-over in 1758 the areas of cleared land left over from the French period had been viewed as especially attractive to prospective British settlers, and they had received special attention in the mappings and surveys of the anonymous officer of 1762 and of Samuel Holland in 1765.204 And when British settlers began to arrive, the location of the French clearances was of considerable importance in influencing the selection of lands for clearance205 — actually, for re-clearance, since on most of the French sites trees had grown back by the 1770s. As a result, old—growth forests in the vicinity of these French clearances would have been among the first new forests subject to attack.206 The location of Charlottetown — The decision of Samuel Holland to locate the chief administrative centre of the island near the former French capital of Port La-Joie, and the subsequent foundation and development of Charlottetown on his chosen site, had considerable implications for the future [MacDonald] (1804) (not extracted). See also Selkirk (1803) (pp. 8, 14, 15-16, not extracted) for specific examples of the keenness of new settlers to settle near salt-marshes, and Selkirk (1805) (p. 181, not extracted) for the fact that settlers with access to extensive salt-marshes were likely to pay less attention to the “permanent acquisition of productive land" (i.e. to forest clearance). 2°“ Anon. 1762; Holland 1765. 205 A specific example is the movement across Malpeque Bay to the French cleared lands of Lot 13 of a number of the Scottish settlers brought out in 1770 by Robert Stewart to settle his own Lot 18 (see Bumsted 1987, pp. 50-51; and Sobey 1997, p. 26). That a premium was placed on the French cleared lands is also indicated by Selkirk (1803) (p. 16, not extracted) who set the sale price to his settlers at Belfast of “old cleared [land] grown up" at two dollars per acre — twice that of uncleared ‘front‘ land (i.e. with a water frontage), and four times that of ‘back land’. Selkirk (p. 8, not extracted) also mentions that “Col. Shuttleworth at St. Peters has got as high as half a Dollar rent pr. Acre having a great deal of marsh & old French cleared land". [See Shuttleworth (1793) for further information on this landlord] 206 lt was however evident to some that such old cleared sites carried a disadvantage: the surveyor Charles Morris (1768) observed that the French cleared land on Lot 13 was “intirely worn out" and would need to be “well manured" to be productive. 36 geographical pattern of forest clearance for the whole of the island. Charlottetown was to be the port of arrival for most new settlers, especially in the nineteenth century, and thus the point from which they would set out to look for a prospective farm.207 It was also to become the main source of provisions, and a principal market for farm products. For these reasons the nearer that prospective farm sites were to Charlottetown the more desirable they would be.208 By contrast areas farther from the town were less attractive because of the distance. This is most evident for the part of the island farthest from Charlottetown, the area west of the Bedeque-Malpeque isthmus, where settlement was always to lag behind that of the rest of the colony2°9. 21° 2“ The location of roads — The laying—out of the island’s road system had a very significant effect on the spatial pattern of forest clearance in the areas through which the roads ran, the effect of which has persisted in most parts of the province up to the present day.212 Most of the early roads were created to connect the various parts of the 207 Two examples: two of Lord Selkirk‘s ships (the Dykes and the Oughton) deposited their people at Charlottetown in 1803 [Ref.: Chappell (1775-1818) (entries for 10 and 28 August, not extracted)]; and Charlottetown was the point of departure for the fictional English immigrant in the satirical piece by an anonymous writer (Anon. 1836). 2°“ Johnstone (1822) (p. 159, not extracted) advised prospective immigrants of the commercial advantage of settling near Charlottetown, "both with regard to what they have to sell, and what they have to buy". 209 An actual contemporary example is the failure of Lord Selkirk to persuade any of his people to settle on the remote Lot 10, to which they refused to go because it was at an “inconvenient distance“ (see Selkirk (1803) pp. 36-37, not extracted). 21° It is of interest that the other two county capitals (Princetown and Georgetown) chosen by Holland in 1765 (though it was the surveyor Charles Morris senior who selected the town sites in 1768), did not develop as proper county capitals, and thus, unlike Charlottetown, never acted as springboards for settlement. Princetown did not even develop as a village — its role as capital was re-assigned to St. Eleanors in the 1830s. As for Georgetown, even in 1821 it consisted of only “a small house or two" (Johnstone 1822, p. 117, not extracted) and by the time it did develop as a town (after 1850) settlement was well advanced over the whole island. 2“ We should note that Charlottetown could also have a negative effect, with some settlers trying to get as far away from it as possible. This would have been especially true of squatters. 212 To anyone driving in 2006 along the roads in many rural parts ofthe province, it will be evident that land along the roads tends to be cleared, with wooded areas lying further back. This is also very evident in the Chalmer’s (1895) map (even in the small-scale version printed in this report), as well as in any modern map that shows both forest boundaries and the road system.