(1803) specified these as 'spruce’. Wood would also have been used in the bridges that formed part of the road system, for which hemlock, because of its resistance to rot, was especially preferred”“. The building of such structures was not a one-off event since both the corduroy roads and the bridges were subject to rotting and thus presumably required regular replacement with new logs and wood.255 Thus road-building in wet or swampy areas, and wherever rivers and streams had to be bridged, would have created additional pressure on softwood trees, presumably mostly in the locality of the road. In the end, the impact of road-building on the forests of the island, although significant in the immediate area of the roads, in overall terms was far less important than the effects due to clearance for farming. Forest clearance for other reasons — Apart from the destruction of trees associated with land clearance for farming and road-making, several other reasons for the clearance of the forest are mentioned in the sources. Forest clearance on the site of Charlottetown - In 1768 a party of government officials from Halifax, under the direction of Lieutenant-Governor Francklin, arrived with orders to ”cause the timber in the whole of the streets to be entirely cut down”.256 Soldiers from the garrison at Fort Amherst were to carry out the work with the assistance of hired Acadian axemen. The order mentions only that the streets were to be cleared, which was later reported as completed — presumably most of the town blocks were left to be cleared by their eventual occupiers (which began in 1770).257 The same survey party also visited and laid out the sites of Princetown and Georgetown, though I am not aware of any felling of trees at these sites. This government—directed 25‘ Selkirk 1803; Stewart 1806; Hill 1839; Seymour 1840. 255 Selkirk (1803) noted that the corduroy surfaces - he called them ‘causeways‘ - lasted “for several years", but added that “when old, [they] break, and are dangerous“; Seymour (1840) recorded a specific incident: “My horse got his legs thro[ugh] a rotten corderoy Bridge but scrambled up“. 256 Francklin 1768. 130 years later Pollard (1898) wrote up an extended imaginary account of the clearance of the site of Charlottetown. 257 There must also have been some clearance for public buildings in 1768, since several houses were built for the future government officials. 43 tree-felling at Charlottetown was a unique event in terms of forest clearance on the island: elsewhere, where a village or town developed it was a gradual and unplanned process on land that had already undergone clearance for farming.258 Forest clearance to create fire-breaks — The only record that l have come across of this type of clearance is that carried out by David Lawson at Stanhope in 1777 when he cleared ”all the spruce and pine near the mill” in order to protect the new mill that he was building from future forest fires.259 This action was carried out only after the loss in succession of two previous mills on the same site due to the ”woods burning”. The cost of the tree- removal from around the mill (£10) implies that a considerable area was cleared. However other evidence suggests that this type of prior clearance of forest to create fire-breaks was not a common practice, and that such action was usually only resorted to when fires were actually threatening.260 And, if the reminiscences of local residents concerning a fire at Long River in 1826 are correct (again a mill site was threatened), for such a firebreak to have been useful it would have had to have been very wide: that particular fire was said to have "leaped across the Southwest River, 600 yards broad at that part” [a measure on a modern map gives 492 yards].261 25” Many examples could be cited, such as St. Eleanors, Summerside, Montague, Kensington, Alberton and Victoria. 259 Lord Selkirk (1803) had proposed making a fire-break across part of Point Prim but it was never carried out. His aim was to confine a deliberately set fire to 100 or 150 acres on the Point Prim peninsula. He wished to test whether fire might be beneficial as a tool in forest clearance and land improvement. 25° An example of forest fire threatening buildings is Lawson‘s (1877-1878) recollection that “the first church in Covehead [had been] burnt by a forest fire that had been raging" — ironically this would have been within a mile or so of the mill that his forbear and namesake had tried to protect with a fire-break in 1777. (The fire probably occurred in 1822 or 1823, since the church was re-built on the same spot in 1823.) We also have two reports of forest fires threatening buildings on the outskirts of Charlottetown: Mary Cambridge (1811) reported “very great fires in the wood near C Town [causing] great danger [to] the buildings at Bird Island Creek [i.e. the mill and brewery at what is now Wright‘s Creek] but they were with difficulty saved"; eighteen year later Horatio Mann (1829), a visiting proprietor, recorded in his diary on 15 July: “The woods were on fire in different directions, and near to Charlottetown there was a fire that threatened great danger to Mr. Downe’s estate. Four engines and all the Military with nearly all the men of the town attended with hatchetts & shovels to raise banks to prevent the fire from running. Fortunately the winds abated or many of the Houses in the town would have been destroyed". 261 This particular fire had been ‘raging‘ in the ‘dense forest‘ south of the Southwest River. After leaping the River, it caught the "immense trees on [the north] side“. Johnston’s mill and “the little home in the forest“ were only saved through the action of the local