important source of nutrients for the first crops.287 Some of this ash could also have a cash value as potash (the raw material for making the lye used in soap-making), and though Peters (1851) deplored the fact that some settlers sold their ash, selling seems not to have been widely practiced on the islandzaa.

An alternative method: girdling trees - Instead of directly chopping all of the living trees down, as described above, an alternative method for the clearance of old-growth upland forest was to kill the trees by removing a ring of bark from all around the trunk — a process called ‘girdling’ — leaving them to be cut down some years later.289 In this procedure, as described by Cambridge (1796?) and Stewart (1806), the first step was to ”grub up” and burn the smaller trees and bushes (i.e. pull or lever them out by the roots), followed by the girdling of all the large trees. Stewart says that girdling was carried out ”in the beginning of the summer, which prevents their vegetating the following year” — he is referring to the sprouting of what he later calls ‘suckers' from the girdled trunks. Girdling, however, seems not to have been a common practice on the islandm, and it is evident from Stewart why this was so: although much easier and cheaper in the early stages than standard cutting, "the labour of removing the branches and trunks of the dead trees as they fall is more tedious and expensive in the end than getting rid of all the timber at once”.

”7 The fertilizing value of the ash is mentioned by Selkirk (1805),

[Hill] (1819), Johnstone (1822), Peters (1851), and in the

submission of the tenants of Lot 22 to the Land Commission (1860).

”8 Hill (1339) chastised the settlers for having failed to export potash when they could have done so.

“9 Girdling is mentioned by [Cambridge] (1796?), Selkirk (1803) and Stewart (1806). There was some uncertainty about whether girdling would kill all trees: Selkirk reported that one of his informers, Jo Laird of Vernon River, believed “that all trees die outright when girdled" — unless it was “imperfectly done". Selkirk confirmed this from his own examination of trees, “particularly maples", that appeared to have survived girdling: he said that he always found “some corner of the bark that had escaped and kept up the communication".

29° [Cambridge] (1796?) recorded that instead of girdling, "for the most part the inhabitants cut all the trees down"; also Selkirk (1803) said that girdling was ”not in general practice in the Island for clearing" — though he did see it occasionally done to trees beside roads; while all that Stewart (1806) tells us is that girdling was “preferred” by some. Thus, the statement of Clark (1959) (p. 78) that by the 18205 girdling was the favoured method of forest clearance on the island has no support, and is contradicted by the evidence of [Hill] (1819), Johnstone (1822), MacGregor (1828), Lewellin (1832) and Lawson (1851).

47

The direct use of fire in clearing — If there was some difference of opinion over the value of girdling in forest clearance, few saw any advantage in the direct use of fire to kill the trees. In fact both Stewart (1806) and MacGregor (1828) considered that there were major disadvantages in such a practice — and, given the fact that many settlers must have had to take on, willy-nilly, the clearing of such accidentally burnt areas, both recorders must have had plenty of opportunity to observe the problems that the subsequent clearing of such burned land presented. Among these problems, they noted that after the burn most of the trees were left standing and so still had to be cut down at some stage, but their wood, due to its "losing the sap” became hardened, and the trees were thus more difficult and laborious to cut down than ”green wood”29‘. Secondly, the ”tall weeds” that sprang up in such areas after the burning (Stewart specifically mentions ’fireweed’) used up the nutrients released by the fire, thus ”exhausting the soil”292, to be followed ”in a few years” by ”a growth of young timber among the dead trees rendering such land more difficult to clear” than the original growthm. Added to this, the charred trees were ”exceedingly disagreeable to work among”29“, and due to the difficulty of restricting such fires to the limited area required to be cleared for the farm, there was usually the destruction of a great deal of timber that would have value in the future295. Thus, unless the tree clearing operations were carried out immediately after the fire, both writers felt strongly that burning the forest should never be resorted to in place of cutting the trees d0Wn.296 297

29‘ Both Stewart (1806) and MacGregor (1828) stress this problem. This must also have been a problem with girdled trees, although Stewart (1806) does not mention it.

292 MacGregor 1828.

293 Stewart 1806. 29‘ MacGregor1828.

295 Stewart 1806. 296 MacGregor (1828) concluded: "The clearing of ground, on which the trees are all in a fresh growing state, is preferred to that which has been subjected to fires"; while Stewart (1806) stated: “I am persuaded that no man who understands the proper management of wood lands will ever wish to see the timber on them killed by fire until he has a prospect, of being able to bring them into cultivation". (This opinion is not to be confused with Stewart's comment in an earlier chapter that what he called the “burnt lands" (i.e. the large area in the north-east of the island that had been burned during the French period over sixty years before) had been recently shown by “a variety of trials" to be more cheaply and quickly cleared than “the forest lands". "Still it must be