He reasoned that such suppression did not occur around the pioneer settlements of the island because of the absence of fences forcing the animals to feed on restricted areas. Instead, since the cattle could move freely in their 'eagerness’ for ’grass’ in the forest, they were not forced to turn to the browsing of the woody vegetation in specific areas. Jo Laird, one of Selkirk's informants, proposed that the suppression of woody vegetation by livestock could be achieved without the use of fences by sowing grass and clover immediately after a fire had gone through an area, so that the cattle might be attracted to feed there, "bringing it to an excellent pasture”, and thus "keeping down the brushwood”. However there is no evidence that this hypothesis was ever put to the test.

FOREST FIRE

Fire was a major factor in forest destruction and change during the whole colonial period. However, before discussing its role in the British period I shall consider what the evidence from this later period can add to the information that we already have on the major fires that had occurred in the north-east of the island during the French period.339

The legacy of the French period fires — We know from the French period records that two major fires had occmred in the north—east of the island, one in 1736 and the other in 1742; the limited French period descriptions indicate that the land burned had included the area between the upper part of the Hillsborough River and St. Peters Bay, as well as the coastal area extending from Naufrage to East Point. However, it is from the information recorded by Captain Samuel Holland during his survey and mapping of the island in 1765 that we get a more comprehensive and geographically precise picture of the area that had been burned. From the brief notes that he made on the forest in each of the sixty-seven townships included in a table appended to his map, as well as from brief general descriptions of the burnt area resulting from the fires contained in his two

phenomenon, as is also the eventual conversion of woodland to grassland by their actions (e.g. see Rackham 1986, pp. 67, 73).

339

See Sobey (2002) (pp. 22—24) for an analysis of the French records for the fires.

lettersm, the bounds of the burned area have been mapped in Figure 5.

As the map shows, fourteen townships, either in whole or in part, from Lot 35 (bounding the western side of Tracadie Bay) all the way to East Point, were reported by Holland to have contained ”burned woods". However, it should be remembered that Holland's surveyors recorded only what they could see from the coasts, and along the shoreline of the river estuaries and bays — though they will also have traveled along the few trails and portages within the area. Thus, within the boundary of the burned area shown on the map, it is likely that there will have been areas that escaped the fires, particularly areas with predominantly hardwood forest, especially in the north-east peninsula, as had been noted by Joseph de La Roque in 1752.3“1 Even with this reduction in mind, it is evident that a very large area of land had been affected: at a rough estimate, the shaded area shown in Figure 5 contains about 69,000 hectares, some 12% of the island’s land surface.342

Because of the large area of land that had been burned, these fires drew the comments of many of the British period recorders, even up to the mid- nineteenth century 3‘3. All were under the

34" Holland (1765) Plan of the Island of St. John [with a table of

lot descriptions]; Letters of 4 March and 8 October. I have also taken note of the landscape descriptions of the anonymous officer who ‘overran‘ the island in 1762: “Backwards into the Country [from the ‘bay of Fortune‘], it is almost entirely clear even to the Bay of St Peters, from a Fire which happen’d in the Year 1750“; and “the Inhabitants of Tracadie and the Adjacent Villages, retire [to “Grand Restico in Winter‘] for the cover of the Woods, being more Commodiously situated for Firewood" — the implication being that the woods at Tracadie were burned (Anon. 1762). l have also noted that Captain John MacDonald (1784), in a letter to his sister Nelly, concerning the procurement of timber to build his house at Tracadie, suggested that she might obtain look for it in the Winter River area of Lot 35, which suggests that the forest in that area had not been totally burned.

3‘" Although La Roque had recorded that between East Point and

Naufrage the land was a “déself’ [i.e. a wasteland] on account of the fire, he added that "a peu de distance de la coste. les terres se trouvent couvertes de bois francs" [a short distance inland the country is covered with hardwood].

3‘2 This value was obtained by estimating by eye the proportion of each township that was burned as shown in Figure 5. taking the area of each township to be the number of acres as 'measured‘ by Clark (1959) (p. 261). The total area of the burn came to 171,000 acres or 69,300 ha, which is 12.1% of the total land area of the island (574,000 ha) as given by MacDougall et al. (1988) (p. 22). 3‘3 Anon. 1762; Smethurst 1774; Holland 1765 (March, October); Stewart 1806; Johnstone 1822; MacGregor 1828, 1832.