impression that only a single ’great’ or 'tremendous' fire had been responsible“, and though none knew precisely when either of the fires had occurred, this did not prevent them from making wild guesses about the date, ranging between the first decade of the eighteenth century to the end of the French period“. The size of the fire was also exaggerated by some, Smethurst (1774) saying that it had ”passed almost through the whole Island”, while Johnstone (1822) said that it ”overran the greater part of the northern

shore ”.346

What made the area of the fires recognizable even a century later was the landscape legacy that they had left behind: many of the burned trees stood for decades after the fires, and ’barrens’ and ’second-growth' woodland had ‘sprung up’ on parts of the area. We have Stewart's (1806) reference to ”old pine trees and stumps still remaining” on parts of the ’burnt lands’, and also to ”strong ferns, dwarf laurel, and other shrubs” having ’overrun’ some areas”, while Johnstone (1822) and MacGregor (1828) especially noted the ‘second-growth' woodland, that (combining their lists) consisted of spruce, balsam fir, trembling aspen, white birch348 and ”wild cherry”. Johnstone estimated that the trees of this new woodland were "from forty to fifty years growth”, while MacGregor said that the largest that he had seen in the area were ten to twelve inches in diameter — he later increased this to twelve to fifteen inches in his 1832 book.349

3‘“ The words of Johnstone (1822) and MacGregor (1828) respectively.

3‘5 The anonymous officer (Anon. 1762) gave the date as precisely 1750; Holland (1765), presumably relying on the memory of his Acadian guides, gave a different estimate in each of his two letters: “about 26 years since", and “about 24 years sir‘ce" (i.e. 1739 and 1741); Smethurst (1774) said "about seventy years ago" (i.e. about 1704); Stewart (1806), “near a century back” (i.e. about 1706); Johnstone (1822), “more than sixty years ago" (i.e. before 1762); MacGregor (1828): “about 1750".

346 Another error that Johnstone transmitted was on the cause of the fire: "it is said [to have been kindled]", he reported. “by a spark from the pipe of an Indian” - a story that must have been part of island folklore at the time.

347 Stewart (1806) is clearly referring here to what Johnstone (1822) and Gesner (1846) were later to call the ‘barrens’ at St. Peters. (See the discussion on the barrens on pp. 12-13).

m A “small specie of birch" had also been noted at East Point in the area of the ﬁre by the anonymous officer in 1762 (Anon. 1762).

3‘9 MacGregor 1832.

There was speculation among some about the type of forest that had originally covered the burned area: Stewart (1806) reasoned from the above- mentioned pine trees and stumps that the area had been "covered chiefly with pine and other resinous woods”. Similarly, MacGregor (1828) noted that the French fires had destroyed ”large tracts" of "majestic pines”. This importance of pine in the burnt areas receives further support from Holland’s comment in 1765 that ”in many places the burnt timber looks at a distance like lofty pillars or columnes”, a description that would especially fit the growth-form of large pine trees”, and there is also evidence from French period records that indicates pine to have been especially important in the area of Tracadie Bay and Savage Harbour35‘. There is thus no doubt that pine trees had made a very important contribution to the forests burned in the fires, at least in the western part. Whether the species was white pine or red pine (of which there are French period reports in the aream), or a mixture of both, is an open question. However, whether pine made a significant contribution to the burned forests east of St. Peters Bay is not known, though considering the overall magnitude and destructiveness of the fires, we can at least be certain that there must have been a high and even predominant conifer component in the burned woodland as a whole, with adjacent to the coast, this component undoubtedly being contributed by

white sprucem.

Forest fires in the British period — The large amount of contemporary evidence on the forest fires that occurred during the British period, suggests that they were all a by-product of land clearance operations: because fire, as we have

350 Holland (1765): March. Holland recorded that such ‘columnes' occurred “particularly at the Carrying Place [i.e. the portage] betwixt the North East River [i.e. the Hillsborough] and Tracady [i.e. Tracadie Bay]" (the portage is marked clearly as a line on his map). However his inclusion of the words “in many places" suggests that they were found more widely than at a single spot.

35‘ See Sobey (2002) (p. 126) for French period records of pine in the same area. In summary, these are as follows: in 1727 Jacques de Pensens, the commandant at Port La-Joie, had said that the finest masts on the island were found at Savage Harbour — these could only have been pine; then, in the following year he was involved in the harvesting of red pine masts from the portage running between the Hillsborough River and Savage Harbour. Also, a French period map shows ‘beaux pignadas' [ﬁne pine forests] in the area between Savage Harbour and Tracadie Bay.

352 Masts of ‘pin rouge’ [red pine] had been harvested by the French in 1727 and 1728 near the Hillsborough River along the portage running to Savage Harbour (see Sobey 2002, pp, 161 -76).

353 See the section on coastal white spruce forest (pp. 18-19),