north-east of the island lie. the after-effects of the French period fires), as settlement advanced over the whole of the island in the nineteenth century, this problem must have gradually become more general, as is suggested fifty-two years later in a letter printed anonymously in an island newspaper, in which the writer has a fictional island farmer tell a fictional newly-arrived immigrant:

there is very little of the timber you have seen would answer for building — some of it would not last any time, and others so rough and knotty, it would break all our tools to work it; we have to go across the swamps for suitable timber, and it is late in the winter before they freeze over to carry cattle [i.e. oxen]... ; at other times when the snow is deep early in the winter, we cannot break a road at all, and the timber must lie for

another season. 440

And, just as was so for its log cabin predecessor, the frame house did not spring up in a finished state all in one go. Macphail (1939) gives an example of this in his description of the house of his maternal relations at Newton near Belfast:

The Smiths built themselves a comfortable solid warm house; but they never finished all the rooms inside. The walls were of thick pine planks, halved or rebated Some of the rooms were properly plastered; some were merely lathed; but the vast ”other end” showed the smooth planks; and the upper storey was an open loft.

During the pioneer period, and even long after, house improvement for some was a process that took place over many years, and in the absence of the necessary resources, and in the face of other demands on a pioneer family’s time and energy, it could be a long drawn out business. Macphail might attribute the unfinished state of the Smith house to the inherited cultural peculiarities of the family, but in the nineteenth century such lassitude was not uncommon. This is evident from another comment by the same anonymous letter- writer of 1836, but what is also interesting is that he indicates that there could also be a retrogression in the structure and state of a house, with the house deteriorating to the point where it had to be replaced. Again, it is the fictional farmer speaking to the fictional immigrant:

you will think it strange to see people dwelling in a house several years before it is finished; but this is the second house that l have had to build within this fourteen years, and the second set of barns and stables.

“0 Anon. 1836.

Our timber here lasts but a short time. We are always building, and kept so poor to make up the rent, that we are not able to finish our buildings until they are half decayed, when it is time to build again — and we have to do all the building ourselves, a bit at a time, when we can spare it from the crops and the cattle.

The letter-writer may be exaggerating in order to make a political point (the main purpose of his letter was to attack the proprietorial land-holding system), but even so, the wood used in island houses and buildings must have indeed required continuous replacement, especially given the cost and scarcity of paints and varnishes that would have given them a protective surface.441

At this stage I am unable to estimate the amount of wood used in the building of the island’s frame- houses, as well as in the farm buildings, though it is not impossible in the future for someone to do so, based on an analysis of a sample of still extant buildings of the period, supplemented by standard manuals showing the timbers used in such buildings, combined with estimates of the number of farmsteads at various periods, which could be obtained from census records.

Conclusion — What effect did the extraction of materials for house and other building construction have on the forests of the island? For the first century or so, to perhaps 1850, it probably had a small effect, especially in comparison with the effects of forest clearance and forest fire and of the other more drastic extraction processes, such as for the timber export trade. However, in the latter half of the nineteenth century when the forest had diminished to a fraction of its former area, and when forest fire and the export trade had declined into insignificance, it is possible that any effect on the forest due to the extraction of building materials is likely to have been much greater in terms of the amount of forest remaining, though this would also depend upon the number of houses and other buildings being built. At that time it could well have contributed to a further significant loss of trees and wood, and especially trees of a merchantable size, though the figures are not available to enable us to do more than speculate. However, by the beginning of the twentieth century, if not before, I expect that this effect would have become less, as more and more of the wood used in building began to be imported

441

Johnstone (1822) (p. 98, not extracted) had also noted that “these [log] houses soon begin to rot at the ground, if not underfooted with brick and stone".