Given that firewood shortages were becoming evident in the nineteenth century, it is not surprising that some writers envisaged a time when the island having been completely cleared for agriculture, its forests would be no longer available to supply the fuel requirements of the population. Even so, they did not express undue concern, some noting that the small peat resource of the island could then be utilized”, as well as, more importantly, the abundant coal reserves of Nova Scotiam. However, Abraham Gesner (1846), after his lengthy government-sponsored survey of the mineral resources of the whole island, expressed greater optimism: ”since", he said, ”trees spring up spontaneously and in great abundance, with care and foresight there is little danger of a scarcity of fuel for a long period to come”. And of course this indeed did prove to be so on many island farms, where for another century the woodlots continued to be managed to provide a sustainable firewood supply. The commercial sale of firewood — For those who did not have access to a woodlot on their own land, and of course this would have included many of the citizens of Charlottetown, the only recourse was to buy their firewood from others, and it is likely that a trade in the commodity developed soon after the founding of the town. The first mention of such a market for firewood that l have come across is in 1799, in the daybook of Benjamin Chappell, one of whose occasional jobs was to measure ’cordwood' sold to the government for use in the military barracks, though he also measured the cordwood bought by others as wellm. In fact in 1820 the island’s Assembly legally formalized the standard size of the cordwood offered for sale, stating that it was to be of ”good and sound hard-wood at least four feet long"5“. There seem to have even been entrepreneurs who specialized in supplying firewoodm, including, John Hill tells us in 1819, 5‘8 Gesner 1846; Monro 1855. 5‘9 Johnstone 1822; Lawson 1851 (p. 14); Monro 1855. 520 Chappell (1775-1818) (not extracted) records measuring cordwood for various people including “the King" on 19 January and 25 July 1799, and on 27 February and 16 March 1802. 52‘ House of Assembly 1773-1849 (see 1820, 1849). Afour foot long log, the standard length in both Britain and North America, would have been able to be burned in an open fireplace without any further cutting. 5” From Chappell (1775-1818) (eg. 8 May 1802) it appears that ‘Mr. Cambridge' was one of the suppliers of cordwood to Charlottetown residents. 79 ”Indian families", who, he said, in winter cut and sold firewood in Charlottetown, though his statement that ”Charlottetown is principally supplied with firewood cut by them” may be an over-statement.523 We also find from the 1860 Land Commission report that some tenant farmers sold firewood from their own land to fishing vessels (presumably from the American schooner fleet), as well as in Charlottetown”. However, I have not come across any evidence to indicate that the wood cut down in land clearance operations was ever diverted into a commercial fuelwood market in any significant way.525 The effects of firewood collecting on the forest — An important effect of the firewood economy on the forest in the landscape is that the need to have a sustainable supply of firewood was an important incentive for the retention of a portion of each farm as a wood-lot. This meant that even in areas where all of the land was suitable for clearance, substantial parts of the forest survived either as small individual parcels, or, when several wood- lots adjoined each other, in larger blocks. This has meant that some woodland has survived up to the present-day in even the most intensively farmed areas of the island, and has acted to give the impression that such areas are more wooded than they actually are.526 523 [Hill] 1819. John Hill lived at Cascumpec, about as far away from Charlottetown as you could get, and he thus may not have been that well informed of what went on there. 52‘ Land Commission 1860: evidence of the agent, G. W. DeBlois, concerning the Cunard estate. Hatvany (1996) (p. 200) observes that by the Convention of 1818 the American fishing fleet was excluded from landing in British North America — except for “wood (I presume firewood), water and shelter’. 525 Unlike the sale of timber by farmers, which is frequently mentioned (see below). I note, by contrast, that Williams (1989) (pp. 133-34) believes that land clearance operations in the eastern United States in the nineteenth century “provided an enormous amount of wood for the energy requirements of the nation", and that many individual farmers obtained a useful income from the sale of clearance wood for firewood. There is no evidence that this was so for farmers on the island, which of course did not have the many large cities and developing towns that the United States had, with their insatiable fuelwood demand, 526 I am thinking here of the intensively farmed areas of eastern Prince County where, though a detailed map would show that in terms of area there is actually very little woodland, yet because there is always a bit of woodland somewhere in the field of view, one has the impression of a greater amount of forest in the landscape than there actually is. However, regrettably, in recent years it has been evident that even these small wood-lots are vulnerable to being grubbed out to increase potato production, with negative effects on the landscape.