Another writer534 refers to the 'timber-getter’ living apart from his family in a ’camp’ which had to be separately provisioned — the equivalent, probably on a small-scale, of the lumber camps of the mainland — though this would not have been necessary when the trees were close at hand to the farm.535 Elsewhere Hill makes reference to the "lopping and squaring” of the trees after they had been cut down (i.e. their conversion into ’square’ or ’ton timber’ using the broad-axe).536 This procedure, with a few exceptionsw, would usually only have been carried out when the timber was intended for export to the British Isles, and it would have been done at the spot where the tree was felled.538 MacGregor's (1828) reference to the ’hewing’ of the timber for 'exportation’ refers to the same procedure. On the other hand, if the timber was intended for local use it would have been more likely taken out of the woods in the form of logs, as in John Cambridge’s comment: ”in the winter, some are employed in cutting and carrying pine-logs for the sawmills”539. Returning to Hill, the next step was, when the snow was on the ground, to use oxen to draw the timber out of

the woods to ”the sides of navigable rivers”540 —

felled when the sap was not running", while a good snow cover eased the task of moving the cut timber out of the woods.

53“ Anon. 1826.

535 Also, [Lawson] (1877-1878), in relating stories about the nuisance cause by bears, mentions a ‘lumbermen's camp' at Millvale (near New London), “in 1841, before [the area] was settled".

536 ‘Square timber‘, the name use in Upper and Lower Canada, is defined by Lower (1973) (p. 253) as “timber cut out of logs as they lay felled in the forest, squared to a rough four sides with the broad axe". ‘Ton timber‘ was the name used in the Maritime colonies for wood in this form, and it was called ‘ton timber’ in the legislation passed by the House of Assembly (1773-1849) in 1817, 1820 and 1849 that regulated its size. Until the 18605 it was in this form that most of the timber was exported from British North America to Britain (see Lower 1973, pp. 23, 253). The steps in converting a log into ton timber are described in detail by Macphail (1939).

537 Seemingly, the timbers for framing a house could also be squared before moving them out of the woods — which would have greatly reduced their weight: in the instructions to his sister concerning the timbers for the ‘frame’ of his proposed house at Tracadie, Captain John MacDonald (1784) wrote “when your carpenter shall have marked the proper trees to be cut, I should think some of the French would be good hands for assisting him to cut, square, float and bring them to the spot" — note the order of the procedures.

5“ As in Prendergast’s (1835) reference to “the cutting down,

squaring and hauling away of timber" — i.e. the squaring is done before the hauling away.

539 [Cambridge] 1796?.

5‘0 A less reliable source, Anon. (1818), also mentions that

‘streams’ were used “to convey [the settler's] timber to the seat of

81

Stewart (1806) further tells us that in the process, the timber was pulled on ’sledges’, that oxen were used more than horses, and that this usually took place in March's“. Then, ”in the spring”, Hill says, it was ”rafted” to the ”depot” of the local merchant and/or to the proprietor or his agent (sometimes the merchant and the proprietor were the same person, as was John Hill himself).542 It is evident that some of the timber merchants also had their own timber booms to which individual ’pieces’, and rafts of timber, could be floated for

government, or one of the more frequented ports". More reliable evidence for the use of the rivers to float logs is the passage by the island’s legislature in 1840 of an act (3 Victoria C. Xll, not extracted) to “regulate the floating of Logs, Scantling, Deals, and other kinds of Wood, down the Rivers and lesser Streams in this Island” — its main objective was to require mill owners to construct a “waste gate" at mill dams that would enable the logs coming from up-river to get past the mill. Even so, because of the nearness of much of the island's forests to bays and inlets, the stage of floating the ton—timber or logs down a river could often be circumvented: Greenhill & Giffard (1967) (p. 50) cite a primary source of 1819 (the island's customs officer, Frederick Barwell) who recorded that timber could be hauled directly to the shore to await the ships: "to various parts of the shores of [Richmond Bay] timber is hauled in the winter the Vessels go into the part of the Bay where Lumber has been prepared for them in the winter time — to load — precisely as they do at all the other Creeks and lnlets of the Island where Lumber can be procured".

5'" Stewart (1806) said that sometimes the lack of snow in January or February hindered the process. He also implies the occasional use of horses, and in January 1775 Benjamin Chappell recorded horses being used to bring timber to the saw-pit in the pioneer settlement at New London (Chappell 1775-1818). M’Robert (1776) also noted that in winter “they draw home their wood upon sledges, by horses or oxen" — though this could also mean firewood.

5‘2 In addition to Hill’s mention of rafting timber, we have evidence

from other sources that the timber could be formed into rafts that were then floated to other areas: in 1815 J. B. Palmer, the agent of Lot 13, in a letter to Sir George Seymour, the landlord, alerted him to the fact that “large rafts of timber have been already brought from Egmont Bay to Bedeque”, while in 1840 Seymour himself, while on a visit to the island, came across one such raft belonging to James Yeo, lying at the mouth of the Sheep River in Lot 13. Also, in a notice of the sale of William Schurman's sawmill and 3,000 acres of land on the Wilmot River, the property is described as “convenient for rafting" (Schurrnan 1824). There is also the comment of John Hill (1819) that “rafts of timber' in Richmond Bay “frequently break adrift in blowing weather and on the ebb tide are carried to sea, and frequently a great part lost”. I also note that an act of the island’s House of Assembly makes reference to timber rafts: 6 Victoria C. IX of 1843 (not extracted in this report) records that “much loss and damage has heretofore been sustained in consequence of rafts of timber, deals and other lumber being cut adrift in the several harbours, rivers and streams in this island", and it stipulates penalties for such an offence. Then, the anonymous Miminegash Account Book [PARO, Acc. 2593/12], dating from the 18505, records payments (pp. 53, 65) to Thomas Rix and to John Costain for ‘rafting‘, as does the Morris Account Book (1864-1868) (from North Granville in Lot 21) to Alex Corbett in 1866. Finally, [Lawson] (1877-1878) recalled a particular individual ‘rafting' what he called ‘lumber’ “from Belle Creek [i.e. Belle River] to Orwell about 50 years ago”.