areas“. In addition, some professional timber

merchants also employed others to do the ’lumbering’ for them: John Cambridge in 1818 recorded that there was ”employment for industrious labourers in loading the Timber Ships, and more especially for those who can use the axe”55°, while 22 years later Sir George Seymour observed men 'attending’ a timber raft belonging to James Yeo at the mouth of the Sheep River in Egmont Bay, and later that day he wrote in his journal that ”the young men on Lot 13 prefer lumbering to agriculture or from being in Yeo’s debt are applied by him to the collection of timber as he chooses”.551 552 And several recorders noted that the use of the axe was an

especially valuable skill, or as John Hill put it:

One of the most necessary accomplishments is the exercise of the axe, at which the colonists are uncommonly dexterous, and l have seen people from England, Scotland, and Ireland, who, in the course of a few months, have become very expert, not only in cutting down trees, but lopping and squaring them after,

in the winter time; It is a most beneficial

employment.553

5‘9 See the section on ‘Timber-stealing‘ (further on). It was a fine line between legally cutting the timber on your own land, and stealing the timber that belonged to the proprietor from the vacant land in the area. Anon. (1826) asserts that many settlers were ‘deeply engaged‘ in “timber stealing’.

55" [Cambridge] (1796?). This comment was added in the 1818

edition of his earlier pamphlet. 55‘ Seymour 1840. Also, from a ‘public notice' that John Prendergast (1834-1835), land agent for Lots 10 and 12, placed in the Royal Gazette on 5 January 1835, it would seem that the Acadians of Cascumpec were also extracting timber for James Yeo, though rather than being in his direct employ, it is more likely that they simply sold to him any timber that they cut.

552 We may also assume that John MacGregor’s (1828) statement that the “timber trade has been for many years of considerable importance, in employing a number of ships and men", more likely refers to small-scale commercial enterprises rather than to farmers lumbering on their own land. Whether the Archibald McLean who wrote the following in a letter to a relative in Scotland in 1848 was timbering on his own land, or commercially, is unknown: “We was making square timber for the market last winter which we made middling well by, we cleared £100 cash this winter, we are at it again. We have four hired men my cusin John for one of them. We have four horses of our own and two hired.” [Archibald McLean, living at an unspecified location on P.E.|., to Neil Rankin in Scotland, 3 March 1848. PARO 2716/1 .]

553 [Hill] 1819. Others who comment on the value of axe skills are Selkirk (1803), Stewart (1806), [Cambridge] (1818), Mac-Gregor (1828) and Hill (1839), two of whom ([Cambridge] (1818) and Stewart (1806)), like Hill above, considered that new immigrants could soon acquire the skill - to whom we might add Hill (1839) who said that “the chief requisite [to be able to use the axe in telling trees] was muscular strength".

83

THE SAWMILLS

One of the destinations of trees cut down in the forest were the island’s sawmills, where the logs could be cut into 'deals’, planks or boards, or into smaller pieces such as lathwood, for either local use or export.554 Unfortunately, only a few of the early recorders commented on the subject of sawmills or sawmilling, and thus there is clearly scope for further research on all aspects of the topic, especially making use of the newspapers of the day, as well as government records, though it is likely that much of the information that we would now like to know about the construction and the production of island sawmills was never put down on paper. I shall first consider what the recorders wrote about the predecessor to the water-powered sawmill, namely the whip—saw and the saw—pit.

Pit-sawing — The water—powered sawmill carried out mechanically, and with greater efficiency and speed, what otherwise would have had to be done by two men using a whipsaw, and it seems that for small jobs at least, the sawmill never entirely replaced the hand saw and the saw-pit. In fact, in the 19205 Sir Andrew Macphail, born in 1864, was able to recall the use of the whipsaw during his lifetime:

A pit like a long grave was dug and skids were laid across. The log was rolled on these. One boy would enter the pit; the other would stand upon the timber, and with a two—handled saw they would rip off the boards, the top—sawyer guiding the cut, the bottom

sawyer doing most of the work.555

There are two other references to ’pit-sawing’, both from the eighteenth century, and both make a direct comparison of the output of the water- powered sawmill with that of two men sawing in a pit. The first of these, Thomas Curtis, a skilled sawyer himself, newly arrived at the New London settlement from England in November 1775, was very scathing of the sawmill that had been recently built at New London by the proprietor

55" The principal products of the sawmill were classed on the

basis of their thickness as ‘deals', ‘planks' and ‘boards'. Deals were between 3 and 31/4 inches thick, 9 or 11 inches wide and ranged from 10 to 24 feet in length; planks were 1% to 2 inches thick and at least 10 feet in length and 7 inches in breadth, and boards had minimum dimensions of 7/8 inches in thickness, 10 feet in length, and 7 inches width (Wynn, 1981, p. 4).

555 Macphail 1939.