Robert Clark556, saying that ”from what [he] could learn, one pair of Sawyers if they had their Work pitted would have been able to have cut as mutch Boards in the coarse of the Winter as this Mill”, which was ”calculated to Work only one Saw at a time”. He also said that he had been told by ’respectable people' that it took ”upwards of 70 men one winter to keep this saw at work in cutting Boards” (this number would have included all those assigned to felling the trees and bringing the logs to the mill). As a result, Curtis added, "in a Country w[h]ere Timber costs nothing, one would Suppose Boards would be cheap, but from their expencive mode of cutting are renderd very dere as if sold in England." Undoubtedly there is an element of both personal and professional bias in Curtis’ criticism, since he was viewing the sawmill through the eyes of someone freshly arrived from a country where there was a marked prejudice against sawmills (in England it was well into the nineteenth century before sawmills began to replace the pit— sawyer5557). Even so, he may well have been correct in his assessment of the New London mill since in the previous winter (January 1775) in this very settlement, Benjamin Chappell and others, despite the presence of the mill, were still pit- sawing ’fir’ to make boards for the ‘counting- house’ that they were building. Progress however may be evident from the fact that a year later (in March of 1776) Chappell was assigned to cut down pine trees for the sawmill, while in May of the following year (1777) he recorded bringing a raft from the mill to Elizabethtown loaded with 23,000 feet of boards.558 The other early writer who makes a direct comparison between the output and costs of mill- sawn boards and the production of the pit-sawyers is John MacDonald of Tracadie. In his 'lnstructions’ to his sister Nelly, concerning the procurement of the wood needed for the new house that he was planning to have built on his island estate, he advised her, as we have seen, to 556 Curtis 1775. He tells us that the mill was “about 6 or 7 Miles from new London up the River on a convenient Spot". This would seem to indicate the present South-west River which is the main river near ‘Elizabethtown'. 557 Lower 1973, p. 24. He notes that the first sawmill had been built in England in 1769 (just six years before Curtis' arrival on the island), and it was then promptly pulled down by the pit sawyers, who thought it would throw them out of their jobs. 55“ Chappell 1775-1818: see entries for 1775 (24, 26 Jan.; 13 Feb; 9, 16 Mar); 1776 (30 Mar); 1777 (10 May). 84 consider as an option having the boards pit-sawn on the island, as opposed to buying them ready- sawn from a sawmill in Pictou in Nova Scotia: If the Wood is good & if the french would undertake it, four good sawyers would not be long sawing ten thousand feet, — there would be this Advantage in it that the Boards might be sawed of the exact length 8t thickness that the Carpenter would order, so that there would be less waste & refuse stuff than by geting them from Pictou, and as they would be near at hand it might be very little dearer upon the whole than those from Pictou would be with freight and refuse stuff.559 It is odd that MacDonald does not consider getting his boards and other lumber requirements from any of the sawmills that were then on the island, for by the 17803 there were several mills in operation. Some early sawmills — From the various records extracted in this report, it is possible to locate a number of these early sawmills. The visitor Patrick M’Robert in 1776 specifically mentioned the mill at New London, but he also noted that there were sawmills in several other parts of the islands“. Then in 1803 another visitor Edward Walsh stated precisely, for what it is worth, that there were five sawmills on the island, though "formerly there were twice as many”.561 The five that he had in mind may have included the New London mill, John Cambridge's mill at Murray Harbourssz, another Cambridge mill near Charlottetownm, a 559 MacDonald 1784. 55" M’Robert1776. The ‘mills in other parts‘ must have included the sawmill at Charlottetown that Benjamin Chappell (1775-1818) (not extracted) records working on for the acting—governor Phillips Callbeck between 22 July and 10 November 1775, though i do not know its subsequent history‘ It might also have included a sawmill on Lot 59 [the township on the south side of the Montague River] that, according to Bumsted (1979), was built in the 17705 by David Higgens, a partner of the proprietor James Montgomery — though this mill also does not receive mention in later records. (The mill is referred to in the reference cited in footnote 597.) I do not know whether the Montgomery settlement at Stanhope on Lot 34 (founded in 1770) had a sawmill — the only record that l have come across is for a grist mill (see Lawson post 1777). We might also note the failed attempt in 1779 of Chief Justice Peter Stewart to lease land on Lot 34 from Montgomery, probably along the Hillsborough River, for the purpose of building a sawmill in an area that he said had “plenty of excellent pine” (Stewart 1783). 56‘ Walsh 1803. 552 According to Holman (1987) John Cambridge built a large sawmill at Murray Harbour at an unspecified date before the end of the eighteenth century. Benjamin Chappell (1775-1818) refers to it on 29 April 1803 (not extracted). 56’ Chappell (1775-1818) makes a number of references (30 Dec. 1802, 18 Mar., 29 April 1803, not extracted) to a sawmill near Charlottetown that he and his son Theophilus were building for