as the spruce and the ash swamps that Robert Gray encountered in Lot 13 in 1793), as well as in the forest near the coast, on account of the ”impenetrable thicket" of spruce that occurred there, and the large number of windfalls that caused an obstruction slightly further inland.821

Travelling in the ”the trackless forests” also carried the risk of being ”bewildered and lost”, which, as Lord Selkirk mentioned, was a particular worry for new settlers from Europe, and even more so on behalf of their children.822 In fact, this danger, at least for adults, must have been considerably less on Prince Edward Island than on the North American continent where there were truly ”boundless forests" — for no part of the island was more than about ten miles from a river estuary or the shoreline.

In the earliest period, it was probably mostly the fear of getting lost that caused most people travelling any distance to make their way along the coast and rivers, rather than taking the risk of a short-cut through the ’trackless’ interior of the island}?23 However, even when there were blazed trails and tracks, there was still the apprehension, especially for new settlers and visitors, of losing the way, as a comment of Walter Johnstone indicates: when setting out on the long journey mentioned above, from Murray Harbour to Charlottetown, along the pioneer track through the woods that constituted the road, he considered

that there was ”some danger" of ”missing the 824

I:

way .

In fact, for most people, travelling, whether through the forest or not, will have presented a greater danger in winter, though at that season it was not so much the forest itself, as the depth of

821

Gray 1793; Johnstone 1822, 1823 (see pages 18-19 of this report).

3” Selkirk 1805. Undoubtedly, during the early British period children must have got lost in the woods, but the only record that l have come across is from the earlier French period, in fact within the first year of the first French settlement on the island: on 3 July 1721 the chaplain of Port La-Joie recorded in the parish register that Etienne Poitevin, aged eight, had been lost in the woods since 6 June (Harvey 1926, p. 204).

323 For example, prior to the opening of the "new road" to Princetown from Charlottetown shortly before 1793 (Gray 1793), the standard route was to travel north to Covehead and then to walk along the north shore, as M’Robert (1776) did in 1774.

82‘

Johnstone 1823 (p. 26, not extracted).

123

the snow “5 and the low temperatures, that

enhanced the risk.826 Another danger in travelling during the winter in mixed forest was on account of fallen coniferous trees, as recorded by Thomas Curtis:

I had not gone far in the Woods before I trod on the Crown of a great tree and Sunk as if I had gone in a Well about 15 or 16 feet. Endeavouring to get out again by taking hold or treading on the boughs it brought sutch large quantity’s of snow on my head as Allmost to Smother me. I met with mutch difficulty to get out but when out I returned in my own track for fear of meeting with a worse till I found the path, then went home being very wett Gun and all as bad nearly as if I had been in a river. l afterward found that some parts of the Woods was safe to travil in, Sutch as whare the hard Wood grew. In [the] mixture of groath is the most dangerous traveling in winter, there being so many large Trees blown down and covered that its not possible to

find them till you tread on them and sink in far over head and Ears.827

The forest and social isolation The only extensive comment on the isolating effect of the forest on the pioneer settlers is that of the anonymous author writing in the Summerside Progress in 1867:

A small patch of sky, corresponding to the size of the clearance, was all of the ”spacious firmament” that the new settler could obtain a glimpse of. His nearest neighbour, though it may be only a few rods distant, might as far as appearances were concerned, be fifty miles away. All those cheerful sights and sounds so dear and familiar to the dweller of the thickly inhabited

825 Thomas Wright, the island's Surveyor-General, after taking

measurements for three years (in 1783, 1784, 1785), reported that the “depth of Snow in the woods (upon an average) is from two to three feet", and that the snow remained in the woods a month later than on the cleared ground. (Wright, T. (1789) A Three Year Meterological Account of the Climate of the Island of St. John . T. Bensley, London. [PAROz 00. 266/131).

826 As an example of the risks involved in a winter journey through the woods, see the report of the journey of Robert Gray from Charlottetown to Murray Harbour in January 1792, as printed in the Royal Gazette and Miscellany on 14 January of that year, in which it was stated that “they were incessantly assailed by tempestuous winds, dreadful torrents of rain, or heavy falls of snow, which not only rendered their journey inconceivably difficult, but threatened them with immediate destruction, being obliged to encamp in the woods, without wigwam or other shelter from the inclemency of the weather, and sometimes passing frozen swamps that gave way almost every step, in which they frequently sunk so deep as to require each other‘s assistance to get out, it is miraculous that in so perilous a situation, no one perished". (See Sobey (1997) (pp. 27-28) for background details on this journey.)

82’ Curtis 1775.