The anonymous letter-writer to the Royal Gazette in 1836:

the distant landscape is agreeably diversified [my italics] with land and water, along the shores of which the forest is broken with houses and cleared fields, spotted

in some places with cattle and sheep;854

Samuel Hill’s description of the Cascumpec in 1839:

landscape at

a large farm, with all its appurtenances of barns and out—

houses, and the tall forest around, present to the eye, a

- ass scene not surpassed In beauty;

Finally, John Lawson’s description of the

landscape at New London in 1851:

alternation [my italics] of wood and

the beautiful water, forest and meadow, hill and valley so .856

COHSplCUOUS at BVBI’V turn,

In every one of these descriptions, as well as in others from the second half of the nineteenth century”, it is evident that, though the island’s forest and trees are assigned an aesthetic value in terms of their contribution to the landscape, it is as but one element in a mixed rural landscape. It is also evident for some writers it was its resemblance to rural landscapes of their British homeland that elicited favourable comments on the landscape.858

THE ‘ROMANTIC’ FOREST

Some writers put on record a positive attitude towards the forests of the island that is connected neither with the utilitarian nor the aesthetic. The writers concerned are generally island residents or

85" Anon. 1836, Another generalized description of the island

landscape.

855

Hill 1839.

856 Lawson 1851,

857 Other later landscape descriptions that include a mixture of forest (or trees) and cleared farming country, are: Rowan (1876): the general landscape; Anon. (1877): the scenery along the Hillsborough and West Rivers; [Bain] (1882): the general landscape; [Bain] (1883): the landscape at Breadalbane; Ward (1887): the view from Charlottetown Harbour, and that from Tea Hill 35“ Stewart (1831) said the ‘finely wooded country’ along the along the road from Charlottetown to St. Peters resembled “the country about Reading in Berkshire"; while Rowan (1876) said that the island's rural landscape reminded him of England.

128

visitors belonging to the educated and literary class who are not likely themselves to have been involved in the clearance of woodland or in the exploitation of the forest for any of its products. All of these persons made visits or 'excursions' into the forest for various non—utilitarian reasons, and, as importantly for them, an after—effect of these visits was the creation of a piece of writing. Whether it was a letter, an article for a newspaper, or a short paragraph in a published book, these all tend to be subjective in the sense that they express some sort of emotional attachment or expression of feeling towards the forest. The expressions of these ideas occur especially from the mid—nineteenth century onwards.

Most of the literary creations fall within recognized genres that were in fashion at the time, which are allied to the ’Romantic movement’ that prevailed in the nineteenth century in literature and art. Though its roots lay in the eighteenth century the movement was inspired especially by the English ’Romantic’ poets, and William Wordsworth and Lord Byron in particulars“, who in their works expressed a new appreciation for various aspects of wild nature, including forests and woods. The influence of the Romantic movement reached its zenith in the mid-nineteenth century, and it is especially at this time that some island writers, under the influence of the movement, also began to exhibit a positive appreciation for the last remaining bits of wilderness forest on the island, and to make use of this forest as a subject for literary exercises.

The earliest piece of writing that exhibits a ’Romantic’ attitude towards the forest, even if in an embryonic form, is found in a letter of a land agent, Robert Gray in 1793, and this is followed thirty and more years later by other island residents such as John MacGregor, Samuel Hill and Francis Bain, as well as by the visitor Isabella Bird. As did their contemporaries in other parts of North America, these persons began to make excursions into the remnants of the wilderness forest — or else, whenever trips were made into the forest for other purposes, usually utilitarian, they began to invest these journeys with additional meaning. Such visits had a variety of overlapping motives: for some there was a search for novelty — or even adventure; others visited the forest for more subjective reasons, such as self-discovery and contemplation; for still others, the motive was purely recreational; while for some it was simply to

359 Cox etal. 1985, p. 134; Nash 1973, p. 50,