Watson, as well as Francis Bain himself.87o Also, though somewhat earlier (in the second half of the nineteenth century), there were professional scientists, mostly of a geological bent (Abraham Gesner in 1846, William Dawson in 1868 and 1871; and Robert Chalmers in 1895) who, commissioned by either the island's government, or later the new Dominion government, to carry out surveys of the island’s mineral resources, in the process made comments of varying usefulness on what remained of the forests.

Finally, allied to the scientists were the island’s professional land surveyors, who, because they were hired by the government to lay out the lines of the townships and those of the future roads, of all islanders must have been the most familiar with the pre-settlement forest. Several hundred of the maps that they drew, many with brief labels naming the principal tree species or the general forest-types (all potentially locatable geographically), survive in the Provincial Archives. However, when it comes to the fieldbooks from which these maps were constructed (and which were likely to have contained even more detail on the tree composition of the forest — detail even more precisely locatable than that of the maps) unfortunately it is only those of Alexander Anderson, the government surveyor for Prince

County from the late 18305 to the 18703, which survive. 87‘

ATTITUDES AND CONFLICTS CONCERNING TIMBER OWNERSHIP

The proprietors' complaint — As a result of the ’Iottery’ of 1767 all but one of the sixty-seven townships on the island were transferred to private ownership, along with the forests and the timber they contained.872 However, because Enitially almost all of the new landlords — or ’proprietors’ as they became known — lived in the British Isles,

37° McSwain & Bain 1891; Bain 1890; Macoun 1894; [Watson]

post 1904. a" The survey by Alexander Anderson (1838) of the line of the O'Leary Road has been extracted to show the amount of detail that may occur in such records.

872 The exception was the small township, Lot 66, of about 5,800 acres, which was retained by the Crown, along with the ‘royalties' surrounding each of the three county towns. There was no reservation of any of the timber in the granted townships to the Crown, including that of pine fit for naval purposes, as was so in the other colonies of post-Revolutionary British North America (Lower 1938, p. 75),

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and had no one looking after their interests on the island, it was impossible for them to even know what was going on with respect to the timber on their property, let alone to try to protect it. Then, in the nineteenth century, when many proprietors did employ local agents, it was difficult for them, most being Charlottetown businessmen or lawyers, to prevent the theft of timber in distant townships, and in some cases it is likely that even the agents themselves were partaking in the theft through private unrecorded sales of timber or timber 'permits', or other illicit or uncontrolled business dealings.873 There is in fact ample evidence that during the whole of the colonial period, timber on unoccupied land was more or less fair game for anyone.

An early example, from the first decade of settlement, concerns Lot 34: the landlord was Sir James Montgomery, the chief law officer for Scotland, one of a small number of proprietors who did attempt to fulfil the terms of the original grant by sending settlers to the township in 1770. To act as his agent on the island he sent out David Lawson, a Perthshire flax farmer, to start a flax farm at Stanhope.874 Thirteen years later Montgomery received a letter from the Chief Justice of the island, Peter Stewart, informing him of certain irregularities concerning the forests on his township involving both Lawson and the acting governor of the colony during the 17705, Phillips Callbeck:

I knew for certain there had been plenty of excellent pine on the premises, and believed it to have been still there, but in consequence of an hint from a friend, I went to see it and found the pine wood miserably mangled, and on enquiring how, learned that Mr. Lawson had sold considerable quantities. His method was to bargain with anybody that demanded it, for a certain number of tons, and as there was no person resident on the land, the purchaser always culled out the finest trees in different parts without making any regular

873 Two examples, both of which deserve further investigation:

James Williams, the agent for Lord Selkirk, contracted with a timber merchant to remove all of the valuable trees on Selkirk‘s townships on terms very unfavourable to Selkirk, which later involved him in litigation (see Bumsted 1978, pp. 7-8; and 1983; and Selkirk 1809); and James Bardin Palmer, the agent for several landlords was associated with illicit dealings in timber on various lots (Bumsted 1980, p. 11). Another example was brought to the attention of the Land Commission (1860) by Joseph Wightman who said that the agents for Lot 61 had "wronged the proprietor by allowing the timber to be cut away for the sake of the stumpage".

87‘ See Bumsted (1987) (pp. 51-55) for an outline of Montgomery's activities on the island.