Finally, an additional restriction that seems to have been placed by some landlords on their tenants was a prohibition against engaging in the timber trade. The only evidence that l have for this comes from the Land Commission (1860) where a witness, Robert Gordon, representing the tenants of Lots 4 and 5, read from a lease given by one Sarah Maddox to a William Hardy of Cascumpec in 1817 that stated that Hardy was not to ”carry on in Cascumpec Bay a trade in lumber, by selling timber, plank, boards, staves, or any kind of

timber".894

'Timber stealing' — It is evident, as we have seen, that it was not uncommon for lumberers to cut timber on townships without even going to the formality of a permit — namely, stealing the timber from either the landlord or the tenant. We have already seen above, the evidence for such theft over a long period on Lot 13. Another example comes from the adjacent Lot 10, and not surprisingly, concerns the same ’bagger’ and ’cribber’ as on Lot 13, namely James Yeo.895 One John Prendergast, claiming to be acting on behalf of the proprietors of the township, placed ’a public notice’ in the Royal Gazette in September 1834 addressed to "Messieurs, the French of Egmont Village and Cascumpec, Mr. James Yeo of Lot 13, and others”:

Having received information from various respectable persons during my recent inspection of Lot 10 of your having been in the practice of cutting and drawing away timber and hay to a very serious extent from this tract of land and applying the same to your own private uses, to the great and manifest detriment of David and Robert Stewart of the City of London, Esquires, to whom the estate in question doth belong, unless ye come forward and compensate these gentlemen to the utmost extent of the trespasses committed on them, law proceedings will be instituted against ye without any loss of time as

there is abundant proof to enable me to do so. 896

Yeo replied immediately in the next issue of the same paper challenging anyone to show that he

59“ Gordon said that the attorney for the lease was John Hill, the

principal proprietor at Cascumpec at that time,and it may thus have been Hill who was responsible for the inclusion of the clause - Bumsted (1988) notes that in his leases (which were usually for 999 years) Hill reserved “timber, water, and trade rights allowing the tenants rights only to the land itself“.

895 See also Greenhill & Giffard (1967) Westcountrymen in Prince Edward‘s Isle, pp. 127-28, for further comment on this dispute. Lot 10 was owned by David and Robert Stewart of London (see Stewart (1831) for some biographical information).

896 Prendergast 1834.

137

had "ever cut, or ordered to be cut, any timber on the lot without having the authority to do so”, adding however that he was “perfectly ready to account for any arrears that may be due for any

. stumpage”. He then implied that Prendergast was a disrespectable person with no authority to act as agent for the lot.897

Prendergast however did not give up. He placed two further ads, in one of which he said that he had been ”credibly informed that a man commonly known as Jemmy Yeo has told certain Frenchmen of Lot 6, and others also, to go into the woods of Lots 10 and 12, and cut down, square, and haul away Pine and other valuable timber without now or ever having the smallest shadow of authority from the proprietors, or anyone deputed by them, to do so” [his italics]. He also accused Yeo of ’enforcing’ payment of the 'stumpage’ from ”every man implicated in the cutting down of Timber from Lots 10 and 12” — presumably when buying such timber Yeo was in the practice of subtracting from the payment for it a charge for the stumpage.898

What the ultimate outcome of this very public altercation was, I do not know, but the publicity and notoriety of the incident appears not to have hindered the business and political career of James Yeo, who five years later was elected to the House of Assembly. And, within a few months there were other persons who were placing public notices in newspapers claiming that they were the authorized agents for the Stewart townships.899 Such snippets of evidence concerning illicit timber cutting, are undoubtedly like the tip of an iceberg — far more will have gone on, which, by the nature of the act, will have left no surviving paper record.

That the illicit activities allegedly being directed by James Yeo on Lot 10 were far more general, is evident from a detailed analysis of the problem of ”Timber Stealing” contained in a lengthy letter that took up most of the front page of the Prince Edward Island Register on 26 June 1826.900 The author does not identify himself”, but he is

897

Yeo 1834.

89“ Prendergast 1835.

899 See Forgan (1835) and Hodgson & Lawson (1835).

900

Anon. 1826. 901 He signs his letter ‘A Looker-on‘. His need to remain anonymous is indicative, I think, of his perception of the power and/or influence of those involved in the illicit activities.