As for red pine, Patterson (1774) said there was ”some", while Stewart (1806) observed that it was ”confined to two or three districts of small extent”. MacGregor (1828) called it ”rare”, while towards the end of the century, both Bain (1890) and Watson (post 1904) were describing it as ”not common". The only records on the abundance of jack pine are Stewart's (1806) comment that there was ”very little” and MacGregor's (1828) that it

was ”rare”.17

Specific areas - (See Figure 1—1.) The earliest indication in British period records of the specific distribution of pine on the island comes in Captain Samuel Holland’s interim report of March 1765 on his mapping survey of the island, in which he noted that the best places for timber for masts were ”about the Three Rivers [i.e. the present Cardigan Bay area], Bear Harbour [i.e. Murray Harbour”) and Malpac [i.e. the Malpeque Bay area]” — he can only be referring to red or white pine.19 Interestingly, all three areas had been mentioned in French period records as containing either pine forest, or stands of ‘be/le méture’ (i.e. ”fine mast trees", which also can only mean pines)”.

Two of these areas also recur in later records: at Three Rivers Gamaliel Smethurst recorded what he considered to be the illegal cutting of twelve hundred white pine trees in about February 1768; he said that all of the trees grew within 150 yards

‘7 See also my comment on Walsh (1803) in footnote 13. ‘3 Rayburn 1973, p. 90.

‘9 Holland 1765 (March). We may even have an earlier British record for the presence of pine trees at two of these places. The anonymous officer who surveyed the island in 1762 (Anon. 1762) reported that at what he called “3 Rivers" [i.e. the Cardigan Bay area] there was “plenty of fine Ship Timber and very large”, and at what he called “Cap a LOurs“ [i.e. ‘Cape Bear’] he found “the best Ship Timber on the Island". Ship timber in the eighteenth century would have meant either oak or pine (for hulls and masts respectively), but given the Royal Navy‘s long established views on the inferiority of North American oaks (e.g. Albion 1926, pp. 23-25), and especially of red oak, as well as the scarcity of red oak on the island, it is likely that by ‘Ship Timber' our officer meant timber for masts — i.e. pine. It should be noted that there is some error and confusion in both his geography and place-naming: of relevance here is that he places ‘3 Rivers‘ on the south coast of the island west of his ‘Cap a LOurs' and he omits to either mention in his report or show on his map Murray Harbour (i.e. Ie havre a I'ours [Bear Harbour] of the French). From Holland‘s survey, as noted, and the records of the French period (see Sobey 2002, p. 130), it is evident that these were two areas (if we take his ‘Cap a LOurs' to mean the Murray Harbour area in general) where we would have expected to find mast timber on the island.

2° See Sobey (2002) (pp. 126-27, 130, 172).

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of the high water mark“. Since Smethurst considered that his action had saved the rest of the ’grove’“ from destruction, there must have been many more than twelve hundred trees in the stand.23 It is not surprising therefore that two years later, in 1770, we have evidence of another logging operation at Three Rivers also involving the cutting of pine, this time for shipment. This was carried out by David Lawson, agent for the proprietor, and during the operation one of his workers was crushed by a ”large pine tree" that had been cut for embarkation“. Analysis of the contemporary records suggests that the logging operations referred to by both Smethurst and Lawson may have been carried out on Lot 59, which is bounded on the north by the Montague River estuary.25 26

21 Smethurst (1774) was reporting in his capacity as the “Deputy- Surveyor of Woods“ for Nova Scotia, which at that time included the Island of St. John. On the illegality or otherwise of the cutting, I note that by 1768, if the cutting was on Lot 59 (see footnote 25), the land would have belonged to Hutchison Mure, Robert Cathcart and David Higgins, merchants, who had already been conducting trading and fishing operations on the island for some time (see Clark 1959, p. 48). They had successfully petitioned the British government for that specific lot in the land lottery of 1767. The question is whether the man that Smethurst records as organising the cutting, William Livingston, would have been acting on the landlords' behalf — he is among those that are recorded in a census of 1768 (see footnote 25) as having been there “in behalf of the grantees". If this were so, then presumably he would have been legally entitled to cut the pines. Perhaps Smethurst was not apprised of the true legal situation.

22 He uses both ‘grove' and its plural ‘groves’ to refer to the stand or stands that were being cut.

23 Clark (1959) (p. 48), on the basis of the summary published by Warburton (1923) (pp, 122-23), expressed doubt about Smethurst‘s story, but he was unaware that in the original publication Smethurst took care to authenticate his account by copying verbatim a declaration sworn by one of the Acadian woodcutters employed to do the cutting, before a notary public in Nova Scotia (see Smethurst 1774)‘

2" Lawson (post 1777).

25 A census dated 21 July 1768 (about five months after the logging operation) [see Warburton (1923), pp. 146-47, and Lockerby (2004) pp. 10, 13] indicates that the overseer of the February cutting, William Livingston, was then residing on Lot 59 (see footnote 1 in Smethurst (1774)). The site ofthe 1770 logging accident had not been stated by Lawson, but a contemporary diary (see introduction to Lawson (post 1777)) indicates that the accident occurred at ‘Three Rivers‘ where “a log of wood rolling down a steep place" struck the victim. By 1770 Lawson‘s employer, James Montgomery, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, had a business interest in Lot 59 (see Bumsted 1987, pp. 32, 51). Also, for what it is worth, the south bank of the Montague River estuary is notably steep for much of its length. However, there is no guarantee that either Livingston or Lawson would not have ‘poached’ pine from other unoccupied townships.

26 Earl Lockerby has come across a reference to an earlier harvesting of pines at Three Rivers [Lockerby (2004), p. 13]: in October 1765 HMS Magdalene and HMS Senegal seized the vessel Diadem of London at Three Rivers for being in “Breach of the acts of Trade in Lading masts without producing Certificate that