EARLY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE FORESTS OF PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND:

THE BRITISH AND POST-CONFEDERATION PERIODS — 1758 - c. 1900

THE SOURCE-BOOK EXTRACTS

The following pages present verbatim extracts from 172 historical documents containing material relevant to the forests of Prince Edward Island. These were written by 120 different authors (117 men and three women) during the period of British colonial rule on the island (1758-1873), as well as during the period up to about 1900 after the island had become a province in the Dominion of Canada. Because of the large number of extracts, the analysis that accompanies these documents has had to be bound separately in a companion volume (Part A), which is an integral part of this report.

The extracts are presented in chronological order and the original spelling and punctuation has been reproduced for each. The one extract that was written in French is accompanied by an English translation. For each extract a short biographical sketch of its author is included which also provides a brief evaluation of the forest-related material contained in the extract.

The location of places mentioned in either the extracts or in the biographical sketches are shown in Figure 1, while the island’s 67 townships (or lots as they were usually called) have been mapped in Figure 2.

Where an author of a work that was originally printed anonymously has since been identified, either by myself or by someone else, the name is printed in square brackets, for example: [Clark] 1779. When any of the extracts are cited elsewhere in this report the elements that are bolded in the Table of Contents are used to identify them — usually the author’s surname and the year of writing or publication.