Holland, Samuel (1764) Letter (dated 1764) to Lord Hillsborough, ’descriptive of the Island of St. John'. [Unpublished handwritten transcript, (Colonial Office Correspondence), PEI PARO Acc. 2324/8A.]

(1765) Letter (dated 4 March 1765) to Lord Hillsborough, ’descriptive of progress in Survey'. [Unpublished handwritten transcript, (Colonial Office Correspondence), PEI PARO Acc. 2324/8A.]

(1765) Letter (dated 8 October 1765) to Richard Cumberland Esq., Agent to the Provinces of Quebec and Nova Scotia, containing a ’Report of Survey’, to accompany an annotated ’Plan of the Island of St. John in the Province of Nova Scot/a [Unpublished handwritten transcript (Colonial Office Correspondence), in PEI PARO, Acc. 2324/8A.]

Samuel Holland (b. 1728, d. 1801), the recently appointed Surveyor General of the Northern District of North America, was instructed in 7764 by his superiors at the Board of Trade in London, to begin a survey of all the British possessions north of the Potomac by starting with St. John ’3 Island. By this time the Dutchman had been in North America since 1756, as a military surveyor and engineer, working first in the colony of New York, and later, during and after the period of active war with France, surveying at Louisbourg, Quebec and along the St Lawrence River. He arrived on the island in early October 1764 and spent the next twelve months based at Observation Cove near Port La-Joie overseeing the work of four survey parties mapping the various parts of the island’s coastline. He was himself in charge of the party surveying the Hillsborough River and the north coast from Rustico Bay to St Peters. His knowledge of the forest over much of the island was thus largely based on what he and the others could examine from the coasts and rivers — he wrote: ”all rivers and creeks were surveyed as far as boat or canoe would go, or the chainmen penetrate, but sometimes we were obliged to stop, by inaccessible woods and swamps”. In March 1 765 he sent a progress report to London, followed in October by his full report with an accompanying large- scale map of the whole island, which showed the boundary of the French clearances, and also contained a description of each of the sixty-seven townships in which the quality of their land and timber was rated. In both letters he gives a brief generalized account of the timber resources of the island, which consists of a list of the principal tree species and some comments on the general quality of the forests. He also describes the still visible evidence for the major fire that had occurred in the north-east of the island during the French regime.

REFERENCES: Thorpe, F. J. (1983) Holland, Samuel Johannes. Dictionary of Canadian Biography, V: 425-29. Clark, A. H. (1959) Three Centuries and The Island. University of Toronto Press, Toronto. pp. 45-48.

Letter, 1 764

the timber in general is good; by the best account I can as yet get, it consists of

Tree SPEC/6'8- Black Birch, Ash, Beech, Pine, some Oak and Curled Maple; the latter is a fine wood peculiar to this Country, a few planks of the latter shall be sent your Lordship in the Spnng.

I am also informed that in the Summer the Musquetos are so very plenty and troublesome that neither man nor beast can withstand them in the woods.

Letter, 4 March 1765.

The description of this place with the necessary observations made on its natural production, being not properly digested into any connected order, I shall defer sending till the whole is completed, the only general ones I shall trouble your Lordship with at

present, from the best information l have been able to procure, are these, viz: The The principal Woods are principally Spruce, Pine, Beach, Birch and Oak: the latter sort is the most tree species. scarce. The best places in the Island for Timber are about the Three Rivers, Bear Harbour and Malpac, though none of it is fit otherwise for His Majesty’s Navy except The great fire in as Topmasts or perhaps Bowsprits. About 24 years since there happened a fire that the north-east. destroyed the greatest part of the timber: the course it ran was from the Bay of

Fortune to St. Peters, from thence to the North East River, along Savage Bay, Tracady

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