Gray, Robert (1793) Letter (with a sketch plan of Lot 13), addressed to William Porter Gillick, agent for 'Captain Conway’, proprietor of Lot 13 (dated 9 October 1793). [Unpublished Seymour of Ragley Collection, Warwick County Record Office, CR114A/564 & 568. Microfilm copy in P.E.l. PARO, Acc. 3485/1 .]

Robert Gray lb. 774 7, d. 7 828) in this letter to the English agent of the proprietor of Lot 73 (then Captain Hugh Seymour—Conway, who received the lot from his father, the Marquis of Hertford, who had bought it in 7772) gives a lively and vivid account of travel on foot through unbroken wilderness across Lot 73 from Richmond Bay to Egmont Bay, the route of which, because of the map attached to the letter, can be reasonably precise/y located on the ground (see Figure 6). Gray had arrived on the Island in 7787 as a Loyalist ex-army officer and prote’gé of Lieutenan t—Governor Fanning; he had set up residence in Charlottetown and thereafter held several government offices. Although born in Glasgow he had been living in North America since 777 7, and had experience of {Inter alia) Virginia, South Carolina, Rhode Island and Nova Scotia. In the letter he claims to have ”explored many hundred miles in the wild and unfrequented Forests of America from St. Augustine [in Florida] to this Island”. Between 7790 and 7793 he was in London lobbying the absentee proprietors on behalf of Governor Fanning and the island government. It is presumably during that time that he acquired the agency of Lot 73. Despite the somewhat exaggerated/y adventurous tone of the letter, which stresses his own leadership and endurance in the expedition as well as his zealous service in the proprietor's interests, his description of the forest can be taken as valid. They passed through three distinct types of woodland: what is clearly climax hardwood forest, then a ’spruce fir swamp' and finally a wet ash ’swamp ’ — much of the narrative stresses the difficulties encountered in getting across the two types of ’swamp’. Its value lies in the fact that it is one of the few ear/y accounts that is geographically specific and that it gives a detailed description of the gro wth-form of the trees. it is also one of the few accounts to mention wet ash wood/and.

REFERENCES: Bumsted, J. M. (1987) Gray, Robert. Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Vl: 297-98. Greenhill, B. & Giffard, A. (1965) Westcountrymen in Prince Edward’s lsle. University of Toronto Press. p. 45.

[On] the 25Ih of August . . . I set out [from Charlottetown] early in the morning Wilderness accompanied by Mr Charles Stewart, son of the Chief Justice We proceeded by a between new road [i.e. the Princetown Road] lately opened by order of Governor Fanning in Charlottetown a direct line through the wilderness, which shortens the distance to Prince Town from

and Princetown. 60 miles the old road to 37 miles the new, besides avoiding several difficult and

dangerous Ferries. In this route of 37 miles we did not see a single house or human being

From Princetown they crossed Richmond Bay to Lot 73 in a hired boat landing ”at Dona/d Ramsay’s” where he summoned the tenants (on the accompanying map he lists ten tenants on the Lot). On finding that ”no person in that country had ever been through Township 73 to Egmont Bay”, on the following day he set out with four others ”to penetrate through the Lot to Egmont Bay and view as much of it as my time would possibly permit, . . . [despite] much dissuasion by the Tenants against the attempt on the grounds of its impracticability, from imperfect and uncertain accounts received from Indians”. The party travelled by boat to what (from the details he gives) is now the site of the village of Tyne Valley, from where they set off on foot:

We left our boat and took to the woods advancing by the compass in a westerly and L0? 735 ”79 southwesterly direction. l led and for more then a mile found the Land excellent and ha’dWOOds' clothed with a lovely admixture of lofty Pine, Black Birch, Beech, Maple etc. Advancing we fell in with an extensive Swamp covered with a kind of Spruce fir stunted in its growth, generally not more than 5 or 6 feet high and its branches proceeding horizontally from the ground to the top hard rugged and so interwoven as to render the whole to appearance utterly impervious. I had never seen the like tho I had explored many hundred miles in the wild and unfrequented Forests of America

A spruce swamp.

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