Stewart, John (1806) An Account of Prince Edward island, in the Gu/ph of St. Lawrence, North America. Winchester & Sons, London. [Reprinted 1967, S. R. Publishers.]

John Stewart (b. 7758, d. 7834/ arrived on Prince Edward Island from Scotland in 7 775 as a young man in the company of his father, the newly appointed chief justice of the colony. Thereafter in a long career as a politician, office-holder and army officer, he was to be at the centre of many of the political irnbroglios that involved most of those governing the island in its first fifty years of British administration. He spent almost all his life on the island (on page 68 he claims (as of 7806) ”upwards of twenty years actual residence”) — excepting visits to London and a period spent in Newfoundland ( 7804- 7 7) when he was paymaster general of the British forces there. It was in this period that he found time to write and publish the first major book on Prince Edward Island, describing the natural and civil history of the colon y. A substantial part is devoted to the landscape and forests, providing us with the most comprehensive of the early accounts of the tree and plant species. Although he acknowledges his botanical knowledge to be ’imperfect’, he is the first person to attempt to apply scientific binomial names to the tree species — from what source he got the names he does not tell us. If almost all of his description is generalized and not site-specific, it is nonetheless an invaluable account, written by a man who had probably visited the whole island, and who knew especially well the area around Charlottetown and the Hillsborough River, at the head of which he acquired part of Lot 37, where he built his country house, ’Mount Stewart’, the landscaping of which was singled out for comment by other writers of the period.

REFERENCES:

Pigot, F. L. (1973) John Stewart of Mount Stewart. Cornelius Howatt Commemorative Series (No. 2), Williams and Crue, Summerside, P. E. I.

Pigot, F. L. (1987) Stewart, John. Dictionary of Canadian Biography, VI: 735-38.

SITUATION AND DIVISIONS

GEO/9610M? area The lands round all the branches of this extensive harbour [Georgetown] are remarkably well timbered, and yet in great degree untouched, which with its other advantages, render it a most eligible situation for ship building and the timber trade.

[p. 19]

Richmond Bay There are very considerable settlements on Richmond Bay, which are increasing very fast in population, the land being in general very good, and abounding with fine timber. [p. 22]

FACE OF THE COUNTRY. [pp. 23, 25-26]

The Island is in general level, having but few hills, and none of them very high or steep, probably the highest spot on the Island does not rise above five hundred feet The hardwood . . . . hills. above the level of the sea, and the SOII on the hIIIS IS in general the best on the Island, being moister, and less apt to be sandy than the low grounds, the timber on them is in general hard wood, and the trees larger, and stand at a greater distance. than on Few swamps, the low grounds, a sure indication of a superior soil: There are not many swamps of any extent in the Island Travelling is not difficult through the woods, even where there are no roads, there being very little underwood to what is generally found in most other countries covered with forest, nor is it in the least encumbered with rocks, like the neighbouring country of Nova Scotia. In looking at the face of the country without any impediment to the cultivation of the whole, no rocks, no impenetrable swamps, no extensive pine barrens to separate the settlements, so that there need not be a waste acre in the Island,

Few pine barrens.