Succession.

The view from the sea.

Coastal woods.

Wind-b/o wn trees.

Cradle-hills.

Beech woods. Trees as indicators of soil quality. Mixed woods.

Hemlock ’c/umps ’.

Pin e.

Spruce and fir woods.

The ’swamps ’.

cleared for cultivation or by fire (for many thousand acres have been destroyed by fire upon the Island) another cause is assignable for a particular kind of wood being found in a particular place besides the real nature of the soil. The whole Island, when viewed at a distance at sea, looks as if there was not a tree upon it. The trees grow so close together, and are so equal in height, that in spring their dark colour resembles heath; but upon nearer approach to the shore, the wood assumes the appearance of strong growing hemp, for it is almost every where in the southern side of the Island choked up with spruce round the shore, as thick in proportion as hemp will grow; some of it dead and withered, though still standing, and some of it broken by the middle, forming a thicket impenetrable almost to the foot of man. Round the greater part of the Island the flowing tide washes the bottom of a steep bank of various heights, from four to more than twenty feet; and where the greater part of this bank is not solid rock, the sea is wasting the land in exposed situations considerably. On the top of this bank, the thicket I have described is found extending to the utmost verge of the precipice, and some of the trees having lost their roots, are to be seen fallen or falling over. After passing through this stripe of soft wood we find larger trees, and growing more apart; but it is still unpleasant walking, for should there be little or no underwood, which is often the case, yet one's way is entirely blocked up by trees fallen down, some broken by the middle, others torn up by the roots in all the different stages of decay, from the tree newly overthrown to the one nearly assimilated in rottenness to the soil which gave it birth. But there is another impediment to travelling in the woods: many of the trees have been torn up by the roots with high winds, which have raised little hills of earth, which the natives call cradle hills. These render travelling in the woods, additionally unpleasant; and where they are large, require much labour before the land is fully levelled. Of all the different kinds of wood upon the Island, the beech, when growing separately by itself. is the most beautiful. The ground it occupies is the freest from underwood, or any thing to obstruct one’s way, while in summer it furnishes the most delightfully refreshing shade over head of any I have met with. The land where it abounds is the easiest cleared both as to the cutting, burning, and rotting of the stumps; and the land, when cleared, is reckoned the second best in quality of any in the Island. A mixture of hard wood with a small portion of soft wood in it, is next to beech in beauty, easiness to clear, and is also indicative of the best soil upon the Island. Hemlock, a kind of fir that is split into laths in Scotland, grows in clumps. Some of it is found of an amazing size, being from two to three and a half feet in diameter, and from fifty to seventy or eighty feet high, with a few puny mutilated branches near the top. These trees are exceedingly heavy to cut and pile, and very difficult to burn. The stumps will stand undecayed in the ground twenty or thirty years before they can be easily eradicated. The soil congenial to the production of this kind of wood, may be reckoned the third in quality upon the Island; yet in backward seasons it will surpass any other description of soil in the quality of the grain it produces—Pine, which is what we call Scotch fir at home, is not found but in detached trees, here and there in the woods, and is now all cut every where near the shores. Spruce and var fall next to be noticed. The ground naturally productive of these may be ranked as the worst in quality of any in the Island. It is all of a swampy nature; that is, a soil with much of the white sand I spoke of upon the surface, and a red clay below, of such an adhesive nature as not to allow the wet to get down to a proper depth.

These swamps have not been cleared and cultivated in the country any where, and are avoided as land not worth clearing and fencing. But I was told, and I believe it, that some of the gardens in Charlotte Town, which are of this nature, are the most productive of any, after being drained and trenched. Some of these swamps are growing with black spruce, so rank as not to be much more than a foot apart, about the thickness of a pitchfork handle, and from fifteen to twenty feet high, with the branches almost all dead, but a few at their top. But where the water has not a

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