Road—making.

Blazing trees.

Win d- thro ws along roads.

Conserving firewood.

Poor soil in the cradle hills.

Catt/e in the woods.

Preda to rs.

Forest mammals.

Bears.

Letter Sixth, Charlotte Town, Sept. 13th, 1821.

. the subject of roads, and the process of making them; when a new road is to be opened here, a survey is made by one well acquainted with the neighbourhood; the trees are then marked with chips along the track; this they call blazing them. The next process is to cut as many trees as to open a way to ride or walk in. The next step is to cut down as many more, (rooting out the stumps.) as to allow a carryall or slay (sledge) to pass. Next, to level the cradle-hills; and lastly to cast up the earth like a new formed road in Scotland. To cast up the soil from the rib is all that is needful to complete a road here; no better mettle can be got any where, and no better is generally needful. There is no spouty ground here, and if any of it is swampy and wet, they cut down small soft wood trees, and lay across the bottom as close as one can lie at the side of another, and by casting earth from the sides of the road upon these, make it both firm and durable . [pp. 122-23]

Some of the roads are not even well opened and levelled, and till once the trees are cut down on each side to a considerable distance, every blast of the wind is in danger of filling them with wind falls, as they call them, which greatly obstructs the traveller.

Their farms are generally 100 acres, English measure, half a quarter of a mile broad, and a mile and a quarter long. Perhaps the first generation, according to the progress many of the settlers have made, will not clear more than 20 or 30 acres all their life; and the distant end of the farm is carefully kept for firewood for future generations. Where they have large clear farms, they are letting much of the land run entirely wild and barren. [pp. 125-261 New stumped land, however much it was enriched by the first burning of the wood upon it, is always rendered poor before it is fit for stumping; and where the cradle hills are high, the good soil, by the first ploughing, in the hollow parts, is greatly covered up; and the bad soil, from the heart of the cradle hills, is thrown upon the top. [p. 127] From the poor way their cattle are fed during winter, when driven into the woods in this state, they are more in danger of getting mired, as well as falling prey to wild beasts. Their sheep, though very healthy and prolific, sometimes fall a prey to foxes and wild cats;

Letter Ninth, Maxwelltown, Feb. 20, 1822.

The wild animals are bears, red, silver gray, and black foxes, the wild cat, or lucefee, (it is as big as a grey hound) martins, minks, musk rats, three different kinds of squirrels, the ground squirrel, the climbing and the flying squirrel. I never had the pleasure of seeing the last one mentioned, but the others are very plentiful; and it is very amusing to observe their motions, and hear their chirping and cooing when travelling in the woods. There are hares, but they are small, and their fur is of little value; they are gray in summer, and white in winter. There are rats and mice the same as at home, and field mice that stay in the woods; but there is not a mole in the whole Island.

Having mentioned that there are bears upon the Island, some will be ready to say we would not like to go to a country where these ferocious animals are; we might be torn to pieces. Well I can assure you that I never had the pleasure, or rather the alarm of seeing one of them alive, after all the solitary journies l made through the largest woods upon the Island, with no other instrument of self-defence but a walking staff. But the truth is, there are few of them yet in the woods, which are seen occasionally by the inhabitants. And now and then in certain solitary places in the woods, some of the black cattle and sheep are falling a prey to them and the wild cat, while the

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