THE GREAT FIRE.

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horrors of that time are still fresh, interested us much by graphic details of his personal experiences when the fire appeared among them. It was an excessively hot summer, and fires were burning in numerous places upon the Miramichi and St John rivers and their tributaries; and the air was everywhere hot, and obscured with smoke. But on the 7th of October, it began to blow from the southwest, and the fire to spread over the country in the same direction. The wind increased gradually to a hurricane, and the fire advanced with proportionate rapidity. At one o'clock in the afternoon, it was still seventy miles up the river; and in the evening, it was at Douglastown. It travelled eighty-five miles in nine hours, so that scarcely on a fleet horse could a man have escaped from it. Lumberers already in the woods were caught, and solitary settlers with their families; and while all their property was destroyed, some saved their lives by rolling themselves in the rivers, till the scorching blast had passed over them. Instances of miraculous escape he told us—of parental devotion, and of selfish desertion; but the most striking things he mentioned were, that the flame, as it advanced, was twenty-five miles in breadth ; that, coming from the west, it rushed past the towns of Newcastle and Douglastown, leaving a green margin of some miles in breadth between its southern edge and the river; and that when, in its easterly course, it reached Burntchurch River, the wind lulled, turned round, and drove the fire up the river again. It then came back along the green fringe it had left as it descended, and by the way licked up the towns of Douglastown and Newcastle-of their 254 houses leaving only 14. It was doubtless the rushing of the sea-wind from the Gulf of St Lawrence, into the huge fiery vortex, that drove back the flame when it had reached the open mouth of the Miramichi River.

At these towns, men and cattle rushed into the river; and though a hurricane was raging on its surface, people

336

GREAT LOSS OF PROPERTY.

hurried into vessels and boats and scows, and eagerly thrust off from the land. The lesser dread was forgotten in the presence of the greater. But although so huge a flame was raging, there was no light. Showers of ashes and burned twigs, and still burning brands, and thick smoke, filled the air; and for two days afterwards, amid a perfect calm, the darkness on the river was such that a bell was kept tolling on each bank to indicate the site of the ferry, that people might know where to steer to.

The town of Chatham, on the opposite side of the river, in a great measure escaped; but the Nassau Settlement, six miles behind it, was burned to the ground -the settlers only saving their lives by rolling themselves in the river till the flame passed away. In many streams, where the native woods still overhung them, the water proved insufficient to preserve human life; and the thousands of salmon and other fish found floating on their surfaces showed how intense and penetrating the heat must have been.

Over many other parts of the province, great fires raged on the same day; and the loss to the province, not only in private property, but in the public forests consumed, was immense. The loss of private property at Miramichi alone was estimated at £228,000. Nor, in such burnings, is the public injury confined to the old forest trees consumed, which it will take many years to replace, but the soil itself is permanently injured by every such visitation. The clouds of ashes borne away by the wind are an actual robbery by nature, and an exhaustion of the land. It is in this way, no doubt, among others, that land is destroyed, as the provincials term it, by frequent burnings.

On this occasion, cinders and smoke were observed at Quebec, on the banks of Newfoundland, and even as far off as the Bermudas.

Laws are enacted, in most parts of North America,

WOODS FIRED BY LIGHTNING.

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attaching severe penalties to the firing of the native forests; but in a new country they are mere empty threats. As a fact in natural history, besides, it is interesting to know that dry trees are sometimes fired by lightning, and, therefore, that such burnings of the woods must have taken place from time to time from the most remote periods. In explaining the peculiar character of the surface-soil in many places, a knowledge of this fact may not be without its use. Land of ordinary fertility must be impoverished by frequent burnings, if the mineral matter derived from the soil was every time carried away by the winds, and the organic matter in the soil itself was at the same time consumed by the fire.

Oct. 19.—A few miles above Douglastown, the Miramichi divides into two branches, where what is called the North-west Miramichi flows into the main river from the left. At the junction, this branch almost equals the main stream in width; but after an ascent of ten or twelve miles it rapidly narrows, becomes shallow, and splits up into numerous tributaries. I made an excursion of twenty miles to-day up this North-west Miramichi, in company with Mr Rankin and Mr Henry Cunard, as far as a hay-farm belonging to the latter gentleman. The land in general was light, poor, sandy, or stony, till we reached the mouth of the north-west Mill-stream. Beyond this it improved into a light reddish loam. Between the Little and the Great Sevogle—two feeders of the north-west branch which come in from the west-a flat of good alluvial land, about 5000 acres in extent, stretches along the main river. Through it the river winds, forming islands here and there, on wbich patches of alder-swamp are seen, and magnificent American elms skirting their banks, and farm-houses at various distances. A portion of this flat land is under arable culture, but most of it is kept in meadow for the winter's hay. Mr Cunard's farm was of this kind : it was cut for

38

FIRST AND SECOND FOREST GROWTH.

hay every year, and the crop carried off by water to Newcastle and Chatham.

Farther up the river, tracts of hardwood land occur; but it is a consequence of the great fires which have devastated this region, that the indications of the natural clothing of wood, as to the value of land, cease to have that value and trustworthiness which they possess in other places. Since the great fire of 1825, for example, hardwood, chiefly poplar and white birch, with a sprinkling of maples, has taken the place of the pines, while these again grow almost alone on ridges formerly occupied by hardwood. It is true that, after a lapse of years, a sorting out of the trees less suited to the soil would probably take place; but some generations must pass before the forest will assume again the characters of what is called a first growth. This difference between a first and second growth is well known, and is always attended to by those who explore these woods with the view of judging of the agricultural quality of the land. Nor will this appear a difficult thing to do, when it is recollected that the size and age of a few very large trees will indicate the time which must have elapsed since a general destruction of the forest by fire has taken place.

Among other persons whom I met in the evening was the Presbyterian clergyman of Douglastown, a native of Scotland, who assured me, as the result of his long experience, that the winter here is on the whole as agreeable as at home. He prefers travelling, and makes all his visitings, in winter; finds his health better here, and that he is less subject to colds. Consumption has been more prevalent during the last few years, chiefly among young persons born in the country. He has known nine cases during the last two years; but it is quite a new thing, and the old-settled French Acadians are described as being entirely free from this disease.

As to the prospects of the working farmers on the

CLEARING MOLLIFIES THE CLIMATE.

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better for a settler to buy a farm already partially cleared, than to go into the wilderness. He could buy for less than it would cost to clear with the help of paid labour, while he would also avoid the disagreeables of the untouched wilderness. At the same time, it pays the clearer, who expends only his own labour in the work, to go into the woods, take the first six crops, and then sell.

The reader will excuse me from doing more than merely reporting this old settler's advice. From what I have elsewhere stated, the home agriculturist will understand that the clearer, or first settler, is also, by his usual course of procedure in this country, a robber and exhauster of the land; and that he who buys a partly cleared farm, from which six or more crops have been taken, must be prepared to follow upon the cleared land a more generous form of husbandry than it has previously been subjected to, if it is to be made to produce satisfactory crops. Where the land is really good, however, this more generous husbandry is both easily attainable and followed by satisfactory returns.

The clearing of the woods in this country has the effect, not only of diminishing the prevalence of rust and mildew, which, near the river, are sometimes extensively injurious, but also of mollifying the climate. On the rivers which are bordered by burned or cleared lands, the ice breaks up, sledging ceases, cutting timber is stopped, and river driving and all agricultural operations commence a fortnight earlier than where the natural forest remains. Thus, on the whole, the temperature of the province will improve, and the season for rural operations lengthen, as the country is more cleared and becomes more thickly settled. At the same time, the aptitude of the land to grow certain crops, and for rural operations generally, may in reality be lessened, if, as on the Bay de Chaleurs, the indiscriminate cutting of the

VOL. II.

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