Anon. (1867) Country life in Prince Edward Island in the past generation. The Summerside Progress, 21 January 1867. p. 1. Summerside, P.E.l.

The following article appeared without an author’s name in the Summerside Progress in 786 7, having first appeared in the Charlottetown Examiner. It is probably but one example of a type of article that appeared in island newspapers in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when from the perspective of an advanced stage of settlement, islanders were able to look back and comment on the great changes that had occurred in the forests and landscape of the island in a relatively short period of time. / have not carried out a search of newspapers for such articles and this one will thus have to serve as the lone example. I have extracted from it only the comments relevant to the island ’s landscape and forest, though the author also commented incitefu/ly on domestic and social changes as well.

An ever changing coun tryside.

The days of the primeval forest.

The first clearances.

The ’war’ against the forest.

Forest fires.

Fires assist land-clearing.

lmpro vemen t.

Stumping frolics.

Here a man cannot have lived to middle age without having witnessed many and great changes in the general features of the country. He who has attained old age has beheld even greater changes. In his boyhood he has seen the greater part of the country covered with primeval forest. From every hill top landwards nothing met his eye but a vast unbroken sea of foliage, so dense as almost to appear solid. Who that has travelled through this country thirty, or even twenty years ago, has not been struck by the immense expanses of rounded tree tops, so uniform in height, and so substantial in appearance as if to look as if one might walk in safety over the dense masses of foliage. The settlements then consisted of a number of small cleared spaces cut out of the forest with great labor. The view from the settler’s log cabin was bounded on every side by an apparently impenetrable wall of forest. One or two fields, plentifully dotted with blackened and unsightly stumps, and surrounded by irregular fences, equally unsightly, formed the whole landscape. A small patch of sky corresponding to the size of the clearance, was all of the "spacious firmament“ that the new settler could obtain a glimpse of.

But the march of improvement was rapid and continuous. The settler waged war against the forest with fire and steel. The waste of timber now seems very deplorable. Splendid trees were cut down merely to be burned. Every Spring had its fires in the woods of greater or less extent. The woods on fire presented a scene of terrible beauty and magnificence. At night it is really sublime. Everything is dry and everything burns rapidly. The flames run along the fallen leaves, and rage among the windfalls and other debris of the forest. Suddenly they seize the lowermost branches of a fir or spruce tree, and in an instant it becomes a pyramid of fire—the flames darting high above the tallest trees. In the morning the burned woods are a melancholy sight. These terrible fires greatly facilitate the labors of the farmer. In a few years the trees are uprooted by the wind. Another fire passes over them; and if the land be cleared before a new growth of wood has time to spring up, the settler is spared much exhausting labor.

A few years pass away, and the settlement arrives at the second stage of development. The stumps have disappeared from the few acres near the house, and the woods though still extensive, have retreated to a considerable distance.

These are the days of chopping, piling, stumping and fulling ”folics"—days when neighbors helped each other at certain seasons and in certain farming operations, as a matter of course. Every farmer has each year a field of larger or smaller dimensions to stump. Now stumping single-handed is very dull and very heavy work, and hired labor is almost impossible to be procured. He goes round among his neighbors and asks them to come on a certain day to ”lend him a hand". This is the stumping frolic of "the good old times”. ..

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