Notes upon the Dark Days of Canada. 227 



wind which set in in the night of the 2d July, they were carried, 

 probably with more of the same description, across the Gulf of 

 St Lawrence, and the Island of Newfoundland to the place in 

 which the Phoenix then was ; and on the tMrd of July, envelop- 

 ed her in the same obscurity with which Captain Payne's ship, 

 the Sir William H«athcote, and the other transports, were enve* 

 loped on the preceding day. 



For the phenomena of the dark days of Canada which have 

 been thus detailed, there appear to be but two causes to which 

 they can be attributed, — the conflagration of a forest, and volcanic 

 action. y<j htr^iUm vliniu'^ 



As to the conflagration of a forest, the facts of which we are 

 in possession do not appear to warrant a belief that such can be 

 the cause. It seems impossible to suppose that the conflagra^ 

 tion of any forest could have produced a mass of smoke so dense 

 and so extensive as to overspread (as it did in October 1785) 

 the surface of a territory, exceeding certainly 300 miles in 

 length, and probably 200 miles in breadth *, and producing, at 

 its utmost longitudinal extremity, and at mid-day, the obscurity 

 of the darkest night. And as the whole of the cause of this ob- 

 scurity proceeded apparently from the Labrador country, where 

 forest-trees are few in number, stinted in size, and spread in 

 small isolated patches over a general surface of rock, it is the 

 more improbable. In point of fact, such a mass of wood smoke 

 could not have been collected without exposing the individuals 

 which it enveloped to the danger of suffocation ; and it is not 

 said in any of the accounts which are extant, that this was the 

 case, or that their eyes were affected, or that there was even a 

 smell of wood smoke. Captain Payne has indeed observed, that 

 " the dust or ashes collected on the deck appeared to be those 

 of burnt wood ;" but he immediately adds, that they were darker 

 and more heavy than the ashes from a tobacco pipe, which are al- 

 so vegetable ashes, though of another description ; and from the 



" In October 1785, the obscurity extended so as to comprehend on one 

 side, Fredericton, in the province of New Brunswick, and on the other, 

 Montreal. A ship, the Adamanty belonging to the house of Brooke, Watson, 

 & Co. in which, it is understood, the late Sir John Johnson was a passenger, 

 on the 16th of October 1785, was, in the morning, off the east end of the 

 Island of Anticosti : there it was then clear weather, but towards the west 

 they saw a heavy black cloud, and by 12 o'clock on the same day had sailed 

 into it, and very shortly aft«-wards found themselves enveloped in perfect 

 obscurity. 



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