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BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY 
90. — On the Limits of the Great Fire of Miramichi of 1825. 
Read February 7, 1905; later re-written. 
Some observations upon the extensive burnt country at the 
head of the northwest and other branches of the Miramichi, and 
a desire to determine the rate of reforestation of burnt forest 
lands in New Brunswick, have led me to attempt to ascertain 
the precise limits of the great Miramichi fire which occurred in 
1825. Two sources of information were obviously available, — 
first, contemporary records in newspapers, books, maps, etc., and 
second, the testimony of the age of the timber in the Miramichi 
valley as known to well-informed lumbermen. The results of 
both lines of inquiry were the following. 
The earliest account of this immense and calamitous fire, 
(which occurred upon October 7th), that I have been able to find, 
is dated Miramichi, October nth, four days after the event. It 
is a brief but vivid description of the fire, calling, attention to the 
need for aid to the sufferers in whose interest it was printed on 
the front page of a letter-sheet, evidently intended to be widely 
circulated with business and other correspondence.* The account 
of the limits of the fire reads thus : 
At Douglastown, scarcely any 'kind of property escaped the ravages 
of the fire The Town of Newcastle, with all the surrounding settle- 
ments, became a total waste* excepting about fourteen buildings. .. .and 
four miles thmugh the interior. .. .the greatest desolation took place. The 
remote settlements from the entrance of the river upwards, present to 
the eye the dreadful havoc of this most calamitous event, particularly 
those of the North-West Branch, Baltibog and Nappan, some of which 
have scarcely a place of habitation left. 
Another contemporary account is contained in a pamphlet 
published in the same year (1825) at Halifax, reprinted, in part 
at least, in Murdoch’s Nova Scotia (Vol. Ill, page 539). It is 
entirely independent of the Rankin account above quoted, and, 
so far as the extent of the fire is described, reads thus : 
It has since been ascertained that the conflagration extended from the 
Northward from the neighborhood of Bay Chaleu-r, where two cottages 
* A letter in possession of Mri. Clarence Ward, to whom I am indebted 
for ithe use of his copy of the very rare original (recently reprinted in 
St. John and Miramichi newspapers),) shows, that it was written by Mr. 
Alexander Rankin, apparently an eye witness of the fire. 
