41 4 BULLETIN OF THE NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY. 
the Tobique, which is probably incorrect ( New Brunswick , 192). 
Again Alexander Monro, the surveyor, in his New Brunswick , 
1:855, gives an account of the Province largely independent of 
other works, and describes the limits of the fire, which he says 
embraced ; — 
Almost the entire country, from within a short distance of (the Gulf 
shore, and the head of the Tabusintac river, thence nearly to the Falls of 
the Nipissiquit, and from that vicinity in the direction of the Tobique 
River, and near'tto its head, and in another direction, beginning at the 
mouth of the Miramichi River, embracing both its banks, and extending, 
in some places, beyond the present limits of the county to the Nashwaak 
river, in the county of York, thus comprehending in the whole, nearly 
4,000,000 acres of the best lumbering region of the Province. (Page 202) 
Evidence from tradition still current is of course of no great 
value after so long an interval, (now eighty years) since the fire, 
but still it is not without use. A valued correspondent of mine, 
Mr. P. H. Welch of Fulton Brook, Queens County, who has long 
known the woods of south central New Brunswick as lumber- 
scaler and through other occupations, writes me that he always 
understood the fire covered about 5,000 square miles. He also 
adds : — 
About forty years ago I worked with a man, an ox teamster, who was 
an eye-witness of the burning [of Miramichi], and worked all over the 
Miramichi afterwards, and lie positively stated that it [the fire] com- 
menced a short distance east of Nashwaksis and burned everything but 
swamps to the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or, to be more correct, to Tracadie 
Beach. 
Mr. Welch also calls my attention to the words of the Ballad 
of the Miramichi Fire, composed at the time, and still sung by 
the lumbermen, one line of which runs “46 miles by 100 this 
awful fire did extend”. 
So much for evidence as to the general limits of the fire. We 
consider next what evidence may be found as to its actual 
occurrence in particular places aside from Newcastle Parish. Its 
occurrence back of Chatham, though Chatham itself esceped, has 
already been noted. Mr. Welch confirms this from the relation 
of his friend the ox teamster, who told him that a spur “crossed 
