NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK 
415 
the main river below Chatham and laid everything waste on the 
south side of the river to Bay du Vin”. He also was told by him 
that “one wing of the fire crossed the southwest river and ran 
towards Gaspereau burning itself out south of Blackville”. Mr. 
Welch adds that there is other evidence of its extension in that 
direction, and he has given me the limits shown on the accomp- 
anying map. Mr. Welch’s statements on this point receive very 
satisfactory confirmation from another source. In 1844 Sir 
James Alexander made a survey for a military road from 
Moncton to Boiestown, and described his observations in hh 
book L’ Acadie published in London in 1849. In reference to a 
badly burned district he had to cross between Gaspereau and 
Cains River, he writes : — 
We had reached the scene of the Great Miramichi Fire of 1825, when 
the country was ravaged and laid waste from the neighborhood of Bay 
Ohaleur to Fredericton (II, 1849). 
And the matter receives confirmation from yet another source, 
for] Deputy Surveyor Fair weather’s plan of this country, made in 
1836, (for the opportunity to see which I am indebted to Mr. 
E. Hutchison of Douglastown), shows that all this country be- 
tween the Miramichi and the Gaspereau had been heavily burnt, 
though of course the evidence is not conclusive that this fire was 
contemporaneous with thef Great Fire. Alexander’s statement, 
resting as it no doubt did upon the testimony of some of the men 
in his employ, would seem, however, to make this clear. The 
extension of the fire in another direction is shown on one of the 
plans in the Crown Land Office which marks “Outline of Great 
Fire, 1825”, between Mullins Stream and South Branch) Sevogle. 
Through Mr. Hutchison I learn from Mr. Loggie of the Crown 
Land Office that there is no other evidence in that office bearing 
upon the present question. 
So much for the evidence documentary and traditional. We 
consider next the evidence from other sources. Seeking such, 
it occurred to me that an observant and well-informed lumber- 
man thoroughly acquainted with the Miramichi country, would 
probably know, in part from the ages of the trees growing there, 
