NATURAL HISTORY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY OF NEW BRUNSWICK 
417 
We attempt now to deduce from the collective evidence the 
limits of the Great Fire. At first sight the testimony appears 
somewhat conflicting, but this, I believe, is because two quite 
distinct ideas are associated with the name Great Fire of Mira- 
michi. It seems plain that in early October, 1825, a large number 
of local forest fires were burning here and there over an extensive 
drought-stricken country, which embraced a great triangle with 
its apex near Fredericton, and its base on a line drawn from 
Felledune to Richibucto, (compare the accompanying map;, 
some 6,000 to 8,000 square miles in area. The great northwester- 
ly hurricane of the seventh of October fanned these fires to 
greater violence, extending and sometimes unking them, so that 
they formed irregular patches and net-works scattered over the 
area, leaving however, very extensive tracts, especially in the river 
valleys, entirely unburnt. It is this general fire, or series of fires, 
to which the name Great Fire is sometimes applied. In certain 
special sections, however, the fires were of special violence and 
extent. This was the case with that which burnt the Cains River- 
Gaspereau region, and with those which burnt the great area, 
still barren, on the head of the Little Southwest Miramichi, the 
Sevogle, Northwest Miramichi and Nepisiguit, the most extensive 
area still open from burning in New Brunswick.* Most im- 
portant of all these areas, however, partly because of the extent 
and violence of this particular fire, and partly because it involved 
so great a destruction of life and property, was that embracing 
the parish of Newcastle and vicinity, some 400 square miles in 
area, extending from the Square Forks of Sevogle and Mullins 
Stream easterly to the Bartibog, and beyond in a narrow tongue 
to near Grand Dune, and from Tomogonops and Portage River 
south to the Miramichi, which it crossed below Chatham to 
*It is of course not certain that} this area was burned at that time,' but 
certainly it was burned a very long time ago, and apparently no more 
recently than the country about the Square Forks of Sevogle, known to 
have been burned in 1825. Confirmatory of it are the various references, 
in the works cited, to the extension of the fire to, or towards iTobique. 
Perhaps at this time also the Graham Plains and Mitchell Plains country 
was burned on the Walkemik Branch (Note 87), as well as the burnt 
country on the Noith Pole Branch and the Lower North Branch. 
