Value of the Canadian trade. soon discovered that in those colonies there were nine or ten different indigenous species of oak; that among these the live oak, a very superior description of timber, was of most use for ship-building; that firs and pines abounded in great variety; that the uncultivated parts of the country contained the most extensive forests in the world; and that the white Canadian pine was better adapted than any wood to be found in the Baltic for masts of the largest and best description.
They were also aware that when Canada was under the dominion of the French a sixty-gun ship had been constructed of the red pine of that country, which was found very suitable for the purpose. Besides various descriptions of timber well adapted for ship-building purposes, Canada produced the pitch-pine tree, which yields abundance of pitch, tar, resin, and turpentine, so that English shipowners had resources within their own colonies which would render them in a great measure independent of Russia if they were only developed. The great importance of these and other articles of naval stores, and their prodigious abundance in Canada, caused much more attention to be directed to the trade of that country than had hitherto been the case; but it was only after the perseverance of many years in these judicious efforts to develop the agricultural riches of her North American colonies, that English shipowners reaped the benefits of the extensive trade now carried on between them and the mother-country.
