The men will spend May setting up their accommodation and will be ready to start cutting in June. He reckons that if they work to the end of October they will have cut and ”squared and carried to the riverbank at least 300,000 cubic feet of wood”6 — in a whole year he considers that more than 600,000 cubic feet of wood ”of all kinds” could be cut. The cost of all this ”cutting, squaring, transporting and loading” he estimates at five sols per cubic feet. A soldier, he says, even if inexperienced at wood-cutting should be able to cut and square at least 20 cubic feet each day (experienced workers in France, he notes, can cut 30 to 40 feet). They will thus each earn 100 sols a day, 40 of which should go to their commanding officers — so that ”it will commit them to getting their soldiers to work well”.

Boulaye outlines two options for getting the wood back to France: the first is to make use of the privately-owned ships that already sail to Canada — which he says either return empty, or at most with ”beaver skins and fur pelts, which altogether are not able to make up the cargo of a single ship of 150 [tons]”. These ships, he says, can easily be diverted to lle Saint-Jean on their return voyage, and at a freightage rate of five sols per cubic foot of wood, they will make a considerable profit which will compensate them ”for nearly all the expenses of their fitting-out”.

He then estimates the income that private ship- owners will make in carrying this wood back to France. By fairly simple calculations, and allowing for the greater bulkiness of wood, he considers that a ship of 100 tons carriage could carry 20,000 cubic feet of wood:

which at a rate of 5 sols a foot will give him 5000 livres in money for the cargo.7 Vessels of 200, 300 and 400 tons will make 10,000, 15,000 and 20,000 [livres] respective/y. This advantage is so great for these merchants that as soon as they have thought it over they will come forward wanting to carry this wood back to France.

Boulaye’s second option is for the Marine to use its own naval ships, which, he says, will also save the five sol freight rate that would have to be paid to merchant ships:

6 Note that the French foot was larger (by 6.3%) than the English foot (see Table 2, p. 35).

7 1 livre = 20 sols

The King sends a ship to Canada every year which returns empty. If His Majesty, instead of sending a ship of war, sends a flute8 of 500 tons, it will bring back up to one hundred thousand cubic feet of wood, and gain for its freight 25,000 [livres] to compensate the expense of its fitting— out.

He summarises the financial benefits of his proposal by saying that "the King could have all this wood supplied to his ports at ten sols per cubic foot” (i.e. five for the soldiers' work and five for the freightage) — instead of the ”more than thirty sols” which he presently pays, thus ”saving two—thirds of the cost”.

The only up-front expense to the king will be the cost of the axes, grindstones and cross—saws that will need to be issued to the soldiers — though even this cost, he says, could be recovered from the soldiers’ wages if the king wished.

To cap it all he suggests that the soldiers should be encouraged to marry and settle down thus populating and cultivating the island. And, to ensure that the timber resource will continue indefinitely in the future, he advises that attention be paid to allowing all the land that is not cultivated to grow into mature forest.

THE ’FLAWS' IN BOULAYE'S PLAN

On the surface Boulaye's proposal paints such a rosy picture that it would seem a no-lose situation for the king, and an offer that could not be refused. However, it is not hard to understand why nothing further is ever heard of the proposal: it all gives the impression of being the work of a rather naive amateur operating outside the real world. Setting aside the absurdly unrealistic time- scale, the only expense mentioned in putting 200 soldiers from Louisbourg to work in the forests of lle Saint-Jean is the cost of their tools. No mention is made of the costs of transporting the soldiers, accommodating them, and providing draught animals for hauling the logs. He assumes also the acquiescence of both the military authorities at Louisbourg and the soldiers themselves. Even though the 17305 was a time of peace between France and England, it is very doubtful that the governor would have accepted the reduction of

3 According to Proulx (1984) (p. 18) a flute was a flat-bottomed

cargo vessel of heavy build with a port-hole in the stern for loading large pieces of timber.

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