, will listen
to every report, and generally believe it and think everything true
that is told them."

We shall presently see that Allan was able to make good use of his
knowledge of the weaknesses of Indian nature. He was appointed
superintendent of the Eastern Indians in 1777 by the Massachusetts
Congress, with the military rank of Colonel. He was the most
persevering and troublesome antagonist the British had in Eastern New
England. Had it not been for his exertions it is probable the
Americans would have lost their outpost at Machias, and it is possible
that the English would then have held the country as far west as the
River Kennebeck.

CHAPTER XXIV.

AFFAIRS ON THE ST. JOHN DURING THE REVOLUTION.

In the year 1775 armed vessels were fitted out in several of the ports
of New England to prey on the commerce of Nova Scotia. Many of these
carried no proper commissions and were manned by hands of brutal
marauders whose conduct was so outrageous that even so warm a partizan
as Col. John Allan sent a remonstrance to congress regarding their
behaviour: "Their horrid crimes," he says, "are too notorious to pass
unnoticed," and after particularizing some of their enormities he
declares "such proceedings will occasion more Torys than a hundred
such expeditions will make good."

The people of Machias were particularly fond of plundering their
neighbors, and that place was termed a "nest of pirates and rebels" by
General Eyre Massey, the commandant at Halifax.

Early in the summer of 1775 it was rumored that Stephen Smith of
Machias, one of the delegates to the Massachusetts congress, had
orders to seize Fort Frederick, and the Governor of Nova Scotia
recommended the establishment of a garrison there to prevent such an
attempt. But the military authorities were too dilatory and in the
month of August a party from Machias, led by Smith, entered St. John
harbor in a sloop, burned Fort Frederick and the barracks and took
four men who were in the fort prisoners. The party also captured a
brig of 120 tons laden with oxen, sheep and swine, intended for the
British troops at Boston. This was the first hostile act committed in
Nova Scotia and it produced almost as great a sensation at Halifax as
at St. John. The event is thus described by our first local historian,
Peter Fisher, in his Sketches of New Brunswick:--

"A brig was sent from Boston to procure fresh provisions for the
British army, then in that town, from