232 THE THREE WAR-PARTIES. [1690. 



Davis with three or four others, more fortunate 

 than their companions, was kept by the French, 

 and carried to Canada. " They were kind to me," 

 he says, " on my travels through the country. I 

 arrived at Quebeck the 14th of June, where I was 

 civilly treated by the gentry, and soon carried to 

 the fort before the governour, the Earl of Fron- 

 tenack." Frontenac told him that the governor 

 and people of New York were the cause of the 

 war, since they had stirred up the Iroquois against 

 Canada, and prompted them to torture French 

 prisoners. 1 Davis replied that New York and New 

 England were distinct and separate governments, 

 each of which must answer for its own deeds ; and 

 that New England would gladly have remained 

 at peace with the French, if they had not set on 

 the Indians to attack her peaceful settlers. Fron- 

 tenac admitted that the people of New England 

 were not to be regarded in the same light with 

 those who had stirred up the Indians against 

 Canada ; but he added that they were all rebels to 

 their king, and that if they had been good subjects 

 there would have been no war. " I do believe,'' 



Portneuf, Monsieur Burniffe or Burneffe. To these contemporary au- 

 thorities may be added the account given by Le Clercq, EtaUissement de 

 la Foy, II. 393, and a letter from Governor Bradstreet of Massachusetts 

 to Jacob Leisler in Doc. Hist. N. Y., II. 259. The French writers of 

 course say nothing of any violation of faith on the part of the victors, 

 but they admit that the Indians kept most of the prisoners. Scarcely 

 was the fort taken, when four English vessels appeared in the harbor, 

 too late to save it. Willis, in his History of Port/ and (ed. 1865), gives a 

 map of Fort Loyal and the neighboring country. In the Massachusetts 

 archives is a letter from Davis, written a few days before the attack, 

 complaining that his fort is in wretched condition. 



1 I am unable to discover the foundation of this last charge. 



