Emigrant Labor. 55 



hostility to the surveyor prevailed, and his enemies employed 

 agents to work for his removal. Dunbar had many friends, 

 however, and, to the great mortification of Belcher, the post of 

 Lieutenant Governor of New Hampshire was given to him, 

 rather than to Belcher's own candidate.^ On the other hand, 

 the Privy Council settled the question of jurisdiction in favor 

 of Massachusetts, and a garrison from the province was put in 

 place of Dunbar's soldiers.- 



Dunbars letters are so taken up with boundary disputes and 

 his ill treatment by the governor and by his enemies of Massa- 

 chusetts, that very little is said about the experiments of the set- 

 tlers in naval stores. Dunbar was not able to be on the spot, 

 for any length of time, to superintend the production of stores, 

 and the security of the settlers was constantly threatened by the 

 Massachusetts proprietors, on the one hand, and the danger of 

 Indian raids on the other. According to the deposition of one 

 Samuel ]\IcCobb,^ who was trying to establish his claim to some 

 of the property granted by Dunbar, the reason for the failure 

 of the settlement was that the land was poor and uncultivated, 

 and the settlers from Ireland too poor and ignorant of methods 

 of improving land to make a living ofif the soil. They de- 

 pended solely on the sale of firewood, which they cut down and 

 carried to Boston and other towns, until the murders and de- 

 predations of the Indians, in 1745, scattered the settlers and 

 drove them westward, thus ending the attempt to produce 

 stores on the Kennebec lands. 



^B. T. New Eng., Entry Bk. K., letter from the Duke of Newcastle, 

 March 5, 1731, recommending Dunbar. Palfrey, Vol. V, p. 568. 



^Palfrey, Vol. V, p. 569. 



^Dated October 23, 1772, Files of the State House, Boston, quoted 

 by Johnston, "History of Bristol and Bremen." 



